David Carritt

David Carritt
Born	Hugh David Graham Carritt 15 April 1927
Died	3 August 1982 (aged 55)
Education	Rugby School
Alma mater	Christ Church, Oxford
Occupation	Art historian, dealer and critic
Parent(s)	Reginald Graham Carritt Christian Norah Begg

Hugh David Graham Carritt (15 April 1927 – 3 August 1982) was a British art historian, dealer and critic, who was described by the New York Times as being "responsible for more sensational discoveries in the field of Old Master painting since World War II than any other man".

Hugh David Graham Carritt was born on 15 April 1927, the only son of the musician and lecturer Reginald Graham Carritt and his wife Christian Norah Begg, of 2 Royal Avenue, Chelsea, London. He had an older sister and a twin sister. He attended Rugby School before reading modern history at Christ Church, Oxford where he won an open scholarship, but graduated with a third-class degree in 1948.

After university, Carritt worked for himself as an art dealer, and wrote on art for the Burlington Magazine, the Evening Standard, and The Spectator.

In 1952, at the age of 25, Carritt discovered a painting by Caravaggio in the remote home of a British Navy retired surgeon captain. The Concert is now owned by New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

He joined the auction house Christie's in London, alongside William Mostyn-Owen, Noel Annesley, and Brian Sewell, becoming a director in 1964. Sewell "conceived a violent dislike of Carritt, a colleague who committed the dual sins of being a better connoisseur and a Rugbeian".

At a "heavily attended auction" of works from Lord Rosebery's Mentmore Towers collection in 1977, Carritt realised that The Toilet of Venus, attributed to Carle van Loo, a minor painter, was a painting by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Psyche Showing her Sisters her Gifts from Cupid. He bought it for £8,000 (or about $14,000), and in 1978 it was acquired by London's National Gallery for £495,000.

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