Acquisitions by public collections across the UK (2013–23) made possible by the Acceptance in Lieu o

Acquisitions by public collections across the UK (2013–23) made possible by the Acceptance in Lieu of Tax and Cultural Gifts Schemes

Acquisitions by public collections across the UK (2013–23) made possible by the Acceptance in Lieu of Tax and Cultural Gifts Schemes

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he acceptance in Lieu of Tax and the Cultural Gifts Schemes are administered by Arts Council England working in close collaboration with HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and Ministers in the devolved nations for the benefit of all four home nations of the United Kingdom.

This Supplement, generously funded by Adrian Sassoon, celebrates some of the most outstanding allocations that have been made over the last ten years (2013–23) to public collections and archives in the UK through these two schemes. During this period the gross value of objects accepted or gifted through these channels was £482.5 million, with a total of tax settled of £290.8 million. The range of works extended from masterpieces

by Veronese and Rembrandt to meteorite fragments and the archives and office contents of Stephen Hawking. At the heart of both schemes lies the transference of such objects from the private to the public realm.

The more complex and venerable of the two schemes is the Acceptance in Lieu Scheme. It allows those who have an Inheritance Tax bill (at the time of writing set at 40 per cent) to pay all or part of that amount with an offer of works of art or objects of cultural interest. These are then allocated to institutions in the public domain, thereby demonstrating that Benjamin Franklin’s famously unavoidable certainties of death and taxes can be harnessed to positive effect. The offeror receives the agreed value of the offered object(s), less the amount of Inheritance Tax due, plus an added incentive of 25 per cent of the Inheritance Tax amount. This incentive is known as the ‘douceur’, or tax sweetener.

To qualify for this scheme, objects must satisfy at least one of the following pre-eminence criteria or be associated with an outstanding building in public ownership: Does the object have an especially close association with our history and national life? Is the object of especial artistic or art-historical interest? Is the object of especial importance for the study of some particular form of art, learning or history? Does the object have an especially close association with a particular historic setting?

The origins of the scheme, which now operates to the envy of many other countries, lie in legislation of 1910, introduced by the Chancellor David Lloyd George. It was not until 1953, however, that an amendment to the legislation broadened the qualifying remit to include not just land and property but also works of art specifically associated with buildings in public ownership. The necessity for such linkage was removed in 1956 when individual ‘works of art’ pre-eminent for their artistic or historical importance, but not associated with a particular building, could be accepted, although only by national galleries and museums. The range of qualifying recipient institutions was extended in 1965 to embrace regional, university and local museums and galleries; this was further enlarged in 1980 to admit museums and galleries established as trusts or charities. In 1973 the scope of qualifying chattels was expanded to include ‘any picture, print, book, manuscript, scientific object or other thing’ as well as entire collections.

Understandably, the volume and frequency of such cases increased over the years and in 1985 a committee specifically purposed to advise on offers and

allocations was put in place with the establishment of the Acceptance in Lieu Panel of experts. The panel has continued in its important role to this day.1 Additional advice, both academic and commercial, is also sought from external advisers on a case-by-case basis. In 1987 a further modification of the scheme was put in place whereby, if the value of the offered object(s) exceeded the tax liability, a hybrid arrangement was permitted so the recipient institution could raise the extra funds necessary to bridge the gap. It was by this means that Tate secured the most important painting

by Pablo Picasso then remaining in Britain, Weeping woman (1937), from the estate of Picasso’s friend Roland Penrose.

The Panel also advises on the Cultural Gifts Scheme which, in contrast to the Acceptance in Lieu Scheme, does not involve the paying of tax due on an estate with objects offered, but instead encourages corporate or private lifetime giving of works of art and artefacts to qualifying institutions.

Initiated in 2012, this younger scheme is primarily philanthropic. It offers a tax incentive to donors that can be set against Income Tax or Capital Gains Tax. This is set at 30 per cent of the agreed valuation of the offered item for private individuals, and at 20 per cent for companies. The panel is particularly keen that this scheme should encourage the giving of contemporary works of art, an area in which public institutions often have difficulty adding to their collections. In recent years there has also been a concerted effort with both schemes to increase the regional spread of allocations and to encourage first-time allocatees.

Over the years the two schemes described in this Supplement have ensured that thousands of objects have entered the public realm for the enjoyment of all. The agreed maximum of tax that can be foregone by Treasury to enable these allocations currently stands at £40 million per annum. In these hard-pressed times, this constitutes a wonderful resource that is available to public institutions throughout the UK to enhance and improve their collections.2 nicholas serota ch chair, arts council england (2017–present) edward harley cbe chair, ail panel (2013–23) michael clarke cbe chair, ail panel (2023–present) The present Supplement has been sponsored by adrian sassoon, a Benefactor of The Burlington Magazine.

1 The Panel gratefully acknowledges the important role played by agents acting on behalf of offerors and donors.

2 Further details are available on the Arts Council England website, www.artscouncil.org.uk/supporting-arts-museums-and-libraries/supportingcollections-and-cultural-property/acceptance-lieu, accessed 31st October 2024.

For queries relating to these schemes, contact AIL.Panel@artscouncil.org.uk.

For media enquiries, contact duty.press@artscouncil.org.uk.

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1. Murder of St Thomas Becket. England, Midlands. c.1350–76. Alabaster with polychromy, 61 by 53 cm.

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax, from the collection of Michael Foljambe, and allocated to the British Museum, London, 2023.

This relief depicts the assassination of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, on 29th December 1170, in his own cathedral and at the hands of four knights probably sent by Becket’s former friend King Henry II, who had become angered by the Archbishop’s refusal to allow the Crown authority over the Church. After Becket’s canonisation just three years later, the martyr’s shrine at Canterbury became a popular destination for pilgrims from all over Europe. This vivid depiction of the saint’s 3

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shocking death was one of the highlights of the British Museum’s exhibition on Becket held in 2021. An outstanding example of the pre-Reformation English alabaster carving tradition, it is exceptional for its scale and excellent state of preservation, but also its history, having remained for more than six centuries in the ownership of one family.

It was made almost certainly to celebrate the marriage of Godfrey Foljambe (d. c.1375) and Avena Ireland (d. c.1383), both of whose arms may be seen at the bottom. Until the Reformation the relief was probably kept in one of two churches historically associated with the Foljambe family, All Saints Bakewell or Beauchief Abbey, also in Derbyshire.

2. Footed bowl (alfabeguer). Valencia, probably Manises. c.1440–70. Tin-glazed earthenware with metallic lustre, 34.2 by 39.5 cm. (Photograph Mike Fear).

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax, from the Rothschild collection, and allocated to the National Trust for display at Waddesdon Manor, 2017.

This remarkable object is an alfabeguer, a pot made for growing basil and other plants that has four turrets designed as channels for watering. It is beautifully

Acquisitions made possible by the AIL and Cultural Gifts Schemes

decorated with intricate leaf patterns and a heraldic shield and has a lustred surface that gives it extra brilliance. It is one of the finest surviving pieces of fifteenth-century Valencian lustreware, a type of luxury pottery made by Moorish potters working in Manises and Patera and eagerly sought after by wealthy clients in Italy, especially Florence. The bowl is by far the finest and most complete surviving example of an alfabeguer, examples of which can be seen, with plants growing in them, in early Renaissance Italian paintings. However, the most important early reference is literary.

In the Decameron (completed c.1353) Giovanni Boccaccio recounted the tragic story of Lorenzo and Isabella, who wrapped the severed head of her lover in fine cloth and placed it in ‘one of those beautiful pots in which people plant marjoram or basil’, covering it with earth and watering it with her tears.

3. Selection of Islamic ceramics from the Raymond Ades Family Collection.

Accepted by HM Government under the Cultural Gifts Scheme, from the Raymond Ades Family Collection, and allocated to the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, 2019.

