Mentmore sale was million dollar folly

Press, 15 June 1978, Page 17

Mentmore sale was million dollar folly

By

DONALD WINTERSGILL,

“Guardian,” London

A vear ago. Mr Peter Wilson, chairman of Sotheby’s. mounted an auctioneer’s rostrum in a marquee at Mentmore Towers, Lord Rosebery’s mansion in Buckinghamshire, to start a series of sales that dispersed the magnificent contents of the mansion for a total of E6.6M. Yet the nation could have acquired the beautiful Victorian house, the farms, cottage, and land — and the antiques and works of art —for E2.2M and remission of death duties; say £4M or just over. . , The loss was bad enough. But now the full folly of the Government’s refusal to take over Mentmore is even clearer. Very large sums of public money have been spent in the last year in acquiring only a fraction of the contents. , x , The items that have been taken into public ownership are valued at about E2M. Some of the money that was needed

came from the hardpressed resources of the galleries and museums. Some came from the National Land Fund, which is controlled by the Treasury and is used to rescue beautiful buildings and landscapes and to bring works of art into public ownership. Some came from tax concessions by the Treasury. The first two sources should. in the conservationists’ view, have been husbanded for other acquisitions. The National Gallery got a portrait of Madame de Pompadour by Francois Hubert Drouais valued at £600,000; the Louvre would have dearly loved to get it. Lord Rosebery sold it privately to the gallery and was thus entitled to a tax concession. But the gallery had pleaded with the Treasury to accept the work in 'part payment of death duties. The Treasury refused — and the gallery had to dip into its funds.

A similar private deal was done by the National Gallery of Scotland for a portrait by Giovanni Battista Moroni valued at E 50.000. Some other galleries and museums made minor purchases at the auctions. The Treasury did, how-

ever, agree to take a few items in part payment Of death duties — the only known sporting picture by Gainsborough, valued at £150,000; a bureau-cabinet made for Augustus the Strong, King of Poland, valued at £500,000; and a cabinet of ebony and silver made in the Low Countries in the seventeenth century and said to be once owned by Marie de Medici, valued at £220.000. One of the most extraordinary episodes of the Mentmore affair was over

a French eighteenth-centu-ry painting, catalogued as “The Toilet of Venus” by Carle van Loo. It was bought for £BBOO by David Carritt, a London dealer. He announced soon afterwards that the subject was Psyche showing her sisters her gifts from Cupid and that the painter

was Fragonard. The value of the picture was perhaps £600.000. Sotheby’s said icily: “We would point out that the picture was seen by most, if not all. the principal picture dealers of London and Paris, by the French museums including the Louvre and Versailles, and by the National Gallery.” Confirmation of Carritt’s opinion came last month when the picture was bought by the National Gallery, w-hich described it as “a major acquisition.”

The gallery did not reveal the price but did say it was "considerably lower than the original asking price and undoubtedly lower than the market value of a large scale documented work by a comparatively rare as well as outstanding painter.”

Speculation says the price may have been about £400,000. A kind of mania broke out in the auctions of Mentmore. Enormous interest had been generated by the conservationists’ campaign and many people wanted a souvenir of the house. But the mania did force prices up to unrealistic levels. The contents would not have made nearly as much if they had been offered in the ordinary way at Sotheby’s. The Government could

nevertheless have done very well by buying the house and selling off superfluous items such as coal scuttles, walking sticks, and cast iron boot scrapers — and the valuable land and farms. Two studies of Mentmore’s viability as a tourist attraction and stately home were prepared while the row was going on about its possible acquisition by the Government. One, by Mr Anthony Emery of I.P.C. Business Press, said the total spending on rates, staffing, and maintenance would be about £78,000 a year. Income from admission fees, guide books, catering, and so forth would be between £97.000 and £157,000. The other study, by the estate agents Savills, said that the income from 80,000 visitors a year at 80p a head would be more than the running costs. Woburn Abbey, 10 miles away, had a million visitors a year; Whipsnade Zoo, 11 miles away, had

500.000; and Hatfleid House, 35 miles away, had 131.600. On he other hand, Mentmore did need a lot of work doing on the structure: it had been neglected for decades. The Government said shortly before the sales were to start that it was willing to put up £IM for the house and contents if private sources came forward with £2M. Mr Patrick Cormack, Conservative member of Parliament for Staffordshire South-west, led a fundraising drive but failed for lack of time. It is clear that the Government blundered over the whole affair and the responsibility must rest with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Denis Healey; the Secretary for the Environment, Mr Peter Shore; and Mr Shore’s parliamentary under-secre-tary, Lady Birk. The loss has not been Britain’s alone: the cultural heritage of the whole world has been diminished.