The Motive
Bunton was a retired bus driver who earned only £8 in 1961. In that year, Charles Wrightsman, a rich American art collector who made his money in the oil business, purchased Goya's painting Portrait of the Duke of Wellington for the sum of £140,000 ($390,000). He had plans to take it to the United States. The British Government decided to buy the painting for a sum of £140,000 to keep the painting on British soil. However, this move is reported to have enraged Bunton, who was embittered at having to pay the BBC Television licence fee from his modest income.
Read more about this topic: Kempton Bunton
Famous quotes containing the word motive:
“It was the feeling of a passenger on an ocean steamer whose mind will not give him rest until he has been in the engine-room and talked with the engineer. She wanted to see with her own eyes the action of primary forces; to touch with her own eyes the action of primary forces; to touch with her own hand the massive machinery of society; to measure with her own mind the capacity of the motive power. She was bent upon getting to the heart of the great American mystery of democracy and government.”
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“We have not the motive to prepare ourselves for a “life-work” of teaching, of social work—we know that we would lay it down with hallelujah in the height of our success, to make a home for the right man. And all the time in the background of our consciousness rings the warning that perhaps the right man will never come. A great love is given to very few. Perhaps this make-shift time filler of a job is our life work after all.”
—Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)