The Raymond Ades Family Collection is one of the most significant collections of medieval Islamic ceramics in the UK. Comprising 121 pieces, it was offered as a Cultural Gift by Mr Ades’s four children and has been allocated to six museums across England.

It consists almost entirely of objects from the so-called Gurgan Finds, found in the Iranian city now known as Gorgan and thought to have been hidden by a merchant before the city’s destruction by the Mongolian army in 1220–21. Most of the objects in the hoard were packed into storage jars and so have been preserved in unusually excellent condition. The Gurgan Finds transformed understanding of the work of the immigrant potters from Egypt or Syria who settled in Kashan in central Iran in the twelfth century and whose revolutionary technical and design innovations not only established the standards and techniques for all subsequent Islamic pottery, but also influenced the development of ceramics in China and Europe.

inscription ‘Giov. Franco Rustici’ and ‘B63’, as well as an indistinct watermark. There are very few drawings by Gozzoli in the UK and only one of comparable quality: the Head of a youth (Royal Collection Trust). This drawing has a distinguished provenance and bears the mark and stamp of Jonathan Richardson Senior (1667–1745). It was next recorded in the collection of John Rushout, 2nd Baron Northwick (1770–1859), and remained at Northwick Park until it was sold at auction in 1921 to Henry Lascelles, 5th Earl of Harewood (1846–1929).

5. Vespasian suffering from leprosy and being examined in bed by two doctors, from Le Mystère de la Vengeance, fol.61v. c.1465. Illumination on vellum, 37 by 25.5 cm.

(MS Additional 89066/1; photograph Sotheby’s).

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to the British Library, London, 2014.

This manuscript was commissioned by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy (1396–1467), and contains the only extant complete text of Le Mystère de la Vengeance, a civic drama by the Artois-born playwright Eustache Marcadé (d.1440). Consisting of 14,972 lines of French verse on the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, this four-day mystery play was performed for Philip in 1463. The twenty large miniatures by the Flemish artist Loyset Liédet (c.1420–79), a favourite of the dukes of Burgundy, make this the finest extant illuminated manuscript of any medieval drama. Recorded in an inventory of the ducal library as late as 1577, it subsequently belonged to the French bibliophile RenéFrançois, marquis de La Vieuville (1652–1719), before entering the Lamoignan Library, Paris, and then crossing the Channel. Purchased by the 6th Duke of Devonshire at the Duke of Roxburghe’s sale in 1812, at that time it was the most expensive illuminated manuscript ever sold in London. After two hundred years as one of the great treasures of the library at Chatsworth, it was allocated to the British Library.

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4. Studies for two kneeling and two standing figures, two hands and an ear (recto) and Madonna and Child standing in a niche with three attendant angels (verso), by Benozzo Gozzoli. 1459–63. Metalpoint, pen, brown ink and brown wash, heightened with white and touches of gold, and traces of squaring on rose-prepared paper (recto); black chalk with pen and brown ink on rose-prepared paper (verso), 16.5 by 17.2 cm.

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to the British Museum, London, 2016.

A pupil of Fra Angelico, whom he assisted with the frescos in S. Marco, Florence, Benozzo Gozzoli (c.1421–97) is best known for his ravishingly beautiful series of murals, painted between 1459 and 1463, in a style now called International Gothic, in the Magi Chapel of the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, Florence. This is the only known drawing by Gozzoli that can be definitely linked with that scheme. The recto is a study for the standing and kneeling angels on the two altar walls of the chapel; on the verso is the 4

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6. Apollo Belvedere, by Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi. c.1500–20. Partly parcel-gilt bronze and silver, height 41.3 cm.

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax, from the collection of Cecil and Hilda Lewis, and allocated to the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, 2023.

Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi (c.1460–1528), known as ‘Antico’, was court sculptor to the Gonzaga dukes of Mantua, among the greatest of all Renaissance patrons. He took for himself the nickname Antico, reflecting his self-identification with the Renaissance rediscovery of the civilisations of ancient Greece and Rome. All of Antico’s surviving works in bronze are inspired by the Antique, many of them small reproductions of famous Greek or Roman marbles. This copy of the Apollo Belvedere (2nd century CE; Vatican Museums) is one of three known versions by Antico of the celebrated marble. In his small bronze statuettes, the artist would apply gold, silver and rich black lacquers to the surfaces, in the process creating some of the most luxurious and sophisticated Renaissance bronzes.

7. The Panmure ewer and basin. 1586–87. Gilded silver, height 36.5 cm. (ewer), diameter 45.7 cm. (basin), combined weight 3 kg. (Photograph Christie’s).

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to National Museums Scotland, 2022.

Made for ceremonial use in washing hands before and after dining, these elegantly formed vessels contained scented rosewater, which was poured from the ewer

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Acquisitions made possible by the AIL and Cultural Gifts Schemes

into the basin for the service of the monarch at the royal court or for senior aristocrats at home. They feature the goldsmith’s mark HC with a gauntleted arm holding a hammer, possibly for Harman Copleman of London. In 1584 a German visitor to the English court described Queen Elizabeth I washing her hands before dining. Ten years earlier, forty similar sets were listed in the royal inventory of silver. Today only six matching sixteenth-century sets are recorded. The chased Mannerist ornament of the vessels includes dolphins and flowers, appropriate imagery for the flower-scented water they held. The centre of the basin originally contained a boss enamelled with the coat of arms of the first owner, whose identity is not recorded. The set was acquired by William Ramsay Maule, 1st Baron Panmure (1771–1852), after 1832.

8. Dish with the story of Jupiter and Semele, by Francesco Durantino, probably in the workshop of Guido da Merlino in Urbino. c.1542. Tin-glazed maiolica, diameter 25.9 cm.

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax, from the collection of Sinclair Hood, and allocated to the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, 2022.

This dish illustrates the tragic story, recounted by the Roman poet Ovid in his Metamorphoses, of Semele and her affair with Jupiter, who can be seen on the left descending from the heavens towards his lover. Enraged by her husband’s infidelity, Juno persuaded Semele to beg Jupiter to appear to her in fiery glory. When the couple embraced, seen on the right of the dish, Semele was consumed by fire, but their son, Bacchus, would survive the inferno. Francesco Durantino (Francesco di Berardino de’Nanni, c.1520–97) was one of several talented maiolica potters and painters working in Urbino, a great centre of istoriato maiolica production in the Renaissance.

This fine plate comes from the collection of Sinclair Hood (1917–2021), an eminent archaeologist who led excavations at Knossos and was Director of the British School at Athens in the 1950s and early 1960s. Three outstanding pieces accepted in lieu of inheritance tax were placed on loan at the Ashmolean Museum during his lifetime, each carefully selected to complement and enhance the museum’s collection of Renaissance ceramics.

9. Olivia Porter, by Anthony Van Dyck. c.1637. Oil on canvas, 137.2 by 110.2 cm.

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to the Bowes Museum, County Durham, 2016.

This depiction of Olivia Porter was described by Oliver Millar as ‘perhaps Van Dyck’s most dramatic and mouvementé female portrait from the English period’. The compressed dynamism of the figure, fluttering drapery and powerful characterisation all underscore the importance of Anthony Van Dyck (1599–1641) in the development of British portraiture. The sitter was the wife of Van Dyck’s friend and patron, Endymion Porter. As the niece of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, and lady in waiting to Queen Henrietta Maria, she was at the heart of the court of Charles I. This may explain the air of theatricality in the portrait; Olivia Porter is recorded performing at several court theatricals including Chloridia, the 1631 masque written

by Ben Jonson and designed by Inigo Jones. Since the seventeenth century the portrait had been in the collection of the dukes of Northumberland.

10. Emperor Charles V, by Peter Paul Rubens after Titian. c.1603.

Oil on canvas, 118 by 91.5 cm. (Photograph Christie’s).

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax, the amount of which satisfied exceeded the tax liability payable by the offerors. Allocated to the Royal Armouries, Leeds, who made good the difference with the use of their own funds and the aid of a grant from the Art Fund, 2019.

Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) is thought to have painted this copy after Titian’s canvas while in Spain in 1603 on a diplomatic mission, delivering gifts from the Gonzagas to the court of Philip III. Titian’s now-lost portrait, one of many he painted of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, was listed in the 1561 inventory of the castle at Simancas. It is very likely that Rubens, who closely studied the works

by Titian and Raphael in the Spanish royal collection, was particularly fascinated

by Titian’s masterly depiction of armour, a skill that he would later demonstrate in his portrayal of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel (c.1629–30; Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston). The Royal Armouries are the custodians of the UK’s national collection of arms and armour. The Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds opened to the public in 1996.

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11. Prince Rupert, Colonel William Murray(?) and Colonel John Russell, by William Dobson. 1645–46. Oil on canvas, 151.1 by 203.2 cm. (Photograph Omnia Art Ltd).

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, 2018.

This ambiguous group portrait is one of the most compelling works made by William Dobson (1611–46). Painted at the height of the English Civil War, it depicts the Royalist commander Prince Rupert of the Rhine on the left and Colonel John Russell, the commander of Prince Rupert’s regiment of foot, seated on the right. The figure in the centre of the painting, dipping the cockade of his hat in a glass of wine, has been variously identified as Colonel William Murray or Colonel William Legge, Governor of Oxford. The complex action of the painting and its iconography have yet to be fully explained but, as Malcolm Rogers noted: ‘in its feeling for historical and psychological drama [it] is without precedent among group portraits painted in England’. Such direct action and characterisation is underscored by the handling of paint, which shows a complete departure from the elegance of Van Dyck. The painting remained in the family of Colonel John Russell’s descendants and was allocated to the Asmhmolean Museum, Oxford, returning to the city in which it was originally painted.

12. Two shepherds with a mule and a dog in a hilly landscape, by Aelbert Cuyp.

Mid-1640s. Oil on oak, 55.7 by 80.6 cm. (Photograph Edward Clive Art Advisory).

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, 2017.

This painting is representative of the ‘southern landscapes’ produced by Aelbert Cuyp (1620–91). The warm, golden light, redolent of Italy, lends a tranquil atmosphere to the portrayal of two shepherds accompanied by their animals. The painting comes from

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the prestigious collection of old masters formed by the Earls of Cowper at Panshanger (demolished 1954), Hertfordshire. It was first recorded at Panshanger in 1908 but is thought to have been acquired earlier and may have been inherited by the great collector, the 3rd Earl Cowper (1738–89), from his grandfather, the 1st Earl of Grantham (1673–1754). Cuyp was particularly admired for his use of light, and he inspired many later British landscape artists, including J.M.W. Turner. The painting was allocated to Bristol, where it complements the existing collection of seventeenth-century Dutch landscapes. This includes work by Jan Wijnants and Willem Schellinks, both of whom, like Cuyp, were noted exponents of the Italianate style of landscape.

13. Classical landscape with Judith and Tamar, by Pierre Patel. c.1650–52. Oil on panel, 51.1 by 66.4 cm. (Photograph Sotheby’s).

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2015.

Pierre Patel (c.1605–76), whose work is relatively rare, was the leading landscape painter working in Paris in the seventeenth century. Although he is not thought to have visited Italy, his classical landscapes are strongly indebted to the example of Claude Lorrain; the celebrated collector and connoisseur Pierre-Jean Mariette (1694–1774) had dubbed him ‘le Claude Lorrain de la France’. The Old Testament subject of this painting (Genesis 38:14–18) was first correctly identified by Alastair Laing, who served with distinction on the Acceptance in Lieu Panel. In the foreground the turbaned figure of Judah places a ring on the finger of Tamar who, in the guise of a prostitute, seduces him. As a result of their union the tribe of Judah was preserved, and Tamar became a direct forebear of the royal house of David. First recorded in a Scottish collection in the nineteenth century, the painting is now in the Scottish National Gallery, where it complements Claude’s mid-career masterpiece Landscape with Apollo and the Muses (1652).

Acquisitions made possible by the AIL and Cultural Gifts Schemes

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14. Panoramic landscape with cornfields and dunes beside the sea, by Jacob van Ruisdael.

1660s. Oil on canvas, 57.5 by 69 cm. (Photograph Sotheby’s).

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax, the amount of which satisfied exceeded the tax liability payable by the offeror. Allocated to Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery who made good the difference with the aid of grants from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the Art Fund (including a contribution from the Rought Fund), the Arts Council England / V&A Purchase Grant Fund and the Friends of the Norwich Museums, 2023.

Jacob van Ruisdael (c.1628–82) was one of the most influential Dutch landscape painters of the seventeenth century. This work depicts a low-lying landscape (thought to be imaginary) dominated by a vast cloud-filled sky, combining Ruisdael’s ability to capture effects of light and movement with a close understanding of natural detail. Ruisdael’s panoramic vistas, mostly painted from the 1660s onwards, have always been regarded among his finest works and were greatly admired by John Constable. This work had been in the same private Norfolk collection since at least 1840.

15. Flowers in a glass vase on a marble ledge, by Willem van Aelst. c.1665. Oil on canvas, 53 by 43 cm.

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to the Walker Art Gallery, National Museums Liverpool, 2021.

Prior to settling in Amsterdam in 1657, Willem Van Aelst (1627–83) worked in both France and Italy, spending seven years (1649 to 1656) as court painter to Ferdinando II de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany (1610–70), where he was known as ‘Guillielmo d’Olanda’. One of the most prominent Dutch still-life painters of his generation, his success enabled him to afford a house on the Prinsengracht.

He specialised in still-lifes of flowers and of game. This bouquet of flowers combines a lively sense of movement with a dynamic use of chiaroscuro, as well as an extraordinary level of detail. It was featured in a re-display of the Walker Art Gallery’s permanent collection titled Renaissance Rediscovered, which opened in 2023.

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16. ‘Walpole fishbowl’. China, seventeenth or eighteenth century. Blue and white porcelain, 46 by 55 cm. (Photograph Christie’s).

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax, from the collection of the Earls of Derby, and allocated to the Strawberry Hill Collection Trust, for display at Strawberry Hill, Twickenham, 2022.

This blue and white jardinière, with a ‘Three friends of winter’ pattern depicting bamboo, pine and prunus trees, is an excellent example of the type of Chinese porcelain that was exported in enormous quantities and was eagerly collected across Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It belonged to the antiquary and collector Horace Walpole (1717–97), who kept it at his London house in Arlington Row and later at his suburban villa, Strawberry Hill. Walpole used the jardinière as a fishbowl containing goldfish, much to the delight of his tabby cat Selima who, fascinated by the glittering fish within, would balance on the edge until one day she slipped into the bowl and was drowned. Selima’s sad end was immortalised in a celebrated elegy, ‘On the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes’, written by Walpole’s friend the poet Thomas Gray (1716–71). Sold in the 1842 Strawberry Hill sale, the bowl has now returned to the house, where it is displayed in the Tribune.

17. The Hopetoun wine fountain and cistern. 1707–08. Silver, diameter 69 cm. (cistern), height 70 cm. (fountain), combined weight 8.9 kg.

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2019.

This vase-shaped fountain and two-handled cistern were used to serve wine from the sideboard in the Dining Hall at Hopetoun House, East Lothian. Wine glasses were rinsed with water from the fountain, any drips from the spigot (replaced in the 1970s) and dirty water from the glasses fell into the cistern below. The combined fountain and cistern are rare survivals, as such substantial silver vessels were often melted down. The set was commissioned by Charles Hope, 1st Earl of Hopetoun (1681–1742), for his family home, which was built from 1698 to the designs of the Scottish architect William Bruce (1630–1710). Both fountain and cistern feature the goldsmith’s mark for William Lukin of London and are engraved with the armourial crest and coat of arms of the original owner.

18. Emperor Muhammed Shah hunting crane with hawks, attributed to Chitarman II. c.1725–30. Opaque pigments heightened wth gold and silver on paper, 41 by 58 cm.

