A SOVIET GOLD MINE

Waipa Post, Volume 43, Issue 3392, 24 December 1931, Page 3 (Supplement)

A SOVIET GOLD MINE

Anyone with British blood in his veins must have read with mingled feelings the London cabled report that Mr Andrew Mellon, Secretary to the United States Treasury, has paid the sum of £1,600,000 for about 25 Old Masters from the Hermitage collection at Leningrad, which the Soviet Government had been quietly disposing of. Many of the works of art in this enormous collection, heaped together by former rulers, are intimately connected with England, in that they were once part of the magnificent gallery of paintings formed by the first Lord Oxford, formerly the famous minister, Sir Robert Walpole, at Houghton Hall, Norfolk. The whole number of pictures in the collection was 235, and they included some of the finest works of the greatest of the Old Masters. A complete list of them, with a short description, and the size of each picture, is given in "The Norfolk Tour," published in 1777. Among them is the three-quarter length picture of Philip, Lord Wharton, painted by Vandyke, which is one of Mr Mellon's purchases.

To England's irreparable loss, the third Lord Oxford sold most of the collection to the Empress Catherine 11., of Russia, who placed them in that strange retreat of hers, called the Hermitage, where there were 40 vast rooms filled with priceless art treasures, from every quarter of the globe. An English lady who visited Russia some time after Catherine's death, says that after going through these 40 rooms filled with glittering and costly treasures', "the miserable, sight-seer returns with a head swim-/ ming with the colours and forms on every school, through which the delicious Alba Madonna, by Raphael—the pale, fast-worn Christ, by leonardo da Vinci—a whole succession of valuable lights, by Rembramft—a never-to-be-forgotten Perdenojw—and, for the sake of nationality, the Infant Hercules strangling the Serpent, by our Sir Joshua, are dimly smuggling." Then she adds, "But no heart will traverse this gal Jury without murmuring at the natwial indifference which could first allow the Houghton Collection to be transported hither, or worse stity at the inexplicable State economy that only a few months back permitted Nicholas the First to lay his iron grasp upon a few of the finest pictures which ever entered, or certaw/y never quitted, the English shore,*—l mean those choice morsels from Mr Coesvelt's gallery, ; which I last/tad the pleasure of see- : ing in his louse on Carlton, Terrace."

A SALE WHICH DISPLEASED. When Horace Walpole heard of the sale of the Houghton pictures by his nephew, he wrote to Lady Ossory, "I do not like even to think of it; it is the most signal mortification to my ido/atory for my father's memory that it could receive. |j . . I must never cast a thought towards Norfolk more." But-in his old age Norfolk could not be forgotten, for on the death of his nephew the estate and title fell to him, and in some lines written when he heai'd the news, he says:—

An estate and ah earldom at seventy- '*' four; • , Had I sought them or wished for them ? twould add one fear more— That of making a countess when almost fourscore.

Then speaking of Fortune, whatever . :; I'll try In the plain, simple style I have lived

in, to die; '.';'•' ''. : : :<-"",.■ p For ambition too hum'bley for meaiit ness too high. ■ , : jfc

Houghton is f ulli0; meinories. Along, the drive from gates Well lington and were drawn itk their carriage: by She villagers;' Nepr son, a connection^of the paid a visit every year; and nearly every person of celebrity "in 1 England or the Continent, in the middle or* end of the 18th century, has been a guest there. Sir, Robert Walpole built new cottages for the villagers outside"- his | park, within which inally existedi.iand their; regret : at'; leaving their said to have given Goldsmith, the-real idea of?.his "Deserted Village," and HoriiceWalpole's dislike of: the poet has been atfributed to the' Matter's condemnation of a pride which contemplated without regret a "smiling longfrequented village fall." ;•.-. It seems sad toi think that all the beautiful works of art i from Houghton must find a resting place across the Atlantic, but in this case, 'gold truly speaks, arid conditions in Great Britain Will not alas, at.present, petr mit of her buying back again' some,of those treasures which/, should;'• never ftaye left he r