Chantrey Bequest
By the will dated 31 December 1840, Chantrey (who had no children) left his whole residuary personal estate after the decease or on the second marriage of his widow (less certain specified annuities and bequests) in trust for the president and trustees of the Royal Academy (or in the event of the dissolution of the Royal Academy, to such society as might take its place), the income to be devoted to the encouragement of British fine art in painting and sculpture only, by "the purchase of works of fine art of the highest merit ... that can be obtained." The funds might be allowed to accumulate for not more than five years; works by British or foreign artists, dead or living, might be acquired, so long as such works were entirely executed within the shores of Great Britain, the artists having been in residence there during such execution and completion. The prices to be paid were to be "liberal," and no sympathy for an artist or his family was to influence the selection. or the purchase of works, which were to be acquired solely on the ground of intrinsic merit. No commission or orders might be given: the works must be finished before purchase. Conditions were made as to the exhibition of the works, in the confident expectation that as the intention of the testator was to form and establish a public collection of British Fine Art in Painting and Sculpture, the government or the country would provide a suitable gallery for their display; and an annual sum of £300 and £50 was to be paid to the president of the Royal Academy and the secretary respectively, for the discharge of their duties in carrying out the provisions of the will.
Lady Chantrey died in 1875, and two years later the fund became available for the purchase of paintings and sculptures. The capital sum available amounted to £105,000 in 3% Consols, which (since reduced to 2½% in 1903) produces an available annual income varying from £2500 to £2100. Galleries in the Victoria and Albert Museum at South Kensington were at first adopted as the depository of the works acquired, until in 1898 the Royal Academy arranged with the treasury, on behalf of the government, for the transference of the collection to the National Gallery of British Art, which had been erected by Sir Henry Tate at Millbank. It was agreed that the "Tate Gallery" should be its future home, and that no power of selection or elimination is claimed on behalf of the trustees and director of the National Gallery (Treasury Letter, 18054-98, 7 December 1898) in respect of the pictures and sculptures which were then to be handed over and which should, from time to time, be sent to augment the collection. Inasmuch as it was felt that the provision that all works must be complete to be eligible for purchase militated against the most advantageous disposition of the fund in respect of sculpture, in the case of wax models or plaster casts before being converted into marble or bronze, it was sought in the action of Sir F Leighton v. Hughes (tried by Mr Justice North, judgment 7 May 1888, and in the court of appeal, before the master of the rolls, Lord Justice Cotton, and Lord Justice Fry, judgment 4 June 1889—the master of the rolls dissenting) to allow of sculptors being commissioned to complete in bronze or marble a work executed in wax or plaster, such completion being more or less a mechanical process. The attempt, however, was abortive.
A growing discontent with the interpretation put by the Royal Academy upon the terms of the will as shown in the works acquired began to find expression more than usually forcible and lively in the press during the year 1903, and a book in 1904, Administration of the Chantrey Bequest by Dugald Sutherland MacColl, a government committee initiated reforms and a debate raised in the House of Lords by the earl of Lytton led to the appointment of a select committee of the House of Lords, which sat from June to August 1904. The committee consisted of the earls of Carlisle, Lytton, and Crewe, and Lords Windsor, Ribblesdale, Newton, and Killanin, and the witnesses represented the Royal Academy and representative art institutions and art critics. The report (ordered to be printed on 8 August 1904) made certain recommendations with a view to the prevention of certain former errors of administration held to have been sustained, but dismissed other charges against the Academy. In reply thereto a memorandum was issued by the Royal Academy (February 1905, ordered to be printed on 7 August 1905—Paper 166) disagreeing with certain recommendations, but allowing others, either intact or in a modified form.
Up to 1905 inclusive 203 works had been bought—all except two from living painters—at a cost of nearly £68,000. Of these, 175 were in oil-colours, 12 in water-colours, and 16 sculptures (10 in bronze and 6 marble).
Until the 1920s the Bequest was the main source of funding for expanding the collection of what is now Tate Britain, and it remains active today.
Read more about this topic: Francis Leggatt Chantrey