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My colleagues, even the friendliest of them, thought that I was a place-hunter.

KENNETH CLARK, Another Part of the Woods

The visit of King George V and Queen Mary to the National Gallery described at the opening of this book was the result of two years of lobbying on the part of Owen Morshead. Once it was known that Charles Collins Baker was going to retire as Surveyor of the King’s Pictures, various candidates had been considered. The King and Queen’s daughter Princess Mary, the Princess Royal, promoted the candidature of the ubiquitous Finnish art historian and arch-monarchist Tancred Borenius, who had helped her husband, the Earl of Harewood, assemble his collection of Old Master paintings. The trouble with ‘Tankie’, as Morshead liked to refer to him, was that he was tainted by a too-close involvement with the art trade. Morshead crucially got the support of Queen Mary, who – as he reported to Clark – had told him, ‘I know the King wants nothing so much as to feel he has his own pictures under his own man – someone whom he can order about, to whom he can say what he wants done, without feeling that he has to go and ask the permission of the National Gallery officials in the disposition of his own things.’1 Clark had been at the Ashmolean at the time, although frequently in and out of Windsor completing his Leonardo catalogue. The idea appears to have attracted Clark, because Morshead wrote to Queen Mary recommending him for questions of attribution and cleaning, while suggesting that the rest of the work might be done by an administrator – an idea which evidently came from Clark.2 In Morshead’s view Clark was not only the best, but the only, man for the job.

The King had expressed a desire that someone should tell him when to clean his pictures. This worried Clark, as he felt inexperienced in what he called ‘the cleaning side’, and he withdrew his candidature. Morshead then received a note from the King’s private secretary, Lord Wigram: ‘The King and Queen have read your letter to Cromer* about Kenneth Clark. Their Majesties think that the latter is probably a modest retiring young man, who would be quite capable of filling the appointment, and taking all the responsibility.’3 The King and Queen also expressed a desire to meet Clark. Morshead in turn wrote to Clark: ‘You would I am sure find them most sympathetic people, and reasonable: I think you could perfectly well do the two jobs for five years.’4 The matter then had to be left in abeyance, as Collins Baker continued in his post for another year, so it came as a shock at Windsor when Clark accepted the position at the National Gallery. Owen Morshead reported the Queen saying that ‘the news of your appointment had temporarily stunned herself and the Monarch’.5 At this point the King and Queen decided to make their extraordinary trip down to Trafalgar Square on a Sunday morning in March. In Clark’s words: ‘I refused the royal job, so the King came to the National Gallery to persuade me.’6

Lord Wigram wrote to Philip Sassoon, as chairman of the trustees, announcing that the King and Queen would make ‘a short visit of about half an hour to the National Gallery, at 12 noon on Sunday, 25 March. Their Majesties would like the Director to be there …’ They tactfully indicated that the trustees should not change their existing appointments, and that they did not wish invitations to be extended to them as a body.7 Given that this was the first visit by a reigning monarch to the gallery, it was a considerable matter to leave the trustees out of the picture. Clark made a cryptic diary account of the visit: ‘Motor up to London to take King and Queen round NG. I start with Q[ueen]. very stiff and full of formal questions. After the first room take on K[ing]. who is much jollier. Loudly proclaimed that Turner was mad. Very much consoled by [Frith’s] Derby Day where we traced all the incidents, but regretted that the race was not visible. Wanted to put his stick through Cézanne. Q. clearly felt that K. and I were not serious enough but thawed a bit. K. enjoyed view from steps and went off through cheering crowd.’8 The degree to which Clark perjured himself in artistic terms discussing Cézanne and Turner with the monarch can only be imagined, but it is clear that the two men had contrived to enjoy themselves.

Morshead’s debrief to Clark after the visit is characteristically direct: ‘The Queen said to me this morning: “We were both greatly taken with Mr Clark; he seems just the very person we should like so very much to have … the King is most anxious to secure Mr Clark if only it can be arranged” … I went along the passage to see the King … the conversation took this turn:– K. “Well, I met your friend Clark the other day; he took me over the N.G., and we had a long time together. I must frankly say it’s a long time since I met any young man who took my fancy so much; in fact I don’t know when I’ve taken to anyone more completely – the more I saw of him the more I thought ‘that’s just exactly what I had always hoped to get’ … And I liked his little wife too so much … I came away enchanted after a delightful afternoon.” Well well.’9

Apart from the understandable fear of not having the time to do both jobs, Clark was anxious about the reaction of the National Gallery trustees. All this was swept aside at Windsor, and Morshead reassured Queen Mary that pressure was being put on Clark to accept: ‘I felt that if he knew the degree to which the King’s personal desires were involved the issue might present itself in a different light.’10 Clark went to the trustees and obtained their consent; with this kind of pressure being exerted by the King and Queen he had no choice but to accept the position.

