The art of the state

The art of the state

A new catalogue brings the 2,500 scattered oil paintings held by the Government Art Collection together in one place

Sam Jones
Friday December 7, 2007
The Guardian

For the last 50 years, Lord Byron, looking entirely at home in his Albanian costume, has cast a haughty eye over visitors to the British ambassador's residence in Athens. But from today, Thomas Phillips's celebrated portrait of the peacockish and predatory poet will find a wider audience when it is published in a catalogue of the oil paintings held by the Government Art Collection.

The book, which is the brainchild of the Public Catalogue Foundation, manages to corral the 2,500 oil paintings owned by the state and dotted around the world from Whitehall ministries to diplomatic buildings as far apart as Santiago and Moscow on to its 319 illustrated pages.

It features enough famous portraits to ensure Byron is in good company; images of Shakespeare, Mary Queen of Scots and Queen Elizabeth I jostle with Winston Churchill and Harold Wilson. Landscapes, seascapes, still lifes and more abstract pieces are also on the rollcall, which includes many modern and specially commissioned pieces.
The catalogue also reveals some paintings whose historical value matches their aesthetic worth. On page 94, lurking among pictures of a Westland Wessex Mark 1 helicopter and two voluptuous ladies from Seville, is an accomplished portrait of Field Marshal Montgomery by one Dwight D Eisenhower.

Ninety pages further on is the double portrait of Sir Robert Walpole that was damaged by shrapnel from the IRA mortar attack on Downing Street in 1991.

The book represents the latest phase in the Public Catalogue Foundation's push to photograph and publish all of the 200,000 oil, acrylic and tempera paintings held in publicly owned collections in the UK. So far, the charity, which was set up four years ago and is based in the National Gallery in London, has recorded about 40,000 pictures.

It has also published nearly 20 catalogues of county-specific oil paintings and collections housed by institutions such as the Imperial War Museum and the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.

Getting so many images together from so many different places proved something of a logistical challenge, according to Andrew Ellis, the foundation's director.

"The pictures are spread across 450 locations around the world from 10 Downing Street to embassies and high commissions. To be fair, many of the pictures had already been photographed, but we had to get photographers in places like Colombo and Caracas," he said. "We found them by searching the internet, but it was quite difficult trying to get them through security and into the embassies." But the end result, he added, had been worth it. "We succeeded and the resulting catalogue is a fascinating showcase of British art that is spread across the globe and owned by the British public."

Penny Johnson, the director of the Government Art Collection, which holds 13,000 works of art in different media obtained over the last century, was also pleased with the book.

"It's wonderful to see all our oil paintings reproduced together for the first time in one catalogue," she said. "The juxtapositions of the colour images stimulate the imagination and reveal the breadth of the collection in a new and accessible way."

Celebrations to mark the catalogue's publication, however, are likely to be brief. The Public Catalogue Foundation reckons that there are still 150,000 paintings that remain hidden from public view. Many grace the walls of the country's museums, council buildings, universities, hospitals and police and fire stations, but thousands more languish in storage.

The foundation's next goal is to get 60,000 pictures on to the internet by spring 2009. If all goes to plan and funding is forthcoming, said Ellis, all 200,000 paintings should be online by 2012.

Byron's portrait may be bracing itself for the leap into cyberspace, but its physical travels are already under way. The painting has left the poet's beloved Greece and will soon embark on a grand tour of the world as part of a Tate-organised exhibition on orientalism. The empty space that Byron leaves on the ambassador's wall will be filled, fittingly, by Margaret Carpenter's portrait of his daughter Ada Lovelace, which has hung in No 10 for the past five years.