(Photograph courtesy Lyon and Turnbull, Edinburgh).

(Part of the Swinton collection of Mughal paintings and objects).

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to the National Museums Scotland, 2021.

Chitarman II (also known as Kalyan Das, b.1680, active c.1700–45) was one of India’s most important eighteenth-century artists and flourished in the court of the Mughal ruler Muhammad Shah (1719–48) as his chief painter. After a period of austerity, intrigues and unrest, Shah’s reign was marked by both a cultural and intellectual renaissance, with the re-establishment of the imperial ateliers and a sense of escapism

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and hedonism that precipitated the decline of Mughal fortunes. The pursuit of courtly and earthly delights is a theme entwining patron and artist and exemplified in this hunting scene with the nimbated emperor on horseback hunting cranes, while his elephant army in full royal pageantry processes in the background. The Edinburgh-trained Captain Archibald Swinton (1731–1804) served in the East India Company as an army surgeon and later as an emissary of Major-General Robert Clive.

He was a major collector of Indian art and artefacts, and the collection allocated very appropriately to National Museums Scotland includes portrait miniatures, other Mughal-era paintings and lacquer works, various decorated weapons and a portrait of Swinton by David Martin (1737–97).

19. Pair of Chippendale pier tables and pier glasses (the Harewood set), by Thomas Chippendale. Gilded wood with marquetry, 175 by 86 by 76 cm. (each table); gilded wood and glass, 411 by 178 cm. (each pier glass). (Photograph Charlotte Graham for Harewood House Trust).

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, in the tercentenary of Thomas Chippendale’s birth, 2018. The furniture is on loan to Harewood House where it is shown in its original setting.

These pier tables with their matching pier glasses were supplied for the Music Room of Harewood House, Yorkshire, the home of Edwin Lascelles (1713–95), a Barbadianborn planter. The furniture was designed by the Yorkshire-born cabinet-maker Thomas Chippendale (1718–79) to furnish the Neo-classical interiors designed by Robert Adam (1728–92) for Harewood House, built to the 1759 design of the architect John Carr of York (1723–1807). The marquetry tabletops are inlaid with paterae and foliage on a rosewood ground and supported on giltwood stands, matching the frames of their pier glasses, set above the tables between the windows.

20. The Bucintoro at the Molo on Ascension Day, by Bernardo Bellotto. c.1738–39.

Oil on canvas, 107 by 107 cm. (Photograph Christie’s).

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to Historic England for display at Audley End, Saffron Walden, 2019.

Bernardo Bellotto (c.1721/22–80) trained in Venice in the workshop of his uncle Canaletto, whom he assisted on occasion. In search of patronage elsewhere he left Venice and subsequently worked in many European cities including Dresden, Vienna, Turin and Warsaw, where he died. His painted vedute are notable for their topographical accuracy and a deeper – in many ways more nuanced – palette than that employed by his more famous and highly successful uncle. This early work by Bellotto is based on a Canaletto prototype that formed an overmantel at Holkham Hall, Norfolk. It depicts Ascension Day, an annual festival in Venice, when the Doge’s ceremonial barge, or bucintoro, would be rowed out into the Lido. There he would throw a gold ring into the Adriatic to symbolise the ‘marriage’ of the Venetian republic to the sea. The specific moment depicted is the return of the barge to the Molo alongside the Ducal Palace and the Piazza San Marco. It was probably painted for George Berkeley, the Protestant Bishop of Cloyne (1685–1753).

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21. A school, by John Opie. 1784. Oil on canvas, 102 by 126 cm.

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to Tate, 2020.

Upon his arrival in London at the age of twenty, John Opie (1761–1807), the son of a Cornish mine carpenter, was promoted by the satirist and amateur critic John Wolcot (‘Peter Pindar’) as a self-taught prodigy, the so-called ‘Cornish Wonder’. In 1780 he exhibited at the Society of Artists a study of a boy’s head, following up its success with a series of fancy subjects of old men and women and peasant children, which he exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1782. There, his exhibits were noticed by Horace Walpole, who commented in his catalogue that they were the work of ‘a lad of nineteen who taught himself to paint by having poor people and children sit to him’. The present painting, his most ambitious to this moment, was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1784 as A school. The composition, in which an aged schoolmistress instructs a group of young boys, was indebted to Dutch seventeenth-century masters, notably Rembrandt, with whom Opie was favourably compared.

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22. Tabley house and lake, by Richard Wilson. c.1764–66. Oil on canvas, 102 by 127 cm. (Photograph Omnia Art Ltd).

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to the Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester, for retention at Tabley House, Knutsford, 2019.

Richard Wilson (1714–82), the ‘father of British landscape painting’, was born in Penegoes, Wales. Although he trained initially as a portrait painter, upon his arrival in Italy in 1750 he shifted his attention to landscapes, influenced by the examples of Claude Lorrain (1600–82) and his friend and mentor, Claude-Joseph Vernet (1714–89).

In Britain, as well as mythological scenes, Wilson made a series of views of English and Welsh country houses and estates, including Bourne Park, Houghton, Windsor Great Park, Wynnstay, Wilton House and Tabley. Among Wilson’s most innovative works, combining the classical landscape tradition with direct observation from nature, this painting depicts Tabley House, the Palladian country seat of Peter Byrne Leicester, set in a landscape designed by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown. By the late 1770s, due to failing health, Wilson was reduced to exhibiting earlier works, including the present painting, which was shown at the Royal Academy in 1780 as View of Tabley, Cheshire, the seat of Sir John Leicester.

Acquisitions made possible by the AIL and Cultural Gifts Schemes

23. Frederick Howard, 5th Earl of Carlisle, by Joshua Reynolds. 1769. Oil on canvas, 214 by 149.8 cm.

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to Tate for display in situ at Castle Howard, York, 2016.

Frederick Howard (1748–1825), Viscount Morpeth, succeeded to the earldom in 1758.

In 1766 he embarked upon a Grand Tour to France and Italy, during which he began to acquire a collection of old-master paintings. In the formation of his taste, he was influenced greatly by Joshua Reynolds (1723–92), to whom he sat for this full-length portrait in 1769. Here, he wears the robes and insignia of the Order of the Thistle.

By his side is his beloved dog, Rover, by then deceased, having been crushed under the wheels of a carriage in Paris. Carlisle’s pose recalls Reynolds’s earlier full-length portrait Augustus, 1st Viscount Keppel (1752–53; National Maritime Museum, London), which in turn had been based on that of the Apollo Belvedere. The Reynolds portrait is one of many works from Castle Howard, including a significant collection of antique sculptures, that have been accepted in lieu and left in situ so they can still be appreciated in the magnificent building, set in the Howardian Hills of North Yorkshire, designed by the architect and playwright John Vanbrugh (1664–1726).

24. The Lavergne family breakfast, by Jean-Étienne Liotard. 1754. Pastel on paper, 81 by 107 cm.

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to the National Gallery, London, 2020.

This is one of six works accepted from the estate of the merchant banker and philanthropist George Pinto (1929–2018) and variously allocated to the National Gallery, London, National Portrait Gallery, London, and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Jean-Étienne Liotard (1702–89), born in Geneva, was one of the greatest pastellists and his itinerant career took him to Paris, Constantinople, Vienna, London, Amsterdam and The Hague. The two sitters in this superlative large pastel have long been associated with the Lavergne family, relatives of Liotard who lived in Lyon.

A minute signature and date – Liotard / a lion / 1754 – can be found on a sheet of music that pokes out from the open drawer of the table, on which is set an exquisite breakfast still-life. A second version of this composition, painted in oil nearly twenty years later, is in a private collection. Both were reunited in an exhibition, Discover Liotard and the Lavergne family breakfast (November 2023–March 2024), celebrating the acquisition of this pastel by the National Gallery.

