The Art Newspaper

Secret scandal of British Museum director’s masterpiece

Government papers reveal how John Pope-Hennessy was allowed to export old master painting which he promptly sold

By Martin Bailey. News, Issue 206, October 2009
Published online: 05 October 2009

The government file was almost shredded in 1982, when an official noted: “The episode seems never to have become public and is now dead and buried, I should think. I would be inclined, therefore, to let the papers be destroyed.” But a more senior official responded: “A better read than most! If the history of the [Export] Reviewing Committee were ever to be written this would be of considerable interest. So it had better be kept—but securely to protect the main parties.”

Pope-Hennessy, a distinguished Renaissance scholar, was nicknamed The Pope. He also collected Italian paintings. A former V&A director, he became director of the British Museum in 1974. Two years later he was offered a post at New York’s Metropolitan Mus­eum, as head of its paintings department.

The masterpiece in Pope-Hennessy’s collection was Annibale Carracci’s The Vision of St Francis, which he had bought at the Bridgewater sale in 1946, for the sum of £28. When he left for New York, he applied for an export licence for the Carracci (then valued at £25,000) and two other major Italian works, Domenichino’s Christ Carrying the Cross (£10,000) and Lunetti’s Mar­riage of the Virgin (£5,000).

Writing on British Museum notepaper, Pope-Hennessy told Levey on 11 November 1976 that “my intention has always been that my 17th-century Italian pictures should eventually go to the Ashmolean [Museum in Oxford]…They are bequeathed to the Ashmolean in my will, and though I cannot, of course, give an undertaking that none of them will in [an] emergency be sold, I should be very sorry if the Ashmolean were deprived of them.” Pope-Hennessy then left for New York, and since export licences were granted, the paintings went with him.

Within a few weeks of his arrival, in January 1977, Pope-Hennessy sold his Carracci to London dealer Colnaghi. Levey was furious, writing to the Export Reviewing Committee on 7 February to say that Pope-Hennessy’s decision to sell was “extremely shoddy and disingenuous”. It was then that Levey made the astonishing admission that it would have been “difficult” to have recommended that the Carracci should be deferred, because it was owned by a fellow museum director. He added that he had received reassurances that the paintings would go to the Ashmolean.

The Export Reviewing Committee was equally angry for different reasons. Professor John White, committee chairman and an academic at University College, London, drafted a letter to Levey: “The entire system would be undermined if it became evident that, in seeking export licences, one class of citizens might have advantage over another.” White asked arts officials at the former department of education and science to formally reprimand Levey—otherwise the entire committee might resign, making the scandal public.

Levey reacted strongly, writing to the government department to say he condemned the committee’s “emotive attempt to pre-judge the issue, reflecting in the most flagrant way on myself as expert adviser”.

Arts minister Lord Donaldson called in Levey for a meeting on 14 March 1977. In their private conversation, Levey agreed to apologise. The following day he wrote a grovelling letter to the Export Reviewing Committee: “In extreme shock and much haste on receipt of the utterly unexpected news from Col­naghi’s, I wrote that letter in a semi-personal tone, and its phrasing is muddled and misleading. No one regrets it more than I do.” Professor White was not assuaged, saying that Levey’s apology, “did not greatly alter the situation”.

Behind the scenes officials did their best to defuse the crisis, fearing that publicity would damage the government. On 24 March 1977, Professor White agreed to drop the matter, but said his committee still “retained its misgivings about Mr Levey’s handling of this case, but did not propose to resign”. Levey still felt rankled, complaining in a note to the minister of the committee’s “kangaroo-court-cum-star-chamber behaviour”.

Meanwhile, the price of the Carracci was spiralling upwards. Although Colnaghi paid £25,000 in January, an official wrote in March that it was already worth “nearer £100,000”. Later that year it was bought by the National Gallery of Canada, for an undisclosed sum.

Six years later Pope-Hennessy sold his Domenichino (for which he had paid £38) to the Getty Museum, through New York dealer Bob Haboldt. Again the price has not been disclosed, but Pope-Hennessy later said it was $750,000. It too had gone through the export licensing system, without it being deferred to allow a UK national collection to match the price.

Pope-Hennessy died in 1994, and none of his paintings were bequeathed to the Ashmolean. Two years later his remaining collection was sold at Christie’s, fetching $1.6m.

Although Levey (who died last December) allowed the Carracci to be exported, Pope-Hennessy seems to have thought little of the National Gallery’s director. In his 1991 autobiography he was scathing: “The gallery was badly and insensitively hung, and under the then director, Michael Levey, this had reached a crisis point.” He certainly felt he owed the National Gallery director no favours, despite Levey’s ill-judged support for him over the Carracci.