Kenneth Clark

by James Stourton

  Clark’s final Oxford triumph was the opening of the new gallery. It was named after Mrs Weldon, the north Oxford benefactress who had presented the museum with Claude’s Ascanius and the Stag, together with a Watteau and a Chardin. The Weldon Room was a top-lit gallery created by E. Stanley Hall to house English and French pictures of the eighteenth century, and designed to blend with Charles Cockerell’s original architecture. There was a grand opening to which, the Oxford Times reported, practically the whole of the university turned out. The newspaper also revealed that the anonymous donor who had come forward to create the extension four years before the university felt it could raise the money was Kenneth Clark himself.48 It fell to Lord Halifax, the Chancellor of Oxford University, to make a speech in which he described Clark as ‘a man young in years but ageless in his love and knowledge of the arts’.49

  Clark left the Ashmolean at the end of December 1933, to take up his new appointment at the National Gallery in London on 1 January 1934. Owen Morshead sent him Christmas greetings from Windsor, wishing him success in his new position: ‘Happy & Glorious, Not too uproarious, God save our K.’

  * * *

  *1 The other side of the story was that Lee’s promised bequest was conditional on his own attributions being maintained, which Bell would not accept.

  *2 One of the keepers at the National Gallery just before Clark’s time. He was considered by Clark to be the ablest of them, and he went on to have a distinguished career as director of the Barber Institute in Birmingham and as a writer on Italian and British painting.

  *3 She died only a few years later, in 1937, and left her godson Colin her library. Clark purloined it, and Colin received no benefit from it until his father’s death.

  *4 It was on the suggestion of Clark that Lee went into action when the Institute and its important library in Hamburg were in danger (see Another Part of the Wood, pp.207–8).

  10

  Appointment and Trustees

  So in the intervals of being a manager of a large department store I shall have to be a professional entertainer to the landed and official classes.

  KENNETH CLARK to Bernard Berenson, 5 February 19341

  The announcement that Kenneth Clark would be the next director of the National Gallery was gazetted in The Times on 2 September 1933. Although he was only thirty years old, his appointment was greeted with relief and optimism. David Balniel summed up the feeling: ‘This is an excellent appointment in contrast to both the previous directors. He has youth, enthusiasm, tact and discretion, and more all-round knowledge than anyone else in England. A brilliant mind, lots of money, plenty of friends and ambition. He will do well.’2 Balniel’s father Lord Crawford, however, was less impressed, and recorded his opinion of Clark as ‘a very arrogant little chap, but clever as a monkey’, who fancied himself ‘well able to distribute official patronage’.3 Both views would have validity during the tumultuous years that followed.

  The National Gallery had been almost ungovernable over the previous decade, with a continuous simmering row between the trustees and the staff. This was partly because the constitution that governed it had so often been adapted to suit special circumstances. Under the infamous ‘Rosebery Minute’ of 1894, powers of acquisition had largely passed from the director to the trustees. The trustees had become high-handed, treating the curators as mere functionaries to carry out their wishes. Clark’s predecessor, Augustus Daniel (a caretaker appointment), had done as little as possible, and suffered under what he described as ‘the tyranny and malignancy of the Board’. His successor was expected to be the gallery’s deputy director, Clark’s former colleague on the Italian exhibition, W.G. Constable, but Lord Lee had persuaded him to take over the newly established Courtauld Institute of Art Historical Studies. Constable hoped he would be able to do both jobs when the time came. Lord Lee’s term as chairman came to its end in 1933, and he was replaced by the debonair Sir Philip Sassoon.4 Lee had certainly manoeuvred to achieve Clark’s appointment, in part to secure his own reappointment as a trustee. Although some thought Clark was too young, there was a consensus on the board that as an exceptionally bright young man who spoke their patrician language, he could bridge the division between the trustees and the staff. Both sides greeted the appointment warmly, believing Clark to be on their side. As he told BB, he was appointed for his ‘conciliatory disposition’, and it ‘would be the act of a mugwump to refuse’.5

  Clark also believed himself to be too young, but when he received the telegram from the Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, he was flattered. A letter from 10 Downing Street confirmed the appointment, offering him the post for five years, starting on 1 January 1934 with a salary of between £1,200 and £1,500. The letter pointed out (misleadingly) that previous directors had also been on the board of trustees, but ‘the Commission on Museums and Galleries recommended that that practice should be ended, as it has been the cause of some friction which has been experienced with the administration of the Gallery’.6 Clark accepted this apparent erosion of his new position, confident that his powers of persuasion were of greater importance.