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25a. Self-portrait (recto) and 25b. Study for An experiment on a bird in the air pump (verso), by Joseph Wright of Derby. c.1769. Oil on canvas, 76.2 by 63.5 cm.

(Photograph Omnia Art Ltd).

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax, the amount of which satisfied exceeded the tax liability payable by the offeror. Allocated to Derby Museum and Art Gallery, who made good the difference with the aid of grants from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the Art Fund and a number of private donors and foundations, 2022.

In this remarkable self-portrait Joseph Wright of Derby (1734–97) is shown bathed in a warm glow of lamp light. He wears a brown fur cap and in his hand he grasps a porte-crayon, his projecting elbow propped upon on a portfolio of drawings as if he had just stepped away from his studies for a moment. Intriguingly, on the reverse 25a

there is an oil sketch for An experiment on a bird in the air pump (1768; National Gallery, London), which Wright exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1768. Although it has been proposed that the portrait was painted when the artist was aged about forty (c.1772–73), it is more likely that it dates to c.1769, at the time that Wright was working on his next major candlelight painting, An academy by lamplight (private collection), which he exhibited at the Society of Artists that year. The self-portrait was certainly completed before Wright’s departure for Italy in November 1773, when he presented it to his friend Thomas Coltman, from whose descendants it was acquired by the Derby Museum after a highly enterprising fundraising campaign.

26. Lady Londonderry and her son, by Thomas Lawrence. 1827–28. Oil on canvas, 254 by 152 cm. (Photograph Christie’s).

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to the National Trust for display at Mount Stewart, County Down, 2014.

This swaggering portrait of one of Regency Britain’s greatest political hostesses and richest heiresses was painted by Thomas Lawrence (1769–1830) towards the end of his career. Frances Anne Vane-Tempest inherited substantial estates in Durham and County Antrim on the death of her father, Henry Vane-Tempest, 2nd Baronet.

On her marriage to Charles Stewart, he adopted her surname before succeeding his half-brother as Marquess of Londonderry in 1822. Lawrence shows Lady Londonderry in a sumptuous red velvet dress swathed in jewels, including on her sleeve two of the monumental amethysts that had been a present from Tsar Alexander I of Russia.

Lawrence brilliantly contrasted the stately ascent of Lady Londonderry with the playful energy of her eldest son, George, who is shown leading her up the steps of Wynyard Par, one of two vast estates the Londonderrys owned in County Durham.

As one of Lawrence’s most spectacular late portraits it has found a fitting home in the collection of another of the Londonderrys’ houses, Mount Stewart in County Down.

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27. The Theatrical Bubble: Being a new specimen of the astonishing Powers of the great Politico Punchinello in the Art of Dramatic Puffing, by James Gillray. 1805.

(Part of the Bindman collection of political caricature prints).

Accepted by HM Government through the Cultural Gifts Scheme and allocated to UCL Art Museum, London, 2016.

This print is one of a collection of 610, which, along with two copper plates, was formed by David Bindman as a teaching collection and allocated to University College London (UCL) Art Museum. Bindman has had a very distinguished career as a scholar focusing on European art of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. As well as monographs on William Blake and William Hogarth, he has curated a number of exhibitions on graphic satire in both Britain and France, notably The Shadow of the Guillotine: Britain and the French Revolution at the British Museum in 1989. The collection directly relates to these interests, comprising a wide variety of political caricatures, including a large group relating to the French Revolution and Jean-Paul Marat and his murderer, Charlotte Corday, in particular.

Groups of prints by James Gillray, Thomas Rowlandson and Honoré Daumier also illuminate the theme of Anglo–French relations.

28. Aso olono (wrap-around cloth). Ibeju Ode, Southern Nigeria, c.1850.

European yarn, 258 by 166 cm. (Photograph Antony Griffiths and Judy Rudoe).

(Part of the Antony Griffiths and Judy Rudoe collections of African textiles).

Accepted by HM Governmnent under the Cultural Gifts Scheme and allocated to the British Museum, London, 2019.

This gift to the British Museum, made through the Cultural Gifts Scheme, represents a great act of generosity from husband and wife Antony Griffiths and Judy Rudoe, respectively the former Keeper of Prints and Drawings and former Assistant Keeper in the Department of Britain, Europe and Prehistory. Their collections of 438 African textiles were formed over more than a decade. The majority date to the twentieth century, although there are notable exceptions, such as a series of early aso oke (high-status cloths) from the Yoruba people, Nigeria.

Broadly speaking, the collection formed by Griffiths focuses on the Sahel region south of the Sahara Desert, whereas that of Rudoe concentrates on North and West Africa. Taken together, they are intended to complement the collection of West African and Indonesian textiles assembled by the Manchester-based cotton trader Charles Beving (1858–1913) and presented to the Museum in 1934.

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29. Tuscan girl plaiting straw, by William Holman Hunt. 1869. Oil on canvas, 52.1 by 41.9 cm. (Photograph Omnia Art Ltd).

Accepted in lieu of tax by HM Government and allocated to the Lady Lever Art Gallery, National Museums Liverpool, 2015.

While staying in Fiesole in 1868, William Holman Hunt (1827–1910) painted a pair of depictions of children. The model for this work was almost certainly one of the children of Hunt’s host at the Villa Medici, the painter and dealer William BlundellSpence. Hunt had travelled to Italy with his new bride, Fanny, following the financial failure of an exhibition in London. The couple were on their way to Jerusalem but waylaid following an outbreak of cholera. Fanny Hunt died in Italy in 1866 and Hunt took up residence at Fiesole as he was working on her tomb for the English Cemetery in Florence. He painted this work and its companion, Caught (private collection), for the dealer Ernest Gambart, deliberately choosing subjects with commercial appeal.

The young girl is shown set against a meticulously rendered panoramic Tuscan landscape. The painting was acquired in the early twentieth century by William Lever, 2nd Viscount Leverhulme. Its allocation to the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight, is particularly appropriate as it joins the remarkable group of works by Hunt acquired by the 2nd Viscount’s father, William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme.

30. Jules Dejouy, by Édouard Manet. 1879. Oil on canvas, 81 by 66 cm.

(Photograph Sotheby’s).

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to National Museum Wales / Amgueddfa Cymru, Cardiff, 2020.

This portrait by Édouard Manet (1832–83) depicts his older cousin Jules Dejouy (1815–94), a successful lawyer who was appointed to the Imperial Court in France in 1849 and a member of the Conseil de l’Ordre. On the death of Manet’s father in 1862 Dejouy assumed the role of ‘chief counsellor and guide’ to the artist and often supported him financially. Manet depicted Dejouy in his lawyer’s robes, a sheaf of papers under his arm, seemingly caught in the middle of a busy day in the courts.

Dejouy was a member of the committee, alongside Émile Zola, Henri Fantin-Latour and Paul Durand-Ruel, that organised the posthumous Manet exhibition held in 1884, a year after the artist’s death, at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. With its allocation to National Museum Wales, the picture joined the distinguished collection of French Impressionist paintings there, most notably those collected by the Davies sisters.

31. Girl with butterflies, by Frances Macdonald MacNair. c.1902. Pencil, watercolour, gold and silver paint on paper, 22.5 by 32.3 cm.

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to the University of Glasgow for the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, 2021.

Frances Macdonald MacNair (1873–1921), who was born in England, moved to Scotland in 1890, where she enrolled in the Glasgow School of Art. MacNair is well known for being one of The Four, a group of young artists who met there as students during the 1890s, including the artist’s sister, Margaret Macdonald, and her future husband, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and Herbert MacNair, whom Frances would later marry. The Four made a significant impact on the Art Nouveau style at the turn of the twentieth century and what was to become internationally known as the Glasgow School. Frances, who together with her husband used the recurring motif of butterflies in their work, created a series of Symbolist watercolours, including Girl with butterflies. It remained in the same family since it was first purchased nearly 120 years ago and because of this retains its original frame, made by Herbert MacNair.

