Intimate moments

From Sickert to Gertler: Modern British Art from Boxted House
Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, Suffolk, until 13 December

Private collections of art are fascinating, both for the light they shed on the tastes and preoccupations of their owners, and for the otherwise often hidden network of associations they can reveal. Paintings and sculptures made on a domestic scale exert a subtly different appeal than the products of public or museum art. The intimacy of the home setting often awakens a resonance in the art which the de-personalised aura of a gallery can stifle or deny. However, few collections, apart from the grandest, are maintained in the houses for which they were assembled, and if they are left to museums are inevitably broken up and lose their identity. In Modern British Art from Boxted House, we are fortunate to see an intensely personal collection kept together and presented in the intimate milieu of Gainsborough’s House.