Notes for Collectors
MESSRS. CumsTi Cs two big picture sales on May 13th and 20th have been instructive. It is clear that the old English masters are still most popular with collectors. From the purely artistic standpoint they were not well represented at the Raphael sale of May 20th, and yet their portraits fetched
very high prices. Romney, most unequal of painters, is the favourite. His " Mrs. Prescott and Children " fetched 1.9,660 and his " Lady Hamilton as a Bacchante " 110,500, yet neither of them is a good Romney. Of French painters Corot maintains his prestige. His typical ltalinn scene, " Chevriere au Bord de l'Eau," brought £5,565 on May 13th, and Mr. Croal Thomson bought two small and charming
French landscapes, also from Mrs. Denison's collection, for £3,570 and £1,995 respectively. Charles Jacque, painter and etcher of sheep, is gaining in favour while Troyon is losing.
As for Meissonier, the craze for his meticulous military scenes has waned. Even his " 1814," a replica of the Louvre picture, only fetched £1,470, and his technically wonderful " Man Writing" sold for £861—barely a third of its price in the Secretan sale of 1889. While fashions ill modern pictures change, good examples of older masters are steadily appreciat- ing. On May 20th, for instance, a fine pair of portraits by Bo], Rembrandt's disciple, brought £7,560, another pair by his elder contemporary, Pickenoy, 15,985, and a noble pair of the Emperor Charles V. and his wife, by Sanchez Coen(); 11,575. These are sound investments.
One more of the few remaining English collections that are of the first rank will be dispersed at Messrs. Christie's in July.
It was formed by Mr. R. S. Holford, who built Dorchester House, Park Lane, and employed Alfred Stevens, the sculptor of the Wellington Memorial at St. Paul's, to decorate the dining-room. It passed to Holford's son, the late Sir George Holford, who sold some of the best pictures and a few of the rarest books, including a perfect copy of the first edition of the Pilgrim's Progress. The old furniture, the Italian marringe4 chests, the majolica, china and tapestries at Dorchester House and at Westonbirt are highly reputed among connois- seurs, and the Italian pictures, to be sold on July 15th, have figured at many of the Royal Academy's winter exhibitions. Two fine portraits by Tintoretto, and a beautiful portrait of a Venetian lady by Lorenzo Lotto, are among the chief treasures in this part of the collection.
Chess-players should be interested in the primitive chessmen discovered lately at Witchampton Manor near Wimborne, and given by Mrs. MeGeagh to the British Museum, in whose Quarterly they are illustrated. The " elephant " or bishop is a rounded block with two little faces on the upper edge. A broken piece bears the retters " SATRAS," probably a corrup- tion of the Sanskrit word for chess. Mr. Dalton thinks that the inscription may be of the tenth century, in which case the chessmen would be the earliest as yet known, though the game, of course, is of immemorial antiquity; The fame of Antonius Stradivarius of 'Oremona brought many collectors to Messrs. Puttieli and Simpson's on May 19th, when the well-known violin. belonging to the late Baroness M. J. Huyssen de Kattendyke. waft sold. This excep- tionally fine Stradivarius, dated 1699, brought no less than 11,600. One hopes that the eventual owner will be able to play it. Nothing is sadder to see than a collection of fine fiddles in glass eases, whether in a museum or In the house of a man who cannot draw a note of music from them. Price ruled high at the sale. A violin by the competent but hardly
world-famous J. B. Guadagnini of Parma fetched £500. • .
Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia and daughter of our James was one of the most picturesque of Stuart princesses. A volume of Ben Jonson's Works, dated 1681-41, edited by Sir KeneInt Digby and presented by him to the Queen, occurs in Mesmry. Dobell's4ew catalogue, where it is priced at £175. Digby'§ autogra and the fine contemporary binding are notablf: But it is'interesting also to know that Mr. Dobell bought the volume from the library of Cornelia Countess of Craven, at Combe Abbey, Coventry. For it was believed that Elizabeth, after the death of her unlucky husband, the Elector Palatine; secretly married William, first Earl of Craven. At any rate she left her books to him, and they remained at Combe Abbey until a recent date. Thus the Jonson volume enshrines much Political as well as literary history. The steady rise in value of prints or books relating to America was illustrated again the other day at Messrs. Puttick and
Simps' on's when an unusually large number of engravings and lithographs was brought up for sale. That interesting cones- tion of a score of coloured aquatints, by Hill after Wall, known as the "Hudson River Portfolio," fetched 550 guineas. Another work," The Atlantic Neptune " by Joseph Des Band, with views of New York, Boston, Quebec and Louisburg, in coloured aquatints, brought 260 guineas. Thirty years ago a copy of the Hudson River set could be readily bought for ten or twelve guineas, for American collectors had not then awakened to the interest of old views of their rapidly changing country. Another Rembrandt self-portrait is reported to have been found in the Budapest M,useum. It had long been there, but none of the Many experts who had seen it had supposed that it was the work of the master. Some adventurous person persuaded the director to take it out of the storeroom and have it cleaned, and then it was revealed as a genuine signed Rembrandt. This recalls the parallel case of the Rembrandt portrait from Temple Newsam, which was bought a year or so ago by Sir Joseph Duveen for 150,000. The portrait was well known to experts, who regarded it as a school-copy and advised the owner to sell it with other pictures that he did not want. At auction it fetched a trivial sum and passed into the hands of a country dealer before it was discovered anew by a London purchaser. The vagaries of experts are unending, more especially with Rembrandt.
CONNOISSEUR.
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