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Kenneth Clark: Life, Art and Civilisation. James Stourton
Читать онлайн.Название Kenneth Clark: Life, Art and Civilisation
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780007493432
Автор произведения James Stourton
Жанр Биографии и Мемуары
Издательство HarperCollins
Apart from the understandable fear of not having the time to do both jobs, Clark was anxious about the reaction of the National Gallery trustees. All this was swept aside at Windsor, and Morshead reassured Queen Mary that pressure was being put on Clark to accept: ‘I felt that if he knew the degree to which the King’s personal desires were involved the issue might present itself in a different light.’10 Clark went to the trustees and obtained their consent; with this kind of pressure being exerted by the King and Queen he had no choice but to accept the position.
It was the sheer scale of the Royal Collection that was so daunting – seven thousand paintings, as opposed to a mere two thousand at the National Gallery. Nevertheless, on 3 July 1934 Clark was gazetted as Surveyor of the King’s Pictures. Reactions to the appointment were mixed. Berenson wrote laconically: ‘I am doubly glad as I shall feel free to ask you for photos & information about said pictures.’11 But others felt affronted by such pluralism in one so young, believing it to be a sign of Clark’s ambition.12 Apart from the envy the appointment caused, he also felt he lacked Borenius’s enthusiasm for pedigrees and portraiture: at Windsor, royal iconography came well above aesthetics. However, as a later Surveyor put it, ‘the important point about Kenneth Clark at the Royal Collection was the fact that somebody of that calibre was there at all. It set off the train of modern times with great scholars looking after the collection.’13
Clark settled into the job of Surveyor with characteristic efficiency. Few monarchs have had so little aesthetic appreciation – postage stamps apart – as George V. Despite this, Clark became very fond of the King, and found his gruff naval manner concealed a kind and fatherly patron. The Queen was a different matter, and took a close interest in the Royal Collection. Years later Clark told his biographer, ‘As a matter of fact I enjoyed it hugely: staying at Windsor was the best thing in the world. One was left free all day and had the use of a royal car. The old King took a great fancy to Jane and changed the “placement” in order to have her next to him.’14 Clark also enjoyed ‘very good grub’ at Windsor. His main task, as he saw it, was to follow the King’s instructions and implement a programme of restoration and cleaning of the paintings. As he wrote to the Lord Chamberlain, ‘the Collection has been very much let down in the last hundred years’.15 He presented lists of pictures that needed conservation, but invariably provided estimates of the cost – without consulting the restorers – that were far too low, which caused endless trouble with palace officials.16 Typical was the case of the huge Van der Goes altarpiece loaned to Edinburgh, that cost two and a half times Clark’s original estimate for repairs – which he was forced to explain to the Lord Chamberlain’s Office.
With the King’s death in January 1936, Clark had new masters at Windsor. There was a hiatus during the Abdication period, so it was not until May the following year that King George VI and Queen Elizabeth were crowned. Clark had already identified the Duchess of York – as the Queen then was – as a potential ally before the abdication of her brother-in-law. After she wrote Clark a flattering letter about his lecture on English landscape painting he sent her The Gothic Revival, recommending the chapter on Pugin, ‘who was a fascinating character’. They had recently been to an exhibition together, and Clark added that ‘so few people seem to enjoy pictures: they look at them stodgily, or critically – or acquisitively; seldom with real enthusiasm’.17 He enjoyed writing to her about the places he visited. On a tour of Eastern Europe he told her that ‘the most fascinating place we saw was Cracow. It is incredibly mediaeval, squalid & superstitious, with a ghetto full of magnificent old Jews with fur caps & long curly beards: in fact a population of living Rembrandts.’18
The flavour of Clark’s life in the build-up to the coronation, and his impressions of the new King and Queen, were conveyed in a letter to Edith Wharton: ‘I am engaged in a last wild round up before going to Vienna and Budapest next Thursday. We are opening a new gallery, collecting new loans and acquisitions, fighting the Treasury, choosing the great seal etc. every minute of the day. On top of it I have to spend two days at Windsor with the Monarch advising him about his pictures – interminably standing and grinning. This is particularly bitter because it keeps me away from my beloved “Bellers” [his new rented house in the country] which we enjoy more and more every visit … Jane has been laid low with a horrible attack of flu which almost became jaundice. She suffered agonies of depression … I found the new King and Queen very pleasant – she just above the average country house type, he just below it.’19 Clark was to become an ardent fan of the Queen, but he never changed his mind about the King.
On the day of the coronation, the Clarks were in their seats in Westminster Abbey by 8 a.m., three hours before the arrival of the King. Jane wore a white court brocade dress, with a long white velvet Schiaparelli cloak and a tiara.20 ‘The coronation,’ Clark wrote to his mother, ‘was far the most moving and magnificent performance I have ever seen. We had very good seats, almost the best in the Abbey [he enclosed a diagram] … The whole performance was beyond [the theatrical impresarios] Reinhardt and Cochran partly because it took place in the Abbey, partly because it cost £1 million, but chiefly because the leading actors and actresses really looked the part … I must say too, that I felt the real significance of the coronation in a way I couldn’t have believed. The sight of all these different races, of these representatives of every corner of the earth united by this single ideal has converted me to Imperialism.’21
Clark’s first instinct in the new reign was to resign. He was worried that the new King would want to rehang everything, and despite this being his favourite occupation, that he would not have enough time. Morshead talked him out of it, and he soon found that he was far more useful than he had been under the previous regime. First, there was the question of new state portraits, for which Clark recommended Sir Gerald Kelly. He was expected to be in attendance for visits of foreign heads of state, such as the French President Albert Lebrun in March 1939, to show them the treasures. He also found himself an unofficial adviser for the Order of Merit, which – with the exception of the Garter – is the most distinguished award for high achievement at the monarch’s disposal. When his opinion was invited on Edwin Lutyens versus Giles Gilbert Scott for the OM, he replied without a moment’s hesitation ‘Lutyens’, who despite being at the nadir of critical fortune was in Clark’s opinion greater than all his rival architects.22 Later he was consulted about musicians, intellectuals and even scientists, pushing the claims of Maynard Keynes and the physiologist Edgar Adrian.23
Clark had been right in identifying the new Queen as a potential patron of the arts. She began by asking his advice on the rehanging of her sitting room at Windsor. Matters moved on from there, as Jane’s diary reveals: ‘K has enjoyed Windsor espec two long walks with Queen … they want to get in touch with modern life in as many aspects as poss but go slow so as not to hurt people’s feelings.’ She also noted that her husband was ‘shocked at how little K&Q do. She gets up at 11. Hardly anyone at Windsor and just as dreary in the evenings as under King G and QM, but at least latter went to bed earlier. He likes the Q v much.’24 Clark’s position was unusual,