From Australia’s Jewish Past: Harold De Vahl Rubin

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Harold De Vahl Rubin – grazier, philanthropist, and eccentric and colourful art collector

Harold De Vahl Rubin

Harold was born on 3 January 1899 in Carlton, Melbourne.  In continuing from last week’s story, Harold was the younger son of Mark and Rebecca and brother of Bernard.  Harold began his education in Broome Western Australia, where as we have already learned, his father owned a pearling fleet.

Once the family moved to London, Harold attended University College School in Hampstead from 1908 to 1915 and spent 1916 at Eton College.  He joined the British Army and was commissioned in the 5^th Battalion Coldstream Guards in February 1917, and served with the 38th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers (City of London Regiment), being promoted to the rank of lieutenant in January 1918 and in 1918 Harold returned to civilian life.

On 8 July 1925, at the Hampstead Synagogue, Rubin married Marcelle Raphael.  Unfortunately, the marriage ended in divorce.  Harold and his brother Bernard had been left a fortune by their father who had died in 1919 and Harold set himself up as a pearl merchant in London in the mid-1920s. During the 1930s, he expanded the family’s pastoral holdings in Queensland and Western Australia and began to collect paintings.

He married a further three times in London, all of which ended in divorce.   His second wedding was in 1940; his third in 1945 and his fourth in 1948.  In 1941 he was again commissioned in the British Army and demobilised in 1945 having been honoured with the rank of major.  Following this, he set up as an art dealer in Brook Street, London.

 In 1950 Harold returned to Australia to take over the running of extensive grazing interests which included Queensland Pastoral Estates and properties on the De Grey River in Western Australia. He lived at Toorak House in Hamilton Brisbane, but spent a great deal of his time visiting his 17,000-acre property at Pikedale near Stanthorpe, in the Southern Downs region of Queensland.  He also maintained a flat in the Astor on Macquarie Street, Sydney.  On 18 November 1959, his fifth marriage took place at the general registry office in Brisbane, when he married Julia Muller a thirty-year-old divorcee.

In 1959, Harold facilitated the Queensland Art Gallery’s acquisition of seven important European paintings from his private collection, comprising works by Picasso, Degas, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Vlaminck.  The total value of these artworks was £126,504. The most significant was Picasso’s ‘La Belle Hollandaise’ (1905), painted in the years between the artist’s ‘blue’ and ‘rose’ periods.  Harold was predictive in recognising what he called its ‘exquisite tenderness’. The painting is frequently requested for inclusion in major international exhibitions of Picasso’s art.

Harold became a benefactor of St Vincent’s Hospital in 1956, following major surgery, and in 1958, he financed St Vincent’s purchase of Babworth House, which had been Sir Samuel Hordern’s home in Darling Point.  He provided the money needed to establish an after-care annex to the hospital.  This facility was opened in August 1961 and overall Harold gave an estimated £500,000 to hospitals and medical research.

Harold was a man of eccentric habits.  He initiated many of the bizarre stories about himself, making it difficult to distinguish fact from fiction. In the late 1950s, he founded the Queensland chapter of the International Goldfish Club (membership was restricted to those who were prepared to swallow a live goldfish) to raise money for the Miss Australia Quest.  His city residences were filled with paintings, stacked face to face, as well as with live and stuffed exotic and domestic birds — ‘parrots, lorikeets, budgies, canaries, finches, and sparrows’. He bought entire exhibitions of work by young painters. Robert Hughes, a well-known art critic benefited from his generosity.

In 1962, Harold converted to Catholicism. He died of cancer on 7 March 1964 in Brisbane and was buried with Catholic rites in the Canberra Cemetery. His wife Julia and their son survived him, as did the son of each of his first and third marriages; the son of his fourth marriage predeceased him.  He bequeathed eighteen paintings to the government of Israel.

Terry Ingram, a journalist with the Financial Review, wrote on 18 February 1993 as follows:

‘The erratic collecting habits of the eccentric Queensland grazier, Major Harold de Vahl Rubin, have come back to haunt the art market.  A painting by Van Gough was offered for sale anonymously for $A10 million through the advertising columns of a London newspaper a week ago.  It matches a work sold at a Sydney auction as a fake for $A70 in 1974.  Its background also suggests it is the same painting but the vendor has declined to discuss it.  The advertiser of the Van Gogh painting has told a London inquirer the work was bought from the estate of Major Harold de Vahl Rubin. The work which was sold in 1974 was catalogued as coming from Major Rubin’s estate.  Catalogued as “Vincent – Still Life, oil on wood panel 13 1/4 in by 14 1/2 in” (34cm by 37cm), the work was bought at the auction by Murray Bowyer, a Sydney artist and saleroom fossicker.’

The article also states that Harold bought paintings in block lots, including a complete exhibition of the work of Robert Hughes but he never paid for it.  There were many suspect works in his estate.  The estate was locked up in a dispute and his art collection was not disposed of until the early 1970s.  The majority of Harold’s art collection, which had once numbered four hundred works, including sixty paintings by Sir William Dobell, was sold by auction between 1971 and 1973.

Art critic, Mark Holsworth writes that the eccentric multi-millionaire grazier Major Harold De Vahl Rubin had purchased La belle Hollandaise for £6000 in 1940.  In 1959, Harold wanted to know its current value, so he put it up for auction and bought it again, setting a record for the highest price paid for a living artist.  Satisfied that he knew the value, he donated his entire European art collection to the Queensland Art Gallery.  This included a Renoir, a Toulouse-Lautrec, a Vlaminck, and three works by Picasso, including La Belle Hollandaise.

In an interview, Harold said: “I can’t live without pictures around me’’.

The AJHS acknowledges the following references in the preparation of this story:

Australian Dictionary of Biography –  Lynne Seear; The Financial Times; Mark Holsworth – art critic

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