'£1m a year alimony' prompts Cleese to sell art collection

Westminster From The South Bank is a watercolour painted in 1882 by Leeds-born Herbert Menzies Marshall and is among Cleese's collection of eighty paintings, drawings and cartoons which are being sold.

The actor and Monty Python star has made no secret of the price tag of his divorce from Faye Eichelberger, which is said to be costing almost 1m a year in alimony.

Cleese, 70, said: "It is with a heavy heart and a dodgy knee that I have decided to sell my collection of English paintings.

"For one reason only: I have nowhere to hang them (sound of distant violins).

"They have been in storage for three years and I now feel others should have a chance to enjoy them (cheerful brass band music).

"I no longer have the wall space to hang them. I have reduced my living spaces from seven houses in various continents at the extreme – which is absurd – to a nice, comfortable little cottage in Santa Barbara.

"I am trying to have a simpler and smaller life. My beautiful pictures have now been in store for three years and I prefer that new owners experience the excitement of my original collecting."

The couple married in 1992 and papers filed in California revealed a request from Mrs Cleese to keep their homes in New York and London, with lawyers also requesting half of his incomings going back to 1992, with annual maintenance of 900,000.

The full collection goes on show from October 26 at the Chris Beetles Gallery in St James's, London.

Marshall produced many topographical watercolours of French cathedral cities and continental rivers as well as of English scenes.