"Same Song, Hundreth Verse" - Beaverbrook Style

How does that old song go?   Same song, second verse, a little bit louder and a little bit worse. This is the third blog entry on the ongoing Beaverbrook saga. To see the other articles please click here.  The ongoing struggle is assuming almost pathetic overtones. On one hand, the English descendants of the east coast financial magnate Max Aitken, are struggling to regain possession of an extremely expensive collection of paintings and in the other corner the Canadian Beaverbrook Gallery is struggling to hang onto a collection which they believe was permanently bequeathed to them to as an art legacy.

Who isn't surprised that the big winners are the lawyers whose legal costs have eaten up 2.8 million Foundation dollars.

CBC News (online): 

CBC News has obtained details of a proposed settlement that would have ended the eight-year-old legal dispute between the Beaverbrook Art Gallery and the Beaverbrook Canadian at Foundation. 

The two sides would have split the 78 paintings roughly evenly, based on whether they came to the gallery before or after its opening in September 1959, according to foundation documents. 

But the settlement was rejected by the Canadian foundation board, even though it was negotiated by Timothy Aitken, the foundation’s chairman and one of Lord Beaverbrook’s grandsons.

The rejection prompted Aitken to resign from the foundation, the documents show. Aitken confirmed the events in an interview with CBC News, his first on the subject. 

To view the complete news article, please click here.

Beaverbrook Gallery Wins!

Turner: Fountain of Indolence 1834

So the battle endeth at last! The Beaverbrook lot of descendents have returned home to England, after a 6 year legal fight to seize the paintings in the Beaverbrook Gallery and take them home with them. Not that they haven't been doing it anyway.
The family has had a sorry reptutation of conviently "borrowing pictures" and then forgetting to return them to the gallery.

It all came to a head with a 6 year legal fight over ownership. The descendents claimed that the works were "loaned" to the gallery. The gallery said, "no way", they were a legally bequeathed to the gallery as trustees by Lord Beaverbrook.

Please click here to see the previous story in this saga.

I suspect that it was a win-loss situation for the gallery. |The gallery got back what they were legally entitled to, and Lady Maxwell Aitken and family flew back to England, leaving behind them the Beaverbrook Gallery, to pay for the legal costs.

You can't win for losing it seems.

The story can be found by clicking here to be taken to The Art Newspaper.

We Want Turner Back! Legal fight goes to Court

Beaverbrook heir wants Freud and Turner back!

Are you ready for this? When is a gift bequeathment not a gift bequeathment?
Not when it is a Turner Painting given to New Brunswick's Beaverbrook Gallery, by the late Lord, himself.

Its reported that Max Aitken, moved to the UK where he gained his peerage - and bought himself a mansion, and he acquired along the way, grandchildren who today want the two most valuable paintings back. The old family mansion is said to cost a fortune to repair, and times are tough nowadays, and the gallery has about $200 million dollars hanging on their walls out there in one of the colonies. Get the story?

The fun begins today, with an open court session in which both sides will trot out their paperwork to determine who gets to keep the collection. The Beaverbrooks have already gone down this road before and the courts settled on the collection staying where it is - in the gallery. But, times have changed and $200 million is a lot of change.

I know of one man who went to court, with his wife pushing him in a wheelchair, and him hoping for a softening of a judicial heart. I wonder if the descendents will appear with runs in stockings, and their elbows poking out of their Harris Tweet jackets?

They've got their eyes set on the two big ones, Fountain of Indolence, by JW Turner, and Hotel Bedroom, by Lucien Freud.

Beaverbrook's descendents have had a habit of taking the Lord's paintings out of the gallery, on loan, then selling them off.

The gallery's documents showing their legal entitlement to the paintings were earned for them a decision in court the first time around. Story has it that over the years, Beaverbrook's descendents have bullied the gallery management into signing documents which claim that the paintings were lenders and not keepers.

Please click here to be taken to the source of this content,Canada.com.

Another source. The brunswickian. Click here.