What
every
THE CHINA MAIL,
FRIDAY, JANUARY 16, 1959,
man
rich
ought to know.
THE shining bubble of
the post-war art
market has swollen to
-BEFORE HE TAKES Á CHANCE ON
new and astonishing THE TRICKIEST GAMBLE OF ALL
dimensions in 1958.
Millionaires, woring war with their cheque-books for paintings by the French Impressionists, have pushed prices to Lin- precedented levels.
by J. W. M. THOMPSON
But ther (lewould tell this as Barbizon-fancler named Willis Thero bas bern a curious gently as possible 16 my James paid more than £6,000 result. These rich men are imaginary millionnice) then for it. obviously better than most of the story took a turn which bas us at making money-und they rot come to the impressionists. are scrambling to put more and Not yet, at any rate, more money into works of art.
So this has fostered the notion Cold eye
that arl in n gilt frame in a for
more lucrative Investment than Any mere thare certifiente with aklit edge.
Looks better
What is more, of course, Jooks better on your wall, you care about thing.
that sort
1
1!
turned a
the picture, the £0,000 he lald out in 1015 would then have been worili £90,000.
Staggering
Later, another American, Even the most pedestrian of Willip Butterworth, bought it securities
would have fated for the same price--and it was better than the pleture. Thai an unlucky Investment. When 1514 sum of £3,870, put into hi fomity sold: 12 in 1954, after 2% per cent Consals, would his death, i fetched' a mere s have been worth £3,437 in £570.
1054.
Barbizon A rally
Fashion suddenly colti **
on the pictures. Their landscapes all al once began to seem dull and over-familiar Pileeen crumbled, and their successors, the 1m pressionists, boomed.
collectors
Inevitably, many of the heavy losses, Nowadays the records at these re mostly hidden away kindly in the edgers of art dealers in London. Parls, and New York,
At this high point in the buying spree," the Taschating question is how true is all this? Will the bull market in impres- slonists really go on and on for
ever?
If I knew a nice millionaire who was thinking of Joining in the costly contest, 1 think I would lead him
soon as possible to a picture gallery of St Jamesa Street, 'There I would show him a painting with a rather bleak message.
Magic term
Not that it is a bleak pleture
its just a skeleh of à vine, by the 19th-century French arlist Charles Francois Daubigny. He made the ketch for a much bigger picture now in the Louvre.
The relevant point is that this picture was the rst, so it is believed. La which
the nost
magic tern "impressionism" was applied. (it was meant, Incidentally, as condemnation,
not praise,)
And the lesson for would-be
"invcolors" in
art lies in the
commercial ups and downs
which befell the
work of this
now
forerunner of the so-fashionable Impressionists.
Daubigny was an artist of the Barbizon Schicol. They got this neme because they the
had then revolutionary idea painting landscapes direct from nature, and went to the country
Still, have been able to trace the vleissitudes of some of these pictures. One of them, franquil landscape called Evening, is by this same artiut Doabigny.
ໄ
Jt Arst attracted aftention in the collectior of the Scottish thread magnate Sir Archibald Coals. He sold it in 1914, for canh.
A
The boom was well on thens:
year later
American
And ns If to emphasis th= uncertainty of the trade, there das been lately a modest ralty
in Barbizon prices. in 1955, pack in London again, this pic
ture sold for £1,750.
But what a deeline from the £8,000 of 40 years carller! And that sum in today's values, equals nearly £20,000.
What would have happened if these collectors had put their mene? Instead into more conventional investments on the Stock Exchange?
Ir that 1914 sum of £3,870 had
Kone into Rolls-Royce, shares at that time, it would Fave grown to £39.940 in 1951, when the picture had slipped to
£570:
And if Mr Wills James had chosen these shares instead of
And, of course, there would have been the interest, which, if you are rich enough, you might equate with the pleasure of looking at the picture on your wall.
Simlar upheavals have come of to utterly different kinds pointlag.
The English Victorians used to pay staggering sums for their fashionable painters' works,
In 1050 a picture by the Sir Edwin Victorians' darling, Landseer, was sold for £1,260. the National A little earlier Gallery picked up Plero della Francesca's Nativity for £2.415. Today the National Gallery's pleture would be worth perhaps The Landseer went £500,000. for £94 103, a few years ago.
