09 February 2017
Everything Must Go
What should we keep?
by J.R.Thomas
Our film review this week (see “Lion”) deals with the problems of the poor, so let’s have some counterbalance by looking at the problems of the rich. One particular problem, that is. That no matter how much money you may have, you just can’t buy anything that you want. Not if it is a work of art, anyway.
This week’s upset billionaire is an American hedge fund owner, James Tomilson Hill III, who last year in a private deal bought Portrait of Young Man in a Red Cap by Pontormo, a Florentine artist, active in the first half of the sixteenth century. The young man, not that it is terribly relevant, is Carlo Neroni, a valiant defender of Florence against the Hapsburg Emperor Charles V. It is a magnificent and sensitive portrait, displaying all the manly virtues so prized then – depicted by a love letter in one hand, a sword in the other. Mr Tomilson Hill was happy to pay £30m for it, to form in due course, it is understood, the centrepiece of a collection for a gallery he proposes to found in New York, or nearby.
But love and war do not always run smoothly, and neither does art collecting. The Department of Culture, Media and Sport (which never sounds quite right but let’s not get diverted) then intervened on the advice of the Arts Council, as it is entitled to, to hold up the issue of an export licence. The Department does this if it is concerned that an item or art work which is significant to Britain’s cultural heritage may be sold abroad. Unlike in France, where such actions are simply forbidden (making France a much better place for the financially careful collector to buy art, so long as they are prepared to live with it in France), the export licence is simply held up for a period of time whilst it is seen if any British public art institution wants to intervene and can raise the money to match the sale price.
A public appeal is then held and the art and culture loving public often willingly and quickly subscribe to save the beloved artefact. We jest, of course; typically the public will subscribe perhaps five or ten per cent of the purchase price, all the rest will come from various pockets of the government, some direct pockets (the Treasury), some less direct such as the Art Fund (a designated fund for this sort of objective) and others such as the Heritage Lottery Fund, which is sort of a publicly subscribed fund from lottery players (whether they realise it or not). The financial benefits to the owners are often complicated too, especially if there are deferred capital taxes involved in the sale, or large amounts of capital gains tax.
The picture was designated a core part of Britain’s art heritage, the export licence duly suspended, and the money raised to match the price; Mr TH III was told that he would not be taking his new acquisition off to New York. But something changed; the Referendum came, and went, and with it, the value of sterling. “Fine” said Mr TH III (metaphorically) “but I am a dollar billionaire, and the dollars that I used to buy this picture have become worth a lot less in sterling terms”. So he asked that a further US$10m or so be paid to him so as to put him back in the position he was before this saga started. His alternative is not to export the picture, but to keep it in the UK, hidden away in the back of a cupboard or in some private place – and in ten years time, apply again for an export licence. Or simply sell it, should circumstance dictate.
This has never happened before in the complex and arcane world of export licences for important works of art, and the elegant persons who are active in this corner of the artistic woods are horrified it is happening now. This picture, they say, is a key part of Britain’s artistic heritage and should continue to be on display in the National Gallery, as it has been since 2008, by the generosity of its previous owners – though also possibly because they did not fancy the security hazards of keeping it in its previous location – a large country house in a remote part of Northern Ireland.
You might think that this picture, painted in Florence by a Florentine painter of a fine Florentine gentleman, actually ought, if art can have a natural home, to be back in central Italy. It has been in its former Ulster home for over two hundred years, gathered up presumably on some young gentleman’s grand tour. For all that time it has not been noticed by the artistic world; it was not the centrepiece of the family art collection, hanging in the drawing room or library for connoisseurs to notice and admire. Few people knew that it was there at all, and most did not recognise it for what it was, and, although the owning family knew it was there, they did not appreciate any importance it might have.
When they did, they sent it to the National Gallery to share with the public, and to consider how best to secure its future. Sometimes this can be done by a transfer to a public collection in lieu of taxation, or even of prospective taxation, but apparently there were no such considerations here and a private sale was negotiated with Mr Tomilson Hill, so it did not appear in the auction rooms or on the open market.
It is a very fine portrait indeed. Senor Neroni looks at us as we look at him, his gaze steely but also sensitive, a man who knows he lives in dangerous times but does not allow that to undermine an aristocratic sense of poise and romanticism. But is there any particular reason that he should be in a British collection, rather than an American one? We have an increasing problem with our heritage of art and fine objects. The dread pressures of divorce, death, and decay lie ever more heavily on the shoulders of those who own so much of this heritage; more and more is quietly, or noisily as has turned out in this case, slipping through the sales process. Great collections such as that at Castle Howard are starting to eat into their core holdings – the current generation of Howards sold a remarkably fine Reynolds of the 5th Earl of Carlisle last year, and the descendants of the Forbes of Pitsligo family are dispatching to Sotheby’s in March around 30 of their ancestral portraits, not individually of great merit, but a depressing nibbling away of a family and artistic history.
“We do not sell our grandmothers” a 1930’s Duke is reputed to have grandly informed Joseph Duveen, the great art dealer, when he offered to buy an ancestral portrait. But times are pressing, the motherlode of non-core objects is starting to get thin; and a hard pressed owner with a tax bill will consider selling anything that does not earn its keep. There will be much coming to market that is of a closer connection to Britain’s artistic heritage than Florentine portraits, however moving and remarkable. Do we try to keep everything; do we not intervene but let the market take its course; do we keep things for purely artistic merit or for purely historic reasons?
Senor Neroni, one suspects, would be rather appalled by the vulgarity of the squabbling over money now going on under his nose. He has no say in the matter, though one rather wishes he did. Perhaps there is a solution; Mr Tomilson Hill could pose for some modern rising talent with brush and paint, looking hedge fund billionairingly stern, cheque book in one hand, lawyer’s writ in the other; and gift it to the National Gallery to hang in place of the Pontormo. It might become the great symbol of our age.
