Restoring the canvas

IT IS VERY gratifying to hear how successful has been an unusual exhibition of paintings entitled "The Eye and the Cross," which was on view at Arundel Cathedral as part of this year's Arundel Festival.
The exhibition now transfers to the Brighton Polytechnic (Grand Parade, Brighton) from September 10-14, (Admission Free).
The purpose of the exhibition is to try to restore a spiritual dimension to art (the Eye) and to uphold artistic standards which express Christian belief (the Cross).
Few, if any, of the exhibits seemed to me better to achieve this dual objective than John Armstrong's "Blessed are the Peacemakers."
If I may be excused for being somewhat personal, it is true to say that painting offers John Armstrong a way, like prayer, of meditating on the saying and actions of Jesus. He has exhibited widely and is also a teacher of art.
The exhibition is being organised by the first recent regional group of the nationally known Society of Catholic Artists.
Its success may well encourage regional groups to be formed in other areas. By exception to the general rule, incidentally, I noticed that two of the exhibiting artists were nonCatholics.
Master full
ON MONDAY NEXT, September 10, a very different collection of pictures — but no less interesting in their own way — will go on sale at Christie's of South Kensington.
They will consist of works some 180 in all — taken from the studio of one of the most remarkable and unorthodox artists of our age. I am referring to Tom Keating.
He was already quite a considerable and successful artist in his own right before he became really famous for his witty and sometimes uncannily successful imitations of the great Masters.
He had taught himself to be competent in so many quite different techniques and styles that he made a name for himself as a restorer before going on to become an alarmingly successful imitator.
Next week's sale will consist of his pictures, watercolours and drawings and bidding is likely to be brisk.
But it is all rather sad is it not? He was such a cheering and cheerful personality and only just over sixty when he died at the beginning of this year. Apart from the famous imitations, his work in conservation and restoring was prodigious, particularly in his capacity as chief Restorer of the murals at Marlborough House.
When this sumptuous building is not being used by Commonwealth Prime Ministers, the public may visit it and feast their eyes on the fabulous hall and staircase, "tumescent with horses' rumps" (as David Piper put it), in the huge frescoes by Laguerre of the victories of the first Duke of Marlborough.
These are among the house's many art treasures which have been virtually transformed by the restoring hand of Tom Keating.
Movie buff
IT IS EXTREMELY sad to think that before this month is out Freda BruceLockhart's last film piece will have appeared in the Catholic Herald. Readers have been enjoying her column for more than 20 years.
The folk of the film world, meanwhile, have come to know, love and respect Freda and to recognise her as one of the foremost experts on the cinema of our time and one of the most consistently sound, imaginative and professional of critics. The Herald has been incredibly lucky to have been able to print her film notices regularly for the last 23 years.
When I was first editing the paper in the early seventies, from those much-missed offices in the heart of Fleet Street, Freda almost always delivered her copy personally, arriving downstairs in her invalid's car and hooting until someone rushed down to retrieve same.
Freda's gallantry in getting herself everywhere she wanted, unloading her own wheelchair from inside the car, and never missing a film she needed to see, became a London wonder.
How lucky she is, if she will forgive my saying so, for being immensely tough in one way, and vet so exquisitely gentle, sensitive and empathetic at the same time.
Of course, everything did not always go smoothly. One late afternoon. after Freda had left the office her car came to a dead stop just outside El Vino's.
Hearing this, I was naturally the first to be on the spot. (El Vino's was already open). Mechanical help having been summoned, I thought the best thing I could do was to bring Freda some vinous sustenance.
The proprietor of El Vino's in those days was a great friend of mine: none other than the famous Frank Bower (Francis to his intimates).
He quickly came out to superintend the serving at the kerbside of whatever Freda
wanted. When she and I talked about it years later, she doubted my impression that she had been reluctant to partake saying that it was unusual for her ever to refuse a drink. (Her family were once prosperous whisky distillers in the Highlands).
Freda was the only girl in a remarkable family of six. She and three of her distinguished brothers became Catholics, all at different times and independently of each other.
The son of her most famous, and eldest, brother Robert, who is called Robin, also became a Catholic, again purely off his own bat.
Robin became famous with
his book Riley, Ace of Spies and has just completed a book on the Carthusians.
One could go on for ever about such a talented family, but it is Freda who matters at the moment.
She tells me she is going to retire to Sussex but her name will go on appearing in these pages under book reviews and, I hope, other articles from time to time. So it's not goodbye but arrivederci.
Shrine time
I AM GLAD that Fr Rollings, the learned archivist at Walsingham, wrote a letter concerning the disputed date of the shrine's foundation. It is, as he says, a fascinating episode, and he is right to say that one should not too lightly dismiss either date as simply erroneous.
I don't think it is being implied, however, that J C Dickinson — who puts the date at 1130 — is any the less reliable because he is an Anglican! Indeed he was chosen as the scholar most appropriate to write the Walsingham article in the New Catholic Encyclopaedia.
The "old" Encyclopaedia is more vague on the whole subject but states that the shrine dates from the time of Edward the Confessor.
The late — and often rather mischievous — Archbishop Thomas Roberts had, as his hobby, the comparing of these two Encyclopaedias, published 60 years apart — respectively in about 1909 and 1967.
In fact the former often gives far greater and more interesting detail on many subjects, though the more recent one, an entirely new publication, claims, as one of its major objectives, to be "abreast of the present state of knowledge."
All of this provides the opportunity of mentioning that the excellent booklet The Walsingham Story by Arthur Bond, originally written in 1961, has been republished this year in revised form.
Mr Bond favour 1061 as the founding date but stimmarises the not inconsiderable evidence in favour of 1130.
What matters most, of course, Is that Walsingham should continue to flourish as the major inspiration it is, particularly in an ecumenical sense, to today's English Christians.
Whitelaw
LORD WHITELAW's slip while out grouse shooting has inevitably but perhaps unfortunately been overexposed in reports and comments. I am told that accidents of this sort are more common than one thinks, but those concerned usually contrive to keep the media in the dark.
A late Lord Hertford handed out fivers to winged beaters while the Lord Derby of an earlier age imposed fines on any gun even seeming to be "shooting down the line."
Attitudes in pre-war Germany were somewhat different. An English judge made annual visits to shoot with an aristocratic sporting friend in Westphalia.
On one occasion the judge felt impelled to shout out "It's too dangerous to shoot now! The beaters are still very near." His host replied, "Don't be alarmed Henry, they are not armed."
Final comment must be allowed to come from the man buying a paper in front of me and saying (since everyone likes to have his grouse) "Look at the kind of blokes who are leading us! Can't tell a man from a goose."
IN WRITING 'about Walsingham I mentioned in passing the Mass concelebrated by the Pope with Cardinal Hume at Wembley during the Papal visit with the statue of Our Lady of Walsingham on the altar. I was thus interested to hear from the enterprising lady who travelled all the way to Rome with a replica of this celebrated statue to present it to the Pope. She is Patricia Haskew and took her widowed mother with her. They found themselves in the front row of the vast Paul VI Audience Hall and were there able to make a personal presentation of the statue to the Pope. He was, she reports, "Thrilled". She adds, "We were ecstatic."
Gerard Noel