The incident occurred in the environs of Knowsley Safari Park (KSP), outside Knowsley Hall, home of the 19th earl Earl of Derby, noted for its particular fine specimens of the primate – a baboon, a species noted for its painting skills.
The fortunes of the park's proud creatures were expected to improve decidely when three years ago the Earl sold a collection of London executed-early copies of colonial drawings, acquired in the 1850s by one of his ancestors, for $7 million*.
The baboon's luck changed when the park activated its animal emergency procedure on June 11 when the baboon was located beyond the perimeter of the park and shot.
The Liverpool Echo reported that it was told by a KSP spokesman that the park's animal management team, the police and the game keeper did everything they could to resolve the problem before the game keeper took the relevant action.
It said Merseyside Police confirmed that a helicopter was deployed to try to trace the animal and used a moving police cordon to keep the public away.
Sad as the development was it seems unlikely to stop the slide to private treaty sales of UK vendors particularly of hard to place colonial material that began in the early 2000s with the Raper collection sold to the National Library of Australia for $3 million via Mr Clive Stewart-Lockart of the Bloomsbury branch of the UK auction house Dreweatt Neate Auctions.
Targeting Sydney's Royal Botanic Gardens as a buyer the vendor, the Earl of Ducie, must have been heartened to hear that a new Dutch auction appeared to be developing between the National Library of Australia and the SLNSW before the former acquired them.
In 2010 under the tenure pf the present 19th Earl, Christie's travel specialist, Mr Nicholas Lamborn sold the Earl of Derby's collection.
Another collection has now been acquired from the UK reportedly by an Australian institution and Mr Lambourn appears once again to have been involved.
Mr Lambourn told AASD's Terry Ingram that he could not comment on a suggestion that he has also now sold the collection of Thomas Baines watercolours owned by London's Royal Geographical Society.
The Royal Geographical Society was reported in the London Daily Telegraph, which also covered the KSP incident, to have sold the Baines drawings, (from an expedition the explorer artist made to Australia in 1855), to help plug a $A5.8 million hole in its pension fund. The collection consisted of 791 drawings in 6 volumes.
The Royal Geographical Society, which commissioned the drawings, said in a circular to members that the drawings were sold to "a major collection in Australia."
It did not name the collection but the AASD.is reliably informed that the buyer is national, which makes either the National Gallery of Australia or the Australian National Library, now under a new chair person Mr Ryan Stokes.
It might be significant that the Society did not say "a major public collection in Australia.
A "prized bundle" of paintings and sketches by Baines from an expedition to Australia in 1855 was reportedly being sold off.
In a letter to its 16,500 members the Royal Geographical Society Council of Trustees admit the decision to sell the paintings was "unpalatable".
But they insisted it was the only choice left open to them as they battled market dynamics affecting every big company in Britain."
Baines' major contribution to Britain's colonial art heritage was done as a result of visits to South Africa, accompanying Livingston on his historic expeditions to the Zambesi.
He did a far more substantial body of work on his Southern African journeys than his Australian trips.
One of Baines' more common South African works Gorge of the southern branch of Depot Creek and the plain over which it flows c. 1856 sold for $48,800 in the Grundy sale in Sydney on June 28 this year.
As early as 1977, a high value was put on his Australian work when Melbourne dealer Mr Joseph Brown, who sold the same Canberra institution a four panel (in one frame) Central Australian oil for a (present writer remembered) price of $20,000.
The National Archives in Zimbabwe has a big holding of Baines' South African watercolours which were moved to a basement in the building after Independence, just as the statues of the country's founder Cecil Rhodes were rounded up and moved to a single park. But Southern African expatriates have kept the value alive.
* See: Bubbly for the Baboons by Terry Ingram, on 25-Nov-2011. http://www.aasd.com.au/index.cfm/news/282-bubbly-for-the-baboons/
