A Door At Which I Never Knocked
Dec. 23rd, 2022 01:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloI dreamed I was in Oxford- a very crowded city- searching for the rooms of the woman who was going to tutor me in Art History. Each set of rooms had its owner's name written in big letters on the wall outside, but I had no idea where hers was - and no system for finding it apart from going door to door.
I was going to propose that I do a study of the De Critz family- or possibly of Willem Drost- obscure 17th century painters I blogged about earlier this year. The de Critzs were English portraitists who- infuriatingly- never signed their work- and Drost was the Rembrandt pupil who may have painted The Polish Rider which is one of the great paintings of the world.
In real life I could have enjoyed being an Art Historian. And I would probably have chosen the 17th century as my particular field. In certain moods I tell myself that my favourite painter is Nicholas Poussin- not so much for his religious pictures- which strike me as merely dutiful- as for his heartfelt mythologies and landscapes.
Poussin was the particular preserve of Anthony Blunt- who also served as Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures. I was thinking about him yesterday after reading the latest installment of Alan Bennett's diaries- generously shared for free by the LRB. Bennett wrote a play about him- A Question of Attribution- in which he and the Queen do a stately minuet around the subject of his treason. Did she know he was a Soviet spy? Of course she did- a courtier later confided to Bennett- and he knew she knew, but nothing was ever said...
Had I become an Art historian I wouldn't have had Blunt's career- I didn't go to the right schools, didn't have his connections or his expensive taste in guardsman- but I might have been a backroom boy at one of the auction houses, visiting stately homes, scrutinising unregarded pictures and venturing attributions. "Why, I do believe this could be a de Critz!"
What fun that would have been...
I was going to propose that I do a study of the De Critz family- or possibly of Willem Drost- obscure 17th century painters I blogged about earlier this year. The de Critzs were English portraitists who- infuriatingly- never signed their work- and Drost was the Rembrandt pupil who may have painted The Polish Rider which is one of the great paintings of the world.
In real life I could have enjoyed being an Art Historian. And I would probably have chosen the 17th century as my particular field. In certain moods I tell myself that my favourite painter is Nicholas Poussin- not so much for his religious pictures- which strike me as merely dutiful- as for his heartfelt mythologies and landscapes.
Poussin was the particular preserve of Anthony Blunt- who also served as Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures. I was thinking about him yesterday after reading the latest installment of Alan Bennett's diaries- generously shared for free by the LRB. Bennett wrote a play about him- A Question of Attribution- in which he and the Queen do a stately minuet around the subject of his treason. Did she know he was a Soviet spy? Of course she did- a courtier later confided to Bennett- and he knew she knew, but nothing was ever said...
Had I become an Art historian I wouldn't have had Blunt's career- I didn't go to the right schools, didn't have his connections or his expensive taste in guardsman- but I might have been a backroom boy at one of the auction houses, visiting stately homes, scrutinising unregarded pictures and venturing attributions. "Why, I do believe this could be a de Critz!"
What fun that would have been...
