Billy F Price - The American Millionaire Who Coveted Hitler's Paintings

Meet the Texan who snapped up any number of the Fuhrer's daubings.

Billy Price wasn't short of a dollar or two. A Stetson-sporting Texan with a smile as wide as his home state, Price's family made their fortune manufacturing compressors for the oil industry. One of those people with more money than sense, Price sunk his money into art. Nothing too odd about that you might think. However, the paintings that Price invested it weren't the handiwork of an old master. Rather they were created by a disaffected Austrian named Adolf Hitler.

Before he embarked on his - ultimately successful - bid to become the most despised man in human history, Adolf Hitler (you know him; small moustache, difficult hair) was a struggling artist on the streets of Vienna. Who knows? Had he been any good then the Second World War might have been nothing more than a fever dream.

But alas Hitler was no better at painting than he was at being nice to Jewish people. As those with a passion for history will know, Winston Churchill painted whenever he was depressed. While he too wasn't particularly gifted, the big man would have cheered up no end had he ever seen Hitler's sorry efforts.

There are those, though, who really like Hitler's daubings. Or rather, there are those who really like the fact that said daubings were created by Adolf Hitler. Billy F Price was one such individual.

In his informative and often very funny Selling Hitler, Robert Harris (author of Fatherland and The Ghost) writes at length about the collection Price amassed. Housed in a bunker beneath his Houston mansion - and they say Americans have no sense of irony - Price's hoard includes portraits, landscapes, preparatory work plus sketches from the brief period when the future Fuhrer toyed with becoming an architect. In terms of artistic value, the collection is worth next to nothing. In monetary terms, though, Price's pictures are valued at tens of millions of dollars.

And the reason for Price's obsession? Robert Harris suggests that it might have something to do with the manufacturer being a self-made men - those that have worked their way from the bottom up often identify with famous individuals who have done likewise, and individuals don't come much more (in)famous than Hitler. That Nazi memorabilia is widely considered forbidden fruit might also account for the immense amount of time and astonishing sum of money Price sunk into his hobby.

For proof of the oil man's commitment, look no further than the fact he spent eight years and over $100,000 compiling and publishing Adolf Hitler As Artist And Draughtsman, a 'landmark' text published in the early 1980s. As you have to the question the taste of this "labour of love" as Price described it, one aspect of the book is sure to delight those who hold the Texan in contempt. For of the 500+ pictures included in the tome, over 100 were the handiwork on Konrad Kujau, aka Connie Fischer, the man who led Rupert Murdoch and Stern magazine a merry dance with his most famous forgery, the Hitler Diaries.

Oh, and while Billy F Price might have owned much of the mono-testicled one's artwork, the man who boasted the largest collection of Hitler paintings was none other than the hippy-esque, womanising, safari park-owning Marquess Of Bath. Keep that in mind the next time you see him chatting with Ben Fogle and Kate Humble on an Animal Park repeat.