Art: How to Save Taxes

Britain’s National Gallery last week announced the purchase of a huge and handsome Rembrandt for upwards of $400,000. An equestrian portrait, 8 by 10 ft., the canvas had already been whisked off to the gallery laboratories for the tricky and controversial business of cleaning and re-lining, would not be shown to the public for some months. Gallery Director Sir Philip Hendy was exuberantly frank about his purchase: “Much the grandest Rembrandt we have.”

Dealers speculated that if the picture’s former owner, Lady Salmond (wife of R.A.F. Marshal Sir John Salmond), had offered it on the open market it would have brought well over $1,000,000, easily topping the $616,000 sale of Cezanne’s Boy in Red Vest and the record $770,000 recently paid for Rubens’ Adoration of the Magi. But few Englishmen can afford such sums. Had the picture left the country, the government would have collected an enormous estate duty on it. Lady Sal-mond’s private sale to the National Gallery was taxfree, and presumably more advantageous.