The secret art collection
David Roche was a complex character – happy to display his prize-winning pedigree dogs to the world, but never the $80 million of art treasures hidden behind his garden wall. Now, writes Beverley Hadgraft, all that has changed.
PERCHED ON A pedestal in Adelaide’s newest gallery is a large green malachite vase. It’s a valuable piece, worth millions of dollars. Inside are three things: the ashes of the benefactor who provided for that gallery, the extraordinary David Roche; his death mask (he saw one Napoleon had done at Les Invalides in Paris and wanted one himself) and an embroidered pillow, a nod to his sexuality, which reads, “It’s not easy being a queen”.
“His mother gave it to him. He adored it and thought it very funny,” says Martyn Cook, David’s great friend, art dealer and now Director of The David Roche Foundation.
Some may think it peculiar the obsessive collector asked for his ashes to be in the home-gallery at all. Actually, it’s rather poignant. In his lifetime, despite the fact it’s considered the most impressive private collection of decorative arts in the southern hemisphere, David hardly showed his $80 million worth of paintings, ceramics, bronzes, furniture and other European works to anyone.
He suffered from such shyness and insecurity, he couldn’t bear the thought of people thinking it wasn’t up to much. It might even have destroyed him, says Lorraine Felix, his adored personal assistant.
Instead, he decided, people would have to wait until he died to enjoy it. Unmarried and childless, David left the collection, his home, Fermoy House, and a large endowment so it could stay in his beloved Adelaide and be open to the public.
Much of it remains in situ in his home in Melbourne Street, North Adelaide, although it has been given a little more breathing space. The rest will be shown in rotating exhibitions in a new, specially built wing.
He even left instructions for visitors to be able to sit on the chairs and, with supervision, handle the pieces, just as he did. “I don’t want those horrible ropes across doorways and Perspex screens,” he instructed.
It seems sad to have so much loveliness in your life and not share – a bit like going on holiday on your own.
“It is,” agrees Lorraine, “but he was terrified people might say, ‘Oh, it’s a bit ordinary.’”
Of all the adjectives you might use to describe David Roche’s collection, “ordinary” would be bottom of the list.
What did Lorraine think the first time she saw it?
“My first reaction was, ‘Oh, my goodness, what is the colour of this carpet?’ It was a bright green,” she says. “And then, ‘Oh, my heavens, he has got quite a collection.’ You could barely move in some of the spaces. The house had 13-foot [4 metre] ceilings and some were hung five deep with paintings.”
She was, she says, dazzled by the gilt and colour. In the kitchen, she stared at the Welsh dresser crammed with money banks, letter holders and other quirky objects, and thought how impractical it was. “There was hardly anything on it you’d use.”
“Most people’s reaction is, ‘Wow!’,” says Martyn, laughing. “A lady came the other day and used the F word. She said, ‘Pardon me, but this is unbelievable.’”
Martyn, an aesthete and shameless dropper of names of famous collectors, dealers and decorators, admits his first reaction was, “It’s a bit ‘shoulder pads’!”
“David was never afraid of colour,” he says. The rooms were eye-popping reds, blues and yellows, with pattern on pattern, and the surfaces, drawers and walls of every room were crammed with thousands of objects from mechanical toys to priceless porcelain.
How did anyone even move?
“Good question. Very carefully,” he says.
Martyn was usually called on the rare occasions David did anticipate guests. “He’d invite his fellow dog show judges round, for instance, and someone would say, ‘That’s a beautiful picture’, and David would look at me to explain who it was by and of,” he says.
As a highly respected dog show judge, “In the dog world, David was supremely confident and always had an informed comment, but when it came to antiques, he was shy and didn’t like explaining his collection,” Martyn says. “On one occasion, he made himself quite unwell with nervousness. If people asked, ‘What made you buy it?’, he’d reply only, ‘I like it’.”
Even when the Art Gallery of South Australia borrowed from the collection for two exhibitions, David was full of angst and decided he could only visit it incognito – plonking a baseball cap on his usually dapper self until the equally dapper Martyn told him he looked like the village idiot and should remove it.
