Reflections of a stormy petrel

The worst and most damaging heresy - still largely unconscious and unchallenged - in modern thought( Read more... )

I have long since come to the conclusion ( Read more... )

I have been moderately ill (nothing to worry about, I assure you) for a few days, so this entry is later than I meant it. The event it describes took place last week. Even so, it is something so wonderful and important that I decided to post it anyway.

You will not often find me speaking well of the rich, especially of the rich by hereditary privilege. There is, however, a certain kind of good deed that is possible only to those who have enormous amounts of money to dispose of – amounts such as to allow large-scale beneficence while being certain of not beggaring one’s heirs. This kind of behaviour was more common in ancient and medieval times, when generosity was held to be a virtue of kings and great lords; but it has not died out even now – and just yesterday the world was reminded what enormous wealth could do, if used for anything other than selfish ends.

One of the richest families in Britain are the Sainsburys. Not only have they founded what is now the second largest retail chain in the kingdom, but, unlike other famous founding families, they have managed both to keep the business in their collective hands and to keep it prospering. The wealth this generated has been spread down four generations and across a remarkably large number of Sainsbury cousins, one of the richest of whom was Lord Simon Sainsbury.

Lord Simon had already done a lot for the heritage of the United Kingdom by being one of the chief donors in the collective Sainsbury gift that allowed London’s National Gallery, the greatest art museum in Britain and one of the greatest in the world, to expand its exhibition space by, I should guess, fifty per cent. I visited the Sainsbury Wing several times, and regard it as a valuable addition to London. However, when his will was made known yesterday, it became clear that this was only part of what we all owe him. He has left eighteen paintings to the National and Tate Galleries (the Tate Gallery is the art museum dedicated specifically to British art). And not just any paintings. One of those of which the most fuss was made was a Francis Bacon – a painter I loathe; but there were no less than three splendid Lucien Freuds – Freud being without a doubt the greatest living British painter – and it went up from there. A Gauguin still life – beautiful. A Bonnard. The best Douanier Rousseau I have ever seen (they were shown on TV). And to close the list, two truly incomparable Monets – incomparable, of course, except to other Monet masterpieces. As far as I am concerned, Monet is one of the greatest painters who ever lived, to be mentioned in one breath with Rembrandt, Tiziano, Raffaello, and – this may be heresy, but I think so – superior in achievement to Michelangelo. And these two were wholly representative of his achievement: an incredibly atmospheric early (1875) landscape with figures in snow, and a glorious late painting of water and reflected light, of the kind that nobody except Monet ever thought of doing, and of the very best of his kind. I could have looked at it for hours. Luckily the bequest will have a public exhibition next summer before being split between the two museums, so I can look at it as a whole and from life rather than a TV screen.

This is not just a munificent gift, but one made by a man who knows what is good (I’ll forgive the Bacon) and who, being able to buy what he wanted, has thought long and hard on what to buy. Every one of those paintings was significant. Not just a Douanier Roussau, but that Douanier Rousseau; not just a Monet or a Freud, but those Monets and those Freuds. The museums could never have bought even one of them, at today’s art market prices. And Lord Simon has left them to the country, to be enjoyed and learned from by anyone who cares to (access to the great London museums is generally free). This is an act that positively improves London and England; that adds to the stores of beauty, artistic truth, and artistic thought available to the capital. Not many people can make such a claim. No doubt there will have been some tax advantage to the residuary heirs; such bequests are encouraged by law, and carefully negotiated in advance with the tax authorities. But the quality and consistency of the gift reduces any mercenary motives to insignificance, whether or not they were there. As far as I am concerned, a gift of such quality deserves to have all tax remitted for ten years in sheer gratitude.

We do not have the language to properly thank a man for something like this. Once upon a time – I do not know whether they do it still – the National Assembly of France used to vote thanks to successful politicians or generals or diplomats with the austere and economical formula: “Citizen so-and-so has well deserved of the Fatherland”. Something like that ought to be said now: for Citizen Simon Sainsbury truly has a great and unique claim to the gratitude of his country, of his fellow-citizens, and indeed of the whole civilized world.