A violin by Antonio Stradivari

The 1709 ‘ex-Viotti; ex-Marie Hall’ was owned by John Betts and the Duke of Cambridge before it was bought by Giovanni Battista Viotti, from whom it received the first part of its name, in 1782. It is one of two Stradivari violins which were owned and named after G.B. Viotti. Viotti was a violinist and composer known for his 29 violin concertos, and is thought to have been friends with Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven. Viotti sold the violin in 1817 and it was subsequently owned until 1905 by luthier George Hart.

The violinist Marie Hall, from whom the violin received the second part of its name, bought the ‘ex-Viotti; ex-Marie Hall’ from George Hart in 1905 when she was just 21. Five years later she toured through South Africa for a fee of £10,000, the largest amount ever paid to a violinist at the time. She also helped Ralph Vaughan-Williams complete The Lark Ascending, resulting in it being dedicated to her. Marie Hall owned and played the violin until her death in 1956, when it was passed to her daughter, Pauline Baring.

Baring sold the violin at Sotheby’s in 1968, where it was bought by Jack Morrison for £22,000, setting a record price for a Stradivari sold at auction. Morrison sold it again in 1974 to Tun Datu Mustapha through W. E. Hill & Sons. Mustapha, a Malaysian politician, sold the ‘ex-Viotti; ex-Marie Hall’ through Sotheby’s once again in 1988 for £430,000, setting a record once again. The violin was bought by Geraldo Modern, a Brazilian collector who owned at least three violins by Stradivari. In 1991 the violin was bought by the Chi-Mei Culture Foundation, which founded the Chimei private museum in Taiwan in 1992.

The ‘ex-Viotti; ex-Marie Hall’ remains in the Chimei Museum’s collection today.