18th-century bust used as a shed doorstop could net $4.5M for Scottish town 

As It Happens5:2118th-century bust used as a shed doorstop could net $4.5M for Scottish town

An 18th-century marble bust that survived a castle fire only to spent more than a decade propping open the door of a storage shed, may soon bring millions of dollars to a Scottish town. 

The sculpture, by renowned French artist Edmé Bouchardon, depicts John Gordon, a Scottish politician and merchant believed to have founded the town of Invergordon.

Now, after nearly a century of bizarre twists and bureaucratic obstacles, a Scottish court has cleared the way for the municipality to sell the bust to private buyer for £2.5 million ($4.5 million Cdn).

"We could do so much with the money," Invergordon Coun. Maxine Smith told As It Happens host Nil Köksal. "It would mean so much to the local people."

Purchased for £5 in 1931

Smith says the bust's complete history remains something of a mystery. 

What they do know, she says, is that Gordon, a wealthy landowner, commissioned the work from Bouchardon in 1728, while travelling across Europe. 

"John came back home, and he brought the bust with him, and that was in the late 1700s," Smith said. "A lot more has happened since."

At some point in the 19th-century, she says the Gordon family's Scottish castle went up in flames, but the bust survived.

She says it then somehow ended up in the hands of another wealthy Scottish family, at a mansion known as Kindeace House, which ultimately went bankrupt in the 1930s.

Invergordon saw this as an opportunity to lay claim to some local history. In 1931, the town clerk went to the Kindeace House estate sale and bought the bust for £5 on behalf of the local council. According to the Bank of England, that's about £286.13 ($512 Cdn) in today's money.

According to council minutes from that year: "The Council agreed to have the Sir John Gordon bust placed in the Town Hall, the position to be pointed out."

But it never ended up on display. In the 1980s, the town council went through a period of restructuring, Smith said, and the bust went into storage, then disappeared — until Smith stumbled across it by accident in 1998.

"I wasn't actually looking for it because I didn't know it existed," she said. 

Found in an industrial park storage shed

Smith says she found the bust while trying to track down Invergordon's mayoral chains and robes, which also went missing in the '80s. 

"Nobody seemed to know where they were. But then I was told by somebody that used to work at the council years before that they thought they'd been put in storage in this little scout hut that was about eight miles away from Ivergordon," she said. 

"I thought, surely not."

Despite her scepticism, she managed to find a caretaker to let her into the storage shed, where she found the robe and chains displayed on a mannequin. 

"There's an inner door, and the inner door was being held open by this white thing," she said.

Tucked away and gaining value 

That white thing turned out to be the Bouchardon bust. Since then, Smith says the town has repeatedly had it appraised, and each time it's grown in value.

Most recently in 2023, auction house Sotheby's valued it at £2.5 million, calling it "brilliant in execution," according to the region's Highland Council. Sotheby's did not respond to a request for comment before deadline. 

The bust was temporarily displayed in the Louvre in Paris in 2016, and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles the following year, but since then has remained in storage, as the town can't afford the insurance needed to put it on display.

Smith says she's been pushing to sell it and replace it with a replica for nearly two decades, but it has been an uphill battle.

But last year, she says, an offer came through Sotheby's from an anonymous probate buyer to acquire the statue for £2.5 million, as well as pay to have a replica created for the town to display.

In June, after public consultations, the Highland Council approved the decision to sell the bust. On Thursday, The Scottish Highlands' Tain Sheriff Court approved the council's request.

A national treasure?

Still, Smith says there may be one last hurdle to jump over.

It's possible that attempting to finalize the sale will trigger something known as the Waverley Criteria, a process to determine whether the bust constitutes a "national treasure" and must, therefore, remain in Scotland.

Smith says some Scottish museums have expressed interest in displaying the bust, but none have yet offered to buy it. 

"That doesn't help Invergordon in any way," she said. 

Proceeds from the sale, she says, would go to the Invergordon Common Good Fund, and be used in small batches every year to make improvements in the community.

"I actually don't mind if somebody in this country wants to buy it. That's fine," she said. "Probably preferable."