| View previous topic :: View next topic |
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
 |
|
The art heist took place at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. Ever heard of the Dulwich Picture Gallery? I had, I used to go there all the time as a South London kid with cultural pretensions. And a fondness for dinosaurs, lifesize statues of which dot its grounds. “No, you jizzock,†said Hatty, “that’s Horniman’s Museum." Anyway after some sharp exchanges, and some language we both regretted, it turned out that I hadn’t heard of the Dulwich Picture Gallery after all. Though the culturally pretentious Vered family had visited it several times.
The reason I am showing, for the first and last time, Hatty in a better light than myself is to emphasise that we are dealing with a) a very obscure gallery even to locals which nevertheless has b) some major works of art. That in itself is worth our attention. And apparently of serial art thieves...
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
| Rembrandt's small early Portrait of Jacob de Gheyn III has been stolen and recovered four times, most recently in 1983, and is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the most frequently stolen artwork in the world |
I seem to remember this is some kind of red flag for us. Are we talking Richardsons? Are we talking IRA? Are we talking the Pink Panther?
| It has been recovered from a left-luggage office in West Germany in 1986; returned anonymously; found on the back of a bicycle; and discovered under a bench in a graveyard in Streatham |
Sounds more like a zombie movie. But for sure, whenever you're talking Dulwich Picture Gallery, you're going way, way back...
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
Please bear in mind that nobody here chose the Dulwich Picture Gallery. It simply arose because of some shyster we were looking into because he had cropped up investigating some other shyster.
| Characteristically, he made conditions, which were non-negotiable. He was prepared to allow his collection to be displayed in its entirety either in a dedicated extension at the Dulwich Picture Gallery or in refurbished rooms in Somerset House. The latter option was prescient in terms of today’s use of the building but neither alternative was acceptable to the Government. |
So he flogged the lot at Sotheby's for a vast amount of money instead of leaving it all to a grateful nation. I couldn't understand how these two got conjoined since a) Dulwich is nowheresville and b) wasn't owned by the Government anyway, so I asked Hatty to see if there was anything we needed to know about Dulwich on the offchance. She then comes up with the art crime world record as quick as you like. Then another world record comes out of the wainscotting
| Dulwich Picture Gallery is an art gallery in Dulwich, South London. The gallery, designed by Regency architect Sir John Soane using an innovative and influential method of illumination, opened to the public in 1817. It is the oldest public art gallery in England |
You think that's early? Get a load of this
| The gallery was part of Alleyn's College of God's Gift, a charitable foundation established by the actor, entrepreneur and philanthropist Edward Alleyn in the early-17th century |
We've got a file on this gent though I can't remember where from. Apart from those three 'professions' all being art forger specialities. So while we're waiting for that, what about another world record (o.n.o.)
| The acquisition of artworks by its founders and bequests from its many patrons resulted in Dulwich Picture Gallery housing one of the country's finest collections of Old Masters |
And that means 'in the world outside a few palaces' since collections of Old Masters is a decidedly modern business. It's all beginning to add up. To what? I dunno, you work it out. I'm busy following the trail of the shyster before the shyster before the shyster.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
|
|
|
|
Edward Alleyn, says Wiki, was "an English actor who was a major figure of the Elizabethan theatre and founder of Dulwich College and Alleyn's School". The assessment is confirmed by a 'general consensus' among Eng Lit scholars
He was rated by common consent as the foremost actor of his time; his only close rival was Richard Burbage.
He played the title roles in three of Christopher Marlowe's major plays: Faustus, Tamburlaine, and Barabas in The Jew of Malta. He created the parts, which were probably written especially for him.
|
but then comes an admission that
| The evidence for his stage career is otherwise fragmentary. |
So how has his career come down to us? From his own writings apparently
| Alleyn is unusual among figures in 16th-century drama because a large selection of his private papers have survived. |
But were the papers written by Alleyn himself? Possibly not
| They were published in 1843 as The Alleyn Papers, edited by scholar-forger John Payne Collier. | |
|
| |
|
|
|
Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
|
|
|
|
John Payne Collier (1789 – 1883), was a Shakespearean critic and forger. He was a reporter and drama critic for the Morning Chronicle and his hobby was Shakespearean and early English drama on which he published an entire series of books
| After some minor publications, he produced in 1825–1827 a new edition of Dodsley's Old Plays and in 1833 a supplementary volume entitled Five Old Plays. In 1831 appeared his 3-volume History of English Dramatic Poetry to the Time of Shakespeare and Annals of the Stage to the Restoration [published by John Murray], a badly arranged but valuable work. |
Doubts about Collier's work were soon raised by Shakespeare scholars but not enough to worry the higher aristocracy, nor the British Museum
| It obtained for him the post of librarian to the Duke of Devonshire, and, subsequently, access to the chief collections of early English literature throughout the kingdom, especially to the treasures of Bridgewater House. In 1847 he was appointed secretary to the Royal Commission on the British Museum. |
and he lost no time in publishing new Shakespeare editions
| Over the next several years he claimed to find a number of new documents relating to Shakespeare's life and business. After New Facts, New Particulars and Further Particulars respecting Shakespeare had appeared and passed muster, Collier produced (1852) the famous Perkins Folio, a copy of the Second Folio (1632), so called from a name written on the title-page. In this book were numerous manuscript emendations of Shakespeare, said by Collier to be from the hand of "an old corrector." He published these corrections as Notes and Emendations to the Text of Shakespeare (1852) and boldly incorporated them in his next edition (1853) of Shakespeare. | |
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
|
Does he say where he's 'finding' all this stuff? 'Seek and ye shall find' is one of our watchwords. As they say on Mindhunter, the story of the founding of the FBI's Serial Killer Unit (Netflix, highly recommended), was working in the Duke of Devonshire's Library the trigger or the opportunity?
