What I think of as my heritage

Authors

  • Kenneth Hudson

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5617/nm.3834

Abstract

A few years ago I was in Richmond, Virginia, and while I was there I paid a visit to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. One department contained a collection of paintings devoted to sporting subjects. This had been given to the Museum by a rich man who had brought it together over a period ofmore than 30 years. The pictures were mainly from the 18th and 19th centuries and a high proportion of the artists were British. There was a particularly fine series of works by George Stubbs.

As soon as I realised what I was looking at, I began to boil with rage, although I managed to conceal this from my very kind host. What so incensed me was the fact that pictures which I regarded as part of my heritage had been bought by an American and transported bound and helpless across the Atlantic to a place which did not deserve to have them, a museum where they did not belong. My reaction was purely emotional and instinctive. Stubbs was there and I felt that he had been stolen from me. 

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