Helping Britain Buy British

In the glory days of Empire, English art buyers plundered the riches of Italy, France and Greece. But since World War II, the down-at-heel British lion has been unable to compete with Americans, Japanese, and assorted European collectors in the all too open international art market. As a result they have begun to concentrate on simply hanging onto whatever treasures they already have. They rallied round to raise $4 million, thus saving a Titian. But another masterpiece --Velasquez's portrait of his assistant Juan de Pareja, for example, was snatched from them in 1970 by a $5.5 million offer from New York's Metropolitan Museum. This Christmas, though, Britons had an art-treasure story with a happy ending that was almost Dickensian.

The unlikely painter in question was George Stubbs. The son of a Liverpool tanner, Stubbs began drawing human bones when he was only eight years old. Later in life he sequestered himself on a Lincolnshire farm with his "niece," lugged the carcasses of horses into his studio, then flayed and dissected them so he could study their anatomy. Local folk complained that Stubbs made the country round smell like a battlefield. But in 1766, when Stubbs finally published his scrupulous horse drawings, they were recognized as masterly. His paintings, however, were admired mainly by horse lovers, many of them titled. Only in the past two decades have modern critics begun to value him highly, because he had a fine eye for English landscape and deceptively simple pastoral scenes of farmers at work.

Six months ago, it suddenly appeared that two of his very best works, The Haymakers and The Reapers painted in 1785, were about to be bought away from England. Their owner, Major John Lycett Wills, found that he had to sell off the pair. As recently as 1933 they had brought only -L-10 apiece; this year their worth was estimated at $1.8 million. Generously the owner offered them to London's Tate Gallery for a bargain price of $1.4 million, giving Director Sir Norman Reid till Christmas to raise the money.

After plastering London with handsome SAVE THE STUBBS posters, the Tate managed to collect $900,000. By November they were still short, when aid came from an unexpected source. Philanthropist Paul Mellon, who recently gave much of his priceless collection of 18th and 19th century British paintings to Yale, had been considered the most likely foreign buyer if the Tate fell short. But Mellon, a self-styled "galloping Anglophile," felt the paintings should stay in England. He contributed four paintings from his private collection, two Vuillards, a Bonnard and a Giacometti, to a benefit auction. They went for about $90,000, and soon, with more than a little help from the British government, the two Stubbs found themselves safely ensconced in the Tate. British art lovers could breathe easy--for a while at least.

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