32. L’allée au bois, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. c.1874–80. Oil on canvas, 49.5 by 62.5 cm.

(Photograph Christie’s).

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax. As the amount of tax settled exceeded the tax liability payable by the offerors the Ulster Museum made good the difference with the aid of grants from the Department for Communities (for Northern Ireland), the Art Fund, the Esmé Mitchell Trust and the Friends of Ulster Museum, 2023.

Paintings of sous-bois (‘undergrowth’) were undertaken by many French landscape painters in the mid-nineteenth century, notably those of the Barbizon School and by a number of the Impressionists in their early years. Although he is primarily known as a painter of figure subjects, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) devoted considerable attention to landscape in the 1860s and 1870s and his works in this genre are viewed by many as among his most successful and attractive.

Renoir’s characteristic delicacy of touch is evident, as is his ability to conjure a gentle breeze that rustles the leaves and grass in the heat of a summer afternoon. This was the first Impressionist painting to enter the Ulster Museum’s collection, where it complements the works of Irish painters who were influenced by that movement.

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33. Avant et après, by Paul Gauguin. 1903. Notebook containing text and illustrations on 213 pages, 30.5 by 22.5 cm.

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to the Courtauld Institute Galleries, London, 2020.

One of only eight surviving autograph manuscripts by Paul Gauguin (1848–1903), this is the first to have entered a British public collection. Written on the Marquesas Islands during Gauguin’s final months, the text serves as a rich 34

source of information on the artist’s life and opinions and includes an eyewitness account of the occasion when Vincent van Gogh cut off most of his left ear. Gauguin’s complex and contradictory character is revealed by passages in support of Indigenous rights in the Marquesas Islands, then part of French Polynesia, which contrast with his troubling views on gender and sex. The manuscript was acquired in the early twentieth century by the German textile manufacturer Erich Goetz, whose collection included Édouard Manet’s A bar at the Folies Bergère (1882), now one of the masterpieces in the Courtauld Gallery, to which Avant et après was allocated in accordance with the condition attached to its offer and where it joins Gauguin’s well-known painting Nevermore (1897). The manuscript has been digitised and can be consulted on the Courtauld’s website, accompanied by a new transcription of the original text together with an English translation. In 2023, funded by the Getty Foundation’s ‘Paper Project’, the Courtauld organised an international online conference devoted to the notebook.

34. Bookplate of St John Hutchinson, by Dora Carrington, 1918. Woodcut, 8.1 by 7.5 cm. (Part of the Archive of Jeremy Hutchinson, which includes correspondence, manuscripts, photographs and ephemera).

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to the University of Sussex, Falmer, 2020.

Jeremy Hutchinson, Baron Hutchinson of Lullington QC (1915–2017), was one of the most famous criminal barristers of his day. High-profile clients included Christine Keeler, the Soviet spy George Blake and the train robber Charles Wilson, but he was best known as one of the team who defended Penguin Books in the Lady Chatterley Trial in 1960. Later in life he defended the director Michael Bogdanov when Mary Whitehouse brought a private prosecution for gross indecency over the National Theatre production of Howard Brenton’s 1980 stage play, The Romans in Britain. Reportedly the inspiration for John Mortimer’s Rumpole of the Bailey, the liberal-minded Hutchinson was known to address puzzled judges as ‘old darling’. While standing for the Labour Party in the 1945 General Election, he famously knocked on the door of Downing Street to canvas Winston Churchill. His archive is rich in personal correspondence with a wide circle of friends, including artists, authors and a range of other public figures. It includes wartime letters from Hutchinson’s first wife, Peggy Ashcroft, as well as incoming correspondence from their Bloomsbury Group friends to his parents.

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35. Sir Winston Churchill, standing before an easel in the garden of Lady Paget’s house at Kingston Hill, by John Lavery. 1915. Oil on canvas, 76 by 54.5 cm.

(Photograph Sotheby’s).

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to Historic Royal Palaces for display at Hillsborough Castle, Belfast.

This informal view of Winston Churchill shows him painting en plein air and was made shortly after Churchill resigned from the Asquith government in the wake of the Gallipoli campaign. Painted by John Lavery (1856–1941), the successful society portraitist and Churchill’s first artistic mentor, the painting is one of a number Lavery made documenting their friendship. Lavery noted that ‘Mr Churchill has been called a pupil of mine, which is highly flattering, for I know few amateur wielders of the brush with a keener sense of light and colour, or a surer grasp of essentials’. Churchill regularly worked in Lavery’s London studio and in turn produced a number of images of Lavery at work. Showing Churchill dressed in his white smock and trademark Homburg hat, working at a portable easel in the grounds of Warren House in Kingston Hill, this painting is an evocative image of the future Prime Minister absorbed in his favourite pastime. Warren House was the home of Arthur and Lady Paget. Lady Paget, born Mary Fiske Stevens and known as Minnie, was an American heiress and contemporary of Churchill’s mother. The painting was accepted along with a group of works by Churchill himself and allocated for display at Hillsborough Castle.

36. Column, by Naum Gabo. 1921–22/1975. Glass, perspex and stainless steel, height 193 cm., diameter 156 cm. (© Nina & Graham Williams; Tate).

Accepted by HM Government under the Cultural Gifts Scheme from Graham Williams on behalf of himself, his wife, and the artist’s daughter Nina Williams, and allocated to the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2017.

Naum Gabo (1890–1977) is recognised as one of the most important and innovative artists of the twentieth century. Born in Russia in 1890, he trained as a scientist and engineer before turning to sculpture. One of the pioneers of Constructivist Art, Gabo rejected solid materials such as bronze and stone and in the early 1920s began using glass and transparent plastics to make a purely abstract art ‘constructed’ from autonomous elements, rather than carved or modelled, which would provide new ways of understanding space, time and matter. In 1921 he made preliminary designs for Column, with the idea of enlarging it into a giant public sculpture, but the materials available at the time were unsuitable. Gabo moved to London in 1936, becoming a leading figure in the British abstract art movement, forming close friendships with Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth. From 1939 to 1946 he lived in St Ives, Cornwall, where he was a key figure in the St Ives School, before moving to the United States in 1946. In the early 1970s Gabo discovered a new type of glass, which was sufficiently strong and, unlike normal glass, did not have a green edge.

Gabo wrote that he ‘never dreamt that such a beautiful, crystal-clear sheet of glass can now be produced’. He made two 193 centimetre-tall examples of Column, one for the Louisiana Museum, Humlebæk, and this one, which remained with his family.

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37. 1935 (white relief – Quai d’Auteuil – Paris), by Ben Nicholson. 1934–35. Oil on carved board, 109 by 118 cm. (Photograph Christie’s).

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of tax, the amount of which satisfied exceeded the tax liability payable by the offeror. Allocated to The Hepworth, Wakefield, who made good the difference with assistance of grants from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, Art Fund, and donations from other trusts, foundations and individuals, 2022.

Quai d’Auteuil is one of the most important white reliefs made by Ben Nicholson (1894–1982). Given as a present to his first wife, the painter Winifred Nicholson (1893– 1981), who was living at 48 Quai d’Auteuil, Paris, the work was described by Nicholson as having ‘a marvellous peacefulness, exciting landscape of foothills, and mountains, and still sunlight and snow’. Quai D’Auteuil demonstrates the influence of the sculptor Barbara Hepworth (1903–75), with whom Nicholson was sharing a studio at the time; she encouraged his move into working on painted reliefs. Nicholson’s earlier abstract reliefs were painted in a muted palette; however, his larger white versions, begun in early 1934, represent a key moment in British Modernism and place Nicholson as a significant figure within the European avant-garde. At the time the work was created Nicholson was travelling between London and Paris and met artists including Constantin Brancusi, Alberto Giacometti, Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian, making him a key disseminator of Modernist ideas between the two cities.

38. Ovoid vase, by Bernard Rooke. Stoneware with cream slip.

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax, from the collection of John Christian, and allocated to Gateshead Council for display at the Shipley Art Gallery, Gateshead, 2018.

