Page 23 - Joseph Wright of Derby: Virgils's Tomb & The Grand Tour.

From 1936 my father opened a gallery in Carlos Place, London W1, right next to the Connaught Hotel, on the site
now occupied for many years, I believe, by Hamiltons. Soon after, in March 1938, he moved to 142, New Bond Street,
directly opposite Sotheby’s in a building until recently occupied by Mallets.The gallery had a fine shop window and
front room with reception manned by the inimitable and imperturbable ‘Foley’ demobbed from the army. Mr Foley
was always willing and charming, a sort of batman to my papa, tall elegant and gaunt in my father’s cast off Jones,
Chalk & Dawson Sackville Street double breasted suits. A long narrow corridor gallery led to a wonderful backlit
gallery but half way along, invisible to those that did not know it there was a tiny ‘chambre intime’, top lit again, for
viewing in private.Then to the right at the back there was a large top lit office wherein resided the rather terrifying
Stefanie Maison, my father’s then PA, and in the early years her formidable husband, K.E. Maison, the Daumier expert.
My father had a ‘holy of holies’ private office on the first floor overlooking Bond Street into which I think I gained
admittance only twice or thrice in my life.What happened on the further floors above was never revealed. Just before
the war broke out my father had travelled consistently to Milan and Turin (a favoured source13), Florence, Rome,
Zurich and Paris where my father had many long term contacts. My father told me a story of a trip by plane that took
place at this time from Marseilles to Barcelona. Halfway out across the Golfe de Lyons a dog on the plane started
whining and shuddering, then he saw two nuns praying telling their beads.The plane was losing altitude fast with engine
failure and practically gliding down to a crash landing on the water.To his astonishment he saw the co-pilot crawl out
on the biplane wing with spanners, and adjust a fuel feed and restart the engine when they were but a couple of hundred
feet above the waves.

I know little about the war years especially as any records were destroyed in the Blitz or by a burst water main.Well
in truth I know little about anything to do with my father as he rarely if ever divulged.After the outbreak of hostilities
he was rounded up along with all the other‘enemy’ aliens and interned on the Isle of Man in, I believe, Ochan Camp,
for a short period. In the early weeks of their internment after Dunkirk internees were haunted by the spectre of
a Nazi invasion and a swift execution.The camps were veritable universities of talent I have been told by my cousin
who spent time in Hutchinson’s Camp as a boy.The crème de la crème of central European intelligentsia were at
one time housed there, philosophers, psychologists, scientists, musicians, economists, physicians, professors and a
large bevy of artists the foremost among whom being probably Kurt Schwitters the co-founder of Dadaism. One
inmate compared the camps toThomas Mann’s ‘Magic Mountain’. Indeed there were so many artists that Augustus
John,Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, James Bateman and Muirhead Bone wrote an open letter to The Spectator inviting

11. After the war he made a brief attempt to gain restitution of many valuable paintings he had owned in partnership with Dutch dealers which had been
confiscated. He wrote to the authorities in 1950 ‘We find that considerable time has elapsed since we last wrote to you and we should be obliged to hear from you
why we should be victimised in such an extraordinary way. Practically everybody we know has had his property returned in an admirable and most efficient manner, and
we simply cannot understand why we should suffer for so long a time from circumstances with which we have nothing whatsoever to do and after our claim has been fully
acknowledged’. (Stichting Nederlands Kunstbesit,Amsterdam, 7 January 1949, Nationaal Archief, Den hag, NA SNK 2.0842, Nr. 158.

12. My father granted to his former employees the right to continue trading under the name Galerie Matthiesen thereafter but he had no connection or
control over events anymore or direct knowledge of what dealing Dr. Noelle might have undertaken.

13. I believe the Moscardo/Badile Album may have come from here possibly.

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