The continual drain of major Old Masters from collections in historic houses in the UK is gathering speed. The Art Newspaper has learned that the Earl of Derby is selling a pair of paintings by Bernardo Bellotto, which depict Königstein in Germany, for £20.5m. The deal is being done quietly as a private sale through Christie’s. Meanwhile, the Howard family, the descendants of the Earl of Carlisle, recently announced that they are selling their Bellotto, a view of Venice’s Grand Canal, which is due to be auctioned at Sotheby’s in London on 8 July (est £2.5m-£3.5m). Bellotto, a nephew of Canaletto, was a favourite of British aristocratic patrons. The works have been in their respective family collections for more than 200 years.
Museum put off by price
The Earl of Derby’s paintings—The Fortress of Königstein, Seen From the South and The Fortress of Königstein, Seen From the North—were commissioned by Augustus II of Saxony. They depict the king’s castle near Dresden and were completed around 1757. The works reached England in the late 18th century and were subsequently acquired by the 12th Earl of Derby, who died in 1834. They have since remained at Knowsley Hall, the family mansion outside Liverpool in north-west England. Both works were displayed briefly in 2000 at Christie’s in London and at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. The Fortress of Königstein, Seen From the South was on loan to Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery from 1996 to 2011.
Bellotto painted a set of five large pictures of Königstein; one is now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and the remaining two are in Manchester Art Gallery. A spokeswoman for the Manchester gallery says that it will not try to buy the Derby pair, “primarily because of the extremely high guide price”. Because the works were exempt from inheritance tax, they are now available to a UK public collection at a discount, although no UK museum is likely to be able to raise the funds. The Art Newspaper understands, however, that a private US collector may be interested in buying the pair. Edward Stanley, the 19th Earl of Derby, did not respond to our questions about his decision to sell the works.
The third painting by Bellotto—Venice, a View of the Grand Canal looking South from the Palazzo Foscari (1738-39)—was brought back from Venice in 1739 by the fourth Earl of Carlisle, and has always remained in Castle Howard, the Howards’ family mansion in North Yorkshire (famed as the setting for the 1981 British television series Brideshead Revisited). The work is owned by the trustees of Castle Howard, headed by Simon Howard and his elder brother Nicholas. Simon says that its sale will make “an important contribution to the long-term future of the Castle Howard estate and collections”. Along with the painting, the Howard family trust is selling eight other items, including a portrait of Henry VIII (1542) from the studio of Hans Holbein (est £800,000-£1.2m). The works are expected to raise a total of around £10m.
The sales of the paintings by Bellotto are the latest in a series of recent sell-offs of important Old Masters by British aristocrats, whose families often acquired them during the 18th century. In most cases, the families say that they are selling the pictures, which are often owned by trusts, to restore their historic family homes and invest in the long-term future of their estates.
Peer pressure: who else has been selling their Masters?
The Earl of Rosebery sold Turner’s Rome, from Mount Aventine (1836) at Sotheby’s in December 2014. It went to an anonymous buyer, fetching £30.3m. The buyer was probably from overseas, which would mean that an application for an export licence is likely to be made shortly.
The Duke of Northumberland had a major sale of paintings and decorative art at Sotheby’s in July 2014. The sale included a Roman statue of Aphrodite (first century AD), which made £9.4m, and Giovanni da Rimini’s The Lives of the Virgin and Other Saints (around 1300, £5.7m). The painting’s export was deferred and the National
Gallery in London is trying to buy the work.
The Earl of Warwick sold eight major paintings at Sotheby’s in July 2014, making a total of £8.8m. The works included George Romney’s Portrait of Edward Wortley Montagu (1775), which sold for £4m to the London-based Indian and Islamic art dealer Simon Ray, for a client.
Baron Burton sold Reynolds’s Portrait of Lady Frances Marsham (1776) for £4.8m. The work was bought by an unidentified buyer at Christie’s in July 2014.
The Duke of Bedford privately sold Poussin’s The Infant Moses trampling Pharaoh’s Crown (1645-46) to an unnamed overseas collector for £14m at the end of 2013. An export licence for the work was deferred, and in 2014, a group of museums led by the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge tried to match the price. They failed to raise the funds and the work went abroad in July 2014.
Viscountess Hambleden sold Claude Lorrain’s A Mediterranean Port at Sunrise with the Embarkation of St Paula for Jerusalem (around 1650) for £5.1m at Christie’s in December 2013. An application for an export licence for the work was recently submitted. When we went to press, this had been deferred until 1 May, allowing a UK institution to match the price, although the sum is likely to deter any public gallery.
Note: all prices include the auction houses’ commissions, where relevant