Memorandum submitted by The National Gallery
A BRIEF INTRODUCTION
TO THE
NATIONAL GALLERY
The National Gallery's collection of Western
European paintings dating from the thirteenth to the nineteenth
century is one of the richest and most comprehensive in the world,
the equal of other major collections and vying with the very greatest
including the Louvre, Prado and Uffizi. The collection belongs
to the nation and the Gallery serves an enormous range of visitors
from the UK and abroad. The Gallery's role is to engage the public
in the experience of this great collection. It is open to all,
361 days of the year, free of charge.
THE ISSUE
1. The National Gallery is submitting evidence
on one single issue, which is of increasing concern, and which,
we believe, should be of concern to the Select Committee for Culture,
Media and Sport: that is, the increasing cost of great works of
art, including those on long-term loan to British galleries; the
corresponding temptation for owners to sell them; and the inadequacy
of the funding to enable national institutions to acquire them.
2. The Gallery believes that there are two bodies
whose remit includes funding the acquisition of works of art:
these are the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) and the Heritage
Lottery Fund (HLF). In the past they have consistently been able
to support major acquisitions. However, in the future neither
Fund is likely to prove capable of financing acquisitions of great
works of art in the way that they have in the past: the NHMF lacks
adequate funds, and the HLF has made it clear that it treats such
acquisitions as a low, if not marginal, priority within its remit.
3. It is absolutely essential that the National
Gallery can continue to enhance its collection—strengthening
its weaker areas, expanding its geographical range (for example,
by the addition over the past 15 years of paintings from Scandinavia),
and continuing to enhance its scope and depth. New acquisitions
help visitors to see what is already in the collection in new
ways. For example, Stubbs' Whistlejacket, acquired in 1997 with
the support of the HLF, not only introduced a great masterpiece,
but also (as an early, and English, example of Romantic art) served
to redefine the other eighteenth-century pictures around it. New
acquisitions generate excitement, attract new audiences, and enliven
the Gallery's education programme; they help the Gallery maintain
its world standing, and so contribute to London's profile, economy
and tourist appeal.
4. How the country can, and should, acquire
great works of art has preoccupied the House of Commons to a greater
or lesser degree since the foundation of the National Gallery
in 1824. Since the nineteenth century it has been viewed as a
responsibility of Parliament, and of the Treasury acting on its
behalf, to ensure that funding is available to purchase great
works of art as and when they come onto the market.
5. In the early years, acquisitions tended to
be ad hoc and dependent on the generosity of individual
donors, but both the Treasury and the House of Commons fully recognised
their responsibilities for providing funding for major acquisitions,
including, for example, the acquisition in 1825 of Correggio's
Madonna of the Basket (NG 23) for £3,800 and a grant in 1826
of £9,000 for the purchase of Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne
(NG 35), one of the greatest works in the collection, as well
as Poussin's Bacchanalian Revel before a Term (NG 62) and Annibale
Carracci's Christ Appearing to St Peter on the Appian Way (NG
9).
6. The great quality of the collection, its
range and depth and particularly its extraordinary holdings of
Italian art, are a direct consequence of the Report of the Select
Committee in 1855, which established the National Gallery on a
much more secure footing, and led to the appointment of Charles
Eastlake as Director with a remit to acquire works of art on the
continent, especially in Italy. If generous public funding had
not been available during the succeeding decade, Britain would
not have acquired one of the world's major collections, nor the
benefits that derive from it.
7. Over the long term, the price of great works
of art escalates as demand increases and the supply of old master
paintings is correspondingly reduced. As a result, prices that
seem high at any given time, and may deter acquisitions, look
like bargains afterwards. In the closing months of the First World
War, John Maynard Keynes, then at the Treasury, recognised the
long-term benefit of investment in the purchase of great works
of Impressionist art and helped the National Gallery to acquire
some from the Degas sale in Paris; but the failure in the early
decades of the twentieth century to buy more than a tiny handful
of such pictures, before their prices began to rise, has diminished
the Gallery's appeal to the public ever since.
8. After the outcry following the export of
Vela«zquez's Juan de Pareja to the USA in 1970 and the difficulties
faced by the national collections during the sale of Mentmore
in 1977, parliamentary initiative led to the establishment of
the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) through the 1980 National
Heritage Act, with cross-party support. This acted as a fund of
last resort for the national collections with great success during
the 1980s, alongside generous grant-in-aid for acquisitions which
meant that, in 1983-84, the National Gallery was given £3.31
million per annum specifically for acquisitions (in current terms
this is the equivalent of approximately £7.3 million).[57]
However, even then the NHMF lacked the financial resources to
meet the demand: in 1984 Lord Charteris, its chairman, acknowledged
that there were "inadequate resources to deal with the projects
that [it] will be asked to grant-aid", and foresaw damaging
inflation in prices in the art market because of wealthy buyers
overseas.[58]
As Liz Forgan, the current chairman has said, `The needs of the
heritage were greater than even the NHMF could meet".[59]
9. In 1993, to address these needs and in
recognition of the success of the NHMF in helping major institutions
acquire great works of art, it was given responsibility for distributing
the share of funding from the National Lottery for the heritage.
It does this through the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF). For the
NHMF, heritage consisted of two spending priorities, "Heritage
real estate" and "Moveable Heritage", where the
latter meant "museum objects and manuscripts".[60]
It was assumed that the HLF would take on the spending priorities
of the NHMF. Had they done so the problems surrounding funding
for acquisitions would have been solved forever.
10. However, the HLF has progressively developed
its spending priorities to the exclusion of the acquisition of
works of art. In 1998 ministerial advice increased the extent
of the HLF's spending duties, and the HLF's funding stream is
currently under review; in its recent consultation document [Our
Heritage, our future] it has set out its proposed plans for the
future omitting all mention of the acquisition of works of art.
11. In the past the HLF has given substantial
and generous donations towards acquisitions. For example, in 1995
The Channel at Gravelines by Seurat helped to strengthen the Gallery's
holding of post-Impressionist works and, in July 2003 after a
long public campaign, £11.5 million was granted for the acquisition
of Raphael's The Madonna of the Pinks by Raphael. This was a centrepiece
of the Raphael exhibition at the Gallery in 2004, which raised
the profile of London as a tourist destination and generated tourist
revenue estimated at over £20 million. However, the HLF now
considers the occasions where it has funded acquisitions as exceptional:
of the sum put towards The Madonna of the Pinks Liz Forgan has
said, "It was a happy outcome, but one that will always be
an exception".[61]
The Treasury, when asked for funds to help buy the Raphael, recognised
that the Gallery had no recourse other than to the HLF. But HLF's
assistance with the Raphael is unlikely to be repeated. In 2005
HLF spent only £1.18 million on acquisitions for museums
and galleries out of total commitments of £357.6 million
during the year as a whole.
12. The HLF has argued that acquisition of great
works of art should be the job of the NHMF:
The Lottery has rarely been called on to fund
the acquisition of major masterpieces. Yet there have been rare
occasions when the HLF has been able to ride to the rescue, to
do a job that the NHMF was unable to do.[62]
However, the NHMF has not resolved the funding
issues that have caused it difficulty since it began.[63]
The NHMF has spent an average of £4.4 million on acquisitions
per annum since 1995-96: a sum which is useful for some acquisitions
but totally inadequate for the acquisition of old master paintings,
with typical prices now of £10 million and more.
13. The National Gallery's annual purchase grant
was a substantial sum in the 1980s, but the Government ceased
to ring-fence grant-in aid for acquisitions in 1992 and acquisitions
funds have since been squeezed out of existence by a real-term
reduction in Government grant-in-aid. Meanwhile, the Getty Bequest
of 1985 which was expected to enable the National Gallery to compete
with American institutions in the acquisition of great works of
art is the only remaining major source of acquisitions funding
for the National Gallery, but is itself inadequate to fund the
purchase of major old master paintings without eroding the real-term
value of the original gift. It was not given to replace government
support, but to enhance it.
14. This situation led the National Gallery
to take the view that it could not put in an offer for Titian's
Portrait of a Man last year—a picture which has been in
this country since the early eighteenth century, and has always
been regarded as one of its greatest works of art. It is now being
marketed at a price reported to be $120 million and, removed from
the walls of the National Gallery, will almost certainly be sold
abroad.
15. There are possible solutions:
— the purchase grant should be reinstated
at a level equivalent to 1983 (ie £7.3 million pa), by increasing
grant-in-aid by this amount and ring-fencing the allocation as
in the past.
— the Trustees of National Heritage
Memorial Fund should be required, at the time of the renewal of
their charter in 2009, to spend half the income from the lottery
on acquisitions.
— the Government should consider the
establishment of a National Acquisitions Fund, as first proposed
by the Treasury in October 1922.
— the Treasury should revive the system
of direct exchequer grants from contingency, a system of funding
which worked satisfactorily in the past.
— effective tax incentives should encourage
lifetime gifts of works of art, as recommended by the NACF and
the Goodison report.
16. In the past, parliamentary initiative has
led to effective solutions for the funding of Britain's national
institutions. We urge the Select Committee to seek solutions to
the problems of today.
January 2006
57 Calculated using retail purchase index, not taking
into account the above average inflation in price of works of
art. Back
58
Lord Charteris, "The World of the National Heritage Memorial
Fund", Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, Vol 132, 18
January 1984, p. 333. Back
59
25 years of the NHMF-The Story of a Nation, Liz Forgan, 5 October
2005 Back
60
Charteris, op.cit., p.326 Back
61
25 years of the NHMF-The Story of a Nation, Liz Forgan, 5 October
2005 Back
62
ibid. Back
63
". . . though the NHMF continued the essential job that
it was doing, often without great fanfare, it was increasingly
eclipsed by the HLF, so that, as HLF bloomed, the NHMF started
to wither." Ibid. Back
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