THE National Gallery in London faces a legal challenge over ownership of a £500 million collection of Renaissance masterpieces amid accusations that it has failed to honour terms of a bequest.
A descendant of the benefactor who bequeathed 43 works by Raphael, Titian, Botticelli and others in the 1920s says that he can no longer tolerate the gallery’s refusal to observe conditions of the original will.
Richard Hornsby, the great-great-grandson of Ludwig Mond, the chemist who laid the foundations of ICI, said the gallery’s treatment of the Mond Collection was “theft by any other name — this is disgraceful treatment towards one of its greatest donors”.
The paintings went to the gallery with the condition that they would remain “substantially united”. The family funded half the cost of building a room for them. The Mond Room has not been devoted to the pictures since 1945 and is now filled with Van Dycks. The collection is scattered. Raphael’s Crucifixion of 1503, possibly worth £70 million, is in the Sainsbury Wing. A further 12 pictures including Murillo’s St John the Baptist in the Wilderness are in the Lower Galleries A and C. On a visit yesterday, Mr Hornsby was told that, because of staff shortages, these galleries were open only on Wednesdays. As many as 17 pictures were in storage, according to the information he collected, and two works have been on loan to the British Museum for a decade.
Mr Hornsby, 54, chief executive of the Sir Robert Mond Memorial Trust, a mental health charity in London, said: “By stealth, Mond pictures have been placed according to curators’ preferences in historical order and scattered throughout the gallery.
“All that remains of the collection is a small plaque in the Mond Room saying that the room was built with a donation from the Mond family. A list of pictures and their current distribution can be asked for at the gallery desk. Who would do that?” He decided to speak out after reading in The Times last month that hundreds of paintings by Turner could be lost to the nation because the National and the Tate have not honoured terms of the artist’s will. Like them, Mr Hornsby has contacted a QC, Leolin Price, who said: “National institutions think they can behave in a way that would not be tolerated or condoned in any other private institution or company.”
Ludwig Mond (1839-1909) was a German Jewish émigré, son of a cloth merchant who came to England in 1867. He donated away substantial sums to scientific institutions and later devoted more time to building a Renaissance collection. Mr Hornsby said: “He felt that as an immigrant and a Jew he had been treated equitably by England and he left a bequest to the National Gallery to reflect his gratitude.”
He accuses the National Gallery of not only disregarding the terms of the bequest but also of refusing to hand back 12 pictures left to Mond’s sons, Sir Robert and Sir Alfred, the 1st Lord Melchett and Mr Hornsby’s great-grandfather. Mond stipulated that the entire collection was to be transferred to the gallery after the death of his wife, Frida. Mr Hornsby said that, in accordance with the wishes of her late husband, she left 12 paintings to her sons when she died in 1923. He has a letter of 1913 in which she made that clear, as well as a sworn testimony by Mond’s private secretary in the 1920s saying that Mond had asked him to mark the initials “AM” and “RM” on the 12 pictures. Those works included Tintoretto’s Gunboats of the Venetian Navy and Giovanni Bellini’s Pieta.
In 1923, Sir Alfred wrote to the National Gallery about the 12 pictures, saying: “It is impossible to contend that when a gift of this magnitude and importance is made to a body of men representing the public that they should have no regard to the expressed desire and intention of the donor.”
Mr Hornsby said: “The gallery wanted all the pictures. I’m contesting whether the gallery has any right to the 12 paintings and that, since it has broken the terms of bequest, they may have forfeited the rights to the other paintings.”
A gallery spokeswoman said: “Our aim has always been to make sure our collection is on display at all times but from time to time paintings have to be moved. Since the collection is displayed chronologically it is not possible to hang the Mond pictures together but a list is available at the information desks.”
The National Gallery's Mond Collection
Not on view
Fra Bartolommeo The Virgin Adoring the Child with St Joseph
Gentile Bellini The Virgin and Child Enthroned
Giovanni Bellini The Virgin and Child
Francesco Bissolo The Virgin and Child with St Paul and a Female Martyr
G B Cima St Mark
G B Cima Saint Sebastian
Correggio Head of an Angel
Correggio Heads of Two Angels
Francesco Francia The Virgin and Child with an Angel Garofalo A Pagan Sacrifice
North Italian Portrait of a Man in a Large Black Hat
Longhi Catherina Penza
Loschi Portrait of Alberto Pio
Salviati Justice
Titian (after) Portrait of a Man
Signorelli Coriolanus persuaded by His Family to spare Rome
Gaudenzio Ferrari St Andrew (store)
Restricted view. Since September, Lower Gallery A only on Wednesday afternoons or "subject to warder availability"
Giovanni A Boltraffio A Man in Profile (Lower Gallery A) Mirabello Cavalori A Discussion (LGA)
Carlo Crivelli Saints Peter and Paul (LGA)
Giampietrino Salome (LGC)
Giambono A Saint with a Book (LGA)
Lazzarini Portrait of Antonio Correr (LGA)
Luini The Virgin and Child with St John (LGC)
Luini St Catherine (LGA)
Murillo St John the Baptist in the Wilderness (LGA) Sacchi St Paul Writing (LGA)
Sodoma St Jerome in Penitence (LGC)
Signorelli Esther before Ahasuerus and Three Episodes from the Life of St Jerome (LGA)
On view
Giovanni Bellini The Dead Christ Supported by Angels (Room 62)
Sandro Botticelli Four Scenes from the Early Life of St Zenobius (Room 58)
Sandro Botticelli Three Miracles of St Zenobius (Room 58)
Lucas Cranach The Close of the Silver Age (Room 4) Dosso Dossi The Adoration of the Kings (Room 5) Gaudenzio Ferrari Christ rising from the Tomb (SW Exhibition)
Ghirlandaio The Virgin and Child (Room 51)
Mantegna The Holy Family with St John (Room 61)
Palma Vecchio A Blonde Woman (Room 10)
Raphael The Crucified Christ with the Virgin Mary, Saints and Angels (Room 60)
Titian Virgin and Child (Room 9)
Starnina The Beheading of a Female Saint (Room 54)
On loan to British Museum
Greco-Roman A Young Woman
Greco-Roman A Man with a Wreath
Ludwig Mond bequethed 43 works of art in the 1920s.
