News

AIL scheme benefits the nation

MLA, the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, has acquired £4.5 million worth of items of cultural importance for the nation – all thanks to the Acceptance in Lieu scheme. Amongst the nation’s latest treasures are ten Barbara Hepworth sculptures and a Turner pencil and watercolour.

1 Mar 2006 12:00

Judi Jagger

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The MLA’s Acceptance in Lieu (AIL) scheme allows works of art and heritage objects to be offered to the nation to satisfy inheritance tax. It has been operating for more than half a century. In that time it has brought thousands of objects into public collections and saved many houses and their contents which now belong to the National Trust. In the last five years alone, items valued at over £140m have been acquired through the scheme and allocated to public collections. In the latest batch of acquisitions, 31 items have been acquired for the £4.5 million outlay over the past few months.

The Hepburn sculptures have been allocated to Tate and most will stay in Cornwall – fitting, as this is the landscape that inspired their creator.

Other objects accepted include paintings by J M W Turner and Edward Lear, two Arts and Crafts brooches, three bronze sculptures by Gertrude Spencer Stanhope, and a group of fourteen paintings, prints and watercolours by modern European artists including Modigliani and Kandinsky.

Mark Wood, MLA Chairman, says: ‘These wonderful sculptures, paintings and jewellery will come into public ownership thanks to the Acceptance in Lieu Scheme, which ensures that important objects can be offered to the nation as payment of inheritance tax. As funding for acquisitions becomes increasingly difficult, the Acceptance in Lieu scheme grows in importance and is now vital to our museums and galleries.’

The full details of the offers which have recently been accepted are:

Ten sculptures by Dame Barbara Hepworth (1903 – 1975). Dame Barbara Hepworth was one of the leading British sculptors of the twentieth century. Unlike her contemporaries Henry Moore, Constantin Brancusi and Jean Arp, who produced simplifications of organic forms, Hepworth created what can be regarded as the first abstract sculptures ever made. Her commitment to abstraction placed her at the forefront of modern art, and the London studio she shared with the painter Ben Nicholson became the centre of the abstract art movement in Britain. At the outbreak of the Second World War, Hepworth and Nicholson moved to St Ives, Cornwall, where they remained until her death in 1975. Her home has become a museum dedicated to her work and nine of the ten sculptures will be displayed in the Barbara Hepworth Sculpture Garden, St Ives.

The acceptance of the sculptures settled over £1.6 million of tax. They have been allocated to Tate for display primarily at the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden in St Ives, Cornwall, which was the artist’s home and workplace, and where they have been on loan since her death in 1975.

J M W Turner: Naples from the Mole pencil and watercolour with scratching out, 140 x 213 mm. This work is one of a series of 20 commissioned by Turner’s friend James Hakewill in 1817 to illustrate the latter’s book ‘Picturesque Tour of Italy’ . Since Turner had never visited Italy himself, he used Hakewill’s own pencil sketches as a basis for the watercolours. Seven other artists were also commissioned to produce illustrations, but the publisher ultimately refused to use any that were not done by Turner. This commission represents Turner’s first encounter with Italy, a country which was to have such a strong influence on his later work, and was probably the inspiration for his first visit there in 1819 . Only one other work from this series is in a UK collection. The acceptance of this offer settled £105,000 of tax. A decision on where the watercolour is to be allocated has not yet been made.

Two Arts and Crafts peacock-shaped pendant brooches. These two brooches were designed by C R Ashbee (1863-1942), a designer, architect and social reformer, and a driving force behind the Arts and Crafts movement. In 1888, inspired by the writings of John Ruskin and William Morris, and driven by his own social ideals, he established the Guild and School of Handicraft in London’s East End. Ashbee made a conscious effort to design jewellery for women of modest means as opposed to the Continental tradition of catering for the wealthy.

