Unorthodox artist leaves a stunning £91m legacy
ONE of them has amassed a property empire which includes a £39 million John Nash mansion overlooking Regent’s Park. The other made do with a modest North London house, which remained uncleaned for decade after decade.
But those who assume that shark-pickler Damien Hirst has for years been Britain’s most richly remunerated artist — certainly infinitely wealthier than sculptress Phyllida Barlow — may now need to revise that assessment.
For I can disclose that Dame Phyllida, who died last year aged 78, bequeathed a fortune of no less than £91.5 million — almost every penny earned in the last 13 years of her life.
The details, revealed in probate documents, represent an extraordinary transformation for an artist, who, as one obituary recorded, ‘for decades sold nothing’ — a fact which suggested that her enthusiasm for creating ramshackle works from a magpie hoard of luridly painted junk was not widely shared.
Barlow and her husband, fellow artist Fabian Peake, who had five children, had been reduced to near poverty by the 1980s, even though Barlow had become a teacher at London’s Slade School of Fine Art.
But in 2010, a year after she’d retired at 65, an exhibition of her work was held at the Serpentine Gallery in London. It brought her critical acclaim — and attention from the Swiss gallery Hauser & Wirth, of which Princess Eugenie is now a director.
Its co-founder, Iwan Wirth, decided to visit Barlow at home. On arrival, he told his driver that they must have got the wrong address. But they hadn’t.
An exhibition followed in 2011 — as did many others, plus a commission from Tate Britain and selection to represent her country at the Venice Biennale.
Though unseen till now, the money poured in. An admiring critic likened one of her works to ‘a 30ft-high staircase constructed out of packing crates [that] leads nowhere’. Except, it transpires, to a staggering fortune — all of which Barlow left to her husband.