7 Dark Roses - Free Audio ebooks

FINE ART: THE FINEST

INVESTMENT

Newspaper editors seldom allot front-page space to art—

and more’s the pity. But art made headlines throughout the

world not long ago, when the great Erickson collection of

old masters was sold at auction in New York City. Among

the 24 paintings that had been collected by the late adver-

tising magnate Alfred W. Erickson and that had been

ordered sold by the executors of his widow’s estate, were:

one major and two lesser Rembrandts, a Fragonard, a

Crivelli and works by Holbein the Younger, Vandyke,

Cranach the Elder and Terborch.

The major Rembrandt,

Aristotle Contemplating the

Bust of Homer,

and Fragonard’s

La Liseuse

were

exceptionally choice items over which any collector’s or

museum curator’s mouth would water. It was generally

conceded that the paintings would fetch record prices and

for weeks before the sale the entire art world buzzed with

speculation about the sums likely to be involved and who

the highest bidders would be. Top presale estimates were

$1,800,000 for the Rembrandt and $350,000 for the

Fragonard.

Actually, the amounts bid and paid at the auction were

far greater than those predicted by even the most educated

estimators.

Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of

Homer,

the only important Rembrandt not then in a

museum, was purchased by New York’s Metropolitan

Museum of Art, which paid

a resounding $2,300,000 for it.

This price was much the highest ever paid for a single

painting, twice the previous record $1,166,400 Andrew

Mellon paid the Soviet Government in 1931 to get

Raphael’s

Alba Madonna

out of the U.S.S.R. and into the

National Gallery in Washington.

Fragonard’s

La Liseuse

brought $875,000 and was

purchased for the National Gallery. This represented the

second highest price paid for a picture at an art auction

since 1959, when Rubens’

Adoration o f the Magi

was

sold for $770,000. Incidentally,

I attended that sale, going

to $560,000 before dropping out of the bidding.

The point of all this is simply that the art market is

booming and that fine art is a fine—and possibly the

finest— investment in more ways than one. But then, art

has long been a fine investment.

Alfred Erickson purchased

Aristotle Contemplating

the Bust o f Homer

from Duveen Brothers in 1928,

when he paid $750,000 for it. During the depths of the

Depression, he sold it back to the Duveens for $500,000 and

then, in 1936, bought it again for $590,000. Simple

arithmetic shows that he paid a total of $840,000 for the

picture—and that the difference between this over-all

purchase price and the most recent sale price is $1,460,000.

True, on the face of it, it appears that Erickson took a

one-third loss between the time he first bought the painting

and sold it back to Duveens’. But this must be viewed in

light of the general economic conditions prevailing at the

respective times involved. Alfred Erickson first bought in

1928, a peak-prosperity year. He sold when the Depression

was approaching its lowest lows.

To obtain a proper perspective, it is necessary to remem-

ber what happened to business and all forms of investment

during corresponding periods. Stocks plummeted, even

such bluest of blue chips as U.S. Steel, which fell from a

peak 261 3/4 to 21 1/4. In 1932, U.S. Industry was

operating at well below 50 percent of the maximum levels it

had reached before the 1929 crash. Wages paid out in 1932

were 60 percent less than in 1929; dividends paid by

companies still able to pay dividends were 57 percent less.

Considered against this background, Erickson’s temporary

33 1/3-percent loss on his painting would seem strong

verification, indeed, of my contention that art

a fine

investment.

Don’t misunderstand me. Being a collector myself, I

would be the last person in the world to suggest that Alfred

W. Erickson bought—or that any serious collector buys—

works of art for the purpose of realizing a financial profit on

their subsequent sale. I’m only too well aware that art

collectors are just that, and not art dealers.

Aline B. Saarinen, analyzing the motives of great

American art collectors, writes: “Their overpowering

common denominator is this: For each of them, the

collecting of art was a primary means of expression.”

Jacques Lipchitz, the sculptor, who owns one of the

world’s finest collections of primitive art, says, “Collecting

is for learning about the human being and the way he feels

and expresses himself, and about the material he uses to

express himself and the way he uses the material.”

I find nothing exceptionable in these opinions, but my

own views go a step or two further. Like most serious

collectors, I by no means consider the works of art I own as

inanimate ornamental possessions. To me, they are vital

embodiments of their creators. They mirror the hopes and

frustrations of those who cre

ated them—and the times and

places in which they were created. Although the artists

may be long dead, and even the civilizations in which they

worked long since disintegrated, their art lives on.

The interest and pleasure an individual takes in his col-

lection does not stem from the monetary value of the works

of art he owns. They derive from the enduring beauty of the

art and from a realization of the validity and permanence of

the fundamental values that art represents. The collector

takes pleasure in the beauty of art, and he never really

ceases to be stimulated by it.

