Wandering Masterpieces

Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian, the late Armenian international oil tycoon, was a born collector. He began at seven in a Constantinople bazaar, buying Greek coins with a Turkish five-shilling note his father had given him, went on to accumulate one of the world's most prestigious art collections, valued at up to $20 million. His scouts scoured the international art market for him. If they liked anything, Gulbenkian sent an expert; if the expert approved. Gulbenkian went himself. He bought only what he liked, purchasing for pleasure, never for investment or speculation, and he allowed only experts to see his collection. Even good friends were told: "No, I don't think you would appreciate it. Why don't you go to the Louvre instead? You can educate yourself there."

Despite (or perhaps because of) the quality of his collection, Gulbenkian could never find what he considered a suitable home for it. At one time or other, he owned half a dozen town and country places, including a huge London house, a 150-acre estate near Deauville and a vast Paris mansion. But he was rarely in any of his houses, knocked about instead from one plush hotel to another, seemed incapable of settling on a permanent place to hang his hat--or pictures.

Fabulous Offer. In 1936 Collector Gulbenkian lent 30 of his finest paintings to London's National Gallery, later offered the gallery all the paintings as an outright gift on condition that they be housed separately, not spread thin among the museum's other masterpieces. The offer was refused. So, soon after the war, Gulbenkian packed up his 30 pictures, added ten more masterpieces to make the parcel even more attractive, and shipped it all to Washington's National Gallery, on a loan basis.

The paintings included Rembrandt's Old Man Seated, Rubens' Flight Into Egypt, Flemish Dierick Bouts' The Annunciation and outstanding canvases by Corot, Degas, Boucher, Guardi, Fragonard, Frans Hals, Van Dyck, Manet, Monet, Renoir. Eventually Gulbenkian made the same offer he had made London: all the pictures free forever--if the gallery built a special Gulbenkian annex to house them. With regret the National Gallery refused, stuck grimly to the rule that its permanent works be displayed by schools and periods, not by collectors.

Home, at Last. When Gulbenkian died in 1955 in Lisbon, where he lived much of his last 13 years in a drearily decorated Hotel Aviz suite, he left the bulk of his estate and his entire art collection to the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, with instructions to build a Gulbenkian Museum. Last week foundation trustees announced that land had been bought in Lisbon, and that the museum would be completed in about three years.

When the museum is ready, the 40 Gulbenkian masterpieces now in Washington on a loan basis will be packed up and shipped off to the kind of permanent home that their collector could never find for himself but finally managed to establish for his paintings.

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