National Gallery of Canada sets sights on buying ‘Saint Jerome’ with Chagall sale
OTTAWA — The National Gallery of Canada says a plan to sell a Marc Chagall painting “was not made lightly” and would allow it to buy an Old Master painting key to bolstering its collection of French art.
Director and CEO Marc Mayer says the gallery is pursuing Jacques-Louis David’s neoclassical masterpiece, “Saint Jerome Hears the Trumpet of the Last Judgment,” painted in 1779.
The purchase would be funded with proceeds from the sale of “The Eiffel Tower” by Marc Chagall, which is hitting Christie’s auction house in New York on May 15.
That painting, purchased in 1956, is estimated to fetch between US$6 million and US$9 million (C$7.5 million to C$11.3 million).