Talk:Royal Collection/Archive 1

Archive 1

Comments

How much is the art collection actually worth? I accept it is rather hard to price such a priceless collection but there must be some credible estimates, surely? --Camaeron (talk) 15:34, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Style

I reverted the non-wikipedic use of authors' names in capitals, and their list by surname. Still most of paintings names must be put in italics. --Attilios (talk) 09:47, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

The 400b figure for worth of the collection seems wildly inaccurate, source? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.172.94.165 (talk) 19:15, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Valuation

The Valuation of £10billion seems to be plucked out of thin air and is grossly wrong. To say it is priceless is most correct because it is almost impossible to value works of art which are both masterpieces and unique. There is often nothing similar that has been sold to value them against, so to guess what it would sell for is near impossible. And it could be said they are "valueless" anyway because they cannot be sold.

Beyond that the £10billion price tag doesn't seem grasp the size of the royal collection or the treasures within it.
Lets do some simple maths: (forgetting things like jewelery, furniture, etc. etc for the time being- we'll look at art). The collection includes over 7,000 paintings, 500,000 prints and 30,000 watercolours and drawings. Forgetting everything else in the collection, a value of £10billion would give each item an average value of about £18,500. Which is plainly wrong!
This a collection of the worlds finest art. Over 500 drawings by Leonardo Da Vinci, 50 paintings by Caneletto. Countless paintings by the Old Masters. And then all the other collections which include priceless jewels and furniture, and items like the faberge eggs. And then for example take this news story: [1]. 2 just general paintings within the collection- Not well known or anything. On their own they are conservatively valued at upwards of £100 million. And what about Henry VIII's "The Story of Abraham" tapestries displayed in the Great Hall in Hampton Court Palace. They are estimated to be the most valuable thing in the entire country, besides the crown jewels.

£10billion comes nowhere close

--Rushton2010 (talk) 14:33, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

It's a completely pointless game, as all art market values depend on the assumption that no very large & important collection will bwe broken up and sold. There isn't £10 bn in the art market to buy it. We shouldn't say anything for any large collection. Johnbod (talk) 15:06, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree. We don't value the collections of the Metropolitan Museum in New York. We don't value the collections of the British Museum ofr the National Gallery. The desire to value it seems to be an attempt to try and attribute that value to the Queen. But then there is no similar attempts at trying to value the royal collections of other royal families.

In the end it cannot be valued. --Rushton2010 (talk) 22:30, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Copyright claim

Images of, for example, the Leonardo drawings currently being exhibited across the UK, are labelled "© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018" (see for example, [2]). Can we add something about this claim, and its validity, to the article? Does anyone have suitable sources? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:30, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

This is a standard UK copyright claim, made by nearly all UK museums (the RC choose to follow tradition by personalizing it, though I suspect the rightsholder is technically the RC Trust). We ignore it as our servers are based in the US. Many UK IP lawyers doubt that if a test case ever went all the way in the courts, the current UK law & its usual interpretation would be sustained, & a Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.-style judgement might be given. But I can't see any reason to go into that here. Johnbod (talk) 17:41, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

I'm aware - having been a Wikipedia editor for over 15 years - of WMF's position on the copyright in mechanical copies of 'death-plus-seventy' artworks; and I am not proposing to add anything about that to this article. My question was about adding content about the specific claim made by this trust, to this article; not what we as Wikimedians would do to the images. As for "standard UK copyright claim", I've not yet seen an other trust attribute copyright of 500-year-old items in their collection to a single person, much less to "Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:38, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

You know the age doesn't matter, then! Actually, looking at the "Ownership" of the article, & the RCT website, they only seem to "look after" the RC, not actually own it. Plus there is the shady distinction between what is owned "personally" and what is part of the RC proper, "held in trust". It's true most large aristocratic collections have notices in the form "Trustees of ....". A rather legalistic point, but I doubt there is much to said about its "validity". Johnbod (talk) 14:10, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

It relates to digital copies of Leonardo's drawings. The argument would be that digitizing images is a 'creative process' that effectively makes a new and distinct piece of work, original enough to have its own copyright status. This theory has never been tested in a British court. However, three German courts have ruled that digitizing an image in the public domain does create a new copyright.[3] In December 2018 their finding was upheld by the Federal Court of Justice, Germany's highest court.[4] The court said "the photographer has to make decisions about a number of creative circumstances, including location, distance, viewing angle, exposure and excerpt from the shot". Of course, these are not creative decisions, but merely practical considerations; and the end result is a faithful reproduction, not something original. Firebrace (talk) 22:48, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

I think Andy knows all this. That's not his question. And it's not so much a "theory", but what the current English law appears to say on a straightforward reading. Johnbod (talk) 00:39, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether he does know all this. I've not yet seen an other trust attribute copyright of 500-year-old items in their collection to a single person suggests to me that he thinks copyright is being claimed on the actual drawings. Anyway, we can't add anything about the validity of the copyright notice without reliable sources on the subject. There is none. Firebrace (talk) 02:43, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

