After the Bath, est. 1896 by Edgar Degas, one of the paintings due to be exhibited at the Tate Britain, London. Photograph: National Gallery/PA
Simon Sainsbury, having the good fortune to become immensely rich, spent his money wisely. The 18 paintings that he left outright to the nation (not in lieu of tax) are well worth seeing at Tate Britain in London, where they hang in a room together for the first and last time before being dispersed into the collection displays of the National Galley and Tate Britain.
As in any great personal collection (for instance the Frick and those that form the heart of the Courtauld collection in Somerset House, London), you can see a singular eye at work: one that loved the figure, one that had a particular sense of the way paint was applied to canvas.
The paintings look right as a group even though the works were not intended to hang together: they were dispersed in different rooms and different houses by Sainsbury where, it is said, he had a great talent at making things look just right. (It's easy to be inversely snobbish about this kind of thing. But I'm not going to be. To be a great collector is its own kind of creative talent.)
In the book accompanying the display (The Simon Sainsbury Bequest, edited by Andrew Wilson), Neil MacGregor, former director of the National Gallery, summons up vividly the sense of seeing Monet's Waterlilies, Setting Sun, as it used to hang in Sainsbury's drawing room in his house in Sussex. "Modest in dimensions, both picture and drawing room shared and explored the mysterious pleasures of light, darkling and glinting," he writes.
Lucky Sainsbury, and good for him for having the public spirit to pass these pleasures on to all of us. He set down an example: would that others of great wealth would follow it.
