Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, the UK bank majority-owned by the government, said it may sell works from its in-house art collection that is worth as much as £15 million (US$24 million).
The lender, which has received £45.5 billion in state aid in the world’s most expensive bank bailout, is reviewing its collection to determine initially whether UK national museums wish to acquire any of the items.
The bank won European Union approval Dec. 14 for a restructuring plan. Under the plan, it has to get rid of 300 branches and insurance divisions over the next four years, spokeswoman Linda Harper said yesterday.
“We’ll have less buildings, and less of a need for art that we’ve acquired,” Harper said in a telephone interview. She said the bank was identifying works that national museums and galleries might want, “and if there’s a surplus of art, we may look at disposals.”
“No decisions have been taken yet, but we will not sell any pieces of art that are of heritage or of historical importance,” said Harper. The works will be sold when a good price can be fetched for them on the art market, she said.
The bank says it has some 2,200 works of art worth more than £1,000, and another 1,500 or so limited-edition prints. The art collection grew in 2000 when RBS acquired National Westminster Bank Plc and incorporated the pieces in that collection.
One of the paintings that had been part of the NatWest collection, a work by Frank Auerbach, was sold two or three years ago, Harper said. According to the Scotsman newspaper, it sold for £780,000; Harper wouldn’t confirm the figure.
The oldest work currently in the RBS collection dates from around 1750, and is Johann Zoffany’s Portrait of Andrew Drummond, founder of Drummonds, the Scottish lender, RBS said. Other pieces include Jack Vettriano’s Fish Teas and L.S. Lowry’s At the Factory Gates, according to RBS. The collection is valued between £10 million and £15 million.
In the March 9 edition of the Taipei Times a piece by Ninon Godefroy ran with the headine “The quiet, gentle rhythm of Taiwan.” It started with the line “Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention.” I laughed out loud at that. This was out of no disrespect for the author or the piece, which made some interesting analogies and good points about how both Din Tai Fung’s and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) meticulous attention to detail and quality are not quite up to
April 21 to April 27 Hsieh Er’s (謝娥) political fortunes were rising fast after she got out of jail and joined the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in December 1945. Not only did she hold key positions in various committees, she was elected the only woman on the Taipei City Council and headed to Nanjing in 1946 as the sole Taiwanese female representative to the National Constituent Assembly. With the support of first lady Soong May-ling (宋美齡), she started the Taipei Women’s Association and Taiwan Provincial Women’s Association, where she
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) hatched a bold plan to charge forward and seize the initiative when he held a protest in front of the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office. Though risky, because illegal, its success would help tackle at least six problems facing both himself and the KMT. What he did not see coming was Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (將萬安) tripping him up out of the gate. In spite of Chu being the most consequential and successful KMT chairman since the early 2010s — arguably saving the party from financial ruin and restoring its electoral viability —
It is one of the more remarkable facts of Taiwan history that it was never occupied or claimed by any of the numerous kingdoms of southern China — Han or otherwise — that lay just across the water from it. None of their brilliant ministers ever discovered that Taiwan was a “core interest” of the state whose annexation was “inevitable.” As Paul Kua notes in an excellent monograph laying out how the Portuguese gave Taiwan the name “Formosa,” the first Europeans to express an interest in occupying Taiwan were the Spanish. Tonio Andrade in his seminal work, How Taiwan Became Chinese,
RSS