Kenneth Clark

by James Stourton

  Clark wanted to avoid making too many pretty purchases – a natural tendency of the trustees – and in July he made a courageous purchase against considerable opposition, Bosch’s Christ Mocked with the Crown of Thorns. As he wrote to Isherwood Kay, ‘The Bosch was not popular but was supported by Courtauld, Witt and Gore; Duveen keeping up a ground base of “My God! What a picture.” The result was we offered 300,000 lire, which to my great surprise has been accepted.’ He added significantly, ‘I get no support from Pouncey and Davies who detest it.’ Philip Pouncey and Martin Davies were two clever young curators whose respective interests were Italian and Netherlandish art; the first example of a disagreement with Clark from that quarter.

  Clark would normally enliven board meetings with a lantern show, a tour d’horizon of what was available on the London market. As he told Isherwood Kay, ‘England is still far and away the best place in which to form a collection of any paintings, including Italian.’28 Occasionally he and the trustees would buy a painting they did not strictly need, such as the Rubens landscape The Watering Place. The gallery was already rich in paintings by Rubens, but this work from the Duke of Buccleuch’s collection was so glorious that they found it irresistible. The country houses were still the greatest repository of paintings, and long before Clark’s time what the gallery referred to as the list of ‘paramount’ paintings – those for which every effort to acquire should be made if they became available. The owners were sometimes named after their pictures, hence ‘the Earl of Raphael’ for Lord Ellesmere and ‘the Marquess of Reynolds’ for Lord Lansdowne. This list was kept secret,29 which Clark thought was a mistake: ‘we were strictly enjoined not to tell the owners. As a result at least three of the pictures were sold secretly overseas before the present act came in.’30 The most grievous loss was Holbein’s Henry VIII, sold to the German-Hungarian collector Baron Thyssen by his friend Lord Spencer without the gallery being offered the chance to buy it.

  Clark was acutely aware of the gallery’s weakness in the German school, and this was something that could not be remedied through the art trade in London. In a particularly bold move, he travelled to St Florian’s monastery in Austria to try to secure the important Altdorfer Passion and St Sebastian series for the gallery – without success. Good German paintings were hard to find, but he did manage to acquire the Dürer variant, Virgin with Iris. In 1935 he went with Jane to Russia to see the Hermitage Museum, at a time when the Soviet Union’s desire for foreign currency was driving the authorities quietly to sell off art works. The gallery had come within an ace of buying Tiepolo’s Feast of Cleopatra under Clark’s predecessor, 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.

  * * *

  * The torture device better known as the iron maiden.

  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.

  The King had expressed a desire that someone should tell him when to clean his pictures. This worried Clark, as he felt inexperienced in what he called ‘the cleaning side’, and he withdrew his candidature. Morshead then received a note from the King’s private secretary, Lord Wigram: ‘The King and Queen have read your letter to Cromer* about Kenneth Clark. Their Majesties think that the latter is probably a modest retiring young man, who would be quite capable of filling the appointment, and taking all the responsibility.’3 The King and Queen also expressed a desire to meet Clark. Morshead in turn wrote to Clark: ‘You would I am sure find them most sympathetic people, and reasonable: I think you could perfectly well do the two jobs for five years.’4 The matter then had to be left in abeyance, as Collins Baker continued in his post for another year, so it came as a shock
at Windsor when Clark accepted the position at the National Gallery. Owen Morshead reported the Queen saying that ‘the news of your appointment had temporarily stunned herself and the Monarch’.5 At this point the King and Queen decided to make their extraordinary trip down to Trafalgar Square on a Sunday morning in March. In Clark’s words: ‘I refused the royal job, so the King came to the National Gallery to persuade me.’6

  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 is most anxious to secure Mr Clark if only it can be arranged”…I went along the passage to see the King…the conversation took this turn:– K. “Well, I met your friend Clark the other day; he took me over the N.G., and we had a long time together. I must frankly say it’s a long time since I met any young man who took my fancy so much; in fact I don’t know when I’ve taken to anyone more completely – the more I saw of him the more I thought ‘that’s just exactly what I had always hoped to get’…And I liked his little wife too so much…I came away enchanted after a delightful afternoon.” Well well.’9

  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 bein
g 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, as an intellectual who had the ear of the Queen and was as close to her as anybody outside the family in the new reign.

  To Clark’s delight, the Queen started to assemble a small but distinctive collection of contemporary British paintings. Most of her acquisitions were made post-war, but in 1938 she purchased the portrait of Bernard Shaw by Augustus John entitled When Homer Nods. Clark wrote her an enthusiastic letter: ‘May I say how extremely valuable to all of us who care for the arts is Your Majesty’s decision to buy the work of living painters. It is not too much to say that it will have an important effect on British art in general…you will make them [the painters] feel that they are not working for a small clique but for the centre of the national life.’25 He formed a warm and productive relationship with the Queen, who wrote to him: ‘It is so important that the monarchy should be kept in touch with the trend & life of modern, as well as ancient Art, and I hope that you will advise & help us along those lines?’26 Clark took the hint, and over the coming years would write to her, ‘May I take this opportunity of telling Your Majesty about several other things which are happening in the arts.’27 He arranged visits for the young Princesses to the National Gallery, and became a fixture of social life at Windsor. The Queen had her own taste, but the advice proffered by Clark, and later by the chairman of the Tate, Jasper Ridley, was a great stimulation to her interest in this field.