In Pursuit of Rare Meats

I’m sorry, I just cannot approve of an expedition in pursuit of rare meats and I hope few people want to see rare mammals killed. It’s pursuing animals to extinction.

However, The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meats is a mural in the restaurant at Tate Britain, painted by Rex Whistler in 1927. Conservationists, usually so quick to criticise, have not complained because it is a beautiful, pastoral fantasy evoking Renaissance artworks and architecture but with incongruities like a “hunter” riding a bicycle. So far as I know, nobody thinks Rex Whistler was an advocate of hunting rare species. We cannot ask him because he was killed in France serving in the Welsh Guards in World War II. He was a talented artist especially good at large scale murals and delivered a masterpiece to the Tate. It is a favourite luncheon destination for me.

Hitherto nobody has criticised the mural for its very offensive suggestion that rare species should be hunted and killed because it’s a picture, it’s not trying to depict reality. Now the Black Lives Matter movement has put its spectacles on and spotted a black child (slave?) on a rope – tiny, I’ve never noticed the little fellow. The gallery, ludicrously, is taking this seriously. Next thing BLM will demand that black pudding and Pinot Noir are taken off the menu.

Roland Rudd will succeed Lionel Barber as Chairman of the Tate’s Trustees next month. I hope he will make his mark by keeping the mural and keeping the room as a restaurant, as intended in 1927.