AFTER six months of secret negotiations, the National Gallery in London is to acquire one of the finest private art collections in the world on extended loan. It includes paintings by Seurat, Cezanne and Van Gogh, as well as no fewer than 40 works by Pablo Picasso, and will go on show this winter.
The collection, which is owned by Heinz Berggruen, a 75-year-old American citizen and European art dealer, is widely considered one of the last great collections of early modern art in private hands. Mr Berggruen has agreed that it will remain with the National Gallery for at least five years. At the end of that time, he said last week, the loan would be ''renewable, depending on how things go''.
Apart from its 40 Picassos, the Berggruen Collection contains many great works by the French post-impressionists: eight mature works by Paul Cezanne; two important late Van Goghs and 14 Seurats, including one of the artist's undisputed masterpieces, Les Poseuses, and another important painting, The Channel of Gravelines, Grand Fort-Philippe, which Mr Berggruen bought in 1986 from its British owner, Lord Butler of Saffron Walden, after the National Gallery had failed to raise nearly pounds 6m to purchase it for the nation. The collection also contains two of Georges Braque's most impressive Cubist paintings and one of the finest works of Joan Miro's mid-career, the surrealistically titled Dialogue with Insects.
The National Gallery does not publicly put values on the works of art that it houses, but the Berggruen Collection is conservatively estimated - perhaps very conservatively given last week's auction prices for Van Gogh - to be worth pounds 250m.
Neil MacGregor, director of the National Gallery, said last week that Mr Berggruen's decision had been ''quite unexpected''. He had met Mr Berggruen two years ago to...
