Famous Novelist and National Gallery

Huddersfield Daily Examiner, 2 April 1924, page 3, 514 words

The National Gallery, which is 100 years old to-day, was described yesterday by Mr. George Moore, the well-known novelist, as one of the most disagreeable places in London.

“I have compared the National Gallery to a hospital,” he said to a “Daily Chronicle” representative. “Patients in a hospital, however, are not massacred as are the unfortunate patients in the National Gallery.

“Groups of pictures, one enormously valuable, have been ruined by cleaning. It is a fact that Claude’s great picture ‘The Embarkation of St. Ursula’ has been made worthless by cleaning. I do not know what its value was supposed to be — £20,000 to £50,000, perhaps. If it were put up at Christie’s to-day it would fetch nothing.

“The old painters painted in monochrome, and glazed the picture afterwards. I doubt if a glazed picture can be cleaned without harming the picture, the harm done being sometimes more and sometimes less.

“In the case of the Claude I can hardly imagine more harm being done. The Gainsborough group has been much injured. Titian’s ‘Venus and Adonis,’ not a great picture, has also been injured, in a lesser degree.

“I am aware,” Mr. Moore continued, “that I shall make myself extremely unpopular by criticisms. But the matter is important. It is being widely discussed in London. No one has had the courage to say anything. So the cleaning goes on. There is a cleaning factory at the National Gallery. I am concerned with the facts, not with suggestions, and I merely say: ‘Stop the cleaning.’”

Dreadful Wallpaper

Mr. Moore proceeded to attach the wallpaper in the Gallery. “It is the most dreadful I have ever seen,” he said. “Instead of a dark uniform paper, it is a violent paper with spots. You go to see the pictures, and see the wallpaper instead. The Rembrandts, for instance, might as well not exist, for you cannot see them; all you see is the black spots.” Mr. Moore pointed to a picture of Monet which hangs on the grey-papered wall of his drawing-room. “Imagine that on a black speckled background!” he exclaimed. “Would you be able to see it?

“Unity is the first essential. I do not think it necessary that the wallpaper in every gallery should be alike. But it should be a dark, uniform paper. Christie’s use green. That is not bad. For the Reubens pictures I like old rose. Unity, however, is the first thing that matters.”

Sr. Charles J. Holmes, the director of the National Gallery, is a friend of Mr. Moore.

“Sir Charles consults no one but himself,” said Mr. Moore. “He might consult a policeman. That would be better than nothing. I don’t suggest, mind you, that he should do so. But he might consult artists, people who know. He might ask the opinion of the Royal Academy.

“If something isn’t done soon every picture in the National Gallery which is cleaned will be ruined, and in the end there will be no National Gallery.”