Matthew Lloyd/Getty Images “The Italian Woman, or Woman with a Yellow Sleeve†by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot at the National Gallery in London.When the British painter Lucian Freud died in 2011, at the age of 88, his heirs faced a considerable inheritance tax. But his estate, taking advantage of a provision in British law that envisions “acceptance in lieu†of taxes, has now blunted that burden by donating works by two influential 19t-century French artists, Corot and Degas, to British arts institutions.
The Corot painting, which will go to the National Gallery in London, is a portrait called “The Italian Woman, or Woman with a Yellow Sleeve,†which, according to the BBC, “has not been seen in public for more than 60 years,†and, before Mr. Freud acquired it in 2001, once belonged to the Hollywood movie star Edward G. Robinson. In recent years, Mr. Freud had hung it on the top floor of his home.
The Freud estate is also donating three bronze sculptures by Degas to the Courtald Gallery, as specified by the painter in his will. Those works are “Horse Galloping on Right Foot,†“The Masseuse,†and “Portrait of a Woman: Head Resting on One Hand.â€
Stephan Agostini/Agence France-Presse â€" Getty Images Lucian Freud in 2010.Under British law, authors, artists and collectors have been able to donate cultural artifacts in lieu of inheritance tax for more than a century. According to the British government, 51 items of “major cultural significance,†worth more than $60 million, were donated just between 2010 and 2012, including paintings by Reynolds, Turner and Rubens and manuscripts by Harold Pinter and J.G. Ballard.
In the case of Lucian Freud, widely considered to be Britain’s greatest painter at the time of his death, the donation is also being portrayed as his thank-you gift to the nation that sheltered him from Hitler. Mr. Freud, a grandson of Sigmund Freud, was born in Berlin, but as a child came to the United Kingdom as a refugee, becoming a British citizen in 1939.
