No. 1/3371/51.
(COPY)
28th September, 1951.
Dear Sloss,
The question of buying the Law and Sayer collections has now been considered, the decision being that the Sayer collection should be bought for £1,000 and that an offer of £1,000 should be made for the Wyndham Law collection, our ceiling price being £1,250.
May I therefore now take advantage of your offer of further assistance in this matter and request you to negotiate with Wyndham Law on behalf of this Government? If you could find time to do this I would like you to charge to us whatever expenses you may incur, train fares, etc. The Colonial Office will be informed of what is happening.
I fully agree with what you say about cleaning the Wyndham Law pictures and if it is possible to avoid relining by expert cleaning I think this would be preferable. I understand that relining is not always successful and that a picture can in this way very easily be ruined.
It would be useful for us to have in advance an estimate of the costs of cleaning and transporting the pictures to Hong Kong and I propose to ask the Colonial Office to get in touch with you on this since it will probably be easier for you to deal direct with them than by air mail correspondence with us. The Crown Agents will of course make all arrangements for the shipping of the pictures.
Once again let me say how grateful we are for your help. I shall hope to hear from you soon whether you can undertake this further task which involves principally negotiating with Wyndham Law and then keeping an eye on the picture-cleaning arrangements.
With very best wishes,
Duncan J. Sloss, Esq., C.B.E.,
313 Woodstock Road,
Oxford.
P.S.
Yours sincerely,
(Sgd.) A.G. GRANTHAM.
I enclose a copy of my letter to Sayer. (Not enclosed with
Sigram)
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