THE IVEAGH ART TREASURES

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 83, 6 January 1928, Page 11

THE IVEAGH ART TREASURES

VALUABLE GIFT TO BRITISH NATION

Dominion Special Service.

London. November 28. The decision of the Royal Academy to exhibit at Burlington House the great collection which Lord Iveagh has left to the nation is a happy one, lor the people who are most interested in old masters would like to be studv them in tnanv visits, and Ken Wood is some distance away. This season the academy winter show

was to have consisted only of- memorial exhibitions of the works of recently deceased academicians and associates, and to see old masters again at this show will be a return to old times. Rossetti called the winter exhibition of old masters at Burlington House ‘‘the academy’s annual expiation.” It was an old-established institution given up a few vears before the war because of the strong feelings of the. academicians against “the dead hand” in the market and the belief that the rooms were being used as a showground for selling old masters. No such question will arise in the case of Lord Iveagh’s pictures, but

an expert in the market values of old 1 masters has made an estimate of the auction room value of the treasures. “The Guitar Player,” by Jan Vermeer of Delft, the rarest of the Dutch masters, would fetch at least £lOO,OOO. The picture is the best possible type of Vermeer, and there are at least ten known buyers who would be willing to pav £lOO,OOO for it. The Rembrandt “Self-Portrait” is another picture that would be bid up for to the tune of at least £lOO,OOO. “The Man With the Stick,” by Franz Hals, painted in his later or “Rembrandt” maimer, would fetch £30,000, and the Lawrence portrait of “Miss Murray” a similar figure. The full-length Reynolds. “Mrs. Tnllemache,” is one of those pic-

tines for which all collectors are always on Ilie look-out. At Christies it would go for round about £*2a,ooo. Such are the probable values of a mere handful of (lie treasures of the Iveagh collection. The total value has been estimated at £500,000, but in the light of the above figures this seems a modest estimate. By the will of the late Lord Iveagh, states the “Graphic,” the nation not

onlv receives estate dutv to the value of £1,400,000, but the nucleus of a priceless art gallery, which, by the expressed wish of the donor, will be housed in Ken Wood mansion at the expense of the estate and be open to the public. ’ Sixty-three pictures were selected by the owner for this new National Gallery. Tliev include: Fifteen works by Sir Joshua ’Reynolds; ten Romneys; eight Gainsboroughs; three by b. Boucher; two exampl-s of Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Landseer, Van der Velde, Guardi, and Jean Baptiste Pater;_ and one each bv Raeburn, turner, Franz Hals, I-loppner, Rubens, Lawrence, Morland, Cuvp, Vermeer, C. de Jonghe,

Cronie, Jan Van der Meer, and other Dutch and French masters.

The late Lord Iveagh’s collection, from which these pictures have been chosen, has been generally regarded as the finest private collection in the world. Ken Wood, which houses them, and its seventy-four acres of beautiful meadow and woodland, were bought by the late earl. with the intention that they should pass to the nation in 1935 He has directed that the land should be kept aS an open space, for the public, and that the mansion should be converted into an art gallery. It is to be under the care of the London City Council, and it has been endowed with £50,000 for maintenance.