The mole (painting) at the heart of the UK government

The Mole Catcher must rank among the most bizarre acquisitions by the UK’s Government Art Collection. A farmer gingerly holding a dead mole by the tail was painted by Thomas Dugdale, a Royal Academician and war artist, who died in 1952. Five years later his widow sold it to the government for £105, a considerable sum at the time. The Mole Catcher was then shipped to Tokyo, to grace the dining room of successive British ambassadors for 23 years. Although no doubt a talking point, one wonders quite what Japanese visitors would have made of it. After presiding over thousands of dinners (with presumably smoking guests), the picture was in need of restoration, which was done by the Courtauld Institute. By this time “mole” had acquired a new meaning in espionage lingo, and the Cabinet Office thought it would be amusing to borrow the Dugdale. It hung there until 2000, when “C”, the head of the Secret Intelligence Service MI6, requested it for it for his own office. C’s successor in 2004 felt rather differently and returned the painting to the Government Art Collection. The Mole Catcher now hangs in the Ministry of Defence’s Whitehall headquarters.