Page 31 - Joseph Wright of Derby: Virgils's Tomb & The Grand Tour.

to April (several more were given to me by my trusted Emily Farrow). My father had a good friend in John Holroyd-
Reece who had co-founded Albatross paperback books in 1932 whose colour coded subject matter was then avant-
garde and which were based on theTauschnitz editions.When this experiment in publishing ceased in 1939 with the
war it was later taken up and served as the model for Penguin. John resided at this time in considerable style as a
tenant of Lord Massareene in The Keep at Chilham Castle. John’s restoration of The Keep and its Georgian sitting
room with gilded ceiling was exemplary. He was also a fabulous raconteur and someone I hero worshipped. His wife,
Gitta22 was a friend of my mother’s and came to stay in Italy several times, and Gitta’s daughter Elizabeth, long
married to Sir Konrad Schiemann, was a breath-taking beauty. In these latter years my father was stricken by lung
cancer and had a lung removed. The economy was going through a severe contraction and with my father ill the
Matthiesen Gallery was suffering, turning much of its attention to a series of exhibitions of contemporary and
twentieth century art. A lifelong friend from Munich days of Bernhard Degenhart, in the last year of his life he
reconstructed with precision the Moscardo and Badile Album presenting the volume with photos in the place of the
original drawings to the Lugt Foundation (Fondation Custodia) and studied early drawings together with Anegritt
Schmitt who was Degenhart’s star pupil.Anegritt had been sent to London as an intern to work with my father. How
proud he would have been to see her recent publication, almost 50 years on, which Annegrit graciously dedicated to
the memory of my father.23 Days before he died in 1963 he rescued the ailing Matthiesen Gallery by selling a
wonderful Frans Hals portrait to Harry Hyams whose career he had long admired.

My father taught me one lesson and that was that I should remember that despite the times we live in professionalism,
integrity and transparency will always triumph in the longer term.The two schools he sent me to had the following
mottos: Stet Fortuna Domus and Nil Nisi Optimum.The latter motto was drummed into us in a memorable sermon that to
this day I still have glued into my school bible exhorting the maintenance of ‘high standards in life’ in contrast to the
current lamentable cult of ‘me foremost’.24 Taken together these three precepts are admirable for life but are goals that
however hard I have striven for, I have never managed to fully meet.

lll

22. Gitta was both beautiful and an enchanting slightly shy woman of Austrian descent who translated Austrian literature. Her father was Otto Erich
Deutsch the cataloguer of Haydn.

23. Bernhard Degenhart-Annegrit Schmitt, Corpus de Italienischen Zeichnungen 1300-1450,Teil III.Band 3,Badile-Album, Biering and Brinckmann 2010.
24. I quote here some extracts from this address by MajorThomas Reynolds who was Field MarshallViscount Bernard Montgomery’s former batman and

the Head Master (Montgomery came each year to address and exhort the boys as if we were part of his Eighth Army). In distant July 1953 Reynolds
said “There must be a standard in everything.A worthwhile standard, a standard which, while it can be reached, needs effort and determination to reach it. Otherwise
a standard is meaningless.

Everyone must have his standard.
Every institution must have its standard
Every business must have its standard.
Every nation must have its standard.
….We here must aim high, and you must see and understand what we are aiming at and why.
….Will you understand your duty to set an example and not think too much about what you think are your ‘rights’?”

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