The Fascination of the Sale-Rooms
THOSE of us who have made a hobby of collecting, or have studied the ways of collectors, must at times feel somewhat bewildered at the publicity which our pursuit now receives. It is not merely that prices have soared into astronomical figures. The field of collecting has widened, like the universe in the Mount Lick 100-inch refractor, and the numbers who collect have multiplied a hundredfold. Thus it is necessary for the newspapers to accord space to what the Philistine regards, perhaps, as a crazy mode of spending time and money. The biblio- phile and the connoisseur of pictures, majolica, porcelain, bronzes, enamels, tapestry, silver and so on, have, despite themselves, been made to share the limelight with the pugilist, the film star, and the politician. The prices paid at important auctions are given as much prominence as the Stock Exchange quotations. Some old- fashioned folk lament this. They say that art is being vulgarized, that collectors no longer buy what they really like but purchase for the rise, that fashion in the sale-room is unduly exalting some types of artistic work and neglecting others that are more worthy. But fashion has always ruled the collecting world and has always varied with the generations. There has always been trafficking in works of of art. We need not lament the fact that many more people are keenly interested in art and anxious to acquire fine things. The study of art has been immensely stimulated by the growth of collecting. And if some few merely buy to sell again at a profit, it is surely a pleasant and harmless kind of gambling.
LT.-COL. THE HON. EDMUND NUGENT BY THOS. GAINSDOROUGH, R.A.
The rise in prices, accentuated since the War, is of course largely due to the American demand for first-rate artistic work and fine books. That the demand exists is a gratifying sign of the growth of culture in the United States. Americans have superabundant wealth, and many of them have learned how to use it wisely, whether in collecting for themselves or, still better, in endowing museums, libraries, and art galleries for the benefit of the public. Europe, with her many magni- ficent national collections built up through the ages, has no need to envy America for trying, thus late in the day, to Imitate her. Those who know best the European libraries and galleries are least perturbed when they hear that an American has bought some notable manuscript or picture or object of art and taken it across the Atlantic. The greatest masterpieces are not for sale. Many famous English col- lections have had to be dispersed, through the operation of the Death Duties, but others are being formed. There is still an incalculable stock of fine things in private hands here and on the Continent. The attentive reader of the catalogues published by the leading auctioneers—headed by the eighteenth-century firms of Messrs. Christie, Messrs. Sotheby, and Messrs. Puttick and Simpson—must marvel at the unending stream of treasures that passes into and out of the sale-rooms, week after week and year after year. We do not have a Holford sale more than once in a generation, but every season sees one sale at least of great importance, and there is plenty still left in English town and country houses .
This week, for instance, Messrs. Sotheby have had an un- commonly interesting sale of books and manuscripts, some from the extensive library of Lord Brownlow, others from the collection of the late Mr. Cobden-Sanderson, printer, binder, author, and apostle of good taste. Here, side by side, were the most oddly varied items. A letter from George Washing- ton, acknowledging a vote of thanks on his victory at York- town, accompanied a letter from Dr. Johnson, on the death of his mother, to his old friend Miss Lucy Porter. Rare fifteenth- century books appeared with a very notable set of the Kelms- cott Press publications and some from the Ashendene and Dover Presses. Amid a number of mediaeval MSS charmingly illuminated was an unrecorded issue of " The Christmas Carol," dated 1844, with the title in red and green and Stave One " below the heading on the first page. This Dickens item would be a good test for a collector. There are three issues of the first edition, all dated 1843, with the title in red and blue, but distinguished partly by the colour of the Endpapers and partly by the sub-heading as Stave I " or " Stave One " in Roman type. But there are also three variant trial issues, all dated 1844. Of the first, with the title in red and blue, only two copies are known. Of the second, with the title in red and green and the sub- heading " Stave I," eight or ten copies are known and, according to Messrs. Sawyer and Darton, are worth £100 a-piece. The unique copy that has now appeared is a third trial issue. Among the modern rarities in this sale was Mr. Kipling's " Schoolboy Lyrics," privately printed by his father at Lahore in 1881, in the rough blank paper covers that mark the first issue of this much coveted little book. Then there was the excessively rare " Charity Bazaar " (1868) of R. L. Stevenson, an " allegorical dialogue " of two leaves that few Stevensonians have even seen.
Next week Messrs. Sotheby are selling a fine set of drawings by the old masters, collected by the late Mr. William Bateson, whose name in this connexion was known only to the experts. He had a series of twenty-six drawings by Tiepolo, eleven noble examples of Claude, a drawing of a child with a cat that has long been assigned to Correggio, an exquisite study of a nude girl that Mr. Roger Fry is bold enough to assign to Giorgione, and so on. The illustrated catalogue is a delight in itself, and a reminder of what modern English collectors can do. Let it be noted, incidentally, that the Rembrandt etched portrait of Jan Six which was shown at the recent Dutch Exhibition, and which at the Six sale fetched £8,200, the highest price ever paid for a print, is in an English collection. Yet another notable sale announced by Messrs. Sotheby will be that of the late Sir Edmund Gosse's famous collection of English plays, on the last two days of this month.
