(Virginia Woolf)

KEYNES used his wealth and influence to buy pictures and books, to help painters and also to establish new institutions across Britain. He raised Treasury money for the Royal Opera House and founded the Cambridge Arts Theatre and Britain’s Arts Council.

In 1918, having persuaded the government to fund the purchase of art for the National Gallery and having obtained a considerable sum from the Treasury, he was accompanied by the Gallery’s director to Paris to buy at an auction of Edgar Degas’ personal collection of paintings.

Back in England, he announced to Duncan Grant and Bunny Garnett that he had a Cezanne painting in his suitcase but that ‘it was too heavy for me to carry, so I’ve left it in a ditch, behind the gate’. Grant and Garnett rushed to the gate to retrieve the expensive painting and returned in triumph with it.