GREAT ART DEAL

Evening Post, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 94, 18 October 1909, Page 9

GREAT ART DEAL

£500,000 PICTURE PURCHASE. OLD DUTCH MASTERS. fFBOM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.] LONDON, 3rd September. A notable art deal was made this week, when a selection of eleven picked masterpieces and a number of objects of art were bought by Messrs. Duveen Brothers, tho well known Bond-street ■ art-dealers, from the heirs of tho late M. Maurice Kann, of Paris. The sum paid is close on half a million pounds. In view of the alarming exodus of Old Masters from England across the Atlantic, it is satisfactary to know that there will lie at least a chance of some of the Kann pictures finding a home in England, since the whole collection is to be exhibited shortly at Messrs. Duveen's galleries. BEAUTIFUL* PORTRAITS. Four of the eleven pictures are by Rembrandt. Perhaps the most interesting of these came originally from an English collection, from which it pass- ■ ed to Mr. Weber, in Hamburg, until it • was carried off to Paris by Mr. Sedelmeyer. It t§ a profoundly touching character study of a "Pilgrim afc , Prayer," whose fervid emotion is oxEressed not only in tho ascetic features, ut also in his folded hands. The pic- . ture, which bears the date 1661, differs from the majority of Rembrandt's later . works in the' lighting, which is here not , concentrated upon the head, but diffused over the whole figure. Very striking, too, are tne same mas- | ter's portrait of a "Man with a Magnifying Glass," and "The Woman in the I Pink," formerly in the collection of t Count d'Oultremont. "The Woman with the Pink," which is described by Dr. Bode, the greatest living authority on '. Rembrandt, as one of tho master's most ', beautiful female portraits, is richly clad '. and bejewelled, and has an infinitely '. sympathetic expression. The fourth . Rembrandt, whioh, after a long pere- { grination through private collections in Italy, Austria, Holland, and France, l will now appear in the London art mar- , ket, is a magnificent portrait known as . "The Auctioneer." It bears Rem- , brandt's signature and the date, 1658. DUTCH MASTERS. 1 Next to Rembrandt, Franz Hals seems to have occupied the highest place in M. Maurice Kann's estimation. His I "Portrait of a Burgomaster," formerly in the Earl of Arundel's collection, recalls forcibly the famous "Laughing Cavalier" of the Wallace collection. A similar sense of life and alertness and ' quick observation will be found in the "Portrait of a Woman," from the Bournonville collection, and the "Portrait of a Man," with a coat of arms showing three bulls' heads in the background. The other Dutch pictures, which also represent their masters at the height of their achievement, are a summer morning landscape with horsemen by Albert Cuyp, a superb painting of sunlit cornfields oy Jacob van Ruysdael, and a quay scene at Amsterdam by the same master. The last picture of this remarkable gathering is a "Portrait of Lady Elizabeth Taylor," which reflects glory upon the British School. The eight decorative panels by Boucher, which rank among the most attractive productions of the iacile decorative skill, displayed by the painter of the Graces, were painted for the Pompadour, and at one time decorated an apartment in her chateau of Crecy in Beauce. The objects of art include a large collection of majolicas and Limoges enamels — the gem among which is an oval plaque with a portrait of Louis de Gonzadgue, Duke of Nevers, by Leonard Limousin' — and a Florentine loth century marble bust, representing probably a member of the Medici family, ascribed to Donatello. The negotiations which resulted in this half-million deal extended over many months, one of Messrs. Duveen'i most formidable competitors being the director of the Hamburg Museum.