Political turmoil in the Middle East has not deterred the UK’s Government Art Collection (GAC) from lending works to embassies there.
The UK recently re-established diplomatic relations with Iran, and the GAC, which accepts a degree of calculated risk and is keen that paintings should be displayed even in volatile regions, is expected to send works to the British embassy in Tehran once the building has been refurbished and redecorated. Philip Hammond, the foreign secretary, flew to Tehran for a ceremony to reopen the embassy in August, four years after it was seized by protesters. One painting was stolen and three damaged in November 2011 after the UK introduced sanctions against Iran.
Meanwhile, the UK government is pursuing a compensation claim against the Iranian government for losses incurred in 2011, including the paintings. The stolen work was a copy of Luke Fildes’s portrait of King George V. The damaged pieces were a copy of Fildes’s portrait of King Edward VII, George Hayter’s Queen Victoria (1863) and Fath ’Ali Shah (1823) by the Persian artist Ahmad.
The theft in Tehran came seven months after 17 works on loan from the GAC were lost when the UK embassy in Tripoli, Libya, was attacked by pro-Gaddafi protesters. However, in Damascus, Syria, pieces on loan from the collection were safely evacuated from the British embassy shortly before it closed in February 2012.
The GAC sent 14 works to the UK embassy in Baghdad in 2011. Florence Cheesman’s work Gertrude Bell’s House in Baghdad is particularly appropriate, since Bell played a major role in helping to establish modern Iraq and also founded its National Museum.
The collection has more than 300 works on loan to various embassies in the Middle East.