Page 15 - Vision & Ecstasy - Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione's St. Francis.

The early days at No.6 were rough and tough and seemingly desperate.The recession and blackouts seemed
endless and we still had to refurbish the building yet by the autumn of 1978 I had an office on the first floor,
a small off the street gallery with a kitchenette on the ground floor with large picture storage (large canvasses
being my speciality) and a low ceilinged viewing area in the basement. James Ingram, a colleague from Colnaghi,
having been made redundant, joined me and opened a British and European print department on the second
floor. An early picture was a magnificent altarpiece by Giulio Cesare Procaccini Madonna and Child with Saints
Francis and Dominic and Angels which stretched floor to ceiling and which we sold toThe Metropolitan Museum
in 1979, an early triumph.3 (Fig. 1)

At about the time of my departure from Colnaghi, with whom I remained on optimal terms, a version of the
painting The Madonna of the Magnificat by Botticelli came to auction and we bought it in syndication.4 (Fig. 2) It
was in impeccable condition and vastly superior to those works attributed to the artist seen recently in the rooms.
Colnaghi went on to sell it to Mrs. Barbara (Basia) Seward Johnson, who had married the Johnson and Johnson
heir.At the time she was the new young rising star among old master collectors having first formed a collection
of great twentieth century art under the guidance of Harold and Hester Diamond and a less successful collection
of Dutch and Flemish painting. I determined to meet her and engineered this through the late HarryWard-Bailey,
a friend from Colnaghi days, who was then her ‘walker’. Basia, who had studied art at Wroclaw University,
discovered with me a passion for the baroque, something clearly I was able to communicate as it was then my

2. This came about in a rather unusual way. Both sites were owned by London Provincial Properties who also owned the south
side of the yard.They were in financial difficulties with their bankers.This was the tail end of the big‘70s‘crash’ and they had
proposed an ambitious plan for the wholesale redevelopment of the yard as a plaza.When I examined the outline plans for
Nos.7-8 I realised they would block all the light from a small two foot square window adjoining in No.6 on the third floor
and make that small office into a dark hole. I claimed an easement for ‘Rights of Light’ under The Prescriptions Act of 1832.
Panicked at risking the failure of the sale of No.6 for urgently needed ready cash I was offered the adjoining site, freehold,
which they had acquired for £150,000. After some extremely hard-nosed bargaining I negotiated the purchase of 7-8 for
£10,000. I then directed the redevelopment on a daily basis for two years at the same time improving the neighbourhood by
closing and walling up the public lavatory on the end of the transformer station which was directly opposite our shop window.
This I achieved with a simple stratagem: I took over the old lease for the facility fromWestminster City Council at the rack
rent of one pence a year paying them 62pence for the outstanding term. In the succeeding months there were many
disconsolate ‘socialites’.

3. Shortly after the sale panic ensued when it was found that a painting of identical subject had been in a Lombard church but
this fortunately proved to have been a copy.

4. Many years later we resold the painting on behalf of Mrs. Johnson to a notedWest Coast internet billionaire.

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