Kenneth Clark: Life, Art and Civilisation - James Stourton

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but then backed out of the deal, which may have made it harder for Clark to negotiate with the Soviets. He identified two pictures he would like for the gallery, Giorgione’s Judith and Rembrandt’s Prodigal Son, but had to inform his trustees that there was no chance of buying anything from the Hermitage at present.

      January 1936 was a golden month for acquisition, when the gallery succeeded in securing Constable’ s Hadleigh Castle, the glorious Buccleuch Rubens, and the painting Clark was proudest of finding, Ingres’ Portrait of Madame Moitessier. He had travelled to Paris to see an earlier likeness of the same sitter wearing a black dress at Paul Rosenberg’s gallery, and while there he picked up intelligence that the later, much finer, portrait might be available. He did not hesitate, and earned a plaudit from BB: ‘Let me congratulate you on the Ingres you have just purchased. How redolent of Raphael …’31 Clark was to describe this portrait lovingly in his TV essay on Ingres in Romantic versus Classic Art: ‘impassive in her extravagant finery, she reminds one of some sacred figure carried in procession’.32 He recounted the reaction of the trustees to this splurge of acquisitions to Lord d’Abernon: ‘After the first shock of imagining themselves penniless, they were persuaded by the beauty of the pictures.’33

      Acquiring the Ingres was one of Clark’s finest achievements at the gallery, but even that had its critics – and from a direction whence more trouble would stir in future. Sir Gerald Kelly, president of the Royal Academy, wrote to Clark that ‘she isn’t everyone’s seven course dinner. (It is ridiculous to use the phrase “cup of tea” in connection with the stately Mme. Moitessier.)’34 Sometimes Clark was unable to get his way with the trustees. ‘The only time,’ he once told an audience, ‘I ever observed agreement between the staff and the trustees of the National Gallery was when I proposed (as I fairly frequently did in thirteen years) the purchase of a Delacroix. They were agreed that he was a tiresome, second-rate painter, and none of his pictures were bought.’35

      Clark had got off to an excellent start as director, but the work was fatiguing, and his health was never strong. As he wrote to Edith Wharton: ‘I work from 9.30 to 5.30 without a minute’s pause. Then I come home and write lectures till dinner. At the end of it I am good for nothing. However I do feel that the work is rewarding … though I have seen some claws which may soon be turned on me.’36 Over Christmas 1934 he collapsed, and was taken to hospital with a strained heart. Owen Morshead sent a memo to Queen Mary describing the problem: ‘His heart had shifted two inches out of its place owing to the fatigue of the muscles which hold it in position.’37 Wharton invited him to convalesce in the south of France, but Jane took him to Brighton instead, where together they explored the antique shops. Clark recovered, and would enjoy another eighteen months of productive and reasonably smooth running at the gallery before the claws to which he had referred became troublesome.

      11

       By Royal Command

       My colleagues, even the friendliest of them, thought that I was a place-hunter.

      KENNETH CLARK, Another Part of the Woods

      The visit of King George V and Queen Mary to the National Gallery described at the opening of this book was the result of two years of lobbying on the part of Owen Morshead. Once it was known that Charles Collins Baker was going to retire as Surveyor of the King’s Pictures, various candidates had been considered. The King and Queen’s daughter Princess Mary, the Princess Royal, promoted the candidature of the ubiquitous Finnish art historian and arch-monarchist Tancred Borenius, who had helped her husband, the Earl of Harewood, assemble his collection of Old Master paintings. The trouble with ‘Tankie’, as Morshead liked to refer to him, was that he was tainted by a too-close involvement with the art trade. Morshead crucially got the support of Queen Mary, who – as he reported to Clark – had told him, ‘I know the King wants nothing so much as to feel he has his own pictures under his own man – someone whom he can order about, to whom he can say what he wants done, without feeling that he has to go and ask the permission of the National Gallery officials in the disposition of his own things.’1 Clark had been at the Ashmolean at the time, although frequently in and out of Windsor completing his Leonardo catalogue. The idea appears to have attracted Clark, because Morshead wrote to Queen Mary recommending him for questions of attribution and cleaning, while suggesting that the rest of the work might be done by an administrator – an idea which evidently came from Clark.2 In Morshead’s view Clark was not only the best, but the only, man for the job.

      Lord Wigram wrote to Philip Sassoon, as chairman of the trustees, announcing that the King and Queen would make ‘a short visit of about half an hour to the National Gallery, at 12 noon on Sunday, 25 March. Their Majesties would like the Director to be there …’ They tactfully indicated that the trustees should not change their existing appointments, and that they did not wish invitations to be extended to them as a body.7 Given that this was the first visit by a reigning monarch to the gallery, it was a considerable matter to leave the trustees out of the picture. Clark made a cryptic diary account of the visit: ‘Motor up to London to take King and Queen round NG. I start with Q[ueen]. very stiff and full of formal questions. After the first room take on K[ing]. who is much jollier. Loudly proclaimed that Turner was mad. Very much consoled by [Frith’s] Derby Day where we traced all the incidents, but regretted that the race was not visible. Wanted to put his stick through Cézanne. Q. clearly felt that K. and I were not serious enough but thawed a bit. K. enjoyed view from steps and went off through cheering crowd.’8 The degree to which Clark perjured himself in artistic terms discussing Cézanne and Turner with the monarch can only be imagined, but it is clear that the two men had contrived to enjoy themselves.

      Morshead’s debrief to Clark after the visit is characteristically direct: ‘The Queen said to me this morning: “We were both greatly taken with Mr Clark; he seems just the very person we should like so very much to have … the King

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