Noble Pinup

It was 4:10 o'clock one afternoon last week, and the 14 members of the Selection Committee of Britain's Royal Academy were glumly having plum cake and tea to fortify themselves to go on judging the 9,944 entries for the yearly summer painting exhibition. By such reserved accolades as a grunt, a gently lifted hand and a muttered "Not too bad, what?" the committeemen had given a number of paintings the stature of D for doubtful, while marking the others X for rejected. Suddenly Academy President Charles Wheeler looked at a painting, put down his cup, summoned other committeemen to inspect the work "at once." To a man, they gave the painting an A*--an honor not awarded since "before our time," according to Academy Secretary Humphrey Brooke.

Reflecting the academy's staid taste for realism, the painting that interrupted tea is a fool-the-eye portrait of a pretty girl. The artist who painted it is a onetime photo-reconnaissance officer named John Merton. He sat his subject in a dentist's chair, made 100 three-dimensional photographs of her, worked 1,500 hours while playing Bach, Beethoven and Mozart on his hifi. The girl is Lady Dalkeith, 26, a former fashion model and daughter of a Scottish barrister. In 1953's flossiest British wedding, attended by Queen Elizabeth, Princess Margaret and 1,600 other guests, she married Margaret's front-running suitor, rangy, redheaded Walter Francis John Montagu-Douglas-Scott, Earl of Dalkeith, son of the eighth Duke of Buccleuch.

The meticulously drawn portrait shows Lady Dalkeith robed in pink, with matching nail polish, even has slivers of tin foil glittering among her painted diamonds. The academicians think that it illustrates their goal of acting "as a steadying influence on the haste or extravagancy of innovators"--i.e., the pattern-conscious "kitchen sink" school of art. Lord Attlee found Merton's painting "awfully jolly," but art critics disdained it as mere "craftsmanship." Flooded with commissions, Merton rejoined: "I only paint beautiful women, children and angels."

* For acceptance (there are no intermediate grades). After the Ds have been separated from the Xs, another jury, the Hanging Committee, passes the final verdict, this year chose 1,493 of the 3,000 Ds.

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