It was the sheer scale of the Royal Collection that was so daunting – seven thousand paintings, as opposed to a mere two thousand at the National Gallery. Nevertheless, on 3 July 1934 Clark was gazetted as Surveyor of the King’s Pictures. Reactions to the appointment were mixed. Berenson wrote laconically: ‘I am doubly glad as I shall feel free to ask you for photos & information about said pictures.’11 But others felt affronted by such pluralism in one so young, believing it to be a sign of Clark’s ambition.12 Apart from the envy the appointment caused, he also felt he lacked Borenius’s enthusiasm for pedigrees and portraiture: at Windsor, royal iconography came well above aesthetics. However, as a later Surveyor put it, ‘the important point about Kenneth Clark at the Royal Collection was the fact that somebody of that calibre was there at all. It set off the train of modern times with great scholars looking after the collection.’13

Clark settled into the job of Surveyor with characteristic efficiency. Few monarchs have had so little aesthetic appreciation – postage stamps apart – as George V. Despite this, Clark became very fond of the King, and found his gruff naval manner concealed a kind and fatherly patron. The Queen was a different matter, and took a close interest in the Royal Collection. Years later Clark told his biographer, ‘As a matter of fact I enjoyed it hugely: staying at Windsor was the best thing in the world. One was left free all day and had the use of a royal car. The old King took a great fancy to Jane and changed the “placement” in order to have her next to him.’14 Clark also enjoyed ‘very good grub’ at Windsor. His main task, as he saw it, was to follow the King’s instructions and implement a programme of restoration and cleaning of the paintings. As he wrote to the Lord Chamberlain, ‘the Collection has been very much let down in the last hundred years’.15 He presented lists of pictures that needed conservation, but invariably provided estimates of the cost – without consulting the restorers – that were far too low, which caused endless trouble with palace officials.16 Typical was the case of the huge Van der Goes altarpiece loaned to Edinburgh, that cost two and a half times Clark’s original estimate for repairs – which he was forced to explain to the Lord Chamberlain’s Office.

With the King’s death in January 1936, Clark had new masters at Windsor. There was a hiatus during the Abdication period, so it was not until May the following year that King George VI and Queen Elizabeth were crowned. Clark had already identified the Duchess of York – as the Queen then was – as a potential ally before the abdication of her brother-in-law. After she wrote Clark a flattering letter about his lecture on English landscape painting he sent her The Gothic Revival, recommending the chapter on Pugin, ‘who was a fascinating character’. They had recently been to an exhibition together, and Clark added that ‘so few people seem to enjoy pictures: they look at them stodgily, or critically – or acquisitively; seldom with real enthusiasm’.17 He enjoyed writing to her about the places he visited. On a tour of Eastern Europe he told her that ‘the most fascinating place we saw was Cracow. It is incredibly mediaeval, squalid & superstitious, with a ghetto full of magnificent old Jews with fur caps & long curly beards: in fact a population of living Rembrandts.’18

The flavour of Clark’s life in the build-up to the coronation, and his impressions of the new King and Queen, were conveyed in a letter to Edith Wharton: ‘I am engaged in a last wild round up before going to Vienna and Budapest next Thursday. We are opening a new gallery, collecting new loans and acquisitions, fighting the Treasury, choosing the great seal etc. every minute of the day. On top of it I have to spend two days at Windsor with the Monarch advising him about his pictures – interminably standing and grinning. This is particularly bitter because it keeps me away from my beloved “Bellers” [his new rented house in the country] which we enjoy more and more every visit … Jane has been laid low with a horrible attack of flu which almost became jaundice. She suffered agonies of depression … I found the new King and Queen very pleasant – she just above the average country house type, he just below it.’19 Clark was to become an ardent fan of the Queen, but he never changed his mind about the King.

On the day of the coronation, the Clarks were in their seats in Westminster Abbey by 8 a.m., three hours before the arrival of the King. Jane wore a white court brocade dress, with a long white velvet Schiaparelli cloak and a tiara.20 ‘The coronation,’ Clark wrote to his mother, ‘was far the most moving and magnificent performance I have ever seen. We had very good seats, almost the best in the Abbey [he enclosed a diagram] … The whole performance was beyond [the theatrical impresarios] Reinhardt and Cochran partly because it took place in the Abbey, partly because it cost £1 million, but chiefly because the leading actors and actresses really looked the part … I must say too, that I felt the real significance of the coronation in a way I couldn’t have believed. The sight of all these different races, of these representatives of every corner of the earth united by this single ideal has converted me to Imperialism.’21

Clark’s first instinct in the new reign was to resign. He was worried that the new King would want to rehang everything, and despite this being his favourite occupation, that he would not have enough time. Morshead talked him out of it, and he soon found that he was far more useful than he had been under the previous regime. First, there was the question of new state portraits, for which Clark recommended Sir Gerald Kelly. He was expected to be in attendance for visits of foreign heads of state, such as the French President Albert Lebrun in March 1939, to show them the treasures. He also found himself an unofficial adviser for the Order of Merit, which – with the exception of the Garter – is the most distinguished award for high achievement at the monarch’s disposal. When his opinion was invited on Edwin Lutyens versus Giles Gilbert Scott for the OM, he replied without a moment’s hesitation ‘Lutyens’, who despite being at the nadir of critical fortune was in Clark’s opinion greater than all his rival architects.22 Later he was consulted about musicians, intellectuals and even scientists, pushing the claims of Maynard Keynes and the physiologist Edgar Adrian.23

