HIGH PRAISE FOR ART AT THE TIMKEN

“Real works of art of the highest quality are the standard against which to compare whatever comes this way,” visiting British scholar Cecil Gould said emphatically on Saturday morning. “The Timken Art Gallery provides that standard in San Diego, emphasizing quality, not quantity, as the Frick Collection does in New York.”

Parenthetically, he added, “I deplore the teaching of art history through the use of photographs.”

The former keeper of the collection and deputy director of the National Gallery in London visited San Diego last week to deliver the first lecture of the Timken Art Gallery’s 1986 fall series.

Gould, whose specialties are 16th-Century Italian and 19th-Century French art, has published books on Bernini and Correggio and has one on Raphael about to appear. He has also organized exhibitions of the works of Leonardo, Titian and Corot.

After serving with Royal Air Force intelligence during World War II, the young Courtauld Institute-trained art historian became assistant keeper at the National Gallery. In 1973 he became keeper and deputy director. Since 1980 he has been an adviser to the Timken Art Gallery and is the author of several entries in the catalogue of its collection.

His subject before an audience that nearly filled the lecture hall was dryly titled, “An Odyssey of Old Masters: Illustrious Collections of Past Centuries Whose Paintings Are Now in the Timken Art Gallery.”

Gould spoke about the history of collecting art rather than about the history of art, embellishing his accounts of the provenances, or sources, of several works in the Timken collection with tales of passion, foolishness, international politics and high finance, along with his personal reminiscences.

To illustrate the effects of installation on works of art, he used Guercino’s “The Return of the Prodigal Son” (c. 1635), which during the 1920s was placed casually high above a bookcase near the ceiling in a study of the residence of the Marquess of Lansdowne. Earlier, it would have been overwhelmed by the gilt in a splendid hall of the Princess Colonna in Rome, which was its home. In the Timken Gallery, visitors view it at eye level on a pristine wall.

Gould also used the example of the Timken Gallery’s Francois Boucher “Lovers in a Park,” which formerly belonged to the Scottish peer Lord Rosebery. The painting by the favorite artist of Louis XV and his mistress, Madame de Pompadour, in its tasteful sensuality and radiant tonalities, epitomizes Rococo art. Despite its qualities, it was hidden in a dark space under a stairway in Rosebery’s mammoth residence, Mentmore Towers.

The earl’s stated ambitions, Gould informed us, were to win the Derby. He did. And to marry the richest woman in England. Already very wealthy himself, he married a Rothschild. And to become prime minister. During his short tenure in that office, he became known for sending Oscar Wilde to prison.

Among the other works Gould discussed was the Boltrafio “Portrait of a Youth Holding an Arrow,” which long belonged to the Earl of Elgin, who is best known for bringing the marble sculptures from the Parthenon in Athens to England. The historian urged opposition to the efforts of Melina Mercouri, Greece’s minister of culture, to have them returned to Greece. Their acquisition by Elgin was legal at the time. The precedent of such a return would create disorder for museums throughout the world, Gould warned.

The Timken Art Gallery’s 1986 fall lecture series continues Saturday with Svetlana Alpers speaking on “Rembrandt: A Master in the Studio.” On Oct. 18 Richard R. Brettell’s topic will be “Is There Anything Left to Say About Impressionism?”