The Tate Gallery's Wartime Acquisitions

The hundred pictures which made up the exhibition were a selection from the works acquired by the Trustees of the Tate Gallery by purchase, gift or bequest since the beginning of the First World War.

Unfortunately it hasn’t proved possible to include everything shown in the exhibition of the Tate Gallery’s Wartime Acquisitions held at the National Gallery during the spring.

Among those which it was regretfully decided (chiefly on account of their fragility) must return at once to their places of refuge were the group of magnificent colour printed drawings by Blake, as well as works by Madox Brown, Rossetti and other Pre-Raphaelites. The Trustees decided, however, to lend to the exhibition the principal modern foreign paintings added to the Collection since the First World War. These included works by Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Sisley, Anquetin and Cézanne.

These hundred pictures, therefore, constituted a wide choice from the Gallery’s Wartime Acquisitions.

The enthusiasm aroused by these pictures led the Trustees to take the further decision to accept the invitation of CEMA to arrange for their exhibition at other centres.

John Rothenstein