JOHN BUCHAN: HIGH-LOWBROW ART APPRECIATION

I rather liked a Times Literary Supplement  article entitled High-lowbrow written by Robert Messenger in February 21, 2020 paper, page 17.   It is about John Buchan and a rather interesting item to do with art appreciation. The piece has been misquoted a lot, apparently... not so much misquoted but wrongly attributed to the topic of the appreciation of literature.  It was for this reason that the author of this article made a huge, and ultimately successful, effort to track down the story and so has clarified the context in which it was said.

The whole article is here....

He traced the source of the quotation which, apparently, was said by Buchan at the opening of an art gallery in Montreal February 1939. 

Messenger states:  He was opening a gallery and joking about his lack of any "claim to be any kind of authority on art".  [Buchan stated on this particular occasion] "The President of a famous American University - I think it was Harvard - once divided the members of that University into six classes.  He said there were highbrows,; low-highbrows; high-lowbrows; bone-heads and solid ivory.  If we take this classification I think I should come about the middle in my views on art - shall we say high-lowbrow?"

Equalling interesting in this article is the drawing that accompanies it.  It is by E H Shepherd (he of Winnie the Pooh). 

“Chief of the Big Mountain”, cartoon of John Buchan by E. H. Shepard, Punch, 1936 from Punch Cartoon Library

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Here are two paintings by A Y Jackson which would have been around at the time Buchan was giving his talk described above.

Early Spring, Quebec.  A Y Jackson, 1926

Les Eboulements. A Y Jackson   

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Later:  A letter [March 13, 2020] in response to the above TLS article contained something that caught my interest.  The writer owns a letter written by Buchan in 1926.   He observes that the capital B of his surname has 'the shape of a majuscule lambda'.  I had to look that up. He means a capital 'L' of the Greek alphabet...ah yes, 'majuscule' as opposed to 'miniscule'.

Λ λ

I found an image of Buchan's signature in this signed copy of one of his books.
  

The 'B' certainly does take the shape of an upside-down V.

The Autograph Edition of "A History of the Great War", limited to Five Hundred Signed and Numbered Copies, c. 1922.