He seems to be asking why it doesn't say "© Royal Collection Trust 2018", though I was not clear on that at first. Johnbod (talk) 13:06, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

I see. Michael Hall notes in Art, Passion & Power: The Story of the Royal Collection (2017) that the Royal Collection is "not the private property of The Queen, but is held by her as sovereign. For most of it history, its maintenance was considered part of the monarch's official expenditure, and it was administered by the Lord Chamberlain's Office. In 1987 this changed when the Royal Collection Department was established as one of the five divisions of the Household, financed entirely by trading activities, which are undertaken by Royal Collection Enterprises Ltd. In 1993 it was announced that The Queen would pay tax on her private income, and in order that she would not be taxed on assets that pertain to the Crown, the Royal Collection Trust, a registered charity, was established to receive the income from Royal Collection Enterprises. These changes were purely administrative: ownership of the Royal Collection did not change".

The first bit is not entirely accurate; Gordon Brown told the House of Commons in 2000 that the RCT inventory "identifies assets held by the Queen as Sovereign and as a private individual". Another point: As the RCT is privately funded, photographs taken by its employees are not eligible for Crown copyright, therefore I'm not sure by what mechanism the Queen is able to claim copyright on these images. Presumably, there is a contract with the photographer(s) to that effect. Firebrace (talk) 18:49, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

Yes, there certainly will be such contracts. Brown's comment confirms that the sovereign remains the owner (in two possible ways), and the trust is merely the custodian on her behalf. It is mildly odd, but apart from anything else, avoided vast numbers of publishers etc having to change all their notices etc in 1993. I wonder if it will remain the style used after QEII dies .... Not I think anything to say in the article. Johnbod (talk) 19:34, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

History

Re [5], Prodger's article is actually a book review for Art, Passion & Power: The Story of the Royal Collection (2017) by the art historian Michael Hall. Its foreword was written by Prince Charles. All the details were extracted from the book, including the fact that George IV purchased oriental ceramics. That all or some of those ceramics have not survived in the Royal Collection is neither here nor there in a section about the history of the collection. The point is that George IV took an interest in oriental ceramics. That's a fact. Firebrace (talk) 19:21, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Whatever! There are many more, correct, facts in the article than yesterday, and fewer incorrect points. I expect you would find that many or most of them stayed with the Royal Pavilion when that was sold, and were (then) showy contemporary pieces that don't get modern experts excited. Otherwise they no doubt sit around in corners of the palaces. Either way, they are not a strength of the collection, and not worth mentioning here - the RC page doesn't. Johnbod (talk) 19:28, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

It should not be a facsimile of the RCT website, but should draw on a plurality of media, which includes books, journals, and newspaper articles. There were no incorrect points yesterday since everything you have deleted was reliably sourced. Really am tired of your blustering, spittle-flecked edit summaries and over-confident replies. It's a shame because the article had a great deal of potential. Firebrace (talk) 20:05, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Bullshit! As with most articles you jealously guard, there were many errors, mostly not in fact referenced, and some rather poorly so (I'm not saying you added that stuff at all). It's an enormous help in editing if you write about things you know something about, and have proper refs for, or know where to find them online. Johnbod (talk) 21:45, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Yes, that would have been enormously helpful in 2015 at Crown of Princess Blanche when you ignorantly declared "promote to B - not much more to say" (link). It was 4.5kB then; two years later I expanded the article to 7.3kB. Not much more to say, you say? If you had had proper refs or knew where to find them online... you would have known different. Firebrace (talk) 12:45, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

So, well done finding another 2445 bytes to add! Including one fact I think. Are you saying it wasn't a B before your addition? Johnbod (talk) 14:36, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Someone isn't used to being held to account. You want people reading this to believe that out of 2.4kB, there is only one "fact", when they can check for themselves? The truth is not whatever you want it to be. Firebrace (talk) 14:24, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

Should the quoted date for Queen Victoria's wedding dress, in the 'costume' section at citation 39, correctly be the year of her wedding (1840)? Seems to be off by an entire century. DatabaseRobert (talk) 17:53, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

Proposed merge of Royal Collection Trust into Royal Collection

Royal Collection Trust is virtually (for all practical purposes) synonymous with the Royal Collection, and not worth a stand-alone article, even if technically meeting WP:GNG. The history of the charity and current/past trustees is trivial, and can better be summarized in a single paragraph or two at Royal Collection. --Animalparty! (talk) 23:00, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

• Support Johnbod (talk) 04:07, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
• Support, yes this is a sensible organisation, and helpful for the reader. MartinPoulter (talk) 11:18, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
• Support - I agree, it should be merged, and just form a section of the longer article. Perhaps someone with merging skills/authority could just do that? CourtauldGill (talk) 14:51, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

  Y Merger complete. Klbrain (talk) 21:20, 6 September 2020 (UTC)