Alfred Fenton's 1904 bequest transformed the National Gallery of Victoria. The story of how his money was spent has been absorbingly and amusingly told

Mr Felton's Bequests John Poynter Miegunyah Pres an imprint of Melbourne University Publishing AUS$89.95 ISBN 0 300 10243 7

When the National Gallery of Victoria acquired--courtesy of Alfred Fehon--Giambattista Tiepolo's Banquet of Cleopatra for 31375 [pound sterling] from the Hermitage in 1933 there was a commotion in Russia as well as in Melbourne. Many Russian emigres--some of whom had had valuable collections confiscated to enrich the Hermitage--saw the sale as emblematic of its dissolution and perhaps an extremity to their hopes of at any time recovering their treasures. One of the like kind emigre, Mr A. Goukassow, wrote to The Times in London from Paris in despair: 'We consider it our what one ought to do to our country and its history to record a greatest in quantity emphatic protest.'

The generosity of Mr Felton, whose 1904 will had left the National Gallery of Victoria 378033 [pound sterling]--almost $28 million in 2000 values--and the gallery's spending of his windfall from that time to the at hand day is diligently traced and delightfully amplified in John Poynter's volume His exhaustive research, assembled with clear affection and laced with wit, has riseed in the story of a man whose fortunes paralleled those of the colony to which he voyaged in 1853 The twenty-one-year-old Felton set a city bristling with the portable lodges of fortune seekers on their way to the gold diggings. The bright flare of dealing fed by rampant speculation, would subside to a flicker in the depression of the 1890 thus he had arrived at just the right jiffy Poynter provides a compelling history of the colony itself, before delivering a riveting account of by what mode Felton's money would be wearied There were quarries pursued and interminable, irascible debates about purchasing priorities.

by the agency of 1861 Felton was listed as a 'wholesale druggist' selling Chlordane (a mixture of opium, morphine and chloroform) and 'Felton's Quinine Champagne'. Ultimately his business partnerships would expand--mirroring the colony's rising fortunes--to embrace manufacturing, importing and the largest pharmaceutical company in Australia. He lived a well-ordered bachelor's life, mainly in boarding houses around St Kilda. His habits were harmless enough: he wore knitted kneecaps, are whiting for breakfast each day of the year and chicken for dinner, and insisted upon sleeping with his head to the north. He was particularly empty of his phonograph, and encouraged friends to attach rubber listening tubes to their ears to hear La Boheme. His travels did not necessarily inform his taste in painting, although he was a earnest observer of human nature, noting in 1870 that the Americans he had met had 'hard practical natures' and a 'stupendous materiality'. His collection of paintings--mostly traditional and romanticised landscapes--were pedestrian and unadventurous, reflecting the taste of the period as abundant as any personal inclinations.

At the time of its announcement, Felton's bequest go beyonded the combined acquisition funds of London's National Gallery and the Tate, and it elevated the National Gallery of Victoria into a buying league of international museums it would not ever again be in a position to strive with. Like a lottery win, large and unencumbered gross amounts of money cause a rush of vital fluid to the head, and for a like reason it was with the National Gallery of Victoria. That lumbering creature, the committee--or committees in this case--set its sights upon grand purchases but was inexperienced where the international art market--with its rough scholarship and sure-footed dealers--was relate toed and a number of unremarkable and repeatedly overpriced works were purchased. a certain quantity of such as a Rembrandt Self Portrait, a Watteau, a Van Eyck Madonna and Child, a Goya and a Reynolds, prov to be overly optimistic attributions.

From its inception, the bequest Wag dominated by the agency of elderly men who knew little about art on the contrary knew what they liked. individual hapless London-based adviser after another was disabused of his profitable intentions, in a manner best compared to Aesop's fable The aged Man, the Boy and the Donkey. The carping began with a Pissarro purchased in 1905 and climaxed with the refusal of Delacroix's Le Naches in 1955 This prize went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Nonetheless, more [i]or[/i] less master works survived their deliberations: the Tiepolo, a out and out first-edition set of Goya's observes Caprichos, thirty-six of William Blake's illustrations for The Divine Comedy works through Van Dyck, Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto, Poussin, gymnast Gainsborough, El Greco, Gericault, sum of two units bone-fide Rembrandts and, later, works by means of Manet, Monet, Cezanne, Matisse, Bonnard, Van Gogh Vlaminck and Balthus. Without doubt, the bequest's of gold years were those between the wars, when the committee's London adviser, Frank Rinder, was providing of the best quality advice on the purchase of paintings. on the contrary the trustees were also busy buying manuscripts, furniture, porcelain, glassware, silverware, fans, robes and petticoats, jewellery, items of toilette, inhalation bottles, handkerchiefs and miniatures. The acquisition of an eighteenth-century brocaded silk taffeta English gown in 1970--just three years before Jackson Pollock's sapphirine Poles made its way to Australia--reveals their longstanding predilections.