MICHAEL Phillips is going to produce new prints of William Blake’s work from replica Blake plates he has created in a mock-up Blake studio at the Ashmolean (November 8).
This is so enterprising and exciting, but the practice could bring problems of attribution and provenance. All involved would do well to heed a 50-year-old cautionary tale about the goings-on at the new Munch Museum in Oslo in the 1960s.
I was working in Norway soon after this magnificent modern gallery opened and visited it often to see Munch’s powerful canvases.
The curators in charge also had Munch’s prints and lithographic plates in their charge, and these were kept for security reasons in the basement.
What I guess happened was that on some quiet, wintry afternoons, these curators must have telephoned their partners to say that they would be doing some overtime after the gallery closed so they would be late home for dinner.
I guess also that when the first ‘Munch print’ was rolled off the master’s very own old press, joy must have been unconfined for the two loyal custodians.
They must have drunk a toast to Munch’s spirit in their elation at sharing in his achievement.
However, a little time later ‘new Munch prints’ started to turn up in Switzerland: all rather baffling.
Not for long though because Oslo’s very own ‘boys in blue’, acting on information, came a-knocking at the Munch Museum door, and two very shame-faced curators were led away to face both the music and substantial prison sentences.
I rather think the Norwegian establishment is not too keen on this misdemeanour being too widely known about; certainly, Munch’s recent biographer, Sue Prideaux, did not know if it when I related it to her at the Oxford Literary Festival in 2007.
PATRICK SNAITH
Kingston Road
Oxford
Today’s letters
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