Masterworks from Jacob Rothschild collection go to London’s National Gallery and V&A under acceptance in lieu scheme

Two remarkable works from the collection of the late financier, philanthropist and cultural leader Jacob Rothschild are joining two London institutions, the National Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), under the UK’s acceptance in lieu (AIL) scheme.

King David (1651), a commanding oil painting by the Bolognese master Guercino, will go to the National Gallery, where Rothschild was chair of trustees from 1985 to 98. There it will join two related works by Guercino, The Cumaean Sibyl with a Putto (1651), and The Samian Sibyl (1651), both of which were painted as pendants to King David. A refined marble relief, Edward and Eleanor (1790) by the leading Neoclassical sculptor John Deare, will go to the V&A.

Both works go to the respective institutions as part of the UK’s AIL scheme, in negotiations brokered by Christie’s heritage and taxation department. Under the AIL system, those liable for inheritance tax can in certain circumstances cover this liability by giving art or heritage property, providing they are of “pre-eminent” importance or associated with a historic building. The items are then assigned to an appropriate museum or a heritage body, such as the National Trust, whereby they are kept in the UK and made accessible to the public. The acceptance of King David in lieu of inheritance tax on Jacob Rothschild’s estate settled £5.6m in tax.

Rothschild’s role in UK heritage

Rothschild, who died in February 2024, was one of the most influential and consequential figures in the British art world and a noted collector of both historic and contemporary work. As the leader of institutions such as the Heritage Lottery Fund, Somerset House in London and Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, he changed how the UK’s heritage is regarded.

Rothschild made Waddesdon—one of the great Rothschild treasure houses, which he managed and financed through a family foundation which leased it back from the National Trust—an award-winning museum and home to loan exhibitions. The house and estate were at the heart of his concern with making the experience of art open to all.

Set up in 1994 to distribute the money allotted to heritage causes by the UK’s newly launched National Lottery, Rothschild was also the first chairman of the Heritage Lottery Fund. He played a transformational role in the country’s arts sector as the fund distributed over £900 million ($1.46 billion) for more than 1,600 projects in its first three years of operation.

Rothschild’s daughter Hannah Rothschild, also a former chair of the National Gallery, said that her father “regarded Guercino’s King David—a masterwork of the Italian Baroque—as one of the crowning acquisitions of his lifetime. It was his wish to see King David reunited with its two Sibyls at the National Gallery and his family is grateful to the AIL panel and to the National Gallery for giving it a distinguished home amongst such illustrious company.”

“The exquisite marble relief by John Deare,” Hannah Rothschild said, “is of such rarity and importance that my father…felt it must find its home in a national institution. Our family is delighted that the AIL Panel and the V&A have accepted this bequest, fulfilling his vision with such care and distinction.”

374 years on: the reuniting of three Guercino canvases

King David, The Cumaean Sibyl with a Putto and The Samian Sibyl were all commissioned from Guercino in 1651 by his patron Prince Giuseppe Locatelli, of Cesena, near Rimini. The Samian Sibyl was painted as a replacement pendant to King David after another client, Prince Mattias de Medici, governor of Siena, acquired The Cumaean Sibyl from Guercino’s studio in Bologna before it had been delivered to Locatelli.

By the 1830s The Cumaean Sibyl had passed into the collection of the Forbes-Sempill family of Fintray House, Aberdeenshire, by whom it was sold in 1954. It was then bought by the scholar and collector Denis Mahon, who made an agreement with the trustees of the National Gallery in 2006 that it should be acquired by the Trafalgar Square institution following his death. This duly came to pass after Mahon died in 2011, aged 100.

King David and The Samian Sibyl had meanwhile been bought from the Farnese collection in Rome in 1768 by John Spencer, first Earl Spencer, joining his celebrated collection held at Althorp House in Northamptonshire, and Spencer House, in London. Athenian Stuart designed imposing Neoclassical frames for both Guercino canvases, which were hung on either side of the doors into the Great Room at Spencer House. During the Second World War, the 7th Earl Spencer moved both Guercino works to Althorp for safety.

In 2010, the Rothschild family acquired King David at auction for £5.2m, and it was returned to its old position at Spencer House before later being moved to Waddesdon. Two years later, in 2012, The Samian Sibyl was accepted in lieu of inheritance tax from the Spencer family and allocated to the National Gallery. In 2024 the three Guercino works were brought together as part of the loan exhibition Guercino at Waddesdon: King David and the Wise Women.

At the National Gallery, King David will be on display in Room 32—alongside other 17th-century Italian works by artists such as Caravaggio and Artemisia Gentileschi—as part of C C Land: The Wonder of Art, the rehang of the National Gallery which will be unveiled to the public on 10 May.

Edward and Eleanor: a Neoclassical rarity

The Rome-based British Neoclassical sculptor John Deare created the relief of Edward and Eleanor in 1790, eight years before his death at 38. There are just 50 documented works from his short career—of classical and allegorical subjects or related to English history—and few of these are known today. This makes the work allocated to the V&A a great rarity, by one of the most accomplished and subtle stone carvers of his day.

The relief shows Eleanor of Castile sucking poison from the wound of her husband Prince Edward (who succeeded as King Edward I in 1272), cloaking a scene from English medieval life in Neoclassical vein.

Previously, only two other marble sculptures by Deare were in British public collections: Cupid and Psyche (1791), at the Bradford District Museums & Galleries, and Julius Caesar Invading Britain (1796), acquired by the V&A in 2011, where it is on display in the Hintze Gallery. There are plaster versions of the Edward and Eleanor composition in the collections of Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire, and at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool.

The work is of particular scholarly value to the V&A, as it predates the Julius Caesar Invading Britain relief. The museum also holds several albums of drawings by Deare, including a study believed to be preparatory for the figure of Eleanor. Edward and Eleanor will be the focus of a spotlight presentation at the V&A this month as part of an international conference at the museum on sculptural exchanges between Italy and Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Tristram Hunt, Director of the V&A, said: “These remarkable acquisitions, made possible by the Acceptance in Lieu scheme, will forever represent Lord Rothschild’s legacy as a great connoisseur, champion of the arts and relentless supporter of British cultural institutions.”

Remembering Jacob Rothschild in May 2025

The allocation in lieu of inheritance tax of pictures from Jacob Rothschild’s estate to two public collections comes at a time when many of his contributions to UK cultural life are being remembered. May 2025 marks the 25th anniversary of the reopening of Somerset House in London, under the ownership of the Somerset House Trust, a project conceived and masterminded by Rothschild. Under the ownership of the Somerset House Trust, the great courtyarded 18th-century complex, overlooking the Thames and designed by William Chambers, has remained the home to the Courtauld Collection and become a centre for contemporary art, and a transformative hub for artists, innovation and temporary exhibitions.

Meanwhile the reopening of the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery on 10 May, following its renovation and reordering by the architect Annabelle Selldorf, will serve as a reminder of the pivotal role Rothschild played. As chairman of trustees he worked with the brothers John, Simon and Timothy Sainsbury to provide the London museum with an important new extension in 1991.

The wing, again with substantial financial backing from the Sainsbury family, will remain home to the gallery’s remarkable collection of early European art, and will be established as the gallery’s permanent entrance, remodelled to provide a newly welcoming entrance, in line with Jacob Rothschild’s core belief that art should be open to all.