Duveen to the Rescue

Andrew Mellon last week dangled a huge sugar plum before the U. S. people as represented by the Board of Tax Appeals which for three months has been hearing the U. S. Government's claim that Mellon owes $3,089,000 on his 1931 income tax. In 1931, Mellon set up "an educational and charitable trust" to which year by year he hands over a number of his valuable old masters.

Mellon's case is that he proposes to give this, unquestionably one of the world's greatest private collections of old masters, to the U. S. The Government's case is that he has by no means committed himself ever to do any such thing, that the trust actually keeps the Mellon pictures in the Mellon family and that MelIons may go on dangling their sugar plum until doom's crack. The Mellon pictures are now locked securely in Washington's Corcoran Gallery, unseen except by MelIons and friends and, once by subpoena, by Government Counsel Robert Houghwout Jackson. In 1931, just five of them were transferred to the trust, supposedly for tax purposes.

Last week in Washington Mellon's lawyers produced experts to drum home the undoubted fact that the five pictures are valuable. Baron Duveen of Millbank, probably the world's richest art dealer, agreed to the identity of the five pictures:

1) Raphael's Madonna of the House of Alba, $1,166,400, "worth more than all three of the Raphaels in London's National Gallery."

2) Botticelli's Adoration of the Magi, $838,350.

3) Titian's Toilet of Venus, $544,320.

4) Perugino's Crucifixion with St. John, the Magdalen and St. Jerome, $195,615.

5) Van Eyck's Annunciation, $503,010, "worth $1,000,000," said Lord Duveen. "I will give $750,000 for it right now."

All five came from Soviet Russia's Hermitage Museum (TIME, March 4). "The Hermitage," drawled Lord Duveen last week, "is no longer a great collection. It has gone to pieces because of Mellon's purchases." This was poppycock, in the opinion of most critics, who believe that the Hermitage was able easily to spare Mellon's $3,247,695 worth with the sole exception of the Perugino, which cost the least.

An unexpected stroke for Mellon's contention that he will really give the U. S. his great sugar plum fell last week when Duveen popped out, under the Government's cross-questioning, that he (Duveen) actually suggested a definite site for the Mellon museum: a spot "by the obelisk near the pond" (Duveen British for the Washington Monument), that he had recommended a British architect to Mellon and that he had actually seen rough sketches of the museum plans.

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