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
|
|
|
|
Not all modern scholars are convinced of Collier's guilt. One view is that he was "a victim of a conspiracy of which Frederick Madden was a part". We've come across several people of Madden's sort before
| In 1826 he was engaged by the British Museum to assist in the preparation of the classified catalogue of printed books, and in 1828 he became assistant keeper of manuscripts. In 1832 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.[2] At the age of 32 he was made a knight,[3] entitling him to the initials KH after his name, and in 1837 he succeeded Josiah Forshall as Keeper of Manuscripts. He did not get on well with his colleagues, and retired in 1866. |
He is massively important for being the person who found, and identified, the remnants of the Cotton Library
| In April 1837, when still the Assistant Keeper of Manuscripts, Madden was shown a garret of the old museum building which contained a large number of burnt and damaged fragments and codices of vellum manuscripts. Madden immediately identified them as part of the Cotton library collection, which had been badly damaged in a fire of 1731. |
The manuscripts were in a jumble, stashed in the garret, so how Madden could 'immediately' know they were from the Cotton Library is a bit of a puzzle. I'd been under the impression that the survivors of the library fire had been painstakingly collected and transferred more or less intact, as far as possible, into the care of the British Museum. We'll never know if all, or even any of, the docs mouldering away in the BM's garret were from Cotton's library
And there was another fire!
| As well as the fragments found in the garret, he carried out conservation work on the rest of the collection. Many manuscripts had become brittle and fragile, including the codex that contains the only known copy of Beowulf (Cotton Vittelius A xv). By 1845, the work was largely complete, though Madden was to suffer one more setback when a fire broke out in the Museum bindery, destroying completely some further works from the collection | |
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
|
Those of us who own grouse moors know this as 'controlled burning'. It keeps the undergrowth down and allows the new heather to flourish. That way the punters will keep coming back year after year.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
|
|
|
|
More than a hundred years after Edward Alleyn had died, John Payne Collier published the "MEMOIRS of EDWARD ALLEYN, FOUNDER OF DULWICH COLLEGE: Including Some New Particulars respecting Shakespeare, Ben Johnson, Massinger, Marston, Dekker &c." (printed for the Shakespeare Society, of which Frederick Madden was a fellow member)
Collier was exposed by Nicholas Hamilton in his Inquiry (1860). The point whether he was deceiver or deceived was left undecided, but the falsifications of which he was unquestionably guilty among the manuscripts at Dulwich College have left little doubt respecting it. He had produced the Memoirs of Edward Alleyn for the Shakespeare Society in 1841. He followed up this volume with the Alleyn Papers (1843) and the Diary of Philip Henslowe (1845).
He interpolated the name of Shakespeare in a genuine letter at Dulwich, and the spurious entries in Alleyn's Diary were proved to be by Collier's hand when the sale of his library in 1884 gave access to a transcript he had made of the Diary with interlineations corresponding with the Dulwich forgeries. |
Shakespeare's name is only mentioned once in the diary, in connection with a copy of the Sonnets not a play, which is strange for a supposedly great Shakespearean actor. Whether or not Alleyn was the most famous Elizabethan actor after Burbage, he appeared to own or co-own theatres and bear-gardens, with Philip.Henslowe. The accounts of the two men can't be reliably cross-checked because we've been told Collier had worked on both.
Henslowe, who had "extensive business interests, including dyeing, starch-making, pawn-broking, money lending and trading in goat skins", was Alleyn's father-in-law and they became business partners in the 1590s, Alleyn having gone AWOL from the theatrical company. The business of the future founder of the College of God's Gift at Dulwich is described as "several profitable playhouses, bear-pits and brothels".
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
|
That last sentence is interesting. How often have we heard that such and such villain, facing the prospect of meeting the Almighty, endows such and such religious/charitable foundation etc etc. Just as so many of the villains featured here have felt moved to give everything to the V & A, the British Museum etc etc after a lifetime of villainy. We still don't know what they're really up to. There's only so much tax planning and death duty avoidance to be done in one man's lifetime. If you're listening, Mr Almighty, give me a bell.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
|
|
|
|
One rather striking stipulation in Alleyn's charter of Dulwich College was that
| the Master and Warden should always be unmarried and of Alleyn's blood, and surname, and if the former was impossible then at least of Alleyn's surname. |
Not so much "God's gift" as Alleyn's. The 'y' in Alleyn would be dropped but the stipulation was adhered to and in Collier's day the Master of Dulwich College was Dr. John Allen, a constitutional historian, who obtained the post through the influence of Lord Holland, his patron.
