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Tate saves £5.7 million Rubens for nation with help from friends
Louise Jury, Chief Arts Correspondent8 Oct 2008
Last-minute increases in grant pledges have saved a masterpiece of British heritage for the nation.
The Tate has managed to raise £5.7 million to buy a sketch by the great Flemish painter Sir Peter Paul Rubens, just before the deadline for its sale.
It is the only surviving sketch of the overall scheme of ceiling paintings for Banqueting House in Whitehall. Historian David Starkey has described it as being of “the utmost significance to British history”.
The sketch was being sold by the family of the 6th Viscount Hampden, who died in January, and the Tate had struggled to raise the £6 million asking price.
The National Heritage Memorial Fund — the fund of last resort — Tate Members and The Art Fund charity all increased their original pledges to make sure it was not lost abroad.
The family also took £300,000 off the asking price. They had owned the sketch for more than two centuries.
Susan Johnson of Christie's, which acted for the family, said: “It has always been the wish of the vendors that the sketch should be sold to a British institution.”
The work is the first Rubens in the Tate's collection. Stephen Deuchar, director of Tate Britain, said he was “thrilled”, adding: “We can begin to represent the magnitude of Rubens' importance in British culture.”
Carole Souter, chief executive of the NHMF, said it had “pulled out all the stops”, giving £221,000 on the deadline day of 30 September, on top of a previous £2 million. “There is huge demand for our money but we felt strongly that this work had to be saved,” she said.
David Barrie, director of The Art Fund, said it was a “tribute to the importance of the work that so many had rallied to save it”. It gave its largest ever award of £600,000. Tate Members, formed 50 years ago to help the gallery buy works of art, gave £1.5 million.
Rubens lived in Britain between 1619 and 1621, acting as an envoy between Spain and England. He was commissioned by James I to create the work to mark the union of Scotland and England. The canvases were installed in 1636.
David Starkey said Banqueting House was all that remained of the original Whitehall Palace after a fire in 1698, adding: “The loss of the sketch would have been a betrayal of our national heritage.”
The work was valued at £11.5 million but tax breaks brought the cost down.