The 16th Century Italian poet

Federico da Porto ad-

mitted he was “stupefied and overwhelmed” by what he

saw when he visited the magnificent collection of the Vene-

tian statesman-historian Marino Sanudo. Da Porto’s poem

marking the visit indicates that collectors of the 1500s were

no different from those of today—and that he, himself, was

infected by the sense of exhilaration and gratification that

Sanudo obviously possessed in no less measure than do his

modern-day collector counterparts. Wrote Da Porto:

Then u p the stairs you lead us,

and we find A spacious corridor

before us spread, As i f it were

another ocean full O f rarest

things; the wall invisible

With glorious pictures hid—no blank

appears,

But various figures, men o f every guise;

A thousand unaccustomed scenes we see.

Here Spain, there Greece, and here the

apparel fair

O f France.

It is of such stuff that collections—and collectors—are

made. The collector marvels at the wonders of the art he

owns —and he displays his

possessions proudly, sharing

their beauty with others. Cert

ainly, his principal concern is

not with the pecuniary value of his works of art—although

collectors will often stretch and even wreck their budgets to

obtain an object they desire.

Nonetheless, it remains an undeniable fact that fine art

is a fine investment. The dollars-and-cents values of

paintings, sculpture, tapestries, fine antique furniture and

virtually all forms of art have shown a marked tendency to

rise—and even soar—over the years. Much of this, of

course, is due to the increased—and still increasing—

awareness that art represents basic values that are not

only lasting, but that become more valid as time goes on.

Thus, there is competition to secure works of art—and thus

their monetary value, the price people are willing to pay for

them, rises.

The trend has not been limited to art of any particular

school, style, period or medium. A few examples taken at

random should suffice to illustrate the manner in which the

money values of art have spiraled.

In 1885, the Victoria and Al

bert Museum of London

bought more than 1000 drawings by the 18th Century

Italian master Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. Although

Tiepolo’s breathtaking frescos adorned the Labia Palace in

Venice, the Kaisersaal of the Prince-Bishop’s House in

Wurzburg, Germany, the throne room of Spain’s King

Charles III and dozens of other great homes, churches and

public buildings, his drawings were not then in vogue. The

Victoria and Albert Museum paid about ten cents apiece for

them. Today,

each drawing

would bring at least

$1500—if the museum wanted to sell them, which, of

course, it has no intention of doing.

The 19th Century English master Joseph M. W. Turner

produced many fine water-color paintings during his long

and successful career. In the 1940s, these sold for between

$500 and $1000 apiece. At the present time, a large Turner

water color will fetch anywhere up to $25,000.

Paul Gauguin’s

Te Tiai Nei Au I Te Rata

—”I

Await the Letter”—is said to have once sold for less than

$50. At an auction in 1959, the painting realized more than

$300,000. In that same year, one of Braque’s early works—

which had once been sold at auction for $15—was eagerly

snapped up by the Queensland Art Gallery at a price of

$155,000. Also in 1959, an illuminated manuscript

prepared under the direction of Matthew Paris at St.

Albans Abbey about 1250

sold for $190,000—as against

the $115,000 paid for a comparable manuscript not very

long before.

Such a list could be extended almost indefinitely and ex-

panded to include practically every medium, period and

school of art, from prehistoric figurines to contemporary

works by abstract expressionists, action painters and

representatives of the welding-torch school of sculpture—

and most certainly such things as tapestries, carpets and

fine antique furniture.

I have seen the money value of the works of art I’ve

purchased increase and even multiply several times during

the years since I acquired them.

In 1938, I purchased the historic and almost legendary

Ardabil Persian carpet, which had been made on the royal

looms of Tabriz in 1535. Moslem Persians had considered

this fabulous, ll-by-24-foot carpet so beautiful that they had

said it was “too good for Christian eyes to gaze upon.” But

“Christian eyes” had often “gazed upon” the Ardabil carpet

and had marveled at what they saw.

“It is worth all the pictures ever painted,” the American

artist James Whistler declared after seeing the Ardabil.

The carpet, a symphony of glowing colors executed with

unsurpassed artistry and fantastic in its detail, is generally

acknowledged to be one of the two finest carpets in the

Western world.

The Ardabil sold for $27,000 in 1910. Nine years later, it

was purchased by the famous art expert—dealer Lord

Duveen, who paid $57,000 for it. I bought the carpet from

Lord Duveen in 1938, paying him $68,000. I subsequently

received many offers for the Ardabil, including one of

$250,000 from Egypt’s then-King Farouk. I declined his

offer along with all the others. In 1958, the Los Angeles

County Museum—to which I had donated the carpet—