Pinkie

In San Marino, Calif., fortnight ago, was Sir Joseph Duveen, semi-Semitic, ornate dealer and author ity in Art. In San Marino lives Maecenas Henry Edwards Huntington (TIME, Nov. 8). Sir Joseph was visiting Maecenas Huntington. When he left (for Manhattan, where his chief gallery is located), announcement was gently allowed to be made that Maecenas Huntington had acquired of Sir Joseph three more 18th Century British portraits--a Gainsborough ("The Hon. Mrs. Henry Fane"), a Reynolds ("The Hon. Lavinia Bingham, Countess Spencer"), a Romney ("Lady Hamilton"). Which Lady Hamilton portrait by Romney was not specified (Romney did 30 of this his onetime mistress, who left him to occupy the same position with Lord Nelson) ; but the U. S., some day to be public sharer in the Huntington collection, was reassured to hear that all three portraits are "outstanding examples of the best work of their masters"--and cost between $500,000 and $1,000,000. By their acquisition, Maecenas Huntington now owns ten Gainsboroughs, nine Reynoldses, twelve Romneys, all of the first rank, a collection which can never be rivaled in this field. Sir Joseph, it was announced, will, after a few weeks in Manhattan, return to the Huntington home shortly after the first of the year.

Last week occurred once more a far-heralded London sale, one of those dispersals of private collections of British nobility so frequent since the War, one of those sales through which Sir Joseph Duveen and others have acquired and brought to the U. S. a rather deep skimming of the cream of British art. Captain Jefferson Cohn, rich turfman (TIME, Nov. 29) had bought the house, but not the famed art collection therein, of Dowager Baroness Michelham, the house once home of the spidery-signatured Marquis of Salisbury, Britain's onetime most aristocratic Premier. The Dowager Baroness Michelham put up the art collection at public auction. International buyers came to the house, with cohorts, many of them, of mysterious agent-bidders, "Mr. X," "Mr. Y," "Mr. Z." Sir Joseph Duveen was in the U. S. But Sir Joseph's in fluence was felt. As often before, he secured most of the cream. He expressed his intention of transferring it to the U. S. Very possibly Maecenas Huntington, who ever seems to know what he wants, will presently receive of the cream the topmost layer, which again very possibly was already contracted for.

The opening day of the auction saw mostly tapestries put up, "knocked down"--though some of these were so impressively rare as to require more respectful handling than that. A Beauvais specimen went to $130,000 before its seekers got discouraged. A Gobelin brought $95,000. This day's sales totaled $780,000.

But the second day was the one of thrills. Then it was that some score of master canvases, mainly from the expensive 18th Century so favored by Maecenas Huntington, were sold. And chief among these was Sir Thomas Lawrence's "Pinkie," which brought the record auction price to date, $370,000. "Pinkie" is regarded as Lawrence's best work in his early debonair manner, that manner of captivating, almost too facile grace which made him adored of the great ladies of his day and keeps him popular since. "Pinkie" went--to Sir Joseph Duveen. "Pinkie," who was none other than Miss Mary Moulton Barrett, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's aunt, painted as a young girl coquettishly sauntering over a barren moor before a thunderstorm sky.

The second most interesting sale (also to Sir Joseph) was a Gains borough portrait, "Miss Tatton," $231,000, for 30 x 25 inches of Gainsborough's best--Gainsborough who alone of the 18th Cen tury British school put into his work some degree of the character behind the face. There is on record a conversation between Thomas Gainsborough and his Majesty, George III.

"Tantalizing art, hey, Mr. Gainsborough -- portraiture ? No pleasing your sitters, hey? All wanting to be Venuses and Adonises. Since you have taken, hey, to portraiture, I suppose everyone wants your landscapes, hey?"

"Hey, indeed, your Majesty," said Gainsborough.

He had a profound contempt for this uneasy little king, with his know-it-all air, and his face like a plum; what was more the king had touched him on a sensitive spot. All his life he was annoyed that people made him paint their faces and refused to give a guinea for his hayricks and his cottages. Portraiture was fashionable. Landscape was not. Well, one lived in the world; one painted portraits. Sir Joshua had done it; scuttling Romney did it; Thomas Lawrence got himself into the Royal Academy at 21 by doing it. Venuses and Adonises. Even the king managed to be funny about it.

Sir Joseph Duveen's third great acquisition was Romney's portrait of Lady Elizabeth Forbes. These three, together with certain other paintings and objets d'art, cost him $1,000,000. Governor Alvan T. Fuller of Massachusetts, millionaire art collector, secured Romney's superb "Lady de la Pole" for $220,000. The sale continued three more days, but without further headlines in the press; $2,280,000 had been realized in the first two days.

That modern dealers are willing to pay extravagantly for Gainsborough, Lawrence, Romney, Reynolds, is not surprising. Gentlemen of the 18th Century always understood the art of being well-kept. While they lived they were blessed with money and untormented by morals. Life was obsequious to them. Death has followed suit. Eighteenth Century painting sold well in the 18th Century. It brings better prices now because, in addition to its literary quality, its sentimentalism, its triteness and the excellence of its technical effects, there hovers over it a formal and elegant carnality which the modern mind likes to encounter. Perhaps carnality is the wrong word; perhaps you cannot apply it, for instance, to Lawrence's picture of Miss Mary Moulton Barrett for which Sir Joseph Duveen gave 74,000 guineas; perhaps you cannot call this pure and lovely miss, standing with round arms pressed to round bosoms, a storm behind her head, animation in her eyes, gauze around her legs, anything but "Pinkie."