Behind the scenes at a hanging
February 12, 2008 by asayburn
words by Anna Sayburn, photographs by Rebecca Portsmouth. Images of Guido Reni St Sebastian by Permission of the Trustees of Dulwich Picture Gallery
When you next visit a temporary exhibition at Dulwich, stop and think about how all the paintings and other objects have been collected together in one room - sometimes literally from all over the world - for your viewing pleasure.
The new exhibition, of six Guido Reni paintings of St Sebastian, may only involve five loaned pictures (in addition to Dulwich’s own very fine version). But, says Sanne Klinge of the exhibitions department, the exhibition still presents the same challenges of gaining agreement from all the owners, negotiations about security and transport arrangements, and the careful work of hanging the paintings in the chosen exhibition space.
When you consider that the paintings come from four countries across three continents, you get some idea of the scale of the challenge. Four of the paintings - from Genoa, Rome, Madrid and Puerto Rico - arrived together by road from Genoa, where they have already been exhibited as a group. But the fifth, from Auckland in New Zealand, was transported by air to join its siblings in Dulwich.
The gallery uses a specialist fine art transport company to arrange transfers. Couriers from several of the museums travelled with the paintings, to look after the well-being of ‘their’ painting.
Mounting an exhibition may involve couriers of many nationalities converging on Dulwich in a single afternoon to oversee their painting being installed.
Sanne says the paintings ‘look great on the walls’ at Dulwich, and the exhibition sounds like a visual treat. But it’s of more than aesthetic interest for Guido Reni experts, who are expected to flock to Dulwich to study the paintings, together for the first time. Art history may well be re-written as a result.
‘They may not all be by Guido Reni himself. They may be studio works, or copies.
It’s impossible, when works are so far apart, to see the differences between them,’ says Sanne.
What is certain is that this little exhibition demonstrates the international importance of Dulwich Picture Gallery, which is so much more than ‘our’ favourite small gallery.
The Agony and the Ecstasy: Guido Reni’s Saint Sebastians is at Dulwich from 5 February to 11 May.
