Denis Mahon

Denis Mahon with Andrea Emiliani and Pier Luigi Cervellati in Chiusdino . Photo by Paolo Monti .

Sir John Denis Mahon , CH , CBE (born November 8, 1910 in London ; † April 24, 2011 there ) was an English art historian , art collector and expert on the Italian Baroque .

Life

Denis Mahon grew up as the son of John FitzGerald Mahon, the fourth son of Sir William Vesey Ross Mahon (1813-1893), and Lady Alice Evelyn Browne, the daughter of the fifth Marquess of Sligo, Henry Browne, in affluent circumstances. He studied at Eton College and later at Christ Church College of Oxford University , where he received his Master acquired. After a year at the Ashmolean Museum under Kenneth Clark , he moved to Nikolaus Pevsner at the Courtauld Institute , where he was in close contact with Otto Kurz, among others . Mahon's Studies in Seicento Art Theory , published in 1947, are the most important academic monograph of the art historian. In later years, in addition to the publication of numerous articles, he was responsible for exhibitions in England, Ireland, the United States and Italy.

In 1964 Mahon was elected a member ( Fellow ) of the British Academy . In 1967 he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire appointed (CBE), the accolade for Knight Bachelor in 1986. In 2002 he became a Companion of Honor appointed. In Italy, Mahon received the Medaglia ai benemeriti della cultura e dell'arte in 1957 , and in 1982 he was made an honorary citizen of Cento , Guercino's hometown . Mahon received honorary doctorates from the University of Newcastle (1969), the University of Oxford (1994) and the universities of Rome (1998) and Bologna (2002).

Collection and promotion of museums

Mahon bought his first work of art, a painting by Guercino , in Paris in 1934 for only £ 120. In the years that followed he brought together numerous other Baroque paintings and drawings, which he often acquired at similarly low prices either because of the low esteem in this era or because of his unique ability to identify high-quality works by famous masters (“They were worth nothing in the Thirties ... for thirty years I had the field to myself "). When he bid on Europa in 1945 on Guido Reni's robbery , his only competitor was a French art dealer (Arnold Wiggins) targeting the 18th century frame, in which case Mahon was able to purchase the painting for just £ 85. Many works - including works by Guercino and Renis by Annibale Carracci , Caravaggio and Nicolas Poussin - he passed on directly to various European museums without a profit margin. At least initially, however, the lack of interest in Baroque paintings prevented the public collections from acquiring some of these paintings: Guercinos Elias is fed by the ravens , which Mahon was able to acquire in 1936 for only £ 200 from the Barberini collection in Rome and for the same price from the National Gallery was rejected by the then director Kenneth Clark and therefore initially remained in Mahon's private collection for several years, where it was now valued at £ 4,000,000 in the 1990s. Mahon later acted as trustee of the National Gallery (1957–1964 and 1966–1973) and in this position directed the museum's acquisition of several key Baroque works.

In 1970 there was a momentous controversy between Denis Mahon and David Eccles , the then Paymaster General and Minister of the Arts, over the proposed end of free entry to national museums by Eccles. In connection with the dispute, the Treasury Department refused to repay an inheritance tax, which Mahon had to pay after his mother's death, with the gift of Annibale Carracci's Coronation of the Virgin Mary - a work of art whose value at the time exceeded the tax bill many times over. In 1971 Mahon sold the painting to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York .

In later years, Denis Mahon donated or loaned the paintings and drawings to his collection (valued at £ 50,000,000 in 1998 - Mahon himself stated that he never paid more than £ 2,000 for a painting in the 20th century and only around 50,000 in total £) to various museums in England (the National Gallery (London) , the Ashmolean Museum , the National Gallery of Scotland , the Fitzwilliam Museum , the Birmingham Art Gallery and the Temple Newsma House in Leeds ), the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna and the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin . Most of the handovers were made as permanent loans from the Art Fund , which were tied to two conditions: the museums concerned may not sell works of art from their holdings at any time, and they must guarantee free entry for visitors.

The collector died on April 24, 2011 in London at the age of 100.

Works (selection)

Studies in Seicento Art and Theory. Warburg Institute, London 1947.
Mostra dei Carracci - disegni. Edizioni Alfa, Bologna 1956.
Il Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, 1591–1666): Catalogo critico dei dipinti. Edizioni Alfa, Bologna 1967 (together with Cesare Gnudi ).
Guercino: Master Painter of the Baroque. Washington, DC 1992 (ed. Together with Andrea Emiliani , Diane De Grazia and Sybille Ebert-Schifferer ).
Nicolas Poussin: Works from his first years in Rome. Jerusalem 1999.
Come lavorava Caravaggio. Viviani, Rome 2006.

literature

Denys Sutton: Profile: Denis Mahon. In: Apollo , 108, 1978, pp. 266-267.
Maria Grazia Bernardini (ed.): Studi di storia dell'arte in onore di Denis Mahon. Electa, Milan 2000.
Sir Denis Mahon: Wealthy Scholar and Connoisseur who Championed Italian Baroque Painting and Campaigned on Behalf of the Nation's Art Collections. In: The Times London, April 28, 2011, p. 67.

Individual evidence

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Mahon, Denis
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Mahon, John Denis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	English art historian
DATE OF BIRTH	November 8, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH	London
DATE OF DEATH	April 24, 2011
Place of death	London

[1] Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed July 3, 2020 .

[2] ttps://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/apr/28/sir-denis-mahon-obituary .

[3] ttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/art-obituaries/8481701/Sir-Denis-Mahon.html

[4] ttp://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/435853?=&imgNo=0&tabName=object-information ; http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/sir-denis-mahon-art-collector-who-fought-for-free-admission-charges-and-against-the-sale-of-works- from-public-collections-2282565.html .

[5] ttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/art-obituaries/8481701/Sir-Denis-Mahon.html ; http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/9878704/Sir-Denis-Mahon-collection-to-be-given-to-UK-galleries.html .