Vale Edmund Capon

It comes to us all eventually but it's always a bit of shock when someone you admire passes away. Edmund Capon the former director of the NSW Art Gallery has died at age 78 from melanoma.
Pictured above (right) with philanthropist James Fairfax (who passed away in 2017) Whispers thinks the photo sums up Capon's 30 years plus stewardship of the Gallery.
Fairfax was donating over $30M worth of old masters to the gallery at this small get-together and it examples how Edmund was able to seduce and secure funding and donations from the rich and connected.

But more than that, with his unique personality Edmund Capon "opened up" the Gallery to millions of visitors who may not have ever visited the place. In 2010, the year before Capon retired nearly 1.4 million visitors attended the Gallery. 

Right: Barry Humphreys at the James Fairfax art donation function.
Born in London, Capon was an expert in Chinese art and archaeology and managed that division at the world famous Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) before coming to Sydney in 1977 to promote a V&A exhibition. He never left after being offered the position as director of the Art Gallery of NSW. The V&A's loss was our gain. With a unique enthusiasm and an ability to mix with every possible social and business class and treat all with equal respect, Capon became the face of the Gallery and the numbers of visitors rose very year as Capon was able to attract major art shows from all over the world.
Edmund Capon 1941-2019 is survived by his wife Joanna , two children and three step-children.

Edmund Capon (left) with then NSW Premier Barry OFarrell and art patron Stephen Lowy in 2011

Joanna Capon (left) with Edmund and former "first lady" Lucy Turnbull.

Edmund Capon was able to transverse all strata of society and out the Art Gallery of NSW on the map, attracting the general public in their millions along with movie stars like Hugo Weaving pictured here at an Archibald Portraiture prize opening night.

Publishing heir James Fairfax dies

 James Fairfax AC (pictures above left with Edmund Capon), the former chairman of publisher John Fairfax Ltd, passed away age 83 on Wednesday at his Southern Highlands home Retford Park in Bowral. 
James was a great philanthropist and art collector and the son of Sir Warwick Fairfax. In our snap above James donated a substantial body of precious art works of old masters worth then, around $35M to the the NSW Art Gallery.

Barry Humphries at the NSW Art Gallery & one of James' donated works

In 2016 Mr Fairfax bequeathed his Retford Park homestead,  worth around $20 million, to the National Trust for the Trust to preserve in perpetuity for the local community. For the past few decades Fairfax lived and traveled with his companion Ray Hansen who died in 2015.

When the young Warwick Fairfax Jnr, James half-brother launched his ill-fated move to take back the family business Fairfax Newspapers in the 1980s James recived an estimated $200M. He was a director on the Fairfax board from 1957 until 1987, and chairman from 1977 to 1987.

Spending half the year at a property in the UK, James retired permanently to Bowral in 2003. One of the highlights of the social calendar in his Sydney days was an annual masked drag ball where guests, mostly well heeled bachelors from Sydney and Melbourne competed and spent a small on extravagant gowns.
James Fairfax is survived by step mother Lady Mary Fairfax who like James has bequeathed the family home Fairwater in Double Bay to the National Trust on the proviso all her staff live there for life. James leaves behind two half sisters, Annalise Thomas and Anna Cleary, his half-brothers, Warwick and Charles Fairfax.
Below : Retford Park

 

LattéLife's New Power Base

Nicole & Keith               Matt Handbury           Reg Grundy               Miriam Margolyes                 James Fairfax

It's like a roll call of Australia's most powerful citizens : businessmen like billionaire poker machine king Len Ainsworth, properly mogul Theo Onosforou, show biz giants Nicole Kidman, Keith Urban, Miriam Margolyes and Reg Grundy, publishing family scions James Fairfax and Matt Handbury, horse trainer Gae Waterhouse and artists John Olsen and Tim Storrier.

Bill Ranken                John Olsen                          Theo Onosforuw                         Len Ainsworth                    Tim Storrier

All have two things in common- they live in beautiful homes in the surrounds of NSW's gorgeous Southern Highlands just an hour's drive from Sydney and all will be amongst the readers of LattéLife's new Highland's edition of the popular Eastern suburb's newspaper.
In a few short years LatteLife has grown to a circulation of 50,000 in Sydney with the new edition boosting that to 80,000 to an audience that now contains a concentration of the most powerful Australians in politics, business and the arts.
Two experienced editors have been appointed- Monique Butterworth will oversee the Sydney edition while Bowral local Alex Speed will take on local newspapers. Both will continue the current lively mix of news, interviews with locals , colourful offerings from social snapper Bill Ranken (who fortunately lives in both places- Elizabeth Bay and on a splendid property near Goulborn) motoring tips from Aaron Zerefos and the newsy snippets that have drawn advertisers flocking to the pages, making rivals look decidedly dull by comparison.

