Museum acquisitions

THE closure of Sherborne House in Dorset leaves a question mark over the future of the Elizabeth Frink Archive, the premier assemblage of the sculptor’s work.

Art dealer Andrew Sim has sold a watercolour by Richard Dadd (1817-1886) to the Metropolitan Museum in New York. It is the first work by the enigmatic Victorian artist to enter the museum’s vast art collection.

Soon after marrying his young wife Jane, William Morris commissioned his friend Philip Webb to build them a house. The end result, completed in 1859, was Red House, named after its steep red-tiled roof.

HERITAGE grants have helped the British Museum acquire the 15th century illuminated manuscript known as the Wardington Hours.

ROYAL Doulton Ltd are looking for a new owner for their Minton paper archive – the collection of thousands of original watercolours, drawings, pattern books and other manuscript material relating to designs for the Minton factory dating back to 1793.

The Victoria and Albert Museum have secured the funds to acquire this spectacular early 18th century French silver ewer and basin commissioned by John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough.

Museums should learn lessons of the 20th century

After a year-long fund-raising effort, The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford has just secured the future of its most impressive Chelsea porcelain exhibit.

The Museum in Docklands have acquired a rare and significant archive of 18th century papers highlighting London’s role in the transatlantic slave trade.

This Edgar Degas bronze owned by the late art dealer Lillian Browse has been saved for the nation in a deal brokered by Christie’s in lieu of inheritance tax. It follows a similar sale recently arranged by the auctioneers that saw the National Gallery acquire two works by Italian artist Giovanni Paolo Panini.

MUSEUMS are so strapped for cash when it comes to buying works of art that only one in 50 says adding to their collections is now a top priority.

MICK Jagger and Keith Richards may be doing well for 60-somethings, but they’ve got nothing on this old rocker. Dated to 1610, it is thought to be the oldest known rocking horse in the UK and was quite likely made for Charles I.

This Regency figured and gilded rosewood writing table with gilt brass mounts attributed to the Royal furniture-makers Morel and Hughes and once owned by former Prime Minister Earl Grey (1764-1845), has become the newest attraction on show at Temple Newsam House, Leeds.

It gives some idea as to how furniture connoisseurship has changed that the upholstered high-back chair pictured here could once have been accepted as an original furnishing from the bedroom of Mary Queen of Scots.

A LOOPHOLE in the export law has forced the British Museum to pay almost £100,000 more than the original auction price for the most expensive British coin ever sold. The museum believes the case highlights the need for Britain’s laws on exporting art to be reconsidered.

Dreweatt Neate Fine Art have arranged a major private treaty sale to the National Library of Australia, on behalf of a prominent UK family, of a historically important folio of watercolours.

A student has discovered a five-volume inventory of the possessions of Britain’s first Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, while cataloguing in the National Archives at Kew.

Alex Neish is to donate a small collection of Judaica to a museum at the recently excavated and restored 12th century synagogue in Barcelona.

THE memory of a long-ago, short-lived trade agreement between England and France was rekindled by an extraordinary embroidered waistcoat that surfaced in the Deburaux & Associés sale in Paris on February 11, when it sold to the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich for €5000 (£3470) plus 20.33% buyer’s premium.

Franz Xavier Messerschmidt (1736-83) was one of the most extraordinary figures in the history of Western art.