THERE are at least three non-royal houses in Scotland which carry the suffix Palace: Scone, Dalkeith and Hamilton. Though all are impressive buildings, only Hamilton lived up to its regal association and under the tenth Duke of Hamilton was transformed into a palace of imperial splendour. His invitation to David in 1811 for a portrait of Napoleon, his commission of a set of designs from Napoleon's architects Percier and Fontaine in 1822 and the marriage of his son and heir into the imperial family in 1843, all manifest Hamilton's concept of the role of a palace (Fig.2). To realise such an ambitious scheme Hamilton collected vigorously and voraciously. The great Hamilton Palace sales of 1882 may properly be seen as the abdication by his grandson of this inherited imperial part. After 1882 Hamilton Palace lost its meaning and was demolished between 1919 and 1926.

FROM the turn of the century until his financial collapse in the winter of 1913-14, Fritz Waerndorfer used his considerable wealth to promote the cause of modern art in Vienna. He was an enthusiastic patron of the Vienna Secession, and numbered among his friends some of its most prominent members, including Gustav Klimt, Josef Hoffmann and Kolo Moser (Fig. 10). He owned an extensive collection of works both by Austrian Secessionists and by 'corresponding' members from abroad, such as Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Georges Minne and Aubrey Beardsley. By means of commissions to Mackin-tosh, Hoffmann, Moser and other contemporary designers, he transformed his house into a Mecca of the modern movement, the Mackintosh music room and Hoffmann dining room, in particular (Figs 17 and 14), counting among the best known artistic curiosities of Vienna. He was also financial backer and, for a time, business manager of the Wiener Werkstaitte, the Viennese craft group he founded together with Hoffmann and Moser in the summer of 1903. In 1907, he took over the running of the Kabarett Fledermaus, the cafe-theatre which served as a showplace for everything new in poetry, satire, cabaret and dance. About the same time, he also began to support younger (and more impecunious) artists, not-able among them Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele.

THE recent cleaning by Herbert Lank of Velázquez's little known masterpiece, which I first published in this Magazine in 1958, is the occasion for reviewing the history of the painting and contributing a few additional notes.

SINCE the publication in 1817 of the third volume of Nichols's and Steevens's Genuine Works of William Hogarth, with its list of works attributed to the artist, the Hogarth literature has been haunted by a 'lost' conversation piece known as The Betts family. The painting is in fact far from lost, but it is not, sadly, by the master. The description in Genuine Works is clear enough to leave no room for doubt that it is the same as Cat. 1982 in the Tate Gallery's permanent collection (Fig.30).

IN 1842, the Irish artist and critic, Thomas James Mulvany, in a eulogistic series of 'Memoires of Native Artists', described Hugh Douglas Hamilton's Portrait of Colonel Richard St George Mansergh St George mourning his wife (Fig.33), as being 'cold almost to chilliness'. The setting of the picture, he says 'has a lonely air'.=

AMONG the Keynes papers in King's College, Cambridge, is some correspondence between Maynard Keynes and Ivon Hitchens. Keynes owned three of Hitchens's paintings at his death in 1946 and although he did not patronise this artist regularly, as he had Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell and William Roberts, he was instrumental in helping him out at a time of financial distress, a juxtaposition of generosity and patronage which was characteristic of Keynes. He genuinely liked to help young artists, and his collection was in part a quid pro quo. Both Keynes and Sir Edward Marsh, with whom he was on the Board in the late 1930s, acquired pictures by Hitchens for the Contemporary Art Society. Marsh's choice, made in 1938, is now in the Tate Gallery (No.4923); in 1941 Keynes bought two of Hitchens's paintings, which had been exhibited at the Leicester Galleries in 1940. One, Rhododendron glade (Spring) (Fig.36), he kept for his own collection, where it joined Passage of 1936 and Hazel Path of 1937, both now in King's College, Cambridge. The other, Woodland Landscape (Fig.37), is now in the Ferens Art Gallery, Kingston upon Hull (No. 241).

THIS autumn audiences at the Royal Opera House will see for the first time a spectacular new safety curtain designed by Christopher LeBrun to replace the old and shabby curtain, with its vertical stripes in pink and crimson.