Page 29 - Studio International - December 1967

Recent British painting: The Stuyvesant

Collection

David Thompson

In March 1964 in the Preface to the first New Generation
Exhibition at the WHITECHAPEL GALLERY, Bryan Robert-
son wrote 'we are still at the beginning of public patron-
age in England'. We are not much farther on now, but
we do have, as a major example of it, the collection which
was started at that exhibition and is now regarded, within
the terms that were originally defined for it, as more or
less complete. During the last three years, the knowledge
that a painting had been bought for the Stuyvesant
Collection became a new kind of accolade, as prestigious
as a purchase by those three pillars of official patronage,
the Tate, the British Council or the Arts Council;
almost more so, in fact, for this was a new patron, an
`unofficial' one, spending £20,000 a year for what was
presumed to be a fairly limited time, in a limited and
particular field—British painting today (this is the osten-
sible scope of the Collection, although the actual terms
of reference are 'since 1950' : almost all the paintings
belong to the 1960s, with only the occasional earlier
example, like an Ivon Hitchens of 1951, a Bryan Winter
and an Alan Davie of 1956 or a Roger Hilton of 1959).
It was not, it is true, a patron with wholly new or
unexpected tastes, for the purchasing panel of three
(Alan Bowness, Lilian Somerville and Norman Reid)
could hardly have closer connections with the three
`official' bodies already most active in the same field. On
the other hand, they were buying for the Foundation
with more generous resources at their disposal and with a
freedom of action unhampered by the slow processes of
committee. From the first the results were notable for
sheer quality. What is outstanding about the Stuyvesant
Collection is the way it has acquired, again and again,
not merely the good representative example, but the major
work. Richard Smith's Gift Wrap, David Hockney's
Rocky Mountains and Tired Indians, Allen Jones's Buses of
1964, or—from a 'senior' generation—Ceri Richards'
Triptych from the Cathédrale Engloutie series, are just four
Jeremy Moon, Chart 1962
purchases among several of those paintings in which the
Oil on canvas, 80 x 69 in.
artist can be said to have summed up his achievement at
'A number of the paintings I did at this time involved four circles that time on a particularly commanding scale and with
(or other elements) related to the four quarters, or four corners
particular significance; each is, in the strict sense, one of
of a square canvas. I did one or two based more on an overall
grid of circles on an oblong canvas. In Chart only part of the grid the artist's masterpieces.
is there—and with the central blue area and the change from As shown at the TATE, it consists at present of ninety-
solid circles to open circles I seemed to arrive at the resulting seven paintings by fifty-two artists. It is complete in the
final image by more arbitrary means than in the case of other sense that further 'topping up', which might continue for
paintings at that time.'
some time, is likely to be concerned more with widening
the representation of such artists as are already included,
than with introducing new artists in any numbers.
One of the principles on which acquisitions have been
The Peter Stuyvesant Collection is at the Tate Gallery until
December 22. made was that most artists—except those so firmly
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