Extreme Unction, by Poussin
There?s a story breaking in the international art world this morning that has multiple local ties. As most stories in the art world go these days, it involves money and a lot of it. The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge has ?launched a??3.9m appeal to buy a somber masterpiece by Poussin with a tangled recent history that belies its calm grandeur,? reports?The Guardian in London. ?The painting, Extreme Unction, is from a famous series depicting the seven sacraments by the 17th-century French artist, which has been in an aristocratic English collection for more than two centuries, but has been on and off the market in recent years.?
The guy spearheading the effort for the Cambridge museum is none other than former Kimbell Art Museum director Timothy?Potts, who left Fort Worth to become director of the Fitzwilliam. Potts said that ?securing the work for Cambridge would be its most significant old master acquisition in a century,? according to The Guardian. ?It would be a parting coup for Potts, who leaves next month to take over as director at?the Getty museum in California, the wealthiest art museum in the world.?
The Dallas Morning News published the story last September about the Kimbell acquiring Sacrament of Ordination (Christ Presenting the Keys to Saint Peter), by Poussin, the 17th-century French classicist Nicolas Poussin, whom Kimbell director Eric Lee has called ?the father of French painting.? Lee succeeded Potts as Kimbell director.
The Kimbell paid $24.3 million for the painting, which Lee said the museum was able to acquire because of a rare constellation of circumstances in England, where the first set of Poussin?s?Seven Sacraments?have resided since 1785, after being commissioned by an Italian collector in 1630.
?All the stars aligned with this acquisition,? a beaming Lee said last September, only two years after helping the Kimbell acquire a rare painting by Michelangelo. ?Five years ago, it would have been difficult to acquire the painting [by Poussin], to get it out of England, to get the export license. Five years from now, it would also be quite difficult.?
The sale involved months of secret negotiations and international transport, culminating with the Kimbell obtaining an export license in early August of 2011. The Poussin arrived in Fort Worth after 9 p.m. on Aug. 30, 2011, before which a rare set of circumstances led to the sale:
In 2007, the Duke of Rutland, who owned the remaining five of Poussin?s first of two sets of?Seven Sacraments, announced that he was selling them for 100 million pounds, or about $163 million. A national outcry ensued, and the Duke of Rutland reneged.
In 2009, the Duke of Sutherland announced that he would sell what Lee calls ?his two great Titians,? meaning master paintings by the Italian great Tiziano Vecellio, known as Titian.
The Duke of Sutherland allowed the National Gallery in London and the National Gallery of Scotland to co-purchase the first Titian for 50 million pounds. He gave them until 2013 to buy the second Titian for the same price, which British authorities are trying desperately to raise, with funding sources rapidly disappearing.
In other words, the British are so consumed with raising money to pay for the Duke of Sutherland?s Titian that it cleared the way for the Poussin to be granted an export license, thereby enabling the painting to come to Fort Worth.
The British have been hampered by their own weak economy, and lottery revenue that could have been used to raise the 50 million pounds for the second Titian ? or, presumably, to keep the Poussin in England ? is being diverted almost entirely, British news accounts say, to the 2012 Olympics, which ended Sunday.
Here?s our own 2011 story on the sale of the Poussin to the Kimbell.
In chronicling the latest round, The Guardian reports that this one ?is?available as a tax deal with the government, in lieu of the inheritance tax owed by the trustees of?the Dukes of Rutland?from the sale of another painting in the series to the United States last year.? The buyer in that scenario was, of course, the Kimbell.
The Guardian noted that the ?Art Fund charity?? its pockets almost emptied by the ?850,000 it gave the university museum?s great rival, the Ashmolean in Oxford,?to buy a Manet?? is giving ?100,000. It is also appealing to all its members and supporters to back the appeal for a painting seen as a landmark in art history that has influenced generations of later artists.?When the seven paintings first came to England in the 18th century, Joshua Reynolds, then president of the Royal Academy ? where George III came to see them ? said: ?I think upon the whole that this must be considered as the greatest work of Poussin, who was certainly one of the greatest painters that ever lived.? ?
The Guardian notes that ?Poussin regarded Extreme Unction ? the ashen figure of a man on his deathbed being anointed with oil, the final sacrament for a Christian ? as one of his greatest. He wrote to his friend Fr?art de Chantelou, who commissioned a second series, that the subject was ?worthy of an Apelles,? the most famous Greek painter of antiquity.?The paintings were bought by the Dukes of Rutland in 1785. One was destroyed in a fire at Belvoir Castle in the 19th century, and another was sold to the National Gallery in Washington in the early 20th century. The remaining five were on display for several years at the National Gallery in London.?Their sale was announced, the gallery began fundraising, and then the sale was cancelled. By the time the sale was confirmed again, the gallery was in the throes of fundraising to purchase, with the National Gallery in Scotland, the great Titian paintings ? currently the subject of?Metamorphosis, a multimedia arts project?? and had no hope of raising the money to buy the Poussins as well. Ordination was duly sold last year to the?Kimbell Art Museum in Texas?for $24.3m (?15.5m).?Extreme Unction is regarded as of such outstanding importance that the government has accepted it in lieu of the tax owed on the American sale, but since it is valued at ?14m, more than the tax owed, the Fitzwilliam has to raise the balance.?The future of the remaining three paintings in the series ? Eucharist, Confirmation and Marriage ? has not been announced.?The painting is already on display, free, at the Fitzwilliam. Potts called it ?a national and international treasure? which would prove a ?destination painting,? drawing many new visitors to the museum. The museum has until November to raise the money.?
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