On the move

Last weekend, as part of Open House London, the Government Art Collection flung open its doors to allcomers, probably some Spectator readers among them. Its energetic acquisitions and commissioning policy over past decades has made it one of our country’s most valuable cultural resources — yet those of us who don’t stalk the corridors of power may still be only vaguely aware of its existence, let alone the astonishing breadth of its collections. These span four centuries and now contain around 13,500 works of art in almost every medium you can think of.

The sceptic might suppose that a collection of this size might on occasion have sacrificed quality for quantity, but it has been built up skilfully under the watchful eye of a stellar board of advisers, the directors of the National and National Portrait Galleries and the Tate among them, and the results are, unsurprisingly, impressive. Three quarters of the GAC’s works are out on loan around the world at any one time, but a sample is on display in the viewing area of its offices in a cul-de-sac off the Tottenham Court Road — an unlikely and unadvertised location. When I visited, the recently acquired ‘High Street’ series of prints by Eric Ravilious hung near a powerful Keith Vaughan and Jeremy Deller’s screenprint ‘History of the World’. Ahead was a vitrine of glass objets by Matthew Darbyshire that positively sizzles with light and colour, and was in the running for the residence of the British Embassy in Paris, which has offered a prime showcase for the best of contemporary British art since Michael Jay was ambassador in the Nineties. On other walls were landscapes and townscapes by William Marlow and Robert Smirke from the historical side of the collection.