Once again the fabulously wealthy Duke of Northumberland is selling a family treasure that will go to a foreign owner unless public funds and donations can be raised to keep it in this country (Report, 6 December). The £6.8m auction price achieved in July for The Garden of Eden With the Fall of Man by Jan Brueghel the Elder was double the estimate – probably inflated by media hype – and it will now apparently take more to prevent the painting going abroad.
I remember an earlier example of this kind of blackmail by the duke in 2003, when we had to buy his Raphael, The Madonna of the Pinks, to prevent it going to the Getty Museum in California, I went to see the picture at the National Gallery and was happy to stump up a contribution, as it is ravishingly beautiful and I would go and look at it every day if I could.
But repeating this is a step too far for me – the duke wins wherever the picture finishes up and I will content myself with looking at it online. I certainly would not have tried to get a glimpse by visiting his home at Alnwick Castle, the monstrous requirements of which exert a malign influence on the town and countryside around it.
We have plenty of Flemish works in this country and Belgium’s museums are not far away. Let this one go and spend public money on something we’re short of.
Jane Kelly
London
• Gaby Hinsliff writes well about the defeatism implicit in support for measures that increase inheritance (Opinion, 5 December). However, I disagree that “it’s only natural” that parents want to provide for their own children, even to the detriment of others.
It was once thought “natural” that non-white people are not quite human and women are less intelligent than men. In fact, these ideas, and many others like them, were originally promoted as part of “divide and rule” – the fundamental strategy central to all exploitative societies, including our own.
The message is, grab what you can before someone else does. Once this fear is promoted enough, it takes on a life of its own, and it has now come to operate on every scale from nation states down to interpersonal relationships. But the truth is that, under the fear, all people want meaningful lives where they help others and are helped in turn.
Karl Lam
Burwell, Cambridgeshire
