Selby Whittingham
“I’m just a slave / only a slave to you, temptation”. So sang Bing Crosby in 1933 in a song, Temptation, repeated by many famous singers since and, in 1970, in a German TV act of Sid Millward & The Nitwits. That shows (it was recorded) Sid presiding over players prey to temptations which are low rather than romantic, ones of vanity, exhibitionism and revenge. “The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it” (Wilde). So the Wallace Collection has demonstrated and probably will demonstrate further after its successful attempt to remove the prohibition on lending its works which I and others have deplored (November/December issue). “We will start slowly and see how things go,” says Chairman Horta-Osorío ominously.
Temptation and the Wallace go together in the pictures which give it its unique character, those of the French 18th century. By contrast the Director, Xavier Bray, has complained that “working at the Wallace is quite a monastic existence because people know they will never get anything out of you.” The temptation has been for the director to supplant the owner, giving him the latter’s powers and excuses
404 Not Found
Nearly 30 years ago I considered the issue in relation to the Turner Bequest in The Fallacy of Mediocrity. I proposed that a new Act should vest the bequest in a separate trust and that that this should enshrine a clarification and modification of Turner’s prohibition on lending, viz. “The 98 finished oils … should be exhibited constantly together, except that (i) any may be loaned for public exhibition for a period not exceeding 6 months (ii) such loans should be made with regard to the objective of all the finished oils being on view together for most of the time.” I proposed this clause (which could be improved) hesitantly as any change to a donor’s restrictions is always seized on as a precedent for making further ones. Thus some have said that the disregard of Lady Wallace’s request that the
True, some grounds for lending are plausible. It will allow, said the January-February issue, the Wallace Rubens landscape to be