Calling the bluff
Lord Radnor's Velasquez was bought by Wildenstein's for stock, it was claimed. for £2.3m at a Christie's auction last year subject only to an export licence. I have recently heard that Wildenstein's have three Valas- quez in their. New York stock which presum- ably means that there was a huge notional increase in their value on the day Lord Radnor's Velasquez was knocked down to them in London. In fact all comparable old masters soared in price that day.
A lohhv built un quickly after the Christie's sale, led by a Mr Leggatt, a dealer (whose interest must be in an active. high-valued art market) urging the Treasury through a letter to the Times to-make the National Gallery a grant to 'save' the Velasque7. for the nation. The cognoscenti slavishly followed with the brave exception of Beatle-haired Dr Roy Strong of the National Portrait Gallery, characteristically very much his own man.
The money involved. on this occasion, is enormous and I certainly hope that the bluff will be called and that the picture will finish up in safe keeping in the United States. (which unlike the British Treasury has not the reserve of pictures waiting, as the years go by, to be taken for the nation in lieu of death duties).
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