SALE OF ROYAL ART

Evening Star, Issue 20983, 23 December 1931, Page 16

SALE OF ROYAL ART

QUEEN MARY'S PLAN All attempts to balance the budget at Buckingham Palace after allowing for the cut of £50.000 in tho King’s Civil List have failed, as was anticipated, says the special correspondent of tho New York ‘ Times.’ To balance the Royal Budget for the coming year after allowing-for the loss of £50,000 in the King’s revenue, a reduction in servants’ wages and in tho salaries of household officials would have had to bo made, ’and this would have been impossible to cany out. All the officials in the Royal household have accepted a cut of 10 per cent, in their salaries, but the total saving effected by this means will amount to less than £IO,OOO on the year. Cuts in entertainment expenses will save about £7,000 a year No reductions are to be made in the servants’ wages, which were reduced by 10 per cent, in 1925. To make up tho deficit that will occur between now and April, Queen Alary has decided to sell certain pieces from her valuable collection of old furniture, old prints, and objects of art. Tho total value of the Queen’s collection has been estimated at more than £250,000. Queen Mary is busy at present sorting out pieces she ivill dispose of between now and the end of the year. The objects in her furniture collection and her collection of old prints, old silver, and so on, vary greatly in value. Some of them, and perhaps tho most valuable, were gifts from friends and relations. But all tho objects that Queen Alary has purchased during the last twentyfive or thirty years were carefully and shrewdlv chosen, and even in these days ought to fetch at least what was paid for them. To start with, Queen Alary will sell a group worth about £15,000. This sum will enable her to make up the expected deficiency for April after allowing for the cuts in salaries and entertainment expenses. The sale of the furniture aud prints will bo entrusted to three dealers well known to the Queen, and will be carried out with absolute secrecy. No buyer will know from where tho furniture comos. AIAKING ENDS AIEET. It is anticipated that most of the furniture will find its way across the Atlantic, but some of it doubtless will go into the homes of Indian princes. Tho necessity or advisability- of sacrificing part of her collection has not by any means come suddenly upon Queen Alary. Ever since tho end of the war there has been difficulty- about making the revenues King George receives from the State meet the expenses of the Royal household.