Though I was hoping, last January, that the Getty Museum had purchased the marvelous Rothschild Prayerbook when it came up for auction at Christie’s, no press release ever emerged from Brentwood, so I had long since figured that it had disappeared into a private collection and wouldn’t be seen for some time. I was wrong.
The 150-page prayerbook, you’ll recall, is a lavishly illuminated medieval Book of Hours, and at the time of its sale was considered to be the most important illuminated manuscript in private hands. It had been commissioned by a member of the Dutch imperial court, made in Ghent or Bruges around 1505-1510, and contains a Madonna and child by Gerard David, plus 67 full-page illuminations by Gerard Horenbout, Simon Bening and Alexander Bening, the top illuminators of their day. Baron Anselm von Rothschild (1803-74) bought it sometime in the 1800s, but the Nazis grabbed it from his heirs in 1938. Soon after Austria finally returned it to the family in 1998, the late Baroness Bettina de Rothschild consigned it to Christie’s. In 1999, it fetched almost triple its presale high estimate of about $4.7 million–setting a record of nearly $13.4 million. There were five bidders.
In January, I think, there was only one bidder, or maybe two, and the winner got it for $13.6 million. The hammer price was $12 million — exactly at the low estimate of $12 million to $18 million. Last month, he revealed himself–and far from hoarding it, he has put the prayerbook  on the road.
Trouble is, his road is in Australia. His name is Kerry Stokes, and he is chairman of Channel Seven there. He also has interests in other media, both electronic and print, plus property, mining, and construction equipment, according to Wikipedia. Based in Perth, he’s sending to Canberra and Melbourne, according to Australian reports.
Having paged through it myself, I know what he meant when he said “When I first saw it, I actually didn’t know if I should touch it and open it. I started to turn the pages and the hair on the back of my arm stood up. I’m a pretty tough nut, I guess, and I love art as one of the expressions that…probably appeals to the softer side a lot of people would deny I have. This is so unique I expect a lot of people will want to come and see it – we will have something else to offer that nobody else has and that’s the Rothschild Prayerbook.”
That’s from an account in the Daily Mail.
Stokes reportedly has a large art collection. In 2008, the Art Gallery of Western Australia presented an exhibit called PEEP: GLIMPSES OF THE LAST 4 DECADES FROM THE KERRY STOKES COLLECTION. It included Australian artists and others such as Andy Warhol, Bridget Riley, Alfred Jensen, Philip Pearlstein, and Walter de Maria. Then, last November through March, the AGWA presented A PRIVATE VIEW: MODERN MASTERS FROM THE KERRY STOKES COLLECTION, which included works by Monet, Courbet, Matisse and Magritte.
About the same time, he was said to be an “avid collector of rare illuminated manuscripts” and he lent twelve of them to the New Norcia Museum and Art Gallery in Western Australia, in show called Celebrating Word and Image 1250 – 1600. A slide show at the link shows they are nice, but cannot compare with his new prize, a true treasure.
Even if you do not travel to Australia to see this (and it is amazing, as I was allowed to page through it at Christie’s), Stokes wants to share it–I’ve heard unofficially that he is making a documentary about the prayerbook.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Christie’sÂ