The art historian John Christian (1942–2016) was a leading authority on British art of the nineteenth century, as reflected in his collection of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century works on paper, manuscripts and decorative art objects which, following their acceptance in lieu, were allocated to the British Museum and Kelmscott Manor (Society of Antiquaries of London). He also became passionately interested in modern studio pottery, after coming to know Jim Ede and his collections at Kettle’s Yard, while a student at Cambridge. Christian eventually assembled an extraordinarily comprehensive collection of studio pottery with some 150 different artists represented, ranging from well-established figures through to younger and less well-known makers. The transformative allocation of the collection of 531 pieces, including this vase by Bernard Rooke (b.1938) to Shipley Art Gallery, Gateshead, where it joins the Henry Rothschild collection of studio pottery accepted in lieu in 2013, has created the leading centre in North-East England for twentieth-century studio ceramics. A generous donation from Margie Christian has enabled the museum to catalogue and display her brother’s collection.

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Acquisitions made possible by the AIL and Cultural Gifts Schemes

39. Grosse tête, profil droit; Grosse tête, profil droit; and Petite tête, profil gauche,

by Pablo Picasso. 1965. Glazed ceramic, heights 28.3 cm; 28.3 cm; and 29 cm.

(Part of the Attenborough Picasso ceramics collection).

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax, from the estate of Lady Attenborough, and allocated to New Walk Museum and Art Gallery, Leicester, 2018.

Richard Attenborough (1923–2014) enjoyed a distinguished career as an actor and director of such films as Ghandi (1982). He and his brother, the broadcaster and natural historian David Attenborough, grew up in Leicester where their father was Principal of University College, which later became the University of Leicester.

Attenborough first met Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) in 1963: ‘I think my heart missed a beat – the impact would have been no less had I suddenly found myself face to face with Shakespeare or Beethoven’. Picasso’s interest in producing ceramics began in 1946 during a visit to Vallauris in the south of France. There he met Georges and Suzanne Ramié, owners of the Madoura ceramics factory. Picasso learned the techniques of ceramic decoration and the Ramiés and their team of potters at Madoura produced limited editions of his designs. The Attenborough collection consists of seventy-six works by Picasso.

40. Winter (Inverno), by Giuseppe Cavalli. 1946. Gelatin silver print on paper, 29.5 by 37.5 cm. (Part of the collection of Massimo Prelz Oltramonti).

Accepted by HM Government under the Cultural Gifts Scheme and allocated to Tate, 2015.

The history of Italian photography is largely unknown beyond Italy, and Italian photographs are not widely collected outside of the country. A selection of forty photographs, donated by the collector Massimo Prelz Oltramonti, is especially important in redressing this. Photographs by Piergiorgio Branzi, Alfredo Camisa, Giuseppe Cavalli and Luigi Veronesi represent a critical period in Italian history – the 1930s to the 1950s – that encompassed the Fascist regime, participation in the Second World War and the birth of the Republic in 1946. Cavalli and Veronesi were founding members of La Bussola, a group formed in Milan in 1947 that advocated for photography as an art form. More recent photographs in the selection include works by Vincenzo Castella and Walter Nierdermayr. The allocation to Tate was particularly appropriate in the light of its commitment to expanding its modern and contemporary photography collection and the presence in its holdings of works by artists of the Arte Povera group, which provide an important context.

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41. Portrait of Lady Scott, by Lucian Freud. 1952–54. Oil on canvas, 30.5 by 22.9 cm. (© The Lucian Freud Archive. All rights reserved 2024; Christie’s; Bridgeman Images).

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of tax and allocated to Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, 2018.

Painted over eight sittings, Portrait of Lady Scott, together with its companion piece, Portrait of Hermione Scott (1961), are unusual as they were the result of a direct commission from Oliver (1922–2016) and Phoebe Scott (c.1927–2016).

Lucian Freud (1922–2011) rarely accepted commissions to paint portraits, preferring to paint people he knew well: family, friends, lovers and fellow painters. This portrait is typical of Freud’s work of the period, seen in the finely painted brushwork and closely cropped composition, which presents the sitter in isolation and divorced from any context that would give an indication of her personal history or social status. Freud had been introduced to the Scott family through a girlfriend who had hitchhiked a lift from Oliver and later introduced them. The Scott family had settled in the Lake District in around 1900 and founded the Provincial Insurance Company in Kendal, where Oliver was a director from 1955 to 1964. During their lifetimes, Oliver and Phoebe were keen supporters of Abbot Hall Gallery, to which both portraits were allocated in 2018.

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42a. Head and shoulders of a girl, by Lucian Freud. 1990. Etching, 78 by 62.8 cm. (© The Lucian Freud Archive, all rights reserved 2024; Bridgeman Images); and 42b. Bella in her Pluto t-shirt, by Lucian Freud. 1995. Etching, 68.5 by 59.7 cm. (© The Lucian Freud Archive, all rights reserved 2024; the Balakjian Estate; Bridgeman Images).

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of tax and allocated to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2022.

The archive of 481 prints from the Balakjian collection was allocated to twelve organisations, eight of which had not previously received works through the Cultural Gifts Scheme. The prints, which include works by Frank Auerbach (1931–2024), Stephen Conroy (b.1964), Freud, Leon Kossoff (1926–2019) and Celia Paul (b.1959) are from the collection of Dorothea Balakjian (née Wight, 1944–2013) and Marc Balakjian (1938–2017), who together led Studio Prints, one of the most important etching studios in London. Founded by Dorothea in 1968, the studio attracted artists who were interested in the tradition of intaglio printmaking. The collection demonstrates the different stages involved with making a print and shows the working methods of the artists and their relationship with the master printers.

43. The drag ball, no.2, act 2, scene 1, by Leonard Rosoman. 1967–68, completed 1990.

Acrylic on canvas, 183 by 229 cm.

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of tax and allocated to Pallant House, Chichester, 2020.

This painting is from a series of forty paintings and works on paper begun in 1967–68

by Leonard Rosoman (1913–2012). They are based on John Osborne’s then highly controversial play, A Patriot for Me (1965), which features homosexuality and crossdressing. Originally denied a licence for performance, a legal loophole meant that it could be shown at the Royal Court Theatre, London; Rosoman, who attended the first night, returned every evening for a fortnight to make sketches. The play’s production led to the 1968 Theatres Act, which abolished the Lord Chamberlain’s jurisdiction over theatre censorship. Rosoman’s series of paintings, which documents the first gay kiss and drag ball in British theatre, provides a vivid and direct contemporary record of a pivotal moment in British legal and political history.

The drag ball is one of five works from the estate of the artist’s widow, Roxanne Wruble Rosoman, that were allocated to Pallant House. It was included in the 2018 exhibition there of Rosoman’s A Patriot for Me series, the first time the works had been shown together in over forty years.

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44. The family, by John Bellany. 1970. Oil on two hardboard panels, 213.5 by 183 cm. (Photograph courtesy Fife Cultural Trust, on behalf of Fife Council; Andy Phillipson; © The Estate of John Bellany, all rights reserved 2024; Bridgeman Images).

Accepted by HM Government through the Cultural Gifts Scheme and allocated to Kirkcaldy Galleries, 2023.

John Bellany (1942–2013) was born in the fishing village of Port Seton, just south of Edinburgh. His father and grandfathers were fishermen, and his work is steeped in the Christianity and fishing traditions of the community into which he was born.

He studied at Edinburgh College of Art from 1960–65, and the Royal College of Art,

London, from where he graduated in 1968. Painted on a monumental scale, and one of his last works on board, The family was made at a time of considerable financial hardship, when the artist and his wife had two children under the age of five and another on the way. Chained at the neck – a motif Bellany had used in a major painting the previous year to depict marriage as a prison – the couple appear isolated from each other and any human context, the fish heads on the poles evoking the religious despair and symbolism of Golgotha. This bleak vision is characteristic of much of Bellany’s work from this period; the artist’s great power lay in the sense of integrity and honesty with which he unflinchingly depicted his own experience, made all the more remarkable by the young age at which he painted this work.

