In London last week, the BBC somewhat nervously invited Sir Gerald Kelly to take charge of a TV tour of an exhibit of Dutch pictures at the Royal Academy. Sir Gerald, a peppery, blunt-talking, 74-year-old Irishman, is famed both as president of the academy and as painter of over 40 portraits of his wife ("I paint her because I don't think anyone has a prettier wife," he once explained).
The program got under way with a staid, ten-minute monologue by the staid BBC's Edward Halliday. Then Sir Gerald broke into Halliday's lukewarm praise of a Rembrandt self-portrait. "My dear fellow," he boomed,...
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