Charles reveals his connoisseur’s taste in new palace show
Prince and Patron Buckingham Palace
Prince and Patron, a new display of more than 100 artworks chosen by the Prince of Wales to mark the summer opening of Buckingham Palace, is inspired by a wellknown painting in the Royal Collection by Johan Zoffany, the 18th-century German artist.
A tip-top example of the so-called “conversation piece”, or informal group portrait, The Tribuna of the Uffizi
(1772-77) depicts a crush of British toffs on the Grand Tour inside the Tribuna, a red-walled octagonal room within the Uffizi in Florence, marvelling at the jaw-dropping Medici collection. Around them are masterpieces by Holbein, Raphael, Rubens, Titian, and so on, as well as celebrated classical sculptures, all crammed together higgledy-piggledy.
The teeming composition offers a memorable statement about connoisseurship, as well as a barometer of 18th-century taste. And, for his show at Buckingham Palace, Prince Charles seeks to replicate its dynamism, with considerable success.
Accordingly, the Ball Supper Room has been transformed into an octagonal gallery, and each wall is densely hung with a great jumble of drawings and paintings – as well as sundry objects – selected from the Prince’s private collection as well as the Royal Collection, which boasts 7,500 paintings and around 30,000 works on paper. Centre stage in Zoffany’s picture is Titian’s Venus of Urbino, and the Prince musters many Old Masters, too: a couple of chalk drawings by Holbein, Bassano’s Adoration of the Shepherds, and a quietly beautiful painting by Georges de la Tour of Saint Jerome, reading a sheet of paper. Along with the Zoffany, the latter emphasises the aspiration of the show: the Prince wants us to understand that he is a serious, cultured, even scholarly man, with immaculate taste – a connoisseur. As well as Old Masters, though, he finds room for stunning curiosities, such as Napoleon’s Berber-style cloak, embellished with silver thread, which was taken from the emperor’s carriage immediately after the Battle of Waterloo, and captivated the Prince at Windsor when he was a boy. There are also various frankly middling portraits of members of the Royal Family, and a wealth of pictures and objects created by young artists associated with one of three charities founded by the Prince that are showcased in the exhibition: the Royal Drawing School, the Prince’s School of Traditional Arts, and Turquoise Mountain, which trains traditional builders and artisans in Afghanistan.
Oh, and Charles, an amateur artist, even includes a couple of watercolours that he painted, himself. And his two views of Balmoral aren’t half bad. Amusingly, they occupy the same wall as a small, intense oil painting of a bowl of ferns, from 1967, by Lucian Freud, a gift for the Prince’s 50th birthday.
This flash of vanity is evident elsewhere: next to the Freud, we find Susan Crawford’s “Triple Portrait” of the Prince of Wales – a homage, of course, to Van Dyck’s triple portrait of Charles I, which is often cited as the last word in kingly magnificence.
We also find one or two of the Prince’s books positioned on occasional tables laden with peculiar kitsch ornaments, including small bronze dogs and china ducks. For instance, in a bizarre case of product placement, the Prince’s children’s book The Old Man of Lochnagar appears beside a vase decorated with a cockerel and a photograph of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex on their wedding day. For all that, though, the more “personal” moments, such as the arrangements on the side tables, are some of the most diverting moments in the show – because they offer a glimpse into how the Prince likes to live in private. Indeed, one of the joys of this display is how genuinely personal it feels – we get the sense that he really did select everything himself, with minimal help.
The overall effect is that of the traditional “Wunderkammer”, or cabinet of curiosities: a great, encyclopedic hodgepodge of artworks and fascinating objects which together reflect the interests of the collector who assembled them.
Since this Wunderkammer was put together by the Prince, we find an emphasis on botany and the natural world, and an interest in traditional craftsmanship.
At one point, he pairs a 19th-century maharaja’s improbably opulent emerald girdle with a stunning necklace, decorated with 365 emeralds, made in 2015 by a deaf Afghan refugee who trained with Turquoise Mountain.
To return to Zoffany: one of the reasons why his painting of the Tribuna is so good is because he smuggles in a few bawdy jokes, to undercut the otherwise relentlessly earnest emphasis upon high culture.
For the most part, the Prince has a good eye, and cares deeply about many things, but his sweetly ardent desire to demonstrate his cultivation is anything but down-to-earth.
From tomorrow until Sept 30. Details: 020 766 7300