Back to those dog shows. While David kept his collection of 18thand 19th-century antiques to himself, his prowess in the canine world was internationally renowned. He won 19 Best in Show ribbons at Australia’s royal shows and was asked to judge at Crufts under the watchful eye of the most famous dog breeder of them all – Her Majesty the Queen.
His kennels, where he bred Afghan hounds, smooth-coated fox terriers and Kerry Blues, were state of the art, air-conditioned, sound-proofed and with massive runs.
“If people asked, ‘What made you buy it?’, he’ d reply only, ‘I like it’.”
Not surprisingly, many of his favourite paintings by the likes of Maud Earl and John Emms were of dogs. One of the first exhibitions his Foundation will show in the new wing is David Roche: Kennels and Collecting, which will include one of his favourite items, a Frederick T. Daws painting, Champions All, of nine dogs, all champions from one kennel. “He loved his dog pictures and then, after that, porcelain, from the simplest Staffordshire figurines to the most beautiful Meissen,” says Lorraine.
And since most of us have trouble remembering where we’ve left our keys, did he know where everything was? “Yes. You could say, ‘Where’s the Napoleon pistol?’, and he’d say, ‘Second drawer down …’” she says.
David Roche’s wealth came from the Adelaide Development Company, founded by his father. The family was a regular on the BRW Rich List and, as a child (one of six), he was often taken to Europe, travelling in style and being exposed to all the great collections and galleries.
His parents were collectors and, in his teens, David followed suit. Everything was chosen for a particular room, whether Regency furniture or a Rococo chandelier and, says Lorraine, towards the end of his life, David was practically buying a piece every day. “Sometimes, it wasn’t very big, only $2000, but he’d routinely go on overseas trips with Martyn and spend $1.5 million,” she says. “There was hardly a week when a crate wouldn’t arrive packed with purchases.”
Lorraine is a practical person, trained as an accountant. There were times she would unpack the crates and find herself staring at a rare but rather dull Russian plate with disbelief, thinking, “Dear Lord, that’s a deposit on a house”.
Having said that, Martyn reveals there was nothing that David enjoyed more than rummaging through a car boot sale.
“But, of course, he loved his great things – his ‘chorus girls’, he called them. He had an imperial hand seal from Alexander I, the Russian Tsar, and he thought that was marvellous.’”
Other “chorus girls” include an 1810 clock by Louis Moinet once owned by Prince Ernst August of Hanover. There’s a portrait of Russian Empress Catherine the Great – and one of her armchairs – and another of Nicholas I as well as furniture, chandeliers and other items once owned or used by Russian royalty. There’s a French commode owned by the first Duke of Wellington and ceramics, including examples from the Chinese Qing dynasty to Meissen, from Fabergé to Coalport.
Yet here’s another conundrum in the complex character that was David Roche: the great things shouldn’t be too great. He once refused to buy a George Stubbs horse painting, for instance, fearing it might cast a shadow on the rest of his pictures.
Bizarrely, he bought Saint Mary MacKillop’s headstone – as a Catholic, he was a great admirer. When her remains were exhumed and moved to North Sydney, he offered to lend it in perpetuity to the sisters there, says Martyn, but they politely responded, “We have Mary. We don’t need relics”.
David died on March 27, 2013, aged 83. He had been suffering from a red and sore wrist, which initially looked as if an insect had bitten it. When it didn’t get better, Lorraine insisted on driving him to hospital. It was actually sceptic arthritis and surgeons had to remove so much flesh that the resulting strain on his kidneys was too much. Three weeks later, he passed away.
Since the kennels had to be razed to make way for a new carpark, most of his beloved dogs were adopted by staff. One, a terrier that only David had ever been able to handle, chose his own new human, leaping into the arms of the father of one of the kennel attendants when he came to visit.
His friends and staff are pleased at how quickly they got the David Roche Foundation collection ready for public viewing. It was officially opened on June 3 by former Prime Minister Paul Keating, a great collector himself and the first exhibitions opened on June 7.
Would David approve of the new space? Lorraine and Martyn believe he would, but if you find yourself standing next to a large green malachite vase and hear it rattling … let someone know.
“He’ d routinely go on overseas trips with Martyn and spend $1.5 million.”