£25,000 PICTURE.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 333, 21 October 1908, Page 13

£25,000 PICTURE.

PURCHASE FOR THE NATION BY ' -'INSTALMENTS. A large painting of a family group by Frans Hals ; tho Dutch master, has come into tho possession of the trustees of the National Gallery at a cost of £25,000, and will shortly bo placed on viow in tho gallery. Peculiar circumstances _ surround its acquisition, the picture having been purohased on tho instalment plan, a cortain sum having been paid down and the balance being spread, over a number of years. Half the purchase price—-£l2,soo—has already been paid up by tho E> chequer, this sum being mado up of a special grant of £7,600 and the sum of £5000 votod annually by Parliament for tho acquisition of pictures. Tho remainder has to bo found by the trustees, who, unless somo private individuals assist them, have only the annual grant to fall back upon. Consequently the purchase of this pieturo mortgages the annual grant for 1909, 1910, and half of 1911, during which poriod the trustees will bo without public money for tho purchase of pictures for the nation Lord Talbot do Malahido was tho owner •of tho picture, which until a.few weeks ago was unknown practically to everyone. Mr. Buttery, the official picture cleaner and restorer to the National Gallery, was, in tho ordinary course of his profession, summoned to Malahide Castle, somo twelve miles from Dublin, to cloan several pictures, and in tho course of his work he discovered the now famous pieturo. As tho picture had never been oxhibited its existence was unknown even to experts.