‘Generous donor’ bails out National Gallery on Chagall
OTTAWA • An anonymous donor has come to the aid of the National Gallery of Canada, agreeing to pay auction house Christie’s an undisclosed amount so that next week’s proposed sale of Marc Chagall’s La Tour Eiffel would be cancelled, a gallery spokeswoman said Thursday.
The gallery, which owns the painting, and the auction house, which had been contracted to sell it on May 15 in New York, earlier ended their two-week silence regarding the controversy surrounding the 1929 work by the French-Russian painter.
The terse one-paragraph joint statement noted that “a mutually satisfactory financial agreement has been reached, which is not at the expense of the National Gallery of Canada.”
In recent weeks, there has been speculation the gallery could have faced a sevenfigure cancellation fee for removing the Chagall painting from the auction.
In an email, the gallery’s senior media and public relations officer Josée-Britanie Mallet elaborated that the National Gallery “will not pay a penalty for the withdrawal of the painting from the sale. The Gallery and Christie’s have come to a financial agreement which is being supported by a generous donor, who has requested anonymity and nondisclosure of the amount.”
The Chagall painting, which Christie’s had reportedly toured internationally to woo potential buyers, is now in New York, National Gallery director and CEO Marc Mayer said Wednesday. The joint statement from the gallery and Christie’s says that they are working out “next steps to return the painting to the gallery.
For much of last month, Mayer publicly championed the sale of the Chagall painting for as much as an estimated US$9 million.
The initial goal of the unprecedented sale was to raise funds to purchase the painting Saint Jerome Hears the Trumpet of the Last Judgement by Jacques-Louis David, which is owned by the Notre-Dame-de-Québec parish corporation in Quebec City, and which Mayer had said was a “national treasure” at risk of leaving Canada if the parish corporation sold it to a foreign buyer.
It emerged in mid-April that two museums in Quebec were also interested in acquiring the David painting, collaborating with the National Gallery if need be.
Quebec’s Minister of Culture effectively blocked the National Gallery from acquiring the David painting by designating it part of Quebec’s heritage, saying it would remain in the province. The gallery then decided to call off the sale of the Chagall painting, since the David painting was no longer in danger of leaving Canada.