The most sensational event in Messrs. Christie's spring pro- gramme is, of course, the sale of the famous Portland Vase on May 2nd. The vase has been so long in the Gem Room at the British Museum that few people remembered that it was there on loan from the Duke of Portland, whose ancestor bought it 130 years ago for £1,029 and placed it on view in the Museum. This remarkable example of third-century Greco-Roman glass, decorated in cameo with figures which the experts interpret differently, was found in a sarcophagus near Rome about the year 1630, and was brought to England in 1785 by Sir William Hamilton, the friend of Romney's Emma and of Nelson. Wedgwood made a number of excellent copies of it in his jasper ware, one of which is at the British Museum while two are at South Kensington. It will be interesting to see what value is placed on an object which is unique of its kind and familiar to everybody. This week Messrs. Christie have put on sale the " Splfigen Pass " (1841-42) which Turner thought to be his best water colour drawing. The youthful Ruskin tried to persuade his father, the wine-merchant, to buy him the drawing for eighty guineas. Ruskin had to wait many years till in 1878 his friends subscribed 1,000 guineas and purchased the " Spliigen " as a present for him. The " Spliigen " was one of ten drawings which Turner selected as his best and for which he vainly hoped to get £100 apiece. The " Spliigen " seems likely to break the records set up by the sale of " Red Rigi " and " Constance," two other real treasures.' There are other lovely things in the sale, such as a perfect " Still Life " of roses and fruit by Fantin-Latour and Millet's well- known early work, " L'Amour Vainqueur," which was once in the Staats Forbes collection—a hall-mark for the discerning.
Still more of Lord Brownlow's art treasures are to be sold on May 3rd. His pictures from Ashridge six years ago brought over £90,000. The sale a fortnight hence will consist of old masters, mainly collected by the eighteenth- century connoisseur, Sir Abraham Hume. These include a sombre little Rembrandt, " Isaac and Esau," painted about 1636 ; a brilliant portrait of a French artist by his friend Van Dyck ; several Titians, and two of the fascinating little portraits that are attributed to the sixteenth-century French court painter, Corneille de Lyon.
Those who love Gainsborough have a rare pleasure in store on May 2nd. Messrs. Puttick & Simpson, who have long occupied Sir Joshua Reynolds' old house in Leicester Square, are then to sell a Gainsborough portrait which, alike by its beauty and its perfect condition, takes one's breath away. It presents a handsome officer, Colonel Edmund Nugent, in the full-dress uniform of the Grenadier Guards —scarlet with gold-laced blue cuffs—standing against a landscape. The subject would delight any painter but would tax the resources of the greatest ; yet Gainsborough- it was at Bath in 1764 when he was just becoming the rage— conquered the difficulties with ease and made a masterpiece that rivals the " Blue Boy " or any other of his well-known works. If, as is credibly reported, an American collector recently paid £40,000 for a dubious Romney and if the " Blue Boy " really changed hands for a far greater sum, the bidding for this wonderful " Edmund Nugent " should be keen ndeed. The picture is being sold along with other Nugent heirlooms from West Harling, Norfolk. They include another Gainsborough portrait of Edmund's father, the first Earl Nugent, who was a friend of Goldsmith, a keen Anglo-Irish politician, and sometime member for Bristol ; the Earl sat to the painter in 1760 and his portrait was the first that Gainsborough exhibited in public, so that it has a special interest. American collectors will note the Gilbert Stuart portrait of Maria, Lady Nugent, who was the daughter of Cortlandt Skinner of New Jersey, for Stuart's work is greatly esteemed nowadays by his countrymen. There are some early English portraits, a Zoffany, and a number of the sporting pieces by Aiken, Herring, Ferneley and others which have perhaps appreciated more rapidly of late than almost any other class of modern pictures. Next week the Nugent silver, furniture and the like are to be disposed at the same historic rooms in which Sir Joshua spent most of his working life.
We have not by any means exhausted London's resources in the way of sale-rooms. Messrs. Robinson, Fisher & Harding, Messrs. Knight, Frank & Rutley, and Messrs. Phillips, Son & Neale, among others, have art sales at which the discerning may often find a bargain. It was at Messrs. Robinson Fisher's, by the way, that the alleged Romney just rejected by Detroit first appeared last year as " after Romney " and fetched 340 guineas, the buyer being plain " Mr. Bull." A year or two ago Messrs. Knight, Frank & Rutley conducted the astonishing sale of Lord Michelham's pictures, in which Lawrence's all too clever portrait of a child fetched a fantastic price.
But it is time to make an end. The few examples that have been given out of many will serve to show that the great London auctioneers are not likely in our time to lack occupation. For many a long day their rooms will afford interest and instruction to the happy folk who, whether they can afford to buy or not, still enjoy to their heart's content the
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