At the National Gallery 
Peter Campbell
A few years ago a friend spent some weeks making a copy of Raeburn’s The Archers: the double portrait had recently been acquired by the National Gallery, their first painting by a Scottish artist. She began work at Christie’s, but the gallery wanted the picture on the wall and she had to finish her copy there. Public confrontation of picture and replica made comment inevitable. The pleasantries were repetitive – ‘You’ll be able to hang it on the wall and sneak off with the real one’ – and followed no national boundaries. Children generally made the most intelligent remarks: two shaven-headed boys looked for a long time, then one pointed out a fault in a shadow. The man who said that what she would need to match one area was red lead brought some in the following day. It was clear that many people found watching a copy being made more interesting than looking at the pictures they had come to see.
Subscribers to the print edition can log in to view the entire article. For information about subscribing to the London Review of Books click here. This article is available for purchase online. Buy this article.
Peter Campbell is the London Review’s resident designer and art critic.
Other articles by this contributor:
In Venice · Tourist Trouble
At Tate Modern · Century City
At the V&A · fashion photography
At Tate Modern · the fairground at Bankside
At the Royal Academy · Matisse’s revelations
At the National Portrait Gallery · being photographed
At the Hayward and the British Museum · With Goya and Rembrandt
At Tate Modern · Henri Rousseau
print layout
tell a friend