Alfred Beit Foundation back in the black with €5.4m profit

The Alfred Beit Foundation is back in the black after recording a profit of €5.4m in 2015 on the back of two sales of its six ‘Old Masters’ paintings.

The foundation operates loss-making Russborough House in Co Wicklow and it sparked a public outcry in 2015 when it announced the sale of its Old Masters series in order to keep the 18th century Georgian mansion open to visitors.

After a series of emergency meetings with Minister for Arts and Heritage Heather Humphreys, the foundation postponed the planned auction at Christie’s in London.

However, telecoms billionaire Denis O’Brien and co-owner of the Merrion Hotel, Lochlann Quinn, stepped in to purchase two of the paintings and donate them back to the State, giving them to the National Gallery.

In such cases, donors are entitled to 80% of the price written off in their tax liabilities.

Now, new accounts show that the foundation realised €5.8m from the sale of the two paintings and other smaller disposals in 2015.

Mr O’Brien purchased Head of a Bearded Man by Rubens for a reported €3.5m while Mr Quinn purchased for €2m A Village Kermesse Near Antwerp by David Teniers the Younger, a 17th-century Flemish artist.

In her statement attached to the accounts just filed with the Companies Office, chair of the Beit Foundation, Judith Woodworth, said that without the sale of the paintings, the Beit Foundation recorded a deficit of €399,000 on its ordinary activities in 2015. A large contributor to the operating loss in 2015 was the foundation’s legal and professional fee bill soaring almost 10-fold from €10,787 to €100,865. The bill represents almost a third of the €235,000 in income generated by Russborough House in admissions in 2015.

However, the controversy around the future of Russborough House in 2015 coincided with its admission income increasing by 27%, from €185,000 to the €235,000.

In her statement, Ms Woodworth said that “2015 was a challenging year for all involved with the Alfred Beit Foundation”. She pointed out that in the three years to the end of December 2015, the foundation had a cumulative deficit of €811,000.

She said that in the same three-year period, the foundation incurred combined costs of €1.06m on repairs and maintenance and security — the foundation’s security bill for 2015 worked out at €2,860 per week.

“Clearly, this level of deficit cannot continue and it is our ambition to establish a sustainable, long term future for Russborough to enable it to be enjoyed and appreciated by increasing numbers of people,” Ms Woodworth said. “Well over 100,000 people visited Russborough in 2015 and this forms a solid basis for increasing revenue levels into the future whilst the introduction of a ‘pay-in’ car park in 2015 was accepted by the vast majority of people as a way of them contributing to the future survival of Russborough as a visitor attraction of national and international repute.”