Sources in London confirmed yesterday that Toronto billionaire art collector David Thomson was the buyer of the world's most expensive old masters painting this week.
Both Mr. Thomson's long-time picture framer and the manuscripts dealer who placed the winning bid said The Massacre of the Innocents, a heretofore little-known masterpiece by the 17th-century Flemish titan Peter Paul Rubens, is now the property of the 44-year-old chairman of Thomson Corp.
Mr. Thomson had to stave off seven big-spending competitors, including the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, during an electrifying auction at Sotheby's London on Wednesday. It took just 10 minutes for the contest to bound from the starting bid of about $6-million (U.S.) to the winning offer of $76.7-million (U.S.), or about $117-million (Canadian). The avidity of the chase was evidenced by the fact that at the $39-million (U.S.) mark, five bidders were still in pursuit. Until this week, the world record of $35-million (U.S.) for an old masters work -- Jacopo da Pontormo's Portrait of a Young Man, now in the Getty -- had stood for 13 years.
No one was more enthusiastic about The Massacre of the Innocents than Paul Mitchell. "It is the finest old masters painting in existence. Full stop. I say that without exaggeration," said Mr. Mitchell, an art historian and framer who has been a confidant of David Thomson since 1987. The work, which is in "pristine condition," is "completely in a field of its own," Mr. Mitchell said, calling the Rubens "the announcement of the baroque" and the painterly equivalent of "a colossal Twentieth Century Fox film."
"Really," he added, "it is almost too good to be true. It's one of the most complex compositions that any artist could attempt. It's absolutely loaded with references to things, but it has this astonishing emotional power. There's really no other artist besides Rubens who could have pulled it off."
Mr. Mitchell said that he would be meeting with David Thomson on Monday in London to discuss framing for the work. The present frame was made in the 18th or possibly the 19th century "as a one-off kind of thing," he said, and its design is "too static" to show the painting effectively. An improperly framed work "is like an automobile running on three cylinders."
Speaking by telephone yesterday, Mr. Thomson took his family's characteristic position of refusing comment on any art it may have bought at auction. "But I will say one thing: Whoever bought it, the price is irrelevant. People should be looking at its signifcance, its importance, its strength," he said.
Mr. Thomson, although a major, highly regarded art collector in his own right, bought the Rubens for his father, fellow art collector Kenneth Thomson, 78, who is negotiating to give some or all of his large collection to the Art Gallery of Ontario. The senior Mr. Thomson is said to have been set on acquiring this painting for some time.
In Canada, a donation of art, with its value determined by the federal Cultural Property Review Board, can offset the tax on 100 per cent of net income, in effect reducing the donor's income tax to zero. This can be claimed in the year of donation or up to five years afterward.
One notable Toronto art collector, who requested anonymity, said the Thomson Rubens might be a compensatory acquisition.
"If the donation of Ken Thomson's Canadian collection goes through Cultural Property," the collector said, "it might yield tax relief that would offset [the purchase of the Rubens] and vice versa: If Ken takes out that kind of money as income, his suddenly astronomical income tax would be offset, or even evened out" by the donation of the Rubens.
If The Massacre of the Innocents does come to the AGO, it -- and the Frank- Gehry-designed expansion that's being mooted for the gallery -- would catapult the institution, already the 10th largest art museum in North America, to the international front ranks. The AGO's director, Matthew Teitelbaum, was customarily tight-lipped yesterday as to whether his institution is the painting's eventual destination. "It would add lustre to any collection in North America, let alone around the world," he said.
The AGO has three Rubenses in its permanent collection, two drawings and a 1638 oil sketch of one of the artist's most famous masterpieces, The Raising of the Cross. While the AGO is not known as a major repository of significant old masters, "one of our strengths is, in fact, the 17th-century Italian, Dutch and Flemish baroque," the museum's curator of European art, Christina Corsiglia, said this week. In fact, this weekend, the gallery is opening a permanent installation dedicated to Dutch and Flemish painting.
Until earlier this year, The Massacre of the Innocents had been out of sight and without definitive attribution. For several decades the painting's home was a darkened space in an Austrian monastery. It was given to the monastery as a long-term loan by its owner, an unidentified Austrian woman who, after inheriting the painting in 1923, reportedly came to dislike its vivid depiction of King Herod's slaughter of baby boys in the Roman province of Judea, now Israel. Previously, the owner had tried to sell the painting but failed because scholars were attributing it to a Rubens acolyte, Jan van den Hoecke. Attribution to Rubens was determined only a few months ago, after a Dutch relative of the painting's owner, who is now 89, visited the monastery, took a photograph of The Massacre, and brought it to Sotheby's in Amsterdam for another opinion.
Samuel Fogg, the London-based manuscripts dealer and art expert who acted as Mr. Thomson's agent during the auction, admitted Wednesday's hammer price was high.
"[It]came in a little worse than I thought it might," he said. "I didn't know that my client would be able to go that distance. . . . I had considerable confidence that David and his father were really prepared to fight for the piece, but," he laughed, "how long is a piece of string?"
Winning the auction produced "a giddy feeling," Mr. Fogg remarked. He noted that, while he's acted as an agent at auctions before -- and has helped David Thomson assemble his collection of medieval art and sculpture, as well as paintings by British landscape master John Constable and conceptual works by the late German artist Joseph Beuys -- the $117-million he bid this week "was 10 times more than what I am used to."
Both Mr. Fogg and Mr. Mitchell insisted The Massacre of the Innocents is worth every penny of the purchase price. Until this week, the 10 most expensive paintings sold at auction were painted after 1880. They include five works by Picasso and three by Van Gogh.
"Their value seems to be overly high in comparison with old masters," Mr. Mitchell noted, and this week's auction serves to redress the imbalance.
"There is not a shred of reason why The Massacre of the Innocents should be worth a dollar less than the Dr. Gachet," Mr. Mitchell observed, referring to the $82.5-million (U.S.) paid in 1990 for Van Gogh's 1890 Portrait of Dr. Gachet." That painting still holds the record for the highest purchase price. The Rubens, however, "could be valued at two or three times what it fetched if you measure it against the Picassos, Monets and Cezannes out there," Mr. Mitchell said.
There was informed speculation yesterday that the Rubens could stay in England for quite a while before it comes to Canada. If the Thomsons choose to display it in public, a likely temporary home is the National Gallery in London, alongside Samson and Delilah, a Rubens that was painted about the same time as The Massacre. The two paintings have a similar presentation and style, and art experts used Samson and Delilah comparatively to help give The Massacre its definitive attribution earlier this year.