Two diamond-encrusted Cartier brooches, as soon as owned by the humanities patron Virginia Courtauld, have been acquired by English Heritage and go on show right now at her former house, Eltham Palace in London.
The brooches, depicting a falcon and a white Tudor rose, had been a present from her husband, Stephen to mark the restoration of the palace in south east London. Stephen, was the youthful brother of Samuel who based The Courtauld Institute of Artwork.
English Heritage wouldn’t affirm the ultimate sale value however in keeping with the web site of auctioneers Dreweatts, the pair bought for £19,000, on a information value of between £15-20,000. The acquisition was half funded with a grant of £11,478 from the Artwork Fund.
Virginia was a deeply unconventional character for Edwardian England. She grew up in London, the daughter of an Italian delivery magnate Riccardo Peirano, and Rosa Balint, a Romanian peasant, and in her teenagers she acquired a big tattoo of a dragon up her proper leg. She used to decorate up as a person so she might drive sports activities vehicles round Brooklands race observe. Her and her second husband, Stephen, grew to become patrons of the humanities, offering monetary assist for the Courtauld Galleries in Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum. Stephen was monetary director of Ealing Studios and a trustee of the Royal Opera Home.
In the course of the Second World Battle they moved to Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, the place they had been concerned within the black liberation motion there. They funded the development of the Courtauld Theatre in Mutare, right now Zimbabwe’s third largest metropolis. It was reported that when the query arose of racial segregation within the theatre they made it clear they’d pull the constructing down earlier than agreeing to such a measure.
Stephen commissioned the brooches from Cartier in December 1934. They had been particularly made by Cartier utilizing the stained-glass window designs by the English artist George Kruger Grey (1880-1943), which had been put in at Eltham Palace and may nonetheless be seen within the Nice Corridor.
Kevin Sales space, English Heritage’s head collections curator, mentioned: “Virginia Courtauld’s lovely, Cartier diamond and gem set brooches epitomise the glamorous, fashionable spirit that Stephen and Virginia dropped at Eltham Palace once they restored and prolonged it within the Nineteen Thirties.
“The brooches completely convey collectively the outdated within the type of Edward IV’s cyphers, and the brand new with a Nineteen Thirties palette of pink tourmaline and blue sapphire—which is precisely what Virginia and Stephen got down to do at Eltham. The brooches usually are not solely important as items of high-quality Cartier workmanship, however as a deeply private reward from husband to spouse. It’s fantastic that they’ve discovered their method house.”
