Page 19 - Joseph Wright of Derby: Virgils's Tomb & The Grand Tour.

became wealthy with all the trappings and a chauffeur driven Horch car (he never obtained a driving licence). He
rapidly became well known across Europe and was visited by the legendary Dr Wilhelm Bode who elicited gifts for
the Kaiser Friedrich Museum. My father had at this time an exquisite library of first editions all bound in perfect
morocco by the best book binders of the period in Germany (this, along with a great deal else, filled three trucks of
the SS when confiscated later by the Nazis).

Gus Mayer, one of the partners of P & D Colnaghi & Co Ltd in London at this time was a pivotal friend of
my father’s. Around this time, my father, who travelled extensively, made trips to the aristocracy of Germany
on the lookout for great paintings in the process discovering the odd Rembrandt (he was later to do the
rounds of all the great houses in England and Scotland during the war years 1939-45). On one such occasion,
together with Gus, he visited the Graf Langwert von Simmern in the Palatinate spending the weekend at the
Schloss. My father sold the good Graf an important picture but this being the period of German hyperinflation
when a loaf of bread cost a wheelbarrow of marks money was tight. Thus the Graf, over dinner, proposed
paying half cash and half in the product of his estate, the legendary Palatinate wine Erbacher Marcobrunn
Auslese. Having tasted what was on offer, produced in the vintage of 1921,4 both Gus and my father readily
agreed to the bargain. In this way I was much later privileged to sample this extraordinary wine in my youth
on special occasions and even to inherit the odd bottle. I can remember that when in perfect condition and
almost 50 years old the perfume of straw and lemon blossom and perhaps propolis mixed with a hint of eastern
spice intoxicatingly scented an entire room – lighter, different, less cloying than 1921 ChateauYquem which
I have also been privileged to drink on several memorable occasions. I have always wondered what the painting
my father sold on that occasion actually was. My father once sheepishly admitted to me that on their return
from the Schloss both he, Gus and the chauffeur were so inebriated that the massive Horch careered off the
road into a ditch.

In 1928 my father held an epic exhibition of Manet paintings, pastels, watercolours and drawings, so magnificent in scale
that it equated to the scale of show theArts Council or RA might latterly have mounted in London.The Committee included
H.E. P.de Margerie from France, the General Director of the Berlin Museums, Prof. Max Friedlander, Prof. Julius Meier-
Graefe and the Directors of the Berlin Nationagalerie, Stockholm Nationalsmuseum, Oslo Nationalsgalerie, Copenhagem
Carlsberg-Glyptothek, Copenhagen Staatsmuseum, Bremen Kunsthalle and Berlin Staatliche Kunstbibliothek.There were
no less than 90 works exhibited from February through March 1928 and it was the biggest Manet exhibition ever seen in
Berlin up to that date.The breadth of scope of the works shown and their importance was eye watering including, Olympia,
The Execution of the Emperor Maximilian from Copenhagen, A Full Length Portrait of Proust,Fishermen in a Stormy Sea,The Harbour
of Bordeaux,The Balcony from the Musée Luxembourg, The Portrait of Emile Zola,The Fishermen with its evanescent evocative
landscape and many more renowned portraits, still lives and landscapes, sketches and watercolours. My own feeble efforts
in London pale by comparison and I feel truly humbled, but then of course times have changed and such an exhibition

4. A bottle was last seen on the open market at £4400. 1921 was the golden year for hock, the year of the century, not even equalled by 1959.

19