Page 40 - Studio International - February 1965

My years at the Tate
Sir John Rothenstein, Director of the Tate Gallery from 1938
until 1964, looks back on the vital years in which not only
has art changed but the public's attitude towards it. In this
evolution the activities pursued by and at the Tate have
played a dominant role.
Photo: Ida Kar
The Tate. when I became its director. was a quiet.
uneventful, and at times all but deserted place. I
remember reading once. in a Georgian autobiography,
of what it was like in the 'thirties: somnolent and very
restful. the walls hung always with the same range of
pictures. many of them familiar from childhood.
My attitudes as its director were a good deal influenced
by two circumstances. I was director of the Leeds Art
Galleries for nearly two years and of those in Sheffield
for more than four. The other was my happening to be
born into a family of artists.
When I went to Leeds. at the age of thirty, the great
depression had not yet lifted. I had the gallery com­
pletely rearranged and redecorated. and the unemployed
used to come in large numbers. Of course many came
for warmth. and to escape the sooty drizzle. But I was
delighted and surprised at how acutely appreciative
they were. even of the less obvious points of the
rearrangement and redecoration. My experience in
Leeds. and later on in Sheffield. convinced me that it is
not enough-although. of course. crucially important­
to acquire fine works of art. but that a serene and
exhilarating environment must be created by them and
for them. My Northern experience made me. in fact. a
fanatic for presentation. But fine presentation involves
discriminating acquisition-you cannot make a silk
purse out of a sow·s ear. This conviction was
strengthened by my directorship in Sheffield. The public
there had been given negligible opportunities of seeing
anything but popular-academic late Victorian painting.
Yet it gave an immediate response to the 15th and 16th
century Italian paintings as well as to Cezanne's Card
Players. to La Vie. a masterpiece of Picasso's Blue
Period. and to comparable modern works which I
borrowed for exhibition in the newly opened gallery. I
believe that too many people underestimate the public
response to what is serious-and they also underesti­
mate the public's eventual contemptuous apathy
towards the inferior.
There were other circumstances. which affected my
conviction about the way art galleries should be run. I
was born. as I said just now. into an artists' family.
The younger generations of painters and sculptors of
today would find it difficult to imagine how hard life was
for artists-how precarious even for the successful. In
those earlier days collectors. as well as public opinion.
favoured what was familiar. as against what was new.
above all against what was audacious. There were few
scholarships there was no Arts Council. and no British
Council. For the student when he left his art school
there were fewer teaching posts (those were largely
occupied not by artists but by professional pedagogues)
there were no dealers. or very few. alertly on the lookout
for emerging talent. And above all those in charge of
public collections showed very little disposition to
welcome the works of the painters and sculptors who
enjoyed most respect among their fellow-artists. They
often showed. on the contrary, a positive hostility
towards them. Even the Tate Gallery, which pursued a
liberal and independent policy, pursued it with
conspicuous caution. For instance. Sickert and Steer
were both sixty-two years old before the Tate bought
one of their paintings. Epstein was forty-eight when his
first purchases were made: two small pencil drawings.
In fact I can recal I few of the artists now regarded as
illustrious who did not speak bitterly, at one time or
another. of their neglect or ill-treatment by the official
art world. This treatment made me indignant. and I