  The letters of congratulation struck a cautious note, identifying the trustees as a potential source of trouble ahead. Leigh Ashton wrote from the V&A: ‘You will, of course, have a difficult time, but you know your own mind and you must always remember that if you choose you can put your hat on your head and walk out.’7 Ashton believed that the most likely problems would come from Philip Sassoon, who could be charming but then on a whim could become ‘a thorny problem’. He hoped Jane would charm Sassoon with ‘her admirable powers’. Isaiah Berlin wrote on a more positive note: ‘the activity of choosing and buying and arranging pictures when one’s life is devoted to them is as near to Paradise as I can conceive’. But he, like the others, thought Clark’s troubles would stem from the trustees. Anthony Blunt summed it up: ‘May you have plenty of fun with the Trustees – that, I imagine, will be the most disagreeable part of your duties.’ Lord Duveen sent a telegram of ‘Heartiest congratulations’, misspelling Clark’s surname with a final ‘e’; Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant hoped he would remove the glass that covered every picture in the gallery; and Monty Rendall observed that he was the first Wykehamist to hold the position. Interestingly, that wise old bird Sydney Cockerell, the director of the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, struck a different note from the rest: ‘it appears to me that the Trustees have been maligned and that they are as gentle and tractable as cooing doves’. The gallery staff believed that Clark, a professional art historian like themselves, would fight their corner and not be overawed by the trustees. As with the Italian exhibition, everybody assumed he was on their side. The keeper, Harold Isherwood Kay,8 who was to play such a malevolent part in Clark’s time at the gallery, wrote: ‘Your promised advent, if you will not mind my saying so, is the best news of the year.’9 The only place where the appointment was regarded with less enthusiasm was Windsor Castle, where Clark was already marked down for a future post.

  Just before Clark took up his new position he visited Spain for the first time, because, as he told Edith Wharton, ‘I really cannot direct the National Gallery unless I have seen the Prado. I shan’t attempt to see Spain – I shall simply go straight to the Prado, and back, after one large orgy.’10 He confided to her, with regard to his appointment, that BB ‘will be furious…he will say that I will be wholly corrupted, and I will never be able to drink the pure water of scholarship again. Perhaps he is right, but there are no scholars in my family – they were all company directors, and one can’t hope to swim against the tide of heredity for ever.’11

  Clark’s predecessor, Daniel, advised him to come in on 1 January, when the gallery would be open and all the staff there to greet him: ‘You will have no difficulty I am sure. Walk straight into your room and ask the Keeper to tell you if there is anything urgent. You will have letters on your desk.’12 Clark duly appeared on New Year’s Day, and noted in his diary: ‘First day at the NG. Deep fog, train late.
Tour with Glasgow; not very bright but willing to try innovations…on the whole exciting and agreeable.’13 Waiting on his desk was a minute written by Daniel on 31 December 1933, in which he offered the following advice: 1. He should lay down his own requirements, i.e. if he wanted to see letters, and whether inspection visits should be referred to him first. 2. To use the firms of Morrill and Holder for picture cleaning. After various other specific matters, Daniel recommended ‘the folder…containing the Blue Paper, with the Rosebery Minute and other resolutions of the Board passed from time to time. I consider that an understanding of this is of great importance in the conduct of the Board.’14

