Page 14 - Vision & Ecstasy - Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione's St. Francis.

Fig. 1. Fig. 2. Fig. 3.

society ladies which provided pleasurable distraction, I determined that ‘small was beautiful’ for my enterprise
and that overheads were to be kept low. In this I succeeded in the early years as they averaged about £80,000 an
unbelievably small sum today.As I have already recounted, back in the days immediately following my Courtauld
and Florentine/Venetian restoring adventures in 1966-68 I had spent a couple of years working for the princely
fee of £5 a week for a small property company. This was called Queensberry Investments and I had been
introduced there by Leopold, Prinz zu Löwenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg, a friend of my mother’s.1This gave
me the basic ‘know-how’ in how to structure and cost a property development standing me years after in good
stead in Mason’sYard, first refurbishing No.6 and then acquiring the vacant site of Nos.7-8 for a pittance and
obtaining planning permission and developing the site on behalf of my sponsors.2

lll

1. To my disconcertiment and as a result of the 2012 Foreword in the catalogue JosephWright of Derby:Virgil’s Tomb and the Grand
Tour in Naples I have received many letters asking me to commit to an autobiography!This, I fear, I shall never do, partly through
laziness, partly because it is probably expedient that certain art dealing anecdotes remain discretely veiled and do not see the
light of day in print! Nevertheless, for the curious I can direct you to the Forewords and Introductions to Fifty Paintings (1993);
Gold Backs (1995) ‘JPH :A Reminiscence’; An Eye on Nature (1996); 2001 :An Art Odyssey (2001),JosephWright of Derby:Virgil’sTomb
and the GrandTour in Naples (2012) where I have already recorded some autobiographical nuggets.

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