The Princes Gate Collection [antikvár]

Foreword When this exhibition opens to the public on 17 July at the Courtauld Institute Galleries it will be the first time that the Princes Gate Collection, formed by Count Antoine Seilern, has been exhibited in a public gallery. Individual paintings and drawings were lent to exhibitions by Count Seilern in his lifetime, and the collection was always made accessible to scholars and students. We hope and believe that visitors to the exhibition will be thrilled by the range and quality of the paintings and drawings on show, and that they will derive great pleasure and inspiration from them. For Count Seilern wished others to share the life-enhancing experience that he himself derived from the study of great masterpieces. The Collection has been bequeathed to the Home House Society Trustees, the Trust that was set up in 1931 by Samuel Courtauld when he endowed the Courtauld Institute of Art and gave to the University of London the magnificent foundation collection which bears his name. The Courtauld Institute of Art, in particular, and the University of London of which it is a part, have been no less fortunate in their benefactors in the fine arts than in other fields. Although the bequest took effect in July 1978, it was not possible to exhibit the Princes Gate Collection until certain legal formalities had been completed. It was also necessary to find additional space to house temporarily those parts of the Courtauld Institute's collections, now so splendidly augmented, which have to be stored until some larger, permanent home could be found. The Home House Trustees and our Committee of Management felt that it would be most appropriate to show the Courtauld Collection and the Princes Gate Collection together at the Woburn Square Galleries for about a year, since it would not be possible, sadly, to continue to show the Gambier-Parry, Lee of Fareham, and Fry Collections in the restricted space available to us there. (Only the Lee of Fareham Rubens Descent from the Cross has been included, since it relates to Rubens' Visitation and Presentation in the Princes Gate Collection.) This underlines our need for more exhibition space where almost all the treasures in our collections can be publicly displayed. It is to be hoped that negotiations between the University and the Government, and the consultants' studies already initiated, will be successfully concluded and enable us to move the collections and, ultimately, the Courtauld Institute, to the Fine Rooms at Somerset House, thus re-uniting under one roof our teaching activities with the art collections. The present exhibition contains all but a few of the paintings from Count Seilern's collection, and a selection of some sixty of the finest of the drawings. There will be two selections (A and B) of about thirty drawings each. They will each be shown for approximately six months at a time and both sections A and B are included in this catalogue. An enterprise of this kind cannot be undertaken without financial help, and we wish to record our deep gratitude to National Westminster Bank for generously agreeing to sponsor this exhibition. We would also like to thank most warmly the Rt. Hon. Paul Channon, P.C., M.P., Minister for the Arts, for agreeing to a government indemnity for this exhibition. V