Acquisitions
Featured Acquisitions and Gifts
The Simon Sainsbury Bequest
Gallery visitors are used to exhibitions and displays celebrating the work of a single artist or small group united by time or theme. So stepping into Room 8 at Tate Britain between Tuesday 8 July and Sunday 5 October 2008 is initially a surprise, if not a shock. Here is a large space filled with eighteen seemingly random paintings: works from different periods; large and small (some very large and very small); both quintessentially English and undeniably foreign. The effect is to regard each work in an unfamiliar context – tempered by unexpected juxtapositions and a range of emotional or rational responses. The visitor regards each work not in isolation or as part of a series or period, but in the company of unique and very different neighbours. It's an approach that bears further exploration.
Balthus Nude on a Chaise Longue 1950.
© ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2002
This is, then, a unique display: an insight into part of the extensive private collections of the late Simon Sainsbury (1930–2006), a man who was at once both household name and very private person. By extension it is an oblique glimpse of the man himself. Sainsbury was a collector, who spent his private life refining and redefining those collections, whilst publicly supporting the arts and major art establishments. Until now he has perhaps been best known in this context as a prime mover, with his two brothers, behind the extension to the National Gallery. Now he will be remembered for an extraordinarily generous act that benefits not just the Collections of Tate and the National Gallery, but – as he intended – the nation as a whole. We are all a little richer for this generous act.
Francis Bacon Study for a Portrait 1952.
© Estate of Francis Bacon.
All Rights Reserved, DACS 2002
Simon Sainsbury planned his gift meticulously in direct discussion with the Directors of the respective institutions. Though these eighteen paintings represent a fraction of his entire collection, each of the works donated is significant, and has been chosen specifically to boost areas of the Collections of Tate and the National where the addition of these works might have a transformative effect.
When the display closes in October, the works will simply be absorbed into each Collection; they are not designed to stand apart as a memorial to Simon Sainsbury. But for those fortunate enough to have seen all eighteen paintings together there are many lessons and abiding memories.
Thomas Gainsborough Mr and Mrs Carter
circa 1747-8. © Tate
The smallest work, Lucian Freud's Boy Smoking, glowers with a fuming intensity that fills the whole room; a face destined, one feels, to be rendered in court-room pastels. Compare this with the casual lushness of Rousseau's Joseph Brunner; and then again with Bacon's archetypal screaming head; or the easy elegance of Zoffany's family group; or contrasting Degas and Bonnard nudes; or – the only actually odd contrast – Gainsborough's mismatched pair (you can hardly regard them as a 'couple').
The display is equally strong in landscape, with Victor Pasmore's serene Hanging Gardens of Hammersmith demanding endless contemplation; no small feat given the proximity of two Monets and Bonnard's Yellow Boat. There is classic still-life, too with Paul Gauguin's work seemingly referenced in Balthus's strange and haunting narratives.
Victor Pasmore Hanging Gardens of
Hammersmith, No. 1 1944-7. © Tate
For all the century- and genre-hopping the whole display strangely hangs together, without a single discordant note. There is a unifying theme here and that theme is Sainsbury himself: his outlook on life; the paintings he chose to put in his homes; the personal landscape he contrived for himself – all playing a hugely important part in his life. Here is a peculiarly English sensibility, an obvious ‘eye', an eclectic taste. July to October is too short a time to get to know this man; he is destined to remain a fascinating enigma, a generous spirit.
Steve Hare
Works donated to Tate and on display:
Balthus Still Life with a Figure 1940.
© ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2002
Study for a Portrait 1952 by Francis Bacon (1909–1992). Tate holds some of Bacon's most important paintings but there are no works by the artist of comparative style and subject in the Collection.
Still Life with a Figure 1940, Nude on a Chaise Longue 1950 and The Golden Fruit 1956 by Balthus (Count Balthasar Klossowski de Rola) (1908–2001). This is a substantial gift of three major paintings by the artist and will transform Tate's Balthus holdings.
