The treasure house

The best exhibition I never went to was held in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, in 1985.  By never going, I circumvented the paradox at the heart of such exhibitions: the better they are, the greater the attendant crowds, and the less you see.  And yet I saw it, and probably saw more of it than most who were there.

This miracle was accomplished by a book - in fact, the catalogue of the exhibition.  But to call it a catalogue is like calling Schubert a songwriter.  It is a masterpiece in its own right, a triumph of scholarship, photography and production. 

The exhibition and the book The Treasure Houses of Britain are both built around the collections amassed by the British nobility since the 16th century.  Most remain in situ, which is why the exhibition and the book are doubly welcome: for showing objects which are rarely seen, and for charting the organic growth and deeply rooted continuity of these unique assemblies of beautiful objects. 

Turning over the pages of this volume is an experience.  There is surprise after surprise at the sheer quantity and quality of paintings and furniture left in the stately homes of this country, many of which would be star items in practically any national collection. Moreover, the majority are unknown; it is like discovering a secret world, just as rich and splendid as the manifest one, but all the more amazing for being hidden and unsuspected.

But ultimately what emerges from this massive journey of nearly 500 years and 700 pages is not just joy at the art of bookmaking, nor even the rare sensation of being confronted by totally new masterpieces.  It is something which the form and the contents of the book both contribute to.

In addition to the superb colour pictures, and their accompaniment of lucid explanatory entries, there is a series of masterly introductory essays.  In them is mapped out the amazing accretion of what was once the greatest national collection of western art in the world.  That story, it transpires, is the story of the making of Britain itself.  Each new phase matches the rising self-confidence of the country, the shifting tastes and the new enthusiasms.  The Grand Tour was the cultural precursor of the global imperialism which soon followed.  The evolution of the archetypal country house and its collections was built on the wealth which flowed from it.  And acquisition of art and culture became the trophies and visible emblems of the successful new empire builders.

And just as the world of art itself is kind of huge tapestry, where influences mix and marry, so this catalogue exposes the other, parallel web, that of the leading houses of Britain.  For them, already intimately linked through complex marriage lines, art was a further dynastic counter, owned by them, passed between them, marked by both, and ultimately helping to mould them and their civilisation.  It is the greatest success of this exhibition's guide that it exposes so clearly the huge interplay of these great wefts and warps. 

(13.7.87)

Index