New editors: Monique Butterworth and Alex Speed :  below -local scenery

Comings and goings..

A reminder this week of a once grander Australian social scene with the passing of 2 stalwarts.

Pat Tudor

In London the former beauty queen Pat Tudor has died after a tragic accident when she fell down a set of steep marbles stairs in her Knighstbridge home. Aged only 68, Pat was regarded as one of the great beauties of her day. 

Tall. elegant and with impeccable manners and poise she was crowned Miss Victoria in the early 1960s and forged a highly successful modeling career in Melbourne and Sydney before moving to London to act as a sort of roving ambassador for Qantas.

She was also appointed as Kerry Packer's personal UK representative and up until her death still liaised with Kerry's widow Ros and son James Packer, organising all travel arrangements whenever they visited the UK.

When the Packers wished to throw a shindig in the Old Dart, Pat was the girl to get the details right especially when high profile guests like Rupert Murdoch or Lord Rothschild and Sir James Goldsmith were expected.

Pat had only recently attended the Ascot races with visiting Sydney broadcaster Alan Jones.

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After a lifetime of refined wealth the last scion of the David Jones department store empire, Charles Lloyd Jones has died after a long illness at 77.

Lloyd Jones' funeral was held at All Saints Anglican Church in Woollahra yesterday and a who's who of the retail world turned out to send him off.

Sidney Baillieu Myers from the Myer empire (he married the daughter of Sam Horden from Hordens), John Walton of the Walton Stores chain and former newspaper publisher James Fairfax all attended.  Former premier Neville Wran read the eulogy along with nephew Edward Lloyd Jones. A wake was held at the nearby home of Lady Pagan, widow of the former High Commissioner in London Sir Jock Pagan.

Charles Lloyd Jones, a confirmed bachelor was born into extraordinary privilege and wealth. Brought up in the magnificent Rosemont mansion in Woollahra he attended Tudor House and Cranbrook, being ferried to and from school in a chauffeured Rolls Royce. Shy and easily embarrassed., he would ask to be dropped off around a corner.

With his father an avid art collector, Rosemont was packed with valuable artworks amongst them  a Chagall, Picasso, 2 Van Goghs and a Rembrandt

Weekends were spent at the David Jones corporate summer house at Palm Beach. Lloyd Jones became chairman at the family store  (begun by his Welsh grandfather David Jones in 1838) when his brother David died suddenly and later  he headed the advertising department. It was Charles who introduced the houndstooth pattern that has become so synonymous with the store. Today flags at all of David Jones flew at half mast.

In later years he fell on financial hard times. Charles invested  most of his money in a scheme proposed by 2 friends that fell apart within 3 years. He was broke and suffering cancer and the 2 friends agreed to re-pay him $3000 a month, expecting the payments to last less than a year. But Charles survived the cancer and outlived the 2 friends putting him in a precarious financial state.

A brief scandal ensured in the early 1990s when it was claimed that Lloyd Jones and , improbably the American actor Karl Malden (who had never visited Australia) had allegedly attended a notorious Kings Cross bar frequented by underage male prostitutes.
Friends who had been trying all their lives to get Charles to just once, walk into a pub or bar and never succeeded found the ridiculous claim a huge joke.Those who knew Charles well noted his preference for rather muscular male gentleman but he did score on one occasion with a lady who fell for him and wanted marriage-Zsa Zsa Gabor !

                                       
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And off briefly to the launch of a new Samsung TV where the guest of honour was actor Simon Baker who was voted by US magazines as the World's Sexiest Man. Simon says he never watches The Mentalist , the series that has brought him stellar fame throughout the world as it's hard enough making the series to also have to watch it. 

With family in tow, he was soon off to north NSW to the once sleepy former whaling village that is pricing out locals, Byron Bay. Earlier this year Baker paid $1.5M for a nice but average sized cottage in the hinterland of the resort.

the Fairfax family do a little house-clearing

James Fairfax with NSW Art Gallery director Edmund Capon (c the Shuttle)

 The Fairfax family have long dominated the Australian media world with their chain of venerable newspapers-The Age in Melbourne being regarded as one of the great broadsheets of the world. In fact the Fairfaxs had been the longest continuous newspaper owners on the planet.

