Volume 32, Number 20 · December 19, 1985
Brideshead Re-Revisited
By David Cannadine
The Treasure Houses of Britain: Five Hundred Years of Private Patronage and Art Collecting Washington
November 3, 1985 to March 16, 1986, National Gallery of Art,
The Treasure Houses of Britain: Five Hundred Years of Private Patronage and Art Collecting
edited by Gervase Jackson-Stops
National Gallery of Art (Washington)/Yale University Press, 680 pp., $24.95 (paper)
The English Country House: A Grand Tour Book/Little, Brown
by Gervase Jackson-Stops, by James Pipkin
National Gallery of Art (Washington)/A New York Graphic Society, 240 pp., $29.95
The stately homes of England seem about to reconquer the United States for Squire Western, the Duke of Omnium, and Lord Marchmain. That, at least, is the impression conveyed by the splendid exhibition, 'The Treasure Houses of Britain,' in Washington. Thirty-five thousand square feet of gallery space have been given over to it; more than seven hundred works of art from over two hundred houses are on display; the Ford Motor Company alone has subsidized it with a sum in excess of one million dollars; and 700,000 visitors are eagerly and confidently expected before the exhibition closes. Now that the inaugural festivities are over, this may be an appropriate time to take a closer and more critical look, not only at the exhibition itself, but also at the broader British background to it, and at the real aims and objectives of those responsible for staging it.
Review, 5271 words
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