London Season

Workmen rolled tubs full of pink and blue hydrangeas into the tunnel-like entrance of Burlington House early one morning last week in token that London's Social Season was about to begin. It is an ancient immutable law that The Season (when George is in his Palace and debutantes are presented at Court) starts on the first Friday in May with the Private View of the Royal Academy. The Season ends on the loth and nth of July with the Eton-Harrow cricket match at Lord's.

The Private View is not so private. About 5.000 people receive invitations to it. All day long, from ten in the morning till six at night, long lines of white-wheeled limousines and taxicabs rolled down Piccadilly and through the gates of Burlington House. Knowing ones came not at teatime, when the galleries seethed with humanity, but just before lunch when Cabinet Ministers, the Lords of Britain and their ladies, tycoons and literary lions arrived to greet each other effusively, stand self-consciously before their portraits, make disparaging remarks about the rest of the 1,686 works exhibited.

There should have been 1,691. But last minute scandal kept five pictures off Burlington House's chaste walls. Year ago one Mark Symons painted what the penny press described as the Picture of the Year. Not particularly well painted, harsh in color, it was a crucifixion with a Flanders battlefield as a background. There were modern British soldiers, gas masks, hand grenades and other impedimenta and it bore the imposing title "Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?'' It brought him much publicity and many commissions. Feeling that there was a demand for this sort of thing, Artist Symons submitted another this year. It was called "My Lord I Meet in Every London Lane and Street." It included the figures of Jesus, St. Peter, St. John, the Holy Ghost, a perspective view of Tottenham Court Road, a steam roller, a baby Austin, a motorcycle, and about 100 assorted Londoners. Editors did not doubt that this overcrowded, execrable composition would be another Picture of the Year, gave it full page reproduction in both Britain and the U. S. Without warning it was rejected by the white-mustached President of the Academy, Sir William Llewellyn, and his selection committee.

Two other last minute scandals caused shouts of glee to rise in Chelsea at the methods and standards of the R. A. Every Royal Academy must have a picture by a child prodigy. Last year's prodigy was long-legged Joan Manning Sanders, 17. This year's prodigy was 16, Victor Albert Ledger, employed by day as a delivery boy in Covent Garden. He submitted a picture of two drunken 18th Century sailors on the poop deck of a schooner, which was instantly accepted.

"The picture," said Prodigy Ledger to a New York Times reporter, "is called 'On Board the Hispaniola,' and it's based on a sea story, the name of which I have forgotten." Apparently both the Times reporter and the Selection Committee had forgotten Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island too. A few days later indignant letter writers informed the Royal Academy that the picture was not only an illustration for Treasure Island, but an exact copy of the frontispiece of John Seymour Lucas' illustrated edition. Embarrassed, Sir William Llewellyn ordered the picture removed.

Reginald Grenville Eves, once known as a protege of that bearded New Englander John Singer Sargent, now famed as a portraitist, submitted three slick and shiny pictures. They were instantly accepted, for Reginald Eves was up for election as an Academician. A few days later long-suffering Sir William Llewellyn discovered that they were actually what many critics have called most Academy portraits: colored photographs. Sly Reginald had pasted tissue paper enlargements on canvas, colored them with oil paint. This was certainly not cricket! The pictures were thrown out, Reginald Eves was blackballed. Said Artist Eves:

"It is all a mistake. I devised this method while suffering from a cramp in my hand. I had no idea I was working contrary to the Academy's rules."*

Just after the doors were opened last week Artist Dod Proctor discovered that one of his wife's still-lifes had been hung upside down. But the most newsworthy picture that actually appeared on the R. A.'s walls was a biblical scene by small jockey-like Sir William ("Billy Orps") Orpen. Depicting the entry into Jerusalem, it was entitled by the artist and most morning papers "Christ Riding on the Ass." In the evening papers, in the official catalog it appeared as "Palm Sunday A. D. 33." It received the sort of press notice generally reserved for the opera of Jacob Epstein: "childish and primitive," "a monstrosity suitable for Moscow." The cautious News Chronicle considered it "astounding." At Private View Day, Ermine, Viscountess Elibank (a Lady of Grace of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem) approached the painting and announced in the presence of several reporters, "I just can't bear it."

Critics moving diffidently among the silk hats of the gentry approved Augustus John's state portrait of white-chinned Viscount d'Abernon (Argentine Trade Mission, TIME, Sept. 23, 1929) in the red robes of the Bath, Sir John Lavery's state portrait of mutton-chop-whiskered Lord Lonsdale in the blue robes of the Garter, the ever popular sporting pictures of A. J. Munnings. World wide depression, they noted, had a marked effect in reducing the number of large statues on view.

*Though reputable artists do not color photographs, as a labor saving device many throw the reflection of a photograph on a blank canvas by means of a magic lantern, block in the rough outline of the sitter's pose with charcoal.

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