the times | Wednesday December 2 2020 1GM 25
News
Visual art
Rachel Campbell-Johnston
Look with fresh eyes at the work of old masters including Titian and Jan Steen, above right, in the Queen’s Gallery
Masterpieces from
Buckingham Palace
Queen’s Gallery
SW1
HHHHI
Have you ever noticed the cow that, in
the middle of Rubens’s great Summer
landscape, looks back over her
shoulder with a cartoonish roll of an
eye? She is asking you to share in her
painter’s rumbustious sense of humour
as she directs your gaze towards a bull
that is straddling a mate.
Have you ever seen the way in
which that master of precision Jan
Steen, in his Peeping Tom painting of
A Woman at her Toilet, describes
even those faint indentations left in
the flesh by a pair of just-pulled-off
stockings? Have you admired the
skill with which Rembrandt can
handle paint?
If not, now is your moment. The
grand picture gallery of Buckingham
Palace has been cleared for long
overdue renovations, involving such
mundane behind-the-scenes matters
as frayed wiring and lead pipes. As a
result, 65 old master canvases from
one of the world’s most spectacular
collections are to be moved to the
nearby Queen’s Gallery, where they
can be enjoyed in a modern — or
relatively modern — gallery context.
This is a show of masters:
Rembrandt, Rubens, Vermeer, Van
Dyck, Canaletto, Claude and Titian
prominent among them. Do not
expect dramatic surprises. Anyone
who has ever bought a ticket to the
palace’s annual summer openingwill have shuffled past these canvases.
This display is not about the
superficial excitement of novelty. It is
about being given a chance to
appreciate the familiar through fresh
eyes. Displayed not, as so often in theQueen’s Gallery, according to which
monarch acquired them, but in three
groupings, small and large Dutch and
Flemish works, and a space full of
Italian paintings, some resplendently
Baroque, these pictures invite theviewer to look in a new way. A series
of four Canalettos, for instance, now
hung in a row, acquire a surreal
atmosphere, akin to that conjured by
de Chirico. I never thought I would
get excited about the work of this
purveyor of postcard-style souvenirs
to the grand tourist.
An eye-level hang invites
gallerygoers into a personal
relationship. Such proximity may
occasionally do a disservice.
Pontormo’s Virgin and Child is badly
damaged, and the Madonna appears
to nurture a hirsute incubus. But
mostly curators offer a host of the
favourites that the Queen holds in
trust, while inviting us to enjoy them
in an intimate way.
The exhibition opens on Friday for
at least a year.Rare chance to get intimate with the Queen’s old masters
ROYAL COLLECTION TRUST