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WHAT’S GOING ON IN OCTOBER

ANTIQUE

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As the nights start drawing in, there is much still to tempt us out and about

WELLINGTON LOOT The National Gallery has released images of documents relating to the 1961 theft of Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington, ahead of the release of a film based on the famous heist. In July 1965, Newcastle taxi driver, Kempton Bunton, confessed to taking the painting but, after his lawyers argued he hadn’t meant to keep it, only served a three-month sentence for stealing the frame.

Bunton, who died in 1976, sent ransom notes saying he would return the painting if the government invested more in elderly care. It was returned voluntarily four years later and is on display at the gallery. The Duke, starring Dame Helen Mirren and Jim Broadbent is due for release next year.

Above right Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) The Duke of Wellington, 1812-1814, © The National Gallery

Right Jim Broadbent as Kempton Bunton and Helen Mirren as his wife, Dorothy, in The Duke © Pathe UK

Far right A ransom note following the theft addressed to Exchange Telegraph and postmarked July 3, 1962 © The National Gallery

Jarring experience Three UK locations have been selected for the display of Ancient Greek treasures from the British Museum. An Etruscan funerary urn portraying Paris’s abduction of Helen, which triggered the Trojan war,

and an Athenian amphora are two of four pieces on tour to Reading, Surrey and Dundee.

Specially created 3D scans using QR codes will also allow visitors to access the objects from home.

The spotlight loan tour, Troy: beauty and heroism will be at the Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology in Reading until December, Surrey’s Haslemere Educational Museum from February 10 until May 8, 2022 and the McManus Museum, Dundee, between May 19 and August 14.

Above An amphora showing Hector’s body dragged round the tomb of Patroclus while Achilles runs beside, 520BC-500BC © The Trustees of the British Museum

Coming home Masterpieces by the French Impressionist Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) return to the UK next month for the reopening of a London gallery.

The paintings, from the collection of the Courtauld Gallery, return to the gallery after its three-year transformation, having been on show at an exhibition in Norway.

During the 1920s, Cézanne devotee, the industrialist and philanthropist Samuel Courtauld assembled the finest collections of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art in the UK. Acquisitions included Still Life with Plaster Cupid and The Card Players, once owned by the Norwegian collectors Gustav Adolf Jebsen and shipowner Jørgen Breder Stang.

Above right Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) Still life with Plaster Cupid, c. 1894, the Courtauld Gallery, London

Right Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) The Card Players, 1892-1896, the Courtauld Gallery

6 ANTIQUE COLLECTING