The property, which Roche has long owned, has already housed an exhibition drawn from the collection.
Including kennels for his much loved dogs, it is to be extensively remodelled to show more of the collection after the dogs have been found new homes.
Some insight into the wealth of the collection was gained when the exhibition, Empire and Splendour, was held at the Art Gallery of South Australia in June 2008.
Roche bought from leading dealers of his day. They included French and Company, Kentshire and Dalva Brothers in New York; and Jeremy Ltd, S J Phillips, Partridge, Mallets and Hotspur in London.
He also bought from the Maastricht Antique Fair and London's Olympia fairs.
The local market was also in his sights, which meant that some of the fine porcelain finds, including Moscow pottery, made by Sydney's Peter Foster were also saved for the nation.
Some who should know whisper the collection is possibly the finest 18th and 19th century decorative arts collection in the southern hemisphere.
Roche was able to pursue his two interests, dogs and antiques, due to a property investment portfolio inherited from his Irish antecedents, whose family home in the Shamrock Isle, Fermoy, also gave its name to the North Adelaide property.
He extended the interests of the family company, The Australian Development Company, to Sydney where he recognised the opportunities right under his nose in the antique business. He owned at least four houses in Sydney's antique row, Queen Street, Woollahra, one of which he bought for $1 million and sold for $4 million.
The formidable Roche usually travelled with Sydney dealer Martyn Cook who acted as adviser and became a great friend.
He stated that the eye he developed judging dogs, which he did at a high level, assisted in making decisions on what constituted a fine piece of decorative art.
Roche sometimes strayed, however. He wrote he obtained as much pleasure from some of the humble pieces of Staffordshire and mechanical banks in the collection as its stellar pieces.
“If he set his mind on something nothing would stop him buying it,” says Cook who probably would have been satisfied with a slightly more focussed collection.
Roche was a complex, shy, unique and stubborn man, his personal assistance, Lorraine Felix, said in a eulogy at his funeral.
His demeanour gave out mixed signals. Outwardly a bit of curmudgeon, he is said to have found the sight of an indigent begging on the street so heart rending that he would organise a blanket or some other assistance rather than condemn the blighter.
He appeared to love animals more than people but he loved animals a lot. If a little curt he appeared to be a misogynist, how to explain such a momentous bequest with substantial benefits to society?
He loved creating small scale mischief. Asked to nominate where he came from when entering a show, he said Iceland. Where in Iceland he was asked. Roche looked painfully at Cook who refused to help him out with a name. “Icicle,” Roche suddenly volunteer. “Where is that?” said the statistician “It is near Popsickle” came the reply. Now more confident Roche then told of the reindeer farm he held until a fair supervisor relieved the incredulous statistics gatherer.
The antique trade will be looking to the foundation to rekindle a national interest in the best in antiques.
David Jerome Keith Roche, always “Mr Roche” to his staff, was born in Perth on a brief sojourn in Western Australia on January 19, 1930, a second son for John (also an antique collector) and Dorinda Roche, and the fourth of six children.
Returning to SA after this brief two year spell in the west, his schooling included Geelong Grammar from which he went to work briefly on a family property in WA on the Frankland River. This did not work out so he went into the offices of the Adelaide Development Company, the family business at that time in Grenfell Street.
Across the road from the fine art auction house Theodore Bruce's, he began to attend sales and bid confidently from the age of 17.
Years of passionate collecting followed one of his ultimate inspirations being the foundation set up by antique dealer Melbourne antique dealer, Bill Johnston, in East Melbourne.
He mostly outgrew the local trade although remaining in touch with them. Anthony Hurl, with Sydney's Cook, was one of the pall bearers at his funeral.
The collection included exquisite pieces of Chelsea, Meissen, Worcester and Sèvres, luxurious bronze and gilded metalware, and sumptuous objects by Fabergé.
The wow factor was particularly evident in the furniture by leading designers Thomas Hope, Chippendale the Younger and George Bullock.
Many pieces were connected with some famous people of the early 19th century. They add an extra touch of glamour and celebrity. If there is to be an audio guide to the collection, Napoleon Bonaparte’s flintlock pistol and Catherine the Great’s armchair will be stops on the visitor's way.
A service owned by the Duke of Gloucester, brother of George III; and a fashionable
kangaroo-themed plate given as part of a dinner service by Empress Josephine and
Napoleon, to his sister Pauline on her marriage to Prince Camillo Borghese are other show stoppers.
Roche made a number of finds. The image of a previously ‘un-identified’ sitter, in 1st French Empire style costume, showing off a gold finger band and superb pearl earrings, seated on a green silk velvet bench, appears to be one of these.
The sitter in this portrait, an oil on canvas signed lower left R Lefévre Fecit, is suggested by some to be Napoleon's first fiancée. Bernardine Eugénie Désirée Clary (1777 – 1860) who became Queen Consort of Norway.
Roche's passion for antiques, alongside with that of Ros Packer, helped keep Australia in mind on the world's antique markets after the heady days of the Perth and Brisbane entrepreneurs of the 1890s. It followed the seminal buying by James Fairfax and Paul Keating, also regulars at the leading international antique fairs.
It helped shift to Australia to become part of our patrimony some of the finest material culture of a century (the 18th) which settled Australia had very little of and the early part of another when traditional taste, according to older cannons, was at its peak.
Carlton Hobbs, “Carly” to his friends, once of England, lately of New York, headed the list of those who made it possible for him to acquire some of the jewels of his collection, Roche wrote.
Roche stood alongside several US billionaires and leading designers in showing their complete confidence in Carly who was distantly touched by an untidy legal stoush largely involving his brother John Hobbs and a restorer which received coverage in the New York Times.
A visit to the Mario Praz collection in Rome encouraged him to develop the idea of a collection in an Adelaide gentleman's home.
The Museo Mario Praz is located within Palazzo Primoli, in Rome’s Via Zanardelli. This museum house is a fine example of a private residence that has been conserved unchanged since the death of its owner, the renowned Florentine Anglicist, essayist and critic, and collector of 19th century art and furniture.\
The death notice said Roche, brother to John, Diana, Judith and Jennifer (all deceased) and Josephine now living in Italy, would be sadly missed by his staff at Fermoy House, and his nieces and nephews and friends in Australia, Italy, USA and Europe
Roche's funeral, held at St Laurence's Catholic Church, corner of Buxton & Hill Streets, North Adelaide on April 3 attracted a crowd of over 400.
From his beginnings he appears to have been confirmed in the state of bachelorhood.
