16 Are the Old Masters more indispensable than ever?
With museums closed and the future uncertain, historic paintings offer particular forms of escape. How might the instability of a pandemic be countered by finding consolation in the past?
As we have all discovered over the last few months, it can be both uncomfortable and challenging to live in interesting times. Yet, throughout this period, my sense of resolve and purpose has intensified. Events have proved that museums, galleries and collections really do matter and make a substantive difference to people’s lives. It’s hard to quantify this, or itemise on a spreadsheet, but it’s part of what keeps us going and keeps us together, as individuals and as a society.
Art has been a blessing and a lifeline for so many. It reminds us of our humanity, and links us to others. In it, we can find resilience and comfort. The art of the past, however, has a task that seems particularly salient at this moment: to remind us that creativity endures in hard times, and that crises and pandemics are nothing new. Nor do they last for ever, or entirely define the life and experience of those who live through them. For this reason, the ‘Artemisia’ exhibition at the National Gallery, curated by my brilliant colleague Letizia Treves, has touched a nerve this winter. Although it is shocking to learn of Artemisia Gentileschi’s rape, the deaths of her children, and the difficulties she operated under, as a woman in a man’s world, these circumstances did not define her artistic identity. In her own day, she was ambitious, admired and highly successful. Her dazzling paintings still move and delight us more than 350 years after her death. They exist on their own merits, regardless of Artemisia’s traumatic biography.
The consolation of the visual arts lies in the fact that although they – like words and music – can be enjoyed in isolation, the act of enjoyment connects us to a wider world. During a time when there is little variety, and we are forced to live in restricted ways, art enables our imagination to fly. With the help of artistic stimulus, we can still be with people, places or experiences that are currently closed to us. To paraphrase the poet Keats on Chapman’s Homer, art lets us travel to our own ‘realms of gold’.
Since March, I’ve found something for every mood in my own memory bank of images. In spring and early summer, when my desire to swim and to smell the sea was overwhelming, I consoled myself with the noisy bathing pond of Monet’s Bathers at La Grenouillère, and the sandy beach in Bonington’s La Ferté. Paul Henry’s Dawn, Killary Harbour
allowed me to experience early morning in remote Ireland from central London, Gainsborough’s Mr and Mrs Andrews took me into the Suffolk harvest, and Antonello’s St Jerome in his Study removed me from the chaos of home schooling to a peaceful and productive space. In each case the pictures enabled me to conjure in my mind’s eye the smells, colours and light of those particular activities or places, and to connect them with personal and shared experiences.
Other artworks have sustained me, on an almost daily basis. I’ve looked forward to the pleasure that St Paul’s Dome consistently brings me, from many different angles, on my favourite lockdown walks through London. I’ve always loved Piero della Francesca’s Baptism for its ‘still small voice of calm’. The soft light and sense of purpose embodied in this measured, perfect landscape continue to inspire me. In a very different way, I feel a similar sense of belonging in Pieter de Hooch’s The Courtyard of a House in Delft
(Fig. 1). My grandmother had a reproduction of this next to a ticking clock in her hallway, where I often played as a child. For memories of the security and happiness that it evokes, de Hooch’s sunlit yard, with its imperfectly lime-washed bricks and prosaic activity, is one of my most special places.
For all the comfort that these bring, they’re more than the artistic equivalent of the warm blanket or baked potato. Historic art’s specific contribution for us now lies in this winning combination of sustenance and strength. These works have meant something to many more generations than our own. They embody the remarkable continuity of human experience. And, at this particular moment, they make me optimistic for our future.