Art: Indomitable Mediocrity

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In eight weeks, 99,029 Britons had trooped to see the evidence — 400-odd paintings and sculptures that the Royal Academy had bought & paid for from the proceeds of the Chantrey Bequest (TIME, Jan. 10). Were they as good as the Academicians insisted? Or did they belong back in the cellars of London's Tate Gallery, from which they had been momentarily resurrected?

By last week the critics stood withTate Director John Rothenstein—hanging was too good for most of the Chantreys. With Rothenstein they agreed that over the past 70 years of Chantrey buying, the Royal Academy selection committees had picked a high percentage of bad pictures and missed a lot of good ones. Wrote a Manchester Guardian Weekly critic: "Once the eye has been thoroughly glazed by the pompous onslaught of indomitable mediocrity, it is fascinating to wander limply through the galleries, no longer resisting ..." In the Spectator, Harold Nicolson suggested that a detailed, illustrated catalogue of the Chantrey purchases should be prepared (in order to keep a record) and the works themselves sent "to decorate Makerere College in Uganda or the corridors of some Fijian veterinary school."

Academy President (and horse-painter) Sir Alfred Munnings galloped to the defense of the Academy by attacking modernism : "The director of the Tate may be able to tell us why a painting of a head with two noses is better than the landlady's favorite The Bath of Psyche, by Lord Leighton." Old folks generally liked the paintings, too. Said one blackstocking: "They remind me of my youth. Besides, I know what the subject is meant to be. Can't do that with pictures nowadays." Said another: "So frightfully British . . . and I do love the cows."

But Director Rothenstein had made his point. The selection committees had purchased no Hogarths, Reynoldses, Gainsboroughs, Constables, Turners, Blakes or Lawrences. Among later artists, there were no canvases by Whistler or Rossetti—though there were a great many by Royal Academicians. This week, except for about 30 paintings and sculptures which the Tate had always thought worth looking at, the exhibit went back into deep freeze —Psyche and all.