Pierre Bonnard Nude in the Bath
1925. © ADAGP, Paris and DACS,
London 2002
Nude in the Bath 1925, and The Yellow Boat c.19368 by Pierre Bonnard (18671947) further strengthens his representation making it one of the highlights of the Tate. Although Tate already holds Bonnard's The Bath 1925, Nude in the Bath 1925 is a radically different work, by virtue of the inclusion of a self-portrait and its extreme cropping and dynamic vertical format. It provides a greater depth of understanding to the development of this particularly significant theme in his work, while The Yellow Boat is a fine example of his late style.
Girl with a Kitten 1947, Boy Smoking 1950–1 and The Painter's Mother 1972 by Lucian Freud (born 1922). This group of works complements and adds to Freud's representation in a way that allows the psychological and stylistic shifts in his work during these key years to be traced more adequately. Boy Smoking, though little known or reproduced, is one of the finest examples of his incisive approach to portraiture in this period and The Painter's Mother is the first painting of the artist's mother to enter the Collection.
Mr and Mrs Carter c.17478 by Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788) is an important document of the artist's early career and patronage. It is the earliest painting by Gainsborough to enter the Collection.
John Wootton Life-Size Horse
with Huntsman Blowing a Horn 1732.
© Tate
Johan Zoffany Colonel Blair with his
Family and an Indian Ayah 1786.
© Tate
The Hanging Gardens of Hammersmith, No. 1 1944–7 by Victor Pasmore (1908–1998) complements the more abstract and later The Gardens of Hammersmith, No. 2 1949 already in the Collection and serves to illuminate the full complexity of his investigation of abstraction.
Life-size Horse with Huntsman Blowing a Horn c.1732 by John Wootton (?1682-1784) is arguably one of the artist's masterpieces. It is more monumental than the other hunting scenes in the Collection by the artist.
Colonel Blair and his Family and Indian Ayah in an Interior 1789 by Johan Zoffany (1733–1810). This is the first conversation piece by the artist to enter the Collection.
An illustrated book, The Simon Sainsbury Bequest to Tate and the National Gallery, published by Tate Publishing in association with the National Gallery, accompanies the display (priced £12.99). Edited by Tate curator Andrew Wilson, the book discusses the impact of the Bequest on the National Gallery and Tate collections and includes contributions by Lucy Askew, Tabitha Barber, Tim Batchelor, Matthew Gale, Christopher Gibbs, Neil MacGregor, Christopher Riopelle and Chris Stephens.
Works donated to the National Gallery and on display:
Snow Scene at Argenteuil 1875 by Claude Monet (1840–1926) Monet was an incomparable painter of snow and this canvas is the largest and most atmospheric of some 18 snow scenes the artist painted in the town of Argenteuil during the winter of 1874-5, famous for its heavy snowfall.
Water-Lilies, Setting Sun about 1907 by Claude Monet (1840–1926). This vibrant and colourful scene, full of dramatic light effects, depicts a corner of Monet's water garden at Giverny. Joining twelve other works by Monet in the National Gallery's collection, it greatly enhances its representation of his audacious late works.
Bowl of Fruit and Tankard before a Window probably 1890 by Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) is a statement of Gauguin's desire to move beyond Impressionism to an art of greater visual complexity and structural vigour. Here he confronts still-life elements in the foreground with a distant view out over a Breton town.
Portrait of Joseph Brummer 1909 by Henri Rousseau (1844–1910). Joseph Brummer was an early champion of Rousseau's art, commissioning this monumental portrait soon after meeting the artist. It has long been admired as a masterpiece of European portraiture. The National Gallery's only other work by Rousseau, Surprised! 1891, remains a firm favourite with visitors.
After the Bath about 1896 by Edgar Degas (1834–1917). Among the most colourful and visually complex of Degas' late female nudes, this painting profoundly deepens the Gallery's representation of works by the artist.