And so the pendulum swings. Investing in pictures can
os any just as wild a gamble "Aler" on the Stock Exchange
AND AS MOSCOW'S ART SHOW ARRIVES...
No need for the Tate
to be jealous!
bt
Breakfast and The Little Widow by Fedotov, are like Russian pre-Raphaelites,
except a
"WARM, ISN'T IT
Lundun Szyrusų šatvice.
The tender torture
MIDDLE-AGE spread? No zip in the mornings?
I recommend a visit to a converted church sonal demonstration for nothing hall off Great Portland Strect.
There you will find a cordial young mani
white night- shirt ready to take you apart, |re-zhape you, and send you out into the world a new man—just like those glossy advertisements for pipes, wills and fruit valts.
By GEORGE WHITING
their torsos rent asunder,
Anxious to make me feel ut kome, Mr M. offered me a per-
and it was only just in time that I remembered Rule 28 (1) the one that would have pro- hibited me making any "mean- Ingless cries, tematis or gestures derogatory to the opponent."
received from the judo authorities the secolade of the black belt, fourth dan cignity- Ing that he could be trusted to twist the necks of such minor try as white belts, yellow belts, orange belts, green belts, blue belts and brown belts without losing his temper or his trouISETS,
Mat- Thus thwarted, Mr
pore- And that really was
You do not just get n sushila
ከኒ፡ wrapped
white thing. Judogi (nightshirt-cum-klmono) black belt, even first can. You A high round his shoulders, threw halt have to be initiated. a dozen students away, and sat priest sits on your chest ond down for a chat..
screws your neck until the blood supply to your head gives cut is papa, he told me, was an end you lie there, twitching with ex-saller who grew rice way nightmares, until one of the back home in Kagoshima, and other brethren brings you round that by the katsu, which is what they we Saburo should confine his call the secret method of revival. whose paternal Idca
was
me
The method is slightly Spartag Among the less pretentious but delightfully rimpic. First He studies of Russian peasant life, will strangle you, then be will Makovsky's On the Boulevard kick you on a vital nervo centre, the alr, and
dezen in the whole of Japan, and he has been brought here from hammer you into the grour.d. strong erary imagination.
will Tokyo to teach Englishmen the TOW many pictures never, by European gandards, and Perov's Tom the Owl show is you high in
anything but provincial,
you Of the golden period which You will sweat,
ari of being polite while having A in the exhibition of
In the first rooms at Burling, produced the Russion Ballet, quawit, and you will feel wen-
athletic exercises 10 high Russian painting, which ton House are
Kandinsky, there derful. He says. sone splendid Chagall and
end such Having modestly admitted You knew cbout fudo? "u" jumping, baseball,
that he could probably throw 03 pastimes opened recently, could medieval pictures of the sort is almost nothing
shogl design known as icons; stiff devotional colourful ballet
by ENCOURAGING
menns eft, tender, pliable: "do" decorous
Europa well Into hold their own in the images of a forcefulness which Benois and a wonderfully gar
means road, or way. A Japanese (Japanese chess), sumo (wrest any man in called Jigoro Kano thought it up ing with a paunch), aikido (arm- Asia, Mr M. walked over to the National Gallery or the recalls the finest Russian choral pleture of joy-riders on sedges
Have you ever seen an insur- Ly Kustodiev, Apparently Soviet
baving his neck
in 1882 as a coster form of the twisting), and stem! (punching mat and demonstrated for
parts of the his hari-goshi, plus a few other Tate?.
