Page 19 - Joseph Wright - Virgils Tomb and the grand tour of Naples

became wealthy with all the trappings and a chauffeur driven Horch car (he never obtained a driving licence). He
rapidly became well known across Europe and was visited by the legendary Dr Wilhelm Bode who elicited gifts for
the Kaiser Friedrich Museum. My father had at this time an exquisite library of first editions all bound in perfect
morocco by the best book binders of the period in Germany (this, along with a great deal else, filled three trucks of
the SS when confiscated later by the Nazis).

Gus Mayer, one of the partners of P & D Colnaghi & Co Ltd in London at this time was a pivotal friend of my father’s.
Around this time, my father, who travelled extensively, made trips to the aristocracy of Germany on the lookout for
great paintings in the process discovering the odd Rembrandt (he was later to do the rounds of all the great houses
in England and Scotland during the war years 1939-45). On one such occasion, together with Gus, he visited the
Graf Langwert von Simmern in the Palatinate spending the weekend at the Schloss. My father sold the good Graf an
important picture but this being the period of German hyperinflation when a loaf of bread cost a wheelbarrow of
marks money was tight.Thus the Graf, over dinner, proposed paying half cash and half in the product of his estate,
the legendary Palatinate wine Erbacher Marcobrunn Auslese. Having tasted what was on offer, produced in the vintage
of 1921,4 both Gus and my father readily agreed to the bargain. In this way I was much later privileged to sample
this extraordinary wine in my youth on special occasions and even to inherit the odd bottle. I can remember that
when in perfect condition and almost 50 years old the perfume of straw and lemon blossom and perhaps propolis
mixed with a hint of eastern spice intoxicatingly scented an entire room – lighter, different, less cloying than 1921
ChateauYquem which I have also been privileged to drink on several memorable occasions. I have always wondered
what the painting my father sold on that occasion actually was. My father once sheepishly admitted to me that on
their return from the Schloss both he, Gus and the chauffeur were so inebriated that the massive Horch careered off
the road into a ditch.

In 1928 my father held an epic exhibition of Manet paintings, pastels, watercolours and drawings, so magnificent in
scale that it equated to the scale of show the Arts Council or RA might latterly have mounted in London. The
Committee included H.E. P.de Margerie from France, the General Director of the Berlin Museums, Prof. Max
Friedlander, Prof. Julius Meier-Graefe and the Directors of the Berlin Nationagalerie, Stockholm Nationalsmuseum,
Oslo Nationalsgalerie, Copenhagem Carlsberg-Glyptothek, Copenhagen Staatsmuseum, Bremen Kunsthalle and
Berlin Staatliche Kunstbibliothek.There were no less than 90 works exhibited from February through March 1928
and it was the biggest Manet exhibition ever seen in Berlin up to that date.The breadth of scope of the works shown
and their importance was eye watering including, Olympia,The Execution of the Emperor Maximilian from Copenhagen,
A Full Length Portrait of Proust,Fishermen in a Stormy Sea,The Harbour of Bordeaux,The Balcony from the Musée Luxembourg,
The Portrait of Emile Zola,The Fishermen with its evanescent evocative landscape and many more renowned portraits,
still lives and landscapes, sketches and watercolours. My own feeble efforts in London pale by comparison and I feel
truly humbled, but then of course times have changed and such an exhibition costing very much more than a million

4. A bottle was last seen on the open market at £4400. 1921 was the golden year for hock, the year of the century, not even equalled by 1959.

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