Bunhill: Get the picture

A STRIKING picture that normally hangs in Tim Miller's drawing room is at the moment on show at the National Portrait Gallery, the only City picture in the exhibition, The Portrait Now. And thereby hangs a tale. Back in 1985, Miller, as managing director of the Framlington Group, then one of London's most successful fund managers, commissioned Anthony Green, who usually paints only his own family, to do a portrait of the board. He ended up with a group portrait of himself with fellow directors Bill Stuttaford and Anthony Milford.

'It's a jolly good picture' says Miller. 'We all liked it and hung it in the boardroom. Then we were taken over by the Throgmorton Group. I was fired, and offered to buy the picture. They didn't like it one little bit and accepted with alacrity.' And the price? 'I bought it for book value: it was categorised as furniture and written down.'