11 Feb 08

Music (1877) by Edward Burne-Jones, is one of the paintings donated to the Ashmolean Museum

Two major paintings by the artists Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti have been saved for the nation through the Government’s Acceptance in Lieu (AIL) scheme and will be permanently allocated to the Ashmolean Museum.

The paintings are from the same collection that made national headlines in November 2006, when two painted panels by the Renaissance artist, Fra Angelico, were found in a pensioner’s terraced-house in Oxford. The collection belonged to Jean Preston, a regular visitor to the Ashmolean, who also helped out at the front desk of the museum.

Following her death in 2006, the Fra Angelico panels were sold at auction in April 2007 for £1.7 million. The success of the sale enabled her heirs to fulfil her wishes in offering pre-eminent items from her collection in lieu of tax to benefit the Ashmolean and other museums.

Miss Preston had inherited most of the collection from her father, Kerrison Preston, a Bournemouth solicitor who had formed a remarkable collection of mostly Victorian art in the 1930s. She established herself in America as a curator of manuscripts and printed books, until she retired in 1993, and returned to England with her collection, settling in a small house in Oxford.

The oil painting Music (1877) by Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) is now on display at the Ashmolean. Small in scale, important in history, and distinguished in provenance, this painting by one of the best-known of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood depicts two women in flowing robes, one holding a sheet of music from which the other reads while playing a stringed instrument. Regarded as one of the artist’s masterpieces, revealing the influence of Italian classicism, its acceptance settled £560,000 of tax. It was commissioned by the artist’s principal patron, William Graham. Following his death, it passed to Joseph Beausire, and then to Kerrison Preston, who bought it at Christie’s in 1934.

Christopher Brown, Director of the Ashmolean, said: ‘We are extremely grateful to Miss Preston and her family for their generosity, and to the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council for allocating this astonishing collection to the Ashmolean where they will remain accessible to the public. These works are a superb addition to the Museum’s renowned collection of Pre- Raphaelite paintings, which is one of the greatest outside London.’