The peacock, which was one of Ashbee’s favourite motifs, became an iconic symbol of the Arts and Crafts movement. The larger of the two brooches has been allocated to the Victoria and Albert Museum, where it will take pride of place in the new Jewellery gallery which is currently under development. The smaller brooch was offered with a wish that, in due course, it should be allocated to the Museum of Cotswold Arts and Crafts which is due to open in Chipping Camden in 2007. Until that time it will be temporarily allocated to the V&A. The acceptance of these two brooches settled £62,500 of tax.

A Collection of 14 modern paintings, prints and watercolours. This collection of late nineteenth and early twentieth century British and European artists includes:
Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944): Wanderschleier, watercolour. A fine example of the artist’s cool, rational Bauhaus period of the 1920s.
Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920): A Young Girl (1918), pencil drawing. A delicate drawing which demonstrates the elongation characteristic of his style, and the face has an unusual psychological intensity.
Jack Butler Yeats (1871-1957): Grafter’s Glory, oil on canvas. Vivid colouring and brushwood typical of the Expressionist school by the brother of the Irish poet W B Yeats.
László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946): Johhny spielt auf, watercolour. Coloured shapes on a white ground, reminiscent of a deconstructed musical score. The title refers to a celebrated jazz opera of the 1920s by Ernst Krenek.
André Masson (1896-1987) L’hombre de l’herbe , oil and sand on canvas. A major sand painting from late in the artist’s career, in which the contrast between the grittiness of the sand and the delicacy of the pastel colours is particularly effective.

The works, spanning many European countries over a period of more than half a century, in a variety of media, are considered to be of importance for the study of the development of modern art, and many of the artists are currently poorly represented in UK collections. The acceptance of the collection settled £356,300 of tax. All of the works have been allocated to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford in accordance with the condition attached to the offer. They will enrich the already fine collection of 20th century art.

Edward Lear: Jerusalem Well. Known as a writer of nonsense poems, Edward Lear was also an accomplished painter, primarily of landscapes. He traveled extensively in Italy, Greece and the Middle East, producing pencil and watercolour sketches which he worked up in oils back in his studio. This painting was commissioned by a friend of Lear’s, Samuel Price Edwards, in 1865. Lear based the work on pencil and watercolour sketches made out of doors during his visit to the Holy Land seven years before. It is one of his finest oil paintings, in terms of both subject and technique. The acceptance of this painting, one of only a few Lear oils in UK public collections, settled £490,000 of tax. A decision on the allocation of the painting has not yet been made.

Three bronze statues by Gertrude Spencer Stanhope. Mary Gertrude Elizabeth (known as Gertrude) Spencer-Stanhope (1857-1944) was the eldest of 11 children, and a sculptress and painter at a time when female sculptors were rare. She came from an artistic family; her uncle John Roddam Spencer Stanhope and cousin Evelyn de Morgan were both Pre-Raphaelite artists. The three statues, cast in bronze with a dark patina, are: A figure of Pan seated and playing pipes (73 cm high); A figure of the seated Orpheus (73 cm high); and A figure of a naked young woman (78 cm high). These are the only known bronzes by this artist, and are fine examples of the small-scale domestic bronze that was popular in late 19th century Britain. The statues settled £7,700 of tax, and have been allocated to Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council for display at Cannon Hall, which was the home of the Spencer-Stanhope family for over 200 years and was where Gertrude was born and raised.

The AIL Annual Reports for the years 2000 to 2005 are available on the MLA website and give full details of all the items accepted in this period and where they can be seen by the public.

Judi Jagger

About the Author

Judi Jagger is a freelance writer who lives on 15 acres of rural isolation overlooking an island. She loves how the Internet can bring the world to her. When she does venture out, it is to the theatre and cinema and to visit galleries and bookshops. In a previous life she has been a teacher, a librarian, a cleaner (very, very briefly) and a hospital admissions clerk. The nicest thing anyone has told her was that she was “educated, not domesticated”. It was meant disparagingly. She will get round to putting it on a T-shirt one day.