PALGRAVE (Francis Turner, 1824-1897, Poet, Critic, Editor of the 'Golden Treasury')

Autograph Letter Signed to "My dear Cecil" annotated in another hand as Alderson, thanking him for his note which "was the sixth kind message I have received from your family. Cambridge is certainly a poor sort of University, it has no such Professorship. I wish your note could have been multiplied a thousand-fold, so as to keep out that great statesman R. Spencer. I have just returned from Lyme ... it is now impossible that there can be a majority, I fancy although I have a note from Hatfield tonight ... speaks with much satisfaction of the advance in Conservative feeling. Perhaps also it is not that the others should first have the nationalists to deal with, and break up in the effort. I hope I may some time be able to accept your invitation. I should like nothing better. But it must be at a more favourable time of year, when one can enjoy open air and country scenes. Remember me to your wife. I hope her mother is well. Have you ever hear what Layard means to to with the excellent picture collection which he has got together? I hope he may be about to immortalise his name by giving some at least to the N. Gallery ...", 4 sides 8vo., 15 Chester Terrace, Regent's Park headed paper, 4th December

One of his greatest friends was Charles Alderson, with whose family he travelled to Grenoble, and whose familial Norfolk connections included the aesthete and doyenne, Lady Eastlake. Palgrave's flirtation with Liberalism came to an abrupt halt, when in 1885, he diverged with Gladstone over the Home Rule debate. While they lived at 5 York Gate, a mansion located in Regents Park, they took a holiday home, called Little Park, in 'Royalist' Lyme Regis, with a more Conservative inference; it belonged to his parents. Throughout 1870s the Palgraves paid repeated visits and stays at Hatfield House, the home of the future Conservative Prime Minister, Lord and Lady Salisbury.
Austen Henry LAYARD (1817-1894) was a traveller, archaeologist, cuneiformist, art historian, draughtsman, collector, politician and diplomat. Layard bequeathed the bulk of his art collection to the National Gallery, leaving a life interest to his wife who continued to live in Venice. However, in 1902 Italy passed a new law on the export of works of art. This law allowed the Italian authorities to draw up a list of paintings which they deemed of such supreme artistic value that they could not be exported.
The Italians intended to register (or 'vinculate') the following seven paintings:
The Sultan Mehmet II attributed to Gentile Bellini
The Adoration of the Kings attributed to the workshop of Giovanni Bellini
The Virgin and Child attributed to Giovanni Bellini
The Departure of Ceyx by Carpaccio'
The Entombment by Busati
A Muse by Cosimo Tura
Portrait of a man by Jacometto
The British authorities managed to prove that all the paintings except the Jacometto had already been exported and re-imported to Italy and therefore these six paintings were exempted from 'vinculation'.

Item Date:  1885

Stock No:  41489      £75

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