16 December 2000. Thanks to Anonymous. More information on Tomas Harris and other spies who use official secrecy to hide criminal activities are welcomed. Send to: jya@pipeline.com
Source: http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?f=/stories/20001214/404875.html
National Post, December 14, 2000
Isabel Vincent
National Post
The National Gallery of Canada says it will investigate the provenance of some of its most important post-war acquisitions after the National Post found they were purchased on the advice of a British art connoisseur who was later unmasked as a Soviet spy.
Anthony Blunt, better known as the Fourth Man in a ring of upper-class British double agents who worked for the Soviet Union during the Cold War, was paid an honorarium of at least $1,000 a year by the gallery to advise its board on European acquisitions after the Second World War.
Blunt drew on a network of fellow spies who acted as art dealers in Europe to make some of his acquisitions for the National Gallery. At least one of his contacts, Tomas Harris, is suspected of having dealt in art looted from Spain by the Soviet-backed republican side during the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939.
Besides being an expert on Spanish art, Harris was an agent for MI6, the British counter- intelligence agency, during the Second World War -- and historians also suspect him of spying for the Soviets.
He sold the National Gallery several paintings, both with and without Blunt's collaboration. Harris made several trips to Spain during the civil war and allegedly profited from the sale of art looted by Soviet-backed troops. The art was stolen from monasteries, museums and galleries and sold to a network of dealers in London, Brussels and Paris. The profits went to the Soviet army to finance its aid to the Spanish republicans.
Despite Blunt's dubious contacts and his own treacherous history, which was revealed in 1979 by the British prime minister of the time, Margaret Thatcher, the National Gallery has not included any of the works he was involved in purchasing for it as part of its list of 106 paintings with gaps in provenance -- their history of ownership -- from the 1930s and 1940s.
The National Gallery plans to publish the list on Dec. 29 to ascertain whether any of the paintings were looted by Nazis from Jews in countries occupied by the Third Reich. The publication of the list is a response to speculation that galleries around the world might unwittingly have benefited from art stolen by the Nazis and sold through middlemen in Paris, London, Brussels and Amsterdam during and immediately after the Second World War.
Though national institutions around the world are researching the provenances of works acquired during the Second World War, so far there have been no similar efforts to track down work looted from Spain between 1936 and 1939.
"One thing that one should remember is that the National Gallery published catalogues of its complete collections in the 1950s and then again in the 1980s," said Pierre Théberge, director of the National Gallery in Ottawa. He added the gallery will investigate works acquired by Blunt to determine whether there are gaps in ownership.
"Anyone actively searching for these paintings would have had access to this information. We were one of the few galleries in the world to publish our complete collections," Mr. Théberge said.
During the time the National Gallery made its greatest acquisitions in Europe, paintings looted by the Nazis and by the Soviet-backed side in Spain were being sold by dozens of dealers in Europe, who were unloading some of the world's greatest masterpieces at rock-bottom prices.
In 1937, during the height of the Spanish Civil War, Harris sold the National Gallery a painting by Spanish artist Jusepe Leonardo titled St. John the Baptist. According to the National Gallery's records, the painting was in an unnamed private collection in England before being acquired by Harris. Before that, there is a gap of more than 40 years. The earliest provenance records from the gallery show St. John was in the possession of Count Pedro Daupias in Lisbon at the turn of the century.
"As far as we are aware, the painting was in England since 1892, and this is what we know for a fact based on the provenance," Mr. Théberge said.
On the advice of Blunt, the National Gallery acquired Augustus and Cleopatra in 1953. At the time, the painting was attributed to the French painter Nicolas Poussin. Blunt, a world-renowned Poussin expert, helped the gallery buy the painting for $500 from Harris's Spanish Art Gallery in London. The rather sketchy provenance suggests Harris acquired the painting in 1938; before that it was in an unnamed private collection in Britain.
Blunt also advised the National Gallery on the purchase of Abraham and the Three Angels, by 17th-century Spanish artist Bartolome Esteban Murillo.
Though the painting was not acquired through Harris in London, it does have a questionable provenance. The painting, commissioned to adorn a hospital in Murillo's native Seville, was looted by Napoleonic troops during their rampage through Europe.
Blunt also advised the National Gallery on J. M. W. Turner's Mercury and Argus, which it purchased in 1951, and on the 1949 purchase of Lamentation, by the Flemish master Quinten Matsys.
Neither of these paintings appears to have a suspect provenance, nor were they purchased through Harris's London gallery.