Search for Citizen Kane’s lost treasure
BRITAIN/UNITED STATES: Somewhere, almost certainly, there is wood panelling that overheard the plotting of the English Civil War.
Elsewhere, its location unrecorded, is an ornate oak parlour that served generations of Welsh barons - until it was transported to America in its entirety.
And, quite probably, in a forgotten California packing crate there will be plasterwork ceilings still stained with the first tobacco to make the transatlantic journey in the other direction. All of it is lost.
During the first half of the 20th century there were few greater signs of sophistication than for wealthy Americans to buy up British Elizabethan art, or even entire rooms, to decorate their mansions and townhouses.
Now, in one of his first acts as director of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Tristram Hunt is backing a call to locate this missing heritage and bring it back.
The former Labour MP said that the museum ‘‘stands ready to help with any attempts to identify and recover lost artworks’’ after leading historians called for efforts to find and buy back the art, much of which may have never left storage.
Among the first locations they hope to be allowed to investigate are the warehouses used to store the Hearst collection.
William Randolph Hearst, a newspaper publisher, was one of the most prolific art collectors in US history.
The tycoon, fictionalised by Orson Welles in Citizen Kane, displayed many of his works in his home in San Simeon, California - a castle called Xanadu in the film.
Such was his ambition that at the height of the craze for European interiors he used 11,000 crates to import an entire 12th-century Spanish monastery. This was despite the objections of local residents.
According to The New York Times, ‘‘Twice during the work of removing the cloister, the villagers, banding together, drove the workingmen away on the ground that foreigners were robbing the community of its greatest treasure.’’
Today the monastery stands in Florida, firmly on the tourist trail.
However, while hiding a Cistercian monastery is difficult, a medieval drawing room is easier.
Hearst only ever showed a fraction of the art - and interiors - he acquired and, at least according to rumour, much is still sealed.
Citizen Kane alluded to this, with a scene showing boxes and boxes of his art in storage. Tens of thousands of lots were also auctioned after his death, spreading his treasures around the country.
Hunt hopes that a call by John Harris, the historian, and Sir Roy Strong, a former director of the V&A, to find this missing heritage could lead to an opening of the vaults.
‘‘This could turn out to be fascinating, and we would love to know what might still be hidden in Hearst’s Xanadu,’’ Hunt said.
One of the contenders is a Tudor oak parlour made for Gwydir castle in the Conwy Valley, north Wales, which has already been traced to a purchase by the billionaire - but has not been seen since the 1930s.
Another room from the castle, also sold to Hearst, was found in the 1990s in storage at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and purchased by the present castle owners.
Strong said that at the height of the craze ‘‘ship loads’’ of material were sent to the US.
‘‘Masses of stuff went over in the earlier part of the 20th century, when there was a vogue for this stuff,’’ he said.
At the time, Elizabethan portraits could go for £50 (NZ$87) and little of it was recorded.
‘‘There was a passion for period rooms, whole rooms would be sold - with dealers supplying panelling and fitments,’’ he said.
If some of this is located, it might go some way to remedying a half-century of plunder that one British newspaper at the time described as ‘‘a raid’’ and which prompted an act of parliament.
After the sale and dismantling of Agecroft Hall, an entire Tudor mansion, the Manchester Guardian wrote: ‘‘No building of decent age and character is safe from the danger of kidnapping.’’
It seems unlikely that Hearst would feel remorse, though, not least because many of the panellings sold came from houses being demolished.
Like many Americans witnessing the turmoil in Europe in the first half of the 20th century, he viewed his collection as a way of preserving humanity’s heritage.
Arthur Byne, his art dealer, once said: ‘‘My only role in life is taking down old works of art, conserving them to the best of my ability and shipping them to America.’’ - The Times
"This could turn out to be fascinating, and we would love to know what might still be hidden in Hearst's Xanadu." Tristram Hunt, Victoria and Albert Museum in London