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You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/26/the-guardian-view-on-the-royal-collection-if-only-it-belonged-to-the-people
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| The Guardian view on the Royal Collection: if only it belonged to the people | The Guardian view on the Royal Collection: if only it belonged to the people |
| (25 days later) | |
| The exhibition of Charles I’s art collection that opens on Saturday at the Royal Academy of Arts in London is stupendous. It represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see much of the work amassed by the only British monarch to have had serious artistic taste. There are great works by Titian, Holbein, Correggio and Dürer – and the magnificent series by Mantegna, the Triumphs of Caesar, that normally occupies a distant orangery at Hampton Court. There are also rooms of portraits of Charles by Van Dyck so that, at times, the watery gaze of that ill-fated monarch seems inescapable. | The exhibition of Charles I’s art collection that opens on Saturday at the Royal Academy of Arts in London is stupendous. It represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see much of the work amassed by the only British monarch to have had serious artistic taste. There are great works by Titian, Holbein, Correggio and Dürer – and the magnificent series by Mantegna, the Triumphs of Caesar, that normally occupies a distant orangery at Hampton Court. There are also rooms of portraits of Charles by Van Dyck so that, at times, the watery gaze of that ill-fated monarch seems inescapable. |
| For all its splendour, the exhibition is also peculiar. If you came from another planet – or from a state of historical ignorance – you would never know that the aesthetics it celebrates are those of a disastrous, autocratic ruler whose reign ended in bloody civil war. A panel in the final room merely states that he was executed in 1649 (for high treason, it might have added). The title Charles I: King and Collector is disingenuous; it is all “collector” and no “king”. Leaving the grandeur of his royalty and delicacy of his taste untempered by a fuller account of his rule is itself a political statement. One does not have to be parti pris to find it strange that art should float so free from the context of its amassing. | For all its splendour, the exhibition is also peculiar. If you came from another planet – or from a state of historical ignorance – you would never know that the aesthetics it celebrates are those of a disastrous, autocratic ruler whose reign ended in bloody civil war. A panel in the final room merely states that he was executed in 1649 (for high treason, it might have added). The title Charles I: King and Collector is disingenuous; it is all “collector” and no “king”. Leaving the grandeur of his royalty and delicacy of his taste untempered by a fuller account of his rule is itself a political statement. One does not have to be parti pris to find it strange that art should float so free from the context of its amassing. |
| One reason the show is so remarkable is that Charles I’s collection was dispersed, sold off by Oliver Cromwell partly to cover royal debts. Works travelled far and wide. The show has gathered paintings from Paris, Madrid and Fort Worth. Many, however, were recovered by the Stuarts after the Restoration, and belong to the Royal Collection – not, officially, to the Queen as an individual. Instead, she holds them in trust “for her successors and the nation”. In reality, the nation does not get much of a look-in. The Royal Academy show provides a rare airing for masterpieces that are hardly, if ever, visible to the public. Even those works that are regularly on view are to be seen at a price: a regular adult ticket to Hampton Court, “including donation”, is normally £21.20. The state rooms of Buckingham Palace, which include its picture gallery, are open for just over two months of the year, at £24 for an adult ticket. | One reason the show is so remarkable is that Charles I’s collection was dispersed, sold off by Oliver Cromwell partly to cover royal debts. Works travelled far and wide. The show has gathered paintings from Paris, Madrid and Fort Worth. Many, however, were recovered by the Stuarts after the Restoration, and belong to the Royal Collection – not, officially, to the Queen as an individual. Instead, she holds them in trust “for her successors and the nation”. In reality, the nation does not get much of a look-in. The Royal Academy show provides a rare airing for masterpieces that are hardly, if ever, visible to the public. Even those works that are regularly on view are to be seen at a price: a regular adult ticket to Hampton Court, “including donation”, is normally £21.20. The state rooms of Buckingham Palace, which include its picture gallery, are open for just over two months of the year, at £24 for an adult ticket. |
| Cromwell missed a trick, one might argue. The collection should have been requisitioned by the state. Unfortunately, this is rather an anachronistic fantasy. He would have had to have been peculiarly foresighted to have begun a national art museum in the 1650s. Such institutions were a product of the Enlightenment. While the Ashmolean opened in 1683, it was the 18th and 19th centuries that saw the foundation of the Louvre, the Prado, the British Museum and the National Gallery. Nonetheless, walking round the RA show (£20, with donation), it is hard not to hanker for a properly national art collection, combining the treasures of the National Gallery with the riches of the Royal Collection. It would be extraordinary. And it would be free to be seen by the people, its true owners. | Cromwell missed a trick, one might argue. The collection should have been requisitioned by the state. Unfortunately, this is rather an anachronistic fantasy. He would have had to have been peculiarly foresighted to have begun a national art museum in the 1650s. Such institutions were a product of the Enlightenment. While the Ashmolean opened in 1683, it was the 18th and 19th centuries that saw the foundation of the Louvre, the Prado, the British Museum and the National Gallery. Nonetheless, walking round the RA show (£20, with donation), it is hard not to hanker for a properly national art collection, combining the treasures of the National Gallery with the riches of the Royal Collection. It would be extraordinary. And it would be free to be seen by the people, its true owners. |
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