February 2012

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For the first time in over 50 years Titian’s Diana and Actaeon has left the National Gallery in Edinburgh, where it has been on loan from the Duke of Sutherland since 1945. Unveiled today in Room I of the National Gallery, London, this great masterpiece is in a sense returning to its old home, as it forms part of the Bridgewater collection, which from the early 19th century until World War II was on view to the public in the gallery at Bridgewater House, overlooking Green Park in London, having been bought by the Duke’s ancestor, the 3rd Duke of Bridgewater, in 1798. It is in London for only a month, to help raise public interest in the joint appeal by the National Galleries in Edinburgh and London to buy the work. They need £50m and they have until December 31 to commit themselves to raising the money. If you are in easy reach of London, and have never seen the painting, don’t miss this opportunity.

In London the painting will be seen for the first time ever with the National Gallery’s Death of Actaeon, a late, unfinished work by Titian of comparable scale and ambition. It was bought in 1972 from the Earl of Harewood for £1.8m – a price thought extraordinary then (I was still at school in 1972, but can remember vividly the stir caused by the purchase) but is now a telling reminder of the extraordinary rise in the price of great works of art in the past 30 years.

Nobody can doubt that the proposed private treaty sale – an arrangement that means the Duke pays no tax on the sale in return for a big discount on the price – would be a good deal for the National Galleries. Although the announcement of the offer was framed in such a way that it seemed that the galleries had until December 31 to raise the money, in fact they have only to commit themselves to paying for it in instalments over the next three years. The Duke is then going to offer the painting’s pendant, Diana and Callisto, for the same price and on the same terms, and in addition has undertaken not to sell any paintings from the Bridgewater Collection (counting the two Titians this amounts to 26 paintings, all on loan to Edinburgh) for a minimum term of 21 years. This last statement is a generous gesture, although probably not legally enforceable. However, there can be no doubt that the Duke’s offer is admirably generous and realistic, especially in comparison to the lamentable behaviour of the Duke of Northumberland, who sold Raphael’s’ Madonna of the Pinks to the Getty Museum without even the courtesy of warning the National Gallery in London, where it had been on loan for 10 years.

But even so, can the £50m for Diana and Actaeon be raised? The question but ‘is it worth it’ is not interesting it seems to me if the question is simply ‘is it worth so much money’? as it is worth what anyone would pay for it on the open market and £50m is surely a minimum figure in those terms. More significantly, is it worth the country paying that amount of money? Scotland’s most recent heritage ‘crisis’ was the proposed sale in 2007 of Dumfries House in Ayrshire and the dispersal of its contents, which includes furniture designed for it by Chippendale. It was bought by a private charitable trust from the Marquess of Bute, and so will stay intact. The price – £45m – was not far off the Titian’s, but there is of course the difference that ‘saving’ the Titian simply means saving it from leaving the country, whereas ‘saving’ Dumfries meant preserving a unique ensemble that would have been irrevocably dissolved. Yet, it is arguable that Dumfries and the Titian are of comparable importance for Scotland’s heritage: the Bridgewater paintings are the core of the National Gallery of Scotland and if they go there is no question they could ever be replaced, any more than Dumfries House could have been refurnished with Chippendale.

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