The best-known exchange between artist and royalty must be George VI’s celebrated remark to John Piper, who had been painting the castle and surrounding parkland at Windsor: ‘You seem to have had very bad luck with your weather.’ It was the early 1940s, and Piper had invested his watercolours with a brooding quality he no doubt thought appropriate to the mood of the times, and which also echoed his own essentially Romantic vision. The project was a commission from Queen Elizabeth, and extended to 26 views, a rare feat of modern topography that also turned out to be good art. But even the Queen thought Piper’s lowering skies a little overbearing, and reportedly suggested he might ‘try a spring day’.
Usually, however, her passion for collecting art was confined to the purchase of existing works of art, rather than commissions, which was in many ways more supportive of the artists, being a direct encouragement of their efforts. As Kenneth Clark, Surveyor of the King’s Pictures (1934–44) and a friend and adviser of the Queen, wrote to her in 1938: ‘Under Your Majesty’s patronage British painters will have a new confidence, because you will make them feel that they are not working for a small clique but for the centre of the national life.’
From childhood onwards, Queen Elizabeth displayed an interest in art which blossomed into real enthusiasm as she grew older. Her most intense period of collecting inevitably took place in the years of King George VI’s reign — 1937 to 1952 — when personal pleasure in the activity was mingled with royal duty. But the fact that her acquisition of art was by no means confined to these years attests to her very real love for painting and drawing.
Although not a devoted follower of the avant-garde, Queen Elizabeth was progressive rather than conservative in her taste. A number of the best artists working in Britain around the mid-point of the 20th century are featured in her collection, with substantial painters from an earlier generation — William Nicholson and Sickert, for example — also represented.
The charming exhibition in the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace commences with portraits: Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, as she was in 1907, depicted by the miniaturist Mabel Hankey, and a fine charcoal profile drawing by Sargent, dating to just before her marriage to the Duke of York in 1923. Sir Muirhead Bone’s vivid black crayon drawing of the end of Coronation week contrasts effectively with Claude Muncaster’s more sedate but gaily coloured scene of Piccadilly on the Coronation route.
There are several historical acquisitions of consequence made by Queen Elizabeth, including a Gainsborough chalk drawing ‘A Figure in a Landscape’ (rather more effective if you block out the figure), a beautiful Wright of Derby watercolour of an Italian house atop a splendid rampart, and a couple of John Varley watercolours, of which the view of Snowdon is the finer. There’s also a superb Paul Sandby: ‘Windsor Castle, and part of the town’ (c. 1765), a marvel of clarity and light. A cabinet of drawings contains Augustus John’s masterly but tender study ‘Dorelia, standing’ (c. 1907–10), a sweet Berthe Morisot study of a seated girl, and Max Beerbohm’s amusing caricature of Edward VII. The works hanging in this gallery indicate an eclectic taste: from the Japanese-style woodcuts of Elizabeth Keith to the robust Celtic traceries and flickering colour of David Jones’s window picture, ‘The Outward Walls’ (1953).
The Norfolk artist Edward Seago (1910–64) was a frequent guest at Sandringham, and he presented Queen Elizabeth with a picture each year on her birthday and again at Christmas. Seago could be an effective landscape painter, so it is disappointing to find such lesser examples of his work as the watercolours here. But then we should not necessarily expect an artist to give away as presents examples of his best endeavours. Much better things are to be seen by the Australian artist Norma Bull, who worked in England as an unofficial war artist, living in this country between 1937 and 1947, and exhibiting her work at Australia House in 1947, where Queen Elizabeth purchased her pictures. Particularly poignant is her pen-and-watercolour study, ‘The Chelsea Royal Hospital Infirmary, as destroyed by enemy action’ (1941), with a red-coated Chelsea Pensioner pensively surveying the damage. ‘Rocket bomb exploding in the air over London’ (1945), with its cartoonish cloud, or puff of smoke, is an altogether more light-hearted witness of the times.
Half-a-dozen of the famous Piper watercolours are on show, demonstrating his genius for depicting architecture, and four intimate watercolour sketches by another close friend of the royal family, Sir Hugh Casson. Queen Elizabeth was fortunate in her friends and advisers: besides Clark and Casson, there were the collector Sir Jasper Ridley and the writer Sir Osbert Sitwell. Another cabinet, containing personal letters from artists (including a fine decorated epistle from Rex Whistler, who died so young), demonstrates the affection in which she was held. She seems, too, to have evinced an endearing fondness for rogues, those arch-bohemians the art world throws up from time to time, and who often become popular public figures. (I’m thinking particularly here of Augustus John and John Bratby. Bratby not only painted the Queen Mother’s portrait but also presented her with one of his crayon drawings of Venice.)
Among the other exhibits, in this modestly sized exhibition of just over 70 items, are three splendid charcoal-and-ink figure drawings by David Wilkie, and a rich landscape watercolour by David Young Cameron. Coming right up to date, there is the exceptionally competent watercolour ‘Desks at Royal Lodge’ by Hugh Buchanan, commissioned by the Royal Household in honour of Queen Elizabeth’s 100th birthday.
This exhibition tells a heartwarming story, significantly characterised by affection and enthusiasm. (A lavish catalogue, competitively priced at £7.95, recounts the history of the collection in more detail.) Today, the situation seems very different. Certainly royal patronage has changed in its various emphases and incarnations, but there doesn’t seem to be a collector of the stature of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother among the present generations. Perhaps another will emerge. It would be nice to think so. In the meantime, we have a further exhibition (or perhaps several) to look forward to — the oil paintings in the Queen Mother’s collection. Including distinguished pictures by Paul Nash, Matthew Smith and Augustus John, to name but three, it will offer a more complete view of the scope of this enjoyable collection, and a greater impression of its identity.
Watercolours and Drawings from the Collection of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother is at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace until 29 October.
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