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R Madison Sq. Intended for ? ARGUS "O wad some power the giftie gi'e us To see oursel's as ithers see us. ARGUS PRESS CLIPPING BUREAU Establishes: Paris 1879 O, SPENGLER, M'gr. Cable Address: "ARGUSCLIP" NEW YORK. 352 Third Avenue, New York. SCRAPBOOK MAKING A SPECIALITY for memorial or business purposes TERMS $35 for 1,000 clippings $20 for 500 clippings $11 for 250 clippings $5 for 100 clippings Special rates for yearly contracts. NEW YORK Clipping from..................................................... Address of Paper 18 OCTOBER 1908....... Date........................................................................ Back Numbers of N. Y. City dailies for Sale. "MNEMOSYNE - THE LAMP of MEMORY" by ROSETTI. COURTESY OF THE BLAKESLEE GALLERIES. OBVIOUSLY Europe still is the treasure house of old masters. Their frequency of acquisition by American collectors is more apparent than real, the impression frequently being due to the enterprise of American newspapers in obtaining and publishing the facts. This shows in itself that the securing by an American of a genuinely great example of early art still is regarded as an "event." Probably there are in Europe private houses, to say nothing of the public galleries, any one of which contains more great paintings by old masters than are to be found in all the museums and private collections of this country put together. An encouraging circumstance, however, is to be noted. In their acquisitions of old masters American collectors are being guided by an ever higher standard. When, for example, Mr. P. A. B. Widener secured three and Mr. Henry C. Frick one of the Cattaneo Van Dycks from Genoa Europe lost and America gained a corresponding number of art treasures. There was genuine reason for the excitement caused in the art world, the story of which, however, has been told too recently to require repetition. An American art firm, Messrs. Knoedler & Co., was an important factor in rediscovering these pictures in the obscurity of the Cattaneo Palace, in Genoa, while the photographs taken by the Messrs. Braun have made admirable reproductions of these masterpieces accessible to the public.

The Cattaneo Van Dycks date from about 1624, having been painted during the artist's second stay in Genoa. The full length portrait of Elena Grimaldi, wife of Niccolo Cattaneo, shows, in the opinion of Mr. C. J. Holmes, as expressed in the Burlington Magazine, how unsurpassable Van Dyck was as a painter of state portraits, and he considers that the pride of life in a refined and luxurious age never was more luxuriously set forth. The color scheme he describes as a full dark green for the woman's dress, with vivid scarlet lace at the neck and wrists, the head been accented still further by the glow from a rose colored parasol. The negro attendant is in a golden brown costume, "contrasting well with the cool stone work that rises against the sky behind, and the sky itself is no ordinary convention of deep blue or gray, but an expanse of sharp blue and orange such as one hardly finds elsewhere in art before the time of Tiepolo. Of the majestic sweep of the landscape, of the delicacy and distinction of details, such as the hands or the sprig held in one of them, it is needless to speak; they are the work of a master, but here they are trifles compared with the majestic structure of the piece, a structure unique even among Van Dyck's monumental creations." — red ink: #134

MR. FRICK'S Van Dyck is an oval portrait of Canevaro and "an excellent illustration of the balance and modification with which Van Dyck uses his power in works of moderate size." But if the "Elena Grimaldi" is painted in the artist's "grand" style, he has put the man on canvas with a vigor that immediately arrests attention. Canevaro looks out from the portrait with wonderful seriousness of mien. In fact, it is this serious, thoughtful aspect that impresses the beholder. Here is a thinker—possibly lost in reflection upon that very luxuriousness of the age which the artist so sumptuously sets forth in his portrait of Elena. Size counts when in two portraits inspiration and technique go equally hand in hand, and the "Elena" is the more improtant. Yet in the "Canevaro" there is an air of intellectual distinction not to say aloofness, that cannot fail to exercise a potent attraction.

The Cattaneo Van Dycks and "countless others in their way hardly less remarkable" were executed by Van Dyck before he was twenty-seven years old. That circumstance Mr. Holmes considers perhaps the greatest part of the marvel, at [l]east for all who have any conception of [t]he long and laborious exertions by which [t]he science of painting is mastered, even by those who are fortunate alike in the hour, the country and the physical and mental gifts of their birth. "If we consider for one moment the mass of portraits painted by Van Dyck before his thirty-fifth year, and then compare them with the output of any other portrait painter during a similar period, be he whom he will, the comparison will no[t] be