Clark had been right in identifying the new Queen as a potential patron of the arts. She began by asking his advice on the rehanging of her sitting room at Windsor. Matters moved on from there, as Jane’s diary reveals: ‘K has enjoyed Windsor espec two long walks with Queen … they want to get in touch with modern life in as many aspects as poss but go slow so as not to hurt people’s feelings.’ She also noted that her husband was ‘shocked at how little K&Q do. She gets up at 11. Hardly anyone at Windsor and just as dreary in the evenings as under King G and QM, but at least latter went to bed earlier. He likes the Q v much.’24 Clark’s position was unusual, as an intellectual who had the ear of the Queen and was as close to her as anybody outside the family in the new reign.

To Clark’s delight, the Queen started to assemble a small but distinctive collection of contemporary British paintings. Most of her acquisitions were made post-war, but in 1938 she purchased the portrait of Bernard Shaw by Augustus John entitled When Homer Nods. Clark wrote her an enthusiastic letter: ‘May I say how extremely valuable to all of us who care for the arts is Your Majesty’s decision to buy the work of living painters. It is not too much to say that it will have an important effect on British art in general … you will make them [the painters] feel that they are not working for a small clique but for the centre of the national life.’25 He formed a warm and productive relationship with the Queen, who wrote to him: ‘It is so important that the monarchy should be kept in touch with the trend & life of modern, as well as ancient Art, and I hope that you will advise & help us along those lines?’26 Clark took the hint, and over the coming years would write to her, ‘May I take this opportunity of telling Your Majesty about several other things which are happening in the arts.’27 He arranged visits for the young Princesses to the National Gallery, and became a fixture of social life at Windsor. The Queen had her own taste, but the advice proffered by Clark, and later by the chairman of the Tate, Jasper Ridley, was a great stimulation to her interest in this field.

It was building work at Hampton Court which enabled Clark to have what he called ‘the glorious opportunity of rehanging the pictures’ there. He had previously written to BB: ‘I have always hated palaces as a tourist & I hate them even more as a servant. The exception is Hampton Court, which is of course really a public gallery, tho’ as badly run as if it were private … There are an immense number of pictures tucked away … which … few can have seen since you first went there – chiefly Bassanos, of course, but a few interesting sub Titianesque Venetians.’28 Clark believed that his predecessor had treated the place too much like a public gallery and not enough as a palace. He was fortunate that Philip Sassoon was at the Office of Works at the time, and persuaded Lord Duveen to pay for the redecoration of the state rooms with red and gold brocade. The result was that a very moribund palace came back to life, and Clark’s rehang was much admired.

However much Clark enjoyed his role as artistic chevalier servant to the Queen, he found the courtiers and palace administrators tiresome and generally ignorant. As he told Gerald Kelly, ‘I was amused by your references to the life of the courtier. It is interesting to find how educated people, when they are in a position of a servant, take on the servant’s mentality with its touchiness, jealousy, etc. Having been attached to the Court myself for about six years, I now begin to think of the domestic servant with more understanding.’29 Clark’s impatience with courts, and the life they sustained, was to emerge again in Civilisation, when he spoke of their ‘odious pomposity’. Although he gave high marks to the courts of Urbino and Mantua, he virtually left Versailles out of the series. When he made Royal Palaces (1966), which was the first time television cameras were allowed into Windsor and Buckingham Palace, his tone offended the Queen and Prince Philip, who found him ‘sarcastic’ – an incomprehensible judgement by today’s standards. Up until then Clark had been welcomed at state banquets, and described one of them to Janet Stone: ‘The state banquet last night was really beautiful – gold is undoubtedly life-enhancing, and I have never seen so much. All the waiters covered with it, all the plates and cutlery made of it, all the walls lined with it. Into the middle of this over-civilised display came the Black Watch Pipers – making this deafening, but to me intoxicating noise. I wept with joy greatly to the scandal of my neighbour … I had an agonising ten minutes with the Q – she was tired and longing to get away.’30

At the very end of his life Clark suggested to his publisher a new book of essays: ‘I thought of calling this volume “Afterthoughts” and it would include an essay on royalty – a very amusing subject on which I am expert.’31 Apart from the various members of the British royal family, he became well acquainted with Prince Paul, the Regent of Yugoslavia, and the King of Sweden. Despite his qualms and the later temporary fallout over Royal Palaces, Clark was a very successful courtier. Apart from being a conscientious curator, he recognised the unifying power of monarchy, which was to become so important during the coming war. Both Kenneth Clark and the royal family were about to embrace paternalistic populism.

* Rowland Baring, second Earl Cromer, the Lord Chamberlain of the Royal Household.