During the tenure of Henry Vassall-Fox, 3rd Baron Holland (1773-1840) (son of the 2nd Baron) and his wife Elizabeth Vassall (1771-1845), John Allen's association with Holland House is perhaps what he is best known for, hence he is often referred to as Holland House Allen. In histories of Holland House he is frequently referred to as "Lord Holland's librarian".
In 1811, through the influence of his patron Lord Holland,[5] he was elected as Warden of Dulwich College and from 1820 was the Master of that establishment until his death in 1843. He is not considered one of the great Masters of the College as he spent little time there and did little to further the aims of its founder Edward Alleyn. | |
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
|
Wasn't he the bloke who discovered Alleyn's long lost charter? You know, the one that said the Big Cheese had to be called 'Alleyn'. o.n.o.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
|
|
|
|
Chatsworth House is one of England's great stately homes. Not the very greatest, the top two are Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard (despite their titles they're non-royal), designed by Sir John Vanbrugh, both a dramatist and an architect who's said to have invented 'English Baroque'. But Chatsworth can claim a world record, if you discount the royal family.
John Payne Collier's employer, the 6th Duke of Devonshire, was a sporadic art collector who 'travelled extensively' in Europe. According to the Guardian's excellent art reviewer, Jonathan Jones, visiting Chatsworth House, "The Devonshires have the greatest private collection of Old Master drawings in Britain, second only to the Queen's." The present Duke of Devonshire is Deputy Chairman of Sotheby's.
A word to the wise though
| Look at the paintings in Chatsworth and, as in any collection, many are copies, while all have been restored to various degrees. |
One wonders if some of the Chatsworth Old Master 'restorations' could have wound up at Dulwich's new gallery in 1814.
But it's the library that interests us, these days somewhat depleted. Determining the authenticity or otherwise of the Devonshire collection is now up to the Huntington Library.
| When the 8th Duke died in 1908 over £500,000 of death duties became due. This was a small charge compared to what was to follow forty-two years later, but the estate was already burdened with debt accumulated from the 6th Duke’s extravagances, the failure of the 7th Duke’s business ventures at Barrow-in-Furness, and the depression in British agriculture which had been apparent since the 1870s. In 1912 the family sold twenty-five books printed by William Caxton and a collection of 1,347 volumes of plays which had been acquired by the 6th Duke, including four Shakespeare folios and thirty-nine Shakespeare quartos, to the Huntington Library in California. |
The Huntington, it turns out, has its own world record
| Before his death in 1927, Huntington amassed "far and away the greatest group of 18th-century British portraits ever assembled by any one man". | |
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
We normally cotton on (geddit?) to world records because they become a priori selections and not just something we have picked out for attention. Something's got to be the best, that isn't significant; when something's the best and it has some other factor that points to chicanery, it becomes significant. But in these cases you've recently been highlighting, I wonder if something else is going on -- maybe instead of, maybe in addition to.
If you're a billionaire collector (whether in sixteenth, eighteenth or twentieth century terms) is there any point apart from being the best. If so, all your billions may not be enough to get you there. In your lifetime. Legitimately.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
|
|
|
|
The 6th Duke of Devonshire was Lord Chamberlain (twice) and as such he was in charge of licensing plays
| William George Spencer Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire, KG, PC (21 May 1790[1] – 18 January 1858), styled Marquess of Hartington until 1811, was a British peer, courtier, nobleman, and Whig politician. Known as the "Bachelor Duke", he was Lord Chamberlain of the Household between 1827 and 1828 and again between 1830 and 1834 |
But how did he accumulate such an impressive collection of plays, including 'four Shakespeare folios'? One hopes he acquired them from a reputable source
| He purchased in 1812 the library of Thomas Dampier, bishop of Ely, for £10,000, and in 1821 John Kemble's dramatic collections for £2,000. |
John Kemble was a well known actor-director, manager of the Drury Lane theatre, and later of the Theatre Royal in Covent Garden, and brother of the much more famous actress Sarah Siddons. Kemble was almost ruined financially when the Theatre Royal burnt down but was gifted £10,000 by the Duke of Northumberland. The last six years of his life were mainly spent abroad and he died in Lausanne where he was interred in 1823.
The Garrick Club (founded 1831) owned the most complete (the only?) theatrical library in Britain. There is no mention of a valuable Kemble library and nothing about any Shakespeare folios, but the Garrick did acquire a Kemble collection of sorts
| There is an important collection of John Philip Kemble's Covent Garden prompt books. |
After his death he wasn't forgotten, having a life-size marble statue close to his sister's statue in Westminster Abbey and a portrait (1798) by Sir William Beechey, "the leading English portraitist of the golden age of British painting", in the Dulwich Picture Gallery.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
The Library Index 
FAQ 
Search
Register
Profile 
Log in to check your private messages 
Log in 
