Rendering on painting(2)

The article goes under the headline “Old master paintings worth £100m given to Britain – with strings attached”. It is dated the 19th of February 2013 and you can find it on the guardian.co.uk website. The author of the article is Charlotte Higgins.

The article is devoted to Sir Denis Mahon and his extraordinary collection of mainly Italian 17th century paintings. It assesses the bequest of Mahon and touches upon the problem of replenishment of museums’ collections.

The author starts by telling the reader about Sir Denis Mahon and his bequest. A collection of 57 old masters worth around £100m are to be formally given to the nation, with strings attached. If any attempt is made by the host museum to charge for admission; or any item from their collection is put up for sale, the Art Fund, the charity that is donating them, can take them back. This wonderful present was made up by an art historian Sir Denis Mahon, who died in 2011, aged 100.

The author of the article informs that Mahon left 57 works to the Art Fund with the arrangement that they should be on long-term loan to a selection of British galleries: 8 to the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh, 25 to the National Gallery in London, 12 to the Ashmolean in Oxford, six to the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge, five to the Birmingham Art Gallery and one to Temple Newsam House in Leeds.

The final stage of his bequest is now complete, with the formal transference of the 57 works' ownership to the various museums.

In conclusion the author cites a good quotation of Mahon’s pal Christopher Brown, the director of the Ashmolean Museum. He knew Mahon as a man of exceptional erudition: "There was no more enjoyable and illuminating way of looking at paintings than in his company. Poussin, Carracci, Guercino: he spoke about them as if he knew them."

           

I think the aim of the article is to provide the reader with some information about a big collection of Italian paintings and about the way it was created by Sir Denis Mahon. The main idea that despite serious economical situation in the world some people believe, want and try to do that most museums will be free of charge.

To my mind, it’s a very useful article. It’s pleasant to know that there are such people that donating their collection to the museums and galleries, with no strings attached.