I was grateful that, due to the first in, last out filing system in my rucksack, I read Jonathan Jones’s piece (Under the influence, G2, 21 January) after viewing the new Rubens exhibition at the Royal Academy, even though I agree somewhat with his conclusions. But given Jones’ strongly independent thinking on the exhibition, and his strident point that it had just six major Rubenses, it’s surprising that there was no mention of the elephants that weren’t in the room.
One obvious reason that, on entering the first room, his “eyes fell on a painting by John Constable” is that the Rubens landscape for that room hasn’t arrived from Leningrad, along with at least two others. We are probably never going to know whether the delay (at least I hope it’s a delay) has been caused at a low or high level, but it’s not hard to imagine that Russians, on constantly being told by western politicians how they are toughening sanctions against Russia, might not be responding with enthusiasm to loans to a British institution with such a regal cachet. At the very least, the absences told me that ascribing enthusiasm for Rubens’s landscapes as “German” was another over-simplification of this exhibition. But perhaps a wider message is intended.
Roger Macy
London
• Frank Landamore (Letters, 23 January) calls for innovative printing and wireless technology to solve the problem of reading small, badly positioned captions in art galleries. Such technology already exists. It’s called a booklet. At the National Gallery’s recent Rembrandt exhibition, I was handed a small, free book that reproduced the captions in perfectly legible, large script.
Andy McAleer
London
