A bit of French bubbly for the baboons could even be in order. Mr O'Farrell was attending the unpacking of the boxes housing the early drawings of Australian fauna and flora which proprietor of the park Edward Stanley, the 49 year old 19th Earl of Derby, had sold to the Mitchell Library.
Stanley owns the Safari Park which rests alongside his stately pile in Merseyside.
This week for the first time the library gave an official price for the deal , involving 741 210- year old drawings and watercolours in six volumes. It is $7.1 million.
This was only after the library's publicist, possibly finding the figure supplied to her hard to believe, had sent out invitations of the impending unveiling of drawings bought for $1.7 million.
The price was a little more than the $6 million writer had arrived at in the absence of one supplied and it confirms Christie's as the arbiter of the biggest Australian art purchase of the year as well of course the biggest export sale of the year, a $20 million Picasso. The drawings were sold through Christie's by private treaty, the value arrived at by the sum of its parts.
That is a multiple of the price known to have been paid for equivalent drawings.
The library, however, declined to give any breakdown of how it was paying for the material.
The deal came about it followed the referral in June of a proposal the library purchase the drawings. The proposal had come to the attention of Robert Thomas, a map collector who is with the State Library Foundation and on the board of TAL Ltd. (formerly Tower Australia)
This, the most expensive purchase in the library's history was made possible through :the financial support of TAL and its parent company Dai-ichi Life, the NSW Government and the State Library Foundation”.
Mr James Minto, managing director of TAL, said that it had been agreed that the contributions made by each party should not be published.
The funding would be a reminder in the century to come of Dai-ichi Life's move into Australia.
When reminded that Associated Securities (which subsequently went into receivership) provided most of the funding for the great J A Turner oil painting Val D'Aosta in the National Gallery of Victoria Mr Minto commented only that that TAL had preferred to be celebrated with the return to Australia of its heritage rather than overseas works.
TAL Ltd secures naming rights as the collection is named the TAL and Dai-ichi Life Collection.
Founded on September 15, 1902, Dai-Ichi Insurance is one of Japan's most widely held stocks.
Mr Minto pointed out that Dai-Ichi had the usual Japanese corporate concern for art and heritage. It maintained and preserved in its head office building in Tokyo the offices and accoutrements of post WWII Japan administrator General McArthur.
It was not a concern that two thirds of the drawings were copies, done contemporaneously in Britain, of drawings made in Australia, Mr Minto said. They were still rare and important.
Mitchell librarian Richard Neville said that a lot of research needed to be done to establish which images were previously unknown and how they related to the “originals” in the Museum of Natural History in London..
Since 1842, when they were bought by the 13th Earl of Derby, the albums have remained undisturbed at the Derby family seat, Knowsley Hall. The earl bought them from the estate of a London collector, Aylmer Bourke Lambert a leading naturalist who had compiled them in the 1790s and who had commissioned copies.
Neville has a lot of work ahead as the library is expecting another big purchase, the Major James Wallis “scrapbook” which turned up in Canada last year and was auctioned in London, Ontario on October 4 for $1.8 million.
The book had readily obtained as expected, an export permit required of valuable heritage having no known relevance to Canada. Final payment was being made this week.
Neville had not seen the book but Sydney rare book dealer Tim McCormick who had seen it in a private capacity had passed on his extensive observations to the library.
The albums will go on display at the library from December 10 until mid February next year although it is going to be difficult for their magnificence to be fully appreciated because they are in bound volume format.
Mr O' Farrell said that it was not only appropriate that a collection of extraordinary historically works should return to NSW but that with its emphasis on early fauna its future home would be well sited next to the menagerie that was the State House of Parliament next door.
