Rubbish

A painting snapped near the font in Arundel Cathedral, a font which was decorated with art works and guarded by the (middle aged lady) artist, part of the Arundel festival of arts and crafts. The artist thought that the painting was the most awful rubbish and that one would be doing a service to the town by removing it. Perhaps there was an element of professional jealousy here.

The painting in question was described as a copy by one George Dearle-Palser of a 'Virgin and Child with Canon van der Paele flanked by Saint George and Saint Donation', Jan van Eyck, 1436.

My own opinion was that it was a honest attempt to copy an interesting painting, perhaps a little brighter and coarser than the original.

This morning I thought I would check, and snipping the painting out of the middle of the snap as best I could, submitted it to google image search. It came up with the very same copy of the very same picture, rather than the picture itself, but I did get confirmation of the details of the original, now hanging in the Groeningemuseum, Bruges. Considered by some of the authorities consulted by wikipedia to be a masterpiece of masterpieces. Image of the original, for comparison, at reference 2.

Which all goes to show that one should be cautious about making public pronouncements about unknown works of arts. Plenty of elephant traps for the unwary.

Furthermore, a quick peek at reference 1 suggests that what is otherwise known as the Bruges municipal museum has rather a lot of good stuff on its walls, probably rather more than the Arundel municipal museum. It is also just about possible that the Dukes of Norfolk, who own most of Arundel, have some ancient family connection with Bruges, there having been quite a lot of marriage exchange between the aristocracy of northern Europe since the time of the Conquest.

PS: google seems to know nothing about the copyist, although when presented with his name, it does turn up a picture of the label of the copy.

Reference 1: https://www.visitbruges.be/nl/groeningemuseum.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_and_Child_with_Canon_van_der_Paele#/media/File:Jan_Van_Eyck_La_Madone_au_Chanoine_Van_der_Paele_1434.jpg.