  Clark put himself up at the Burlington Hotel in Cork Street until he could find a permanent home in central London. The early days were an unalloyed pleasure: the trustees and the keepers made him feel welcome, and surprisingly, owing to Daniel’s inaction, the gallery had considerable unspent funds available for acquisitions. As he wrote to Edith Wharton: ‘Everyone is being very kind to us and making my work as easy as possible and I am forced to conclude that either my predecessors were unresponsive or I am in for a catastrophic change.’15 Over the next few days he was able to find time to lunch with Lady Horner16 and the interior decorator and society hostess Sibyl Colefax. BB enquired to Jane, ‘I wonder how Kenneth is inserting himself into his new charge, how he is filling it with his own personality and whether it is still softly and cosily upholstered, or whether already showing the points of the Nuremberg Virgin.* Not that I hope, altho’ one can scarcely expect roses, roses all the way and never a stab at all. If only Kenneth had the leisure to keep a detailed diary!’17

  Clark’s cryptic appointments diary records that on 3 January his new chairman, Sir Philip Sassoon, came to visit. The exotic Sassoon, whose family were of Baghdad Jewish origins, was a Tory MP and Under-Secretary of State for Air. Clark described him as ‘a kind of Haroun al Raschid figure, entertaining with oriental magnificence in three large houses, endlessly kind to his friends, witty, mercurial, and ultimately mysterious’.18 The two men immediately formed a rapport, and Sassoon was to be Clark’s final patron: ‘For seven years Philip played the same dominating part in my life that Maurice Bowra had played at Oxford.’19 He entertained the world of power politics, mostly but not exclusively Tory, at Port Lympne, his rather curious home in Kent, and Trent Park, his country house in Hertfordshire which was by comparison the epitome of Georgian good taste. His own collecting interests revolved around eighteenth-century conversation pieces, whose popularity he did much to revive. When David Crawford joined the National Gallery board in 1935 he judged Sassoon to be ‘an admirable chairman, fair, amusing, brisk’.20

  The other trustees were scarcely less colourful. By far the most troublesome was the art dealer Joe Duveen, who had been ennobled in 1933 after his munificent gift of a new gallery to the Tate, and had a dominating position in the international art market, to a degree difficult to imagine today. Lord Duveen had made a very successful career playing the grand seigneur in America and the buffoon in England, for it was difficult to resist his ebullient personality. Lords Lee and d’Abernon had secured his appointment as a trustee; both had made advantageous art deals with him. Clark once observed: ‘It has been well said of the late Lord Duveen that he had got the better of every art dealer in the world except that great syndicate of art dealers, the House of Lords.’21 His position on the board was to cause Clark trouble from the start, for while being naturally generous and socially irresistible, Duveen was also amoral. He was not only incapable of keeping board meeting confidences, but frequently acted on information gleaned from them. Conflicts of interest arose with almost every meeting. Duveen’s supporter Lord d’Abernon was a former diplomat and marchand amateur, whose invariable and almost inaudible contribution to the debates on acquiring pictures was ‘Offer half.’

  The most elegant trustee was Evan Charteris, a beau monde figure who was the gallery’s liaison officer with, and later chairman of, the Tate – in those days still a satellite of the National Gallery, which controlled its purchase grant. The most improbable trustee was the Prince of Wales, who attended meetings infrequently, as he was not allowed to smoke. A problem arose when the Prince of Wales became King Edward VIII in January 1936; as monarch he could not sit on the board. It was suggested that he should sit as Earl of Chester, but in the event he resigned. The most useful trustee was Samuel Courtauld,22 who was not only to lend the best of his incomparable collection of modern French paintings to the gallery, but had also given £50,000 in 1924 to establish a fund to purchase such works. Perhaps the most surprising thing about this great and good man was the degree to which he was in thrall to Arthur Lee, who established the institute that bears Courtauld’s name. In 1935 Clark’s friend David Balniel also became a trustee, and was to prove a staunch ally.