45. The Plumb pudding in danger, with apologies to Gillray, by David Stoten and the Spitting Image Workshop. 1988. Printed card stock, 13.7 by 18.5 cm. (Part of the Spitting Image Archive). Four tranches of material, comprising working drawings, scripts, contracts, and production files, tapes, photographs, memorabilia and letters, including from ‘victims’.

Accepted by HM Government from Roger Law, Peter Fluck and Spitting Image Productions Limited via the Cultural Gifts Scheme and allocated to Cambridge University Library, 2023.

For many growing up in 1980s Britain, watching Spitting Image on Sunday evening television was an indispensable ritual. With an audience that peaked at 15 million, Roger Law and Peter Fluck’s brutal satire had a reach that went beyond traditional newspaper cartoons. Week after week politicians, royalty and celebrities were savagely lampooned in a surreal puppet show that owed something to the Muppet Show, and more to the grotesque caricatures of Gillray and Cruikshank. A gin-soaked Queen Mother with a Brummie accent, politicians who spat and dribbled, thugs, slugs, charlatans and a supine Cabinet cowering as a waitress asked the puppet Mrs Thatcher, ‘what about the vegetables?’ – Spitting Image shocked and entertained in equal measure. No-one who was anyone escaped. Now housed at Cambridge University Library, there is a suitable irony in this archive sitting alongside the political archives of some of the powerful figures the show had so memorably ridiculed.

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46. Illustration from The Tiger Who Came to Tea, by Judith Kerr. 1968. Pencil and crayon on paper, 26 by 18 cm. (Part of the Archive of Judith Kerr).

(Photograph courtesy Seven Stories; © Kerr-Kneale Productions Ltd 1968).

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of tax and allocated to Seven Stories (The National Centre for Children’s Books), Newcastle, 2022.

Judith Kerr (1923–2019), born in Berlin, was one of the most beloved children’s authors of the late twentieth century, famous for The Tiger Who Came to Tea (1968), seventeen delightfully illustrated volumes about the adventures of Mog the Cat (1970–2019) and the semi-autobiographical When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit (1971), partly based on her own family’s escape from Nazi Germany and later adapted as a film (2019). In addition to drinking tea and causing chaos, Kerr’s friendly Tiger, originally created for her own children, sold more than ten million copies and was the subject of a stage show and subsequent television cartoon. Late in life Kerr received numerous awards, including illustrator of the year at the 2019 British Book Awards and an OBE in 2012 for services to children’s literature and to Holocaust education.

The archive, comprising original illustrations and papers for thirty-two books, loose studio artwork, notebooks, a diary and correspondence, also contains drawings, carefully transported across Europe by her mother, that Judith made as a young refugee.

47a. Design model for the Royal College of Physicians, Regent’s Park, London,

by Denys Lasdun & Partners. 1959. (Photograph Mike Fear); and 47b.

Plan of Keeling House, one of the ‘cluster blocks’ of social housing on the Usk Street Estate, Bethnal Green, London, by Fry, Drew, Drake & Lasdun.

1957. (Both part of the Lasdun Archive).

Accepted by HM Government in lieu of tax, from the collection of Sir Denys and Lady Lasdun, and allocated to the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), London, 2018.

Denys Lasdun (1914–2001) was one of the leading British architects of the twentieth century. Influenced – like so many of his generation – by the modernists Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, he also combined this with a respect for tradition and the work of earlier architects such as Nicholas Hawksmoor. His style was characterised by the frequent use of bare concrete and a love of angularity. Perhaps Lasdun’s most famous building over the course of a prolific career was his ‘Brutalist’ National Theatre on London’s South Bank, which opened in 1976. In addition to many other landmark structures, he also designed social housing projects and benefitted from numerous commissions resulting from the building boom in Britain’s universities in the 1960s and 1970s. This very extensive archive contains material spanning the period from the 1930s up to the 2000s and includes documentary records of projects, drawings and plans, architectural models, photographs and audio-visual material.

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48. Red angled ribbed vessel, by Magdalene Odundo. 1985. Burnished and oxidised terracotta, 26.3 by 19.7 cm.

Accepted by HM Government under the Cultural Gifts Scheme and allocated to the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, 2022.

Magdalene Odundo (b.1950) is one of the most significant contemporary ceramic artists working in Britain. Born in Nairobi, she moved to the UK and studied in Cambridge, Farnham and at the Royal College of Art, London.

Her hand-built and burnished vessels draw on ceramic traditions from Kenya, Nigeria and New Mexico. The upper part of this vessel is inspired by fifteenthcentury German armour, specifically a bevor (neck plate) that would have been worn with a sallet (helmet). When studying at Cambridge College of Art between 1971 and 1973, Odundo often sketched the collections at the Fitzwilliam Museum, including the historic armour. The ceramics curator Alun Graves has stated that Odundo transforms the simple material of clay into vessels that she reads as human.

49. At the edge of town, by Peter Doig. 1986–88. Oil on canvas, 153.2 by 214.3 cm.

Offered by the Kennedy Doig family in loving memory of Bonnie Kennedy, accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2021.

At the edge of town marks a new beginning in the work of Peter Doig (b.1959). In contrast to the urban, post-Pop works Doig made while he was in London, it was painted in the rural suburbs of Toronto and is in effect his first landscape painting. Painted over two years, it reflects Doig’s own growing interest in and awareness of landscape art, and in particular the work of the ‘Group of Seven’, the artists who had revolutionised landscape painting in Canada in the 1920s and 1930s. More importantly, it represents the first development of what became emblematic of Doig’s inventive style, his sensuous colour palette and suggestive imagery, based on personal experiences and memories. Often beginning with a found image or, as in this case, a photograph he had taken of a friend on the balcony of a guest house, Doig gradually builds up a picture of heightened colours, expressive forms and arresting imagery. He draws much of his inspiration from artists such as Edvard Munch and Henri Matisse and, in so doing, has helped to re-invigorate figurative painting. This pivotal early work by Doig, who was born in Edinburgh, is the first of his paintings to enter a Scottish public collection and fills one of the greatest gaps in the contemporary collection of the National Galleries of Scotland.

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50. RIG: untitled; stagechairs, by Phyllida Barlow. 2011. Timber, cement and paint, 2.3 by 4.3 by 3.5 m. (Photograph courtesy Alexander V. Petalas; © Phyllida Barlow Estate; courtesy Phyllida Barlow Estate and Hauser & Wirth).

Accepted by HM Government through the Cultural Gifts Scheme and jointly allocated to Leeds Art Gallery and The Hepworth, Wakefield, 2021.

RIG: untitled; stagechairs by Phyllida Barlow (1944–2023) demonstrates the artist’s interest in repurposing everyday materials and discarded objects from urban and industrial life. Created in 2011, this large-scale sculpture is formed of a sloped platform, which supports a crowded assemblage of thirty chairs.

Typical of Barlow’s work, it explores the idea of sculpture as a stage and invites the viewer to consider the relationship between object and architectural space.

‘There’s something about walking around sculpture that has the possibility of being reflective, like walking through a landscape’, Barlow said, ‘the largeness of sculpture has that infinite possibility to make one engage beyond just the object itself and into other realms of experience’. Barlow’s use of unprepossessing materials, often painted with touches of vibrant colours, confronts the viewer with the unsettling paradox of familiarity with the objects used in the sculpture, but unfamiliarity with the form and mass of the installation itself. Barlow was nominated for the Hepworth Prize for Sculpture in 2016 and this work, jointly allocated to Leeds Art Gallery, was the first sculpture by her to have entered the permanent collection of The Hepworth, Wakefield.

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Reprinted from the December 2024 issue of The Burlington Magazine 14–16 Dukes Road, London WC1H 9SZ www.burlington.org.uk