Russia honours only its political ance man
wrung? Quite a spectacle, I mortal combat known at ju- and kicking vital
methods of dismemberment. body.) jitsu. revolutionaries.
all the moro Essure you-and
on a gentleman with a beard, Finally, four rooms of official astonishing when the insurance
And I must say the gentleman with some THE PLEDGE Soviet art: mostly huge, political
his three a beard goi having recovered. men,
guincas' worth. I do hope he is Afterwards they were speeta- sented, the past five appear to mesic-like Death of the Virgin, posters executed in the style of semblance of life, squats on his
makes were have produrce paintings which This is Russion ort at its best the dreariest capitalist-bourgeois haunches,
profound who has Academicians of 40 years ago. obeisance to the man
up to date with his health in- are occasionally pleasant but end purest,
But there is one painting nearly throttled him, and says The
casily enjoyable which frut
redeems this array of thank you very much - it's - pictures occur in the 18th-cen-
painstaking banality: New Salls been-a-pleasure. mischievous by tiry
rooms; two
the 55-year-old Eduard Bttle schoolgirls
by Levitsky. Kaimins. two portraits of Russian beau-
village of Barbizon to do it.
his friends, Daubigny, with had tile success in his lifetime, They suffered neglect, just DS the later Impressionists "old.
cularly discovered"--us the Impresionists.
VALUA
WONE
FOR
music.
The National Gallery owns no The answer which I am sorry
14th-century painting so in- to give in precious few.
the
austere, Out of seven centuries repre- pressive
PHILIPS
{PHILIPST
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tesassin
TWITCHING
had
Thousands of students, busi- By 18, he had arrived at Nihon ness men and other devotees University, was pelting hard for enjoy, having first pledged an economies degree, and themselves to lay no blame on in the anyone, except myself, afler
event of accident, even K it should result in my death."
Having also promised not to bleed on the mat, you may then to the mystic and body-bouncing the
If you are still alive This is ideologically pure, ie, twelve sessions of these kinder- tics by Barovikovsky, a view in a straightforward representa garten preliminarles, you qualify St Petersburgh by Alexeyev, All
of hardworking Soviet for a real going-over by the chief ..and I've never met of these initate European
types. But it is also heroly com- but with a charming position in
a nicer chap. models,
tradition of
be Introduced tho Russian accent. The most ro Courbet and Gericault,
His name is Saburo Matsushita rites markable picture is, perhaps, Apart from the Italian Com-(Under the pine tree"), he is shenanigans that go on in
converted into a the compelling portrali
munist, Guttoso, and our own 23, he weighs 14 stone, murch hall Russion
torture chamber (sorry, temple pensant woman by
by Argundy, an ex-serf of genius. Stanley Spencer, I can think of grin he gives you from under
figurative mop af dark hedgehog heir scrious
Renshuden judo club-who, for The 19th-century
pictures no
a modest entry fco of three contain no revelations, but are painter living than this hitherto ever so encouraging.
unknown Russian.
guineas, will permit you to have Interesting as a series of foot-
your limbs torn off one at a time notes to the great. Russlan nevelists, A Poor Aristocrat's
by Mr Matsushita.
ot
n
morc
David Carritt
surance.
---(London Express Service).
ROUND-UP
ALL-CHILDREN ORCHESTRA
is of tranquility) the new A
He is acknowledged the top Judo expect now in the Western world, one of the best half
TINKER
STAR
HOTEL
N'orchestra of Ipswich school-children will take part in a national "education and careers" exhibition at Olympla next summer. The education committee has authorised £400 to be set aside to meet the travelling expenses of the 130 children taking part in the event and their, teachers. The exhibition is being organised by the National Union of Teachers.
יין
"Phillp! You're not going to the show like that Go and get dressed at once.!
London Express Bervion.
CANARIES
WILL SING.
CANARIES originating from
the Canary Isles will be a feature of the National Ex- hibition of Cage Birds at Olympia, London. Known as roiler canaries they were first Introduced Into Európe In 1825. Their talent mimicry was exploited by inventing all maa- ner of contraptions producing rolling bell-like and watery" sounds, which the birds could readily imitata, Nightingales werd even used to set #31 example to the canaries in purity and depth of tone,
CAMPING FOR
CHILDREN
MIDDLESEX County Council A have launched a campaign to encourage children to tako part in camping holidays. The Counci are cuxious that children should receive multable training ond experiento' while still, at · æchool. A training course in camping for teachers is to be arranged. As a result of this expansion the County Council, is to buy a stock pl camping equipment including tasia, cooking, slovas and; epok- [Ing... áeté, „ruoksidlay, ropllapsible
· buckets-and-ground-shorts.