FREDERICTON – The Beaverbrook Art Gallery’s protracted legal battle with the Beaverbrook U.K. Foundation ended quietly Wednesday, with the parties issuing a news release saying their bitter, high-profile dispute was resolved.
According to the terms of the settlement, the gallery will retain the 85 works it was awarded in arbitration in 2007 by retired Supreme Court justice Peter Cory, including J.M.W. Turner’s whimsical Fountain of Indolence and Lucian Freud’s brooding Hotel Bedroom. Combined, the paintings are worth more than $40 million, and are the most valuable pieces in the collection Lord Beaverbrook amassed before he opened the gallery in Fredericton in 1959.
According to the agreement, the foundation will receive the 48 works that Cory decided were on loan to the gallery the day it opened. In addition, the gallery will receive some of the costs awarded through arbitration, with the exact amount remaining confidential.
"I can’t comment on the settlement itself, but the terms are reasonable and acceptable to both the gallery and the U.K. Foundation,” said Bernard Riordon, the gallery’s director and chief executive officer.
"Having closure is excellent, and obviously in the best interests of both of us."
The quarrel over ownership of $100 million worth of art pitted the gallery against the U.K. trust Beaverbrook created in 1954 to manage his philanthropic works. For six years the case wound its way through New Brunswick legal channels, first in arbitration and then in appeal.
The foundation spent more than $10 million on legal fees and is in such desperate financial straits that it recently decided to sell Beaverbrook’s English estate, Cherkley Court, for approximately $30 million. The sprawling property in Surrey is where Beaverbrook, a New Brunswick-raised newspaper magnate, held court with the likes of Winston Churchill and Rudyard Kipling.
The current Baron Beaverbrook, Maxwell Aitken III, did not respond to emails seeking comment. Kenneth McCullough, a lawyer for the foundation in Saint John, said terms of the settlement prohibited him from commenting, but the foundation will release a statement in a day or two.
A feud that captured the imagination of the arts world, the case began in 2004 when the foundation suddenly claimed ownership of the works in the dispute, and threatened to remove them from the gallery and sell them to pay for renovations to Cherkley Court.
Within months, suits and countersuits were filed, with one legal action – a suit by the Canadian Beaverbrook Foundation over the ownership of 78 paintings – still to be resolved.
Vincent Prager, a member of the board of the Canadian Beaverbrook Foundation, said this week that the charitable trust has no plans to drop the matter.
At similar loggerheads, the gallery and the U.K. Foundation agreed to resolve their dispute through arbitration, which began with hearings in Fredericton on Oct. 2, 2006.
One of Canada’s most respected jurists, Cory heard from a colourful array of witnesses, including Lady Violet Aitken and her son, Maxwell Aitken III, as well as a handful of people who knew Lord Beaverbrook and agreed he always spoke of the collection in terms of a gift and not a loan.
In 2007, Cory gave the lion’s share of the works to the gallery, but the U.K. Foundation immediately announced an appeal. The latter was heard in September of 2008 by a panel of retired judges led by former Saskatchewan Chief Justice Edward Bayda, which a year later upheld Cory’s decision.
The foundation initially said it would respect the panel’s ruling, but a month later announced another appeal.
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