  Gallery board meetings took place once a month at 2.30 p.m. The trustees would usually be invited for lunch beforehand at Philip Sassoon’s London mansion on Park Lane, where they would be served off gold plate. The meetings involved housekeeping, with much time spent on old chestnuts such as the cleaning of pictures, but the main item on the agenda was usually the scrutiny of paintings that had been, or might be, offered for sale. During the 1920s the purchase grant had reached £7,000. It was reduced to nothing after the Crash, climbed back to £3,500 in 1935, and reached £5,000 in 1936. In addition Clark had £7,000 of endowment fund income he could call upon, but even so, this was only enough to buy one good picture a year. The National Art Collections Fund was his saviour in most cases. After a period of inactivity under Daniel, a surprisingly large surplus had accumulated, and as Clark wrote to BB before taking up his appointment: ‘the trustees are all longing to spend money, and will much dislike it if I try to deprive them of their legitimate excitement. If they can be persuaded to spend it on framing and decoration all will be well, but heaven preserve me from flashy acquisitions.’23

  Clark established an excellent relationship with the board. Sassoon was delighted with his new protégé, and Lord Duveen could soon write, ‘now that such perfect harmony exists at the meetings, every minute is a joyous one. This is of course since you arrived.’24 Naturally, each trustee tended to push his own area of interest: Sassoon invariably urged the purchase of Zoffany, and Courtauld of Impressionists. Whatever criticism can be levelled at Clark’s purchases, he had no parti pris, apart from a distaste for what he called ‘the dealer’s view of British art’ – the grand full-length portraits that were still fashionable and that dominated the items on offer. He was keen to acquire more good nineteenth-century French paintings to make up a deficiency in the Impressionists collection, but was aware that these were viewed by the trustees as ‘a Dealer’s boom’. Fortunately Courtauld came to his rescue, lending Manet’s Un Bar aux Folies-Bergère and Cézanne’s La Montagne Sainte-Victoire, the first work by the artist in the gallery. Clark also persuaded the Tate to return Renoir’s Les Parapluies. He felt that his first achievement at the gallery was to hang a room of French nineteenth-century art that was worthy of the place.

  ‘Buying pictures,’ as Clark often observed, ‘was the chief reward of being at the National Gallery. It was still possible to buy great works of art in the 1930s.’25 As soon as he arrived he had started to think about purchases, and he was determined that these should be important. Already under discussion were two Velázquezes from the Frere Collection, including The Immaculate Conception – but they got away. It was to take another forty years for that painting finally to reach the gallery walls. By the trustees’ meeting in March, which was his third, Clark was already recommending Constable’s full-scale oil sketch Hadleigh Castle, and seven panels of The Life of St Francis by the Sienese artist Sassetta. His appreciation of full-size Constable sketches was ahead of its time, and he needed Sassoon’s support to get it past the trustees. In the same meeting, Lord Lee was offering The Family of Sir Peter Lely from his own collection, which was turned down.26

  The seven Sassetta panels co
nstituted a special drama of their own that demonstrated everything that was wrong with having Duveen on the board. These bewitching panels (the eighth is at Chantilly) formed the artist’s San Sepolcro altarpiece, which had been created for a convent that was suppressed during the Napoleonic era. The centrepiece depicting St Francis in Glory was already very familiar to Clark, as it was in the Berensons’ collection at I Tatti. The panels had been offered to the National Gallery by an American millionaire named Clarence Mackay, who had acquired them from Duveen. When it became clear that Mackay was unable to pay for them, Duveen set up the fiction that Mackay wished to sell them. Clark offered £35,000, half the price Mackay had been supposed to pay (and also the price at which they appeared in Duveen’s accounts). By bribing Mackay’s butler, Duveen ensured that Mackay never received Clark’s offer, a fact Duveen cheerfully admitted to the trustees. Eventually a compromise was reached at £42,000, with a press release stating that the panels had been acquired ‘through the good services of Lord Duveen’. As so often happened, it was the National Art Collections Fund that enabled the money to be raised.

  Occasionally Duveen’s interventions worked to the gallery’s advantage. Hogarth’s vivacious Graham Children, which Clark called ‘the perfect poster’, was sent to the gallery by its owner, Lord Normanton, ‘to allow the Board to consider this picture at its next meeting’. The painting was then mysteriously withdrawn, and purchased by Duveen behind the backs of the trustees. When confronted by Philip Sassoon, he relented and presented the picture as a gift to the gallery. Clark was exasperated by such behaviour, but gratified to receive ‘perhaps the most beautiful large painting by Hogarth in existence’.27