A GAINSBOROUGH?

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 281, 30 November 1935, Page 9

A GAINSBOROUGH?

IDENTITY OF PICTURE INTERESTING INVESTIGATION Received Nov. 28, 9.15 p.m. NEW YORK, Nov. 27. The reputed Gainsborough painting of “Matthew Flinders as a boy” has been the subject of an interesting investigation which involved not only the Australian Government Office hero but the authorities at Canberra and various American Government experts. The British Embassy informed Mr. D. AIcK. Dow, official secretary for the Commonwealth of Australia in the United States, that the portrait was part of the estate of the late Judge Barton Payne, founder and head of the American Red Cross, and. would be auctioned at Washington. Air. Dow consulted Canberra, which expressed doubt regarding the’authenticity of the subject, not the painter. Congrca sional Library experts determined tiai Flinders would have been 14 years old when Gainsborough died, but were unable to determine whether the artist ever had the explorer as a subject. A Gainsborough expert in New York asked a 50-guinca fee and expenses to travel to Washington to determine the authenticity of the painting as the work of the artist. A suggestion from Canberra that, if suitable, the auction should be postponed for further inquiry was found impracticable, since it would have made inevitable the raising of the price of the picture. It was ultimately sold for 375 dollars to the wife of a naval officer who is particularly interested in Flinders because of the latter’s invention of the so-called Flinders bar of the compass. The lady declared that it was known that, upon Gainsborough’s death, many of the reputed old masters he had collected for himself were found spurious, so it was hard to make a decision regarding the genuineness of the alleged Flinders portrait. Mr. Dnw said he could see no resemblance between the subject and reproductions of the known miniatuie of Flinders at 27. The purchaser smilingly indicated that the frame was i a genuine Adams and the portrait ] was a charming one of a boy of twelve. There the matter r