The Art Gallery of South Australia's purchase is a work by the Flemish artist who became chief painter to Charles I, Sir Anthony van Dyck. Portrait of a Seated Couple was acquired from the New York branch of Colnaghi's, the London picture dealer.
Colnaghi's in turn had paid only $US109,750 when the portrait was offered for sale at Sotheby's in New York on January 15 last year.
While this was comfortably above the $US10,000-$US15,000 estimate, the consigner, the Detroit Institute of Arts, would be entitled to be a little sad after the deal.
A Michigan-based property magnate, Mr Taubman is an honorary trustee of the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Mr Radford is adamant that South Australia bought well. 'We were able to negotiate with cash up-front, aware of the (painting's) history,' he said. The gallery has a donor who is subsidising the purchase of the portrait, which will be unveiled on February 15.
Another US institution might have found it difficult to purchase the picture because of its history, while the work would never have been able to attract a big price in the British market because the sitters cannot be conclusively identified.
The J.P. Getty Museum had paid $US800,000 for a single portrait in 1984. Van Dyck's excellence was in his sensitive rendition of double portraits, Mr Radford said.
He said also that the Van Dyck attribution had not been queried since 1922
Repainting from a previous restoration had given the work an awkward look, Mr Radford added. It made the portrait look odd, the woman's eyes having a'whatever happened to Baby Jane' look.
Colnaghi's appears to have struck an exceptional note of serendipity in the affair.
As this month's Old Master auctions in New York suggest, in consignments from the Metropolitan Museum of New York, US institutions do not always consign their unwanted works to auction.
The Detroit Institute for the Arts has been hard hit by the decline in the car industry and population shifts from downtown. However, it obviously thought it was not selling a master-work when it consigned the Van Dyck to auction.
Sotheby's catalogued the portrait very conservatively as 'attributed' to Van Dyck.
Mr Radford pointed out that the work had been accepted as a Van Dyck since 1922, although donated to the Institute as a Cornelis de Vos.
The cataloguer said that the sitters had been identified by three scholars as the painter Jan Wildens (1586-1653) and his wife Maria Stappart, but that this theory had been rejected by another academic.
Mr Radford said he did not believe the sitters were Wildens and Stappart. However, while the identity of Van Dyck sitters was of significance to the British market, the painting's quality was of overriding importance in Australia and the identity of the sitter did not matter so much in this country.
The portrait had been sold by Detroit, according to Sotheby's catalogue, to benefit the acquisitions fund of the Institute which must have been sorely depleted in the recession-struck North American city. However, the result will continue to fuel the debate over museum de-accession.
The sale of gifts to institutions is considered to be particularly dangerous in museum circles, because it tends to discourage future donors. The portrait was donated to the Institute in 1889 by James E. Scripps of Detroit.
The work is believed to have long been held in the museum's storage space. The scholar Julius Held wrote in 1982 that the painting appeared to be in poor condition beneath a heavy layer of varnish.
Mr Nicholas Hall, who handled the deal for Colnaghi's, said he was precluded from commenting further upon the work until the institution which had purchased it formally announced its acquisition. However, Colnaghi's restored the painting before selling it on.
Colnaghi's client base in Australia includes James Fairfax, to whom the firm sold a Canaletto, and the Art Gallery of South Australia which also purchased a Claude.
There are now four notable Van Dycks in Australia: a 218 by 139cm portrait of Marchesse Filippo Spinola painted around 1622 and acquired by the Queensland Art Gallery in 1982; and portraits of the Earl of Pembroke and the Countess of Southampton in the National Gallery of Victoria.
The 120 by 154 cm portrait acquired by the Art Gallery of South Australia is the only early Van Dyck in an Australian public collection. The other works are from the artist's Italian period or his later British period.
Mr Radford is not frightened of spending big money on works he considers appropriate for the collection and he also appears to have the uncanny knack of finding the money required.
The portrait complements a fine collection of Old Masters rich in portraiture. He maintains that the portrait's 'robust painterly handling and relaxed, convincing naturalism' contrast with the gallery's smoothly modelled formal portraits by Michiel van Miereveld, Cornelius Johnson and Marcus Gheeraerts.
One of the two works by Van Miereveld is of Van Dyck's patron, the Duke of Buckingham.
