Arts: Leverhulme’s Collection

Lord Leverhulme (who won his elevation by the able manufacture of a red soap) recently died (TIME, May 18, BUSINESS) and all his famous pictures were locked up in the dusk of a London house to to await disposal. English collectors fingured their cheque books. Mitchell Kennerley, Director of the Anderson Galleries, Manhattan, sailed for London.

Last week Mr. Kennerley made an announcement. He had secured, he said, Lord Leverhulme’s collection. . . How much of Lord Leverhulme’s collection, British dealers wanted to know. All of Lord Leverhulme’s collection, Mr. Kennerley made clear. A special steamer, he added, would be chartered to bring it to New York, where it would be put on sale in his galleries.

Lord Leverhulme’s collection gone, taken away! It was a slur upon London as an Art capital, a slur upon England herself, for was not a nation’s Art its chief strength and treasure? A steam of tears rose from a dozen editorial pages. With the lamentable psychology of one who does not count his chickens until they have been run over, the press pointed out that Leverhulme’s collection included two paintings by Rembrandt, several by Frans Hals, Gainsborough’s portrait of Squire Nuttall, Reynolds’ “Countess of Thanet” and “Venus,” Sir Martin Shee’s “Boys of the Annesley Family,” not to mention numerous Turners, Raeburns, Romneys, Lawrences.

The Morning Post offered its readers a more cheering psychology, implying the late Leverhulme’s taste was as honest and as malodorous as his soap, that the transfer of the pictures to the U. S. would be a test of the U. S. public, which, “like Leverhulme, will no doubt be willing to buy its experience.”

The Evening Standard recalled that Leverhulme had once commissioned Augustus John to paint a portrait that could hang on a panel above his fireplace. Finished, the work was so big that the head alone filled the space. Leverhulme placed it there, cut the rest away.

The Daily News outlined what has been called the Mercantile Theory of Art: “In any intelligent scale of values, riches rank very low. Athens … a greater figure in the history of mankind than Chicago or Manhattan . . . little Bethlehem, with no wealth at all, worth more than London . . ..”

Other editors wrote a statement that everyone found acceptable. Partisans of either side were able to find in it a sneer at the other, while to neutral minds it seemed neither sneer nor lament, but a statement of fact: “The Americans have the money.”