That came to an end in 1987 when Warwick Fairfax, the youngest child of the late Sir Warwick and Lady Mary Fairfax-fresh from Harvard, launched a bid to completely privatize the publicly listed company. It was however a bonus to leading Fairfax family members who were major shareholders with brother James and mother Lady Mary picking up an estimated  $200-$300M each although they lost control of their newspapers for all time. Cousin John B.Fairfax picked up a sizable fortune as well. 2 years after Warwick's bid the newspaper chain was in receivership but the Fairfaxs were cashed-up.

One old Master inspects another-Barry Humphries at the James Fairfax art launch (c) the Shuttle

In hindsight and with the advent of the internet young Warwick's scheme, roundly criticized at the time as being overly ambitious looks to have been a smart move. Perhaps he knew more than he let on..  
James Fairfax has become a leading philanthropist as well as an art collector who continually donates works to the Art Gallery of NSW. To date the gallery has received works by such masters as van Ruisdael, Rubens, Canaletto, Claude, Boucher, Amigoni, Domenico, Tiepolo, van Mieris and drawings by Ingres, Watteau, Fragonard and Greuze.

Now he has announced he will donate his historic Southern Highlands property Redford House-once the home of the Horden department store family,to the National Trust. Warwick will divide his time between a Sydney apartment and houses in London's Mayfair and Devon.

Lady Mary Fairfax is doing likewise with the family seat-the harbourside mansion Fairwater with it's many acres of splendid gardens which also serves as the Monaco Consulate-Lady Mary being the Honorary Consul. Lady Mary also used part of her good fortune to purchase the then most expensive apartment in the world-forking out $34M in 1992 for the top 2 floors of New York's Pierre Hotel which boasts a grand ballroom over looking Central Park. Recently a Saudi prince paid over $120M for the New York digs.

As for cousin John B. Fairfax, things aren't looking rosy. He decided to buy back into the publishing world around 15 years ago with the then successful Rural Printing Press followed by the real estate advertising heavy chain of Courier Newspapers plus a 10% stake in the old family Fairfax Newspapers group.

Things are looking grim as Fairfax Newspapers stumble from woe to woe. Those "rivers of gold" as Kerry Packer once described classified advertising are drying up. Fairfax newspapers are still hugely profitable but board room battles are never-ending, share prices have fallen and John B is reputedly down about $60M and it's rumoured, has recently negotiated a mortgage ( the Fairfaxs never have mortgages) on the magnificent 120 year family home Elaine. right next door to Fairwater and regarded as far grander as it has it's own ballroom.

While Fairwater will end up with the National Trust when Mary leaves this  mortal coil-Mary has stipulated each of her faithful retainers live there for the rest of their lives rent free and have the run of the place. She's good to her staff. 

Lady Mary, like all the Fairfax family is good to charity and like the family she married into prefers be a low key helper but many a charity fallen on hard times in this difficult financial climate has praise for the dear lady.

Lady Mary, born Jewish, converted to Catholic faith when she married Sir Warwick. Never one to do things lightly, she had herself confirmed by the Pope.

 Once in New York Lady Mary contracted an eye ailment and was told on doctor's orders she must not fly for 5 days. Anxious to return to Sydney Mary had her loyal chauffeur and his wife who accompany her everywhere, purchase a new Rolls Royce to drive from NY to LA. "we'll ship it home from there" said Mary. When the driver pointed out that a left hand drive Roller wasn't the best for Oz roads she replied"well we'll just find a nice charity to give it to".

As for young Warwick Fairfax who brought all this about just over 20 years ago?. He lives quietly with his wife and kids in the USA.

## update Monday 28th ; Fairfax chairman Ron Walker-who brought us Melbourne's Grand Prix in partnership with Bernie Ecclestone has agreed to step down today. This is a major triumph for John B.Fairfax who has been demanding his abdication. 

Now John B, and son Nicholas Fairfax look set to take leading roles in running Australia's-and the world's-oldest and best chain of newspapers. These chaps have newsprint in their blood. Hopefully they will lead Fairfax Newspapers back to the glory days. They have an advantage-Fairfax media was one of the first to enter the digital age.