| Description | Caption: "then, how to accumulate and preserve the artist’s work"
Ruskin talks about the need to expend public money on works of art, some being, "in the true sense of the word, priceless", to save them from destruction, encouraging the purchase of whatever European countries want to sell. The Elgin marbles with British Museum earphone commentary heard over. Commentary quotes disapproving comments from an 1840s French guidebook on the English predilection for either buying works of art from all over the world or "like Lord Elgin, tearing them off the Parthenon…", but only recently thinking it "necessary to create a public gallery…" as opposed to the many private collections. Children explain The Holy Family with the Infant St. John the Baptist (Italian School, 17th Century, Bradford Art Galleries and Museums) to their classmates. Commentary quotes Sir Henry Cole, first director of the South Kensington [Victoria & Albert] Museum as saying that he was convinced of the value of public exhibition, having seen "working men ... in shabby jackets … accompanied by their four or five children and … their wives…" and noted what pleasure the exhibits gave them, and should be extended outside London.
Nineteenth-century paintings including Cottage in a Cornfield (c.1815-1817), formerly attributed to John Constable; Charles Allston Collins: Berengaria’s Alarm for the Safety of her Husband, Richard Coeur de Lion, Awakened by the Sight of his Girdle Offered for Sale at Rome (aka The Pedlar, 1850); J M W Turner: Now for the Painter: Passengers Going on Board (aka Rope and Pas de Calais, 1827); Angelica Kauffmann: portrait of Ellis Cornelia Knight (1793); George Stubbs: Cheetah with Two Indian Attendants and a Stag (c.1765); Thomas Gainsborough: A Peasant Girl Gathering Faggots in a Wood (1782); and a Still Life: Flowers and Fruit by Jan van Os . Manchester City Art Gallery main staircase and video security screens. Commentary says that William Lloyd’s breaking of the Portland Vase in 1845 drew criticism of the public exhibition of art works. A concert in the Gallery. |
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