The Art Newspaper

London’s National Gallery and Liechtenstein Prince fail to agree on price for Coello masterpiece

The painting’s future remains in limbo, though the Prince is offering to lend it to the museum for public display

By Martin Bailey. Web only
Published online: 21 January 2010

The National Gallery’s attempt to buy the Prince of Liechtenstein’s Sánchez Coello painting is deadlocked because no agreement can be reached on the price. Instead, Prince Hans-Adam II is willing to lend the Portrait of the Infante Don Diego (1577) to the gallery, since he wants it to be on public view and is presently unable to get a UK export licence to send it to his museum in Vienna.

The National Gallery is offering £2m, the sum originally paid for the Coello by the Prince in 2006. However, the exchange rate of the Swiss franc (the currency used in Liechtenstein) has fallen, so this sum is now the equivalent of £2.5m for the Prince, the price he is now asking for.

The National Gallery argues that as a public body it cannot pay more than the market value, which it believes is still £2m. It has assembled a funding package for this amount, with a £250,000 grant from the Art Fund and the remainder from gallery funds and supporters.

The Coello has been at the centre of a major row between Britain and Liechtenstein. Last December this led to the cancellation of the scheduled Royal Academy exhibition of Liechtenstein’s art treasures (The Art Newspaper, December 2009, pp 1,3).

Seizure

The problems began in September 2007, when the Portrait of the Infante Don Diego was seized during a HM Revenue & Customs investigation into export licence applications made by a leading London dealer for nine pictures from Lord Northbrook’s collection which were sold to the Prince of Liechtenstein.

The investigation has dragged on, and the Prince became increasingly frustrated that a painting legitimately acquired and paid for was being impounded. Following strong protests from the Prince, the Coello was handed over to his representative in London on 10 November 2009, but it had to be kept in the UK.

By this time it was clear that the National Gallery was determined to acquire the picture, and would make a matching £2m offer when the export licence application process eventually resumed — which would be after a conclusion of the Revenue & Customs case.

The Prince therefore decided to resolve the matter by selling the Coello to the National Gallery now and dropping his export licence application. This move was then blocked, because the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) — on advice from Revenue & Customs — told the gallery that as a government-funded body, it should not buy a painting which was among a group of works which were the subject of a criminal investigation.

The National Gallery was concerned about being blocked, and asked DCMS to reconsider its stand. On 19 January, after getting further legal advice, DCMS reversed its position, and said it would no longer oppose the purchase.

This was confirmed by DCMS to The Art Newspaper the next day: “Following the return of the Portrait of Infante Don Diego by Sánchez Coello which had been seized by Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs as a part of an investigation and further clarification by the prosecuting authorities, issues preventing the sale or export of the picture are falling away. DCMS is aware that the National Gallery may wish to purchase the picture.”

At this stage there was optimism that an agreement could be reached on the price of the Coello, but later on 20 January the Prince decided that he would insist on the £2.5m figure.

However, in a gesture of goodwill, he has offered the painting on loan, and discussions are now underway with the National Gallery. Although the gallery would very much like to display the Coello, questions remain over its valuation and the painting’s long-term future is uncertain.

Show cancelled

Despite the DCMS’s latest announcement on the sale and export issues “falling away”, this has failed to result in the reinstatement of the Royal Academy’s (RA) exhibition of the Liechtenstein treasures. The RA had hoped that moves to resolve the Coello problem might save the show, which had been scheduled to open on 25 September this year.

The RA show had been cancelled on 16 December. Liechtenstein Museum director Johann Kräftner then told us that “the Prince does not think it appropriate to proceed with the planned exhibition until the matter of a painting by Coello is resolved.” Along with Van Gogh, Liechtenstein was to have been the RA’s major show of the year.

Following DCMS’s change of policy over the Coello on 19 January, there was optimism about saving the RA exhibition. However, the following day Hans-Adam II decided not go ahead, and his veto remained. He still feels that the British authorities have not treated him properly over the Coello case and the export licence application remains in limbo, after a delay of nearly three years.

Another problem is that the Liechtenstein Museum in Vienna needs its own exhibition to replace the 100 or so artworks which would have been lent to the RA from its permanent galleries. Last November it negotiated to take a loan show of paintings from Antwerp’s Museum of Fine Arts (which is closed for refurbishment). This was dropped in December after the Prince cancelled the RA exhibition and the Antwerp paintings are now no longer available.

Kräftner told The Art Newspaper that the RA show has been “postponed”, and will hopefully be resurrected. Charles Saumarez-Smith, the RA’s chief executive, is appreciative of efforts to resolve the Coello problem and “hopes the Liechtenstein exhibition will be reinstated”, although there is no slot in the schedule before 2013. In the meantime, the RA is looking at options for a replacement exhibition for September.