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Peter Mandler
London Guildhall University

The Taxman and the Aesthete: The Canon According to W.M. Rossetti, 1887-1904

Though traditionally reluctant to involve itself very closely in the valuation, still less in the evaluation of works of art, the Treasury found itself forced to do both in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. As art values rose sharply in the 1880s, too much tax revenue was being lost in self-valuation for death duties. As art export became a public issue at the same time, government was moved in 1896 to exempt from death duties 'important' works of art so long as they remained unsold. Thus the Treasury was called upon to make judgements both about the value of works of art and their importance to the nation. Fortunately it had an in-house expert who could help it do just that. W.M. Rossetti had spent his whole life on the excise side of the Inland Revenue, never making much connection between his paid work as taxman and his avocation as one of the foremost art critics of late Victorian London. But from 1887 he brought these two roles together and for seventeen years was responsible almost singlehandedly for deciding the 'true' value of probated works of art and for pronouncing upon their national importance. This paper will survey the functioning of the valuation and exemption system and show how Rossetti brought a sense of art values into the philistine halls of the Treasury, at the same time using his tax-exemption functions to establish a State-sanctioned canon of nationally important art. It is based upon an exhaustive search of the relevant Treasury and Inland Revenue papers - which contain a number of Rossetti's detailed assessments of great private collections - as well as upon his personal diaries.