Rendering 4: 'Old master paintings worth £100m given to Britain – with strings attached'

The article ‘Old master paintings worth £100m given to Britain – with strings attached’ was published by Charlotte Higgins in The Guardian on February 19, 2013. It reports at length that All 57 works must remain free to view and never be sold, according to wishes of late owner Sir Denis Mahon. 

   Speaking on the situation, it’s interesting to note that 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. There’s a lot of comments on the conditions attached to the donation of the works, among them paintings by Guercino, Guido Reni and Luca Giordano, are in line with the wishes of the collector who amassed them: art historian Sir Denis Mahon, who died in 2011, aged 100. 

   Analyzing the conditions, it’s necessary to emphasize that they seem especially resonant now, as museums suffer funding cuts and charging for admission is again being reluctantly considered in some quarters. There are also increasing examples of public bodies selling artworks to help plug financial holes – as with the attempt by Tower Hamlets council in London to sell a Henry Moore sculpture that the artist had intended for public display. 

   Giving appraisal of the paintings, it’s necessary to point out that Mahon, heir to the Guinness Mahon banking fortune, built an extraordinary collection of mainly Italian 17th-century paintings, without ever spending more than £2,000 per picture. He left 57 works to the Art Fund with the arrangement that they should be on long-term loan to a selection of British galleries: eight 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. 

   It’s an open secret that the final stage of his bequest is now complete, with the formal transference of the 57 works' ownership to the various museums. Though the paintings are already in situ – regular visitors to the National Gallery in London will recognise, for example, Guido Reni's Rape of Europa, with the mythical heroine, clad in saffron and fuchsia, being borne away over the waves on the back of Zeus, disguised as a bull – but they are now accompanied by smart new signs, announcing "new acquisition". There’s a comment from Christopher Brown, the director of the Ashmolean Museum, that 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. 

   The author draws a conclusion that his public-spirited desire to have his collection end up in the public realm was "completely free of vanity". He was supremely uninterested in having his "name inscribed on a particular room" and was happy that his collection should be dispersed around Britain. I think it’s the right decision to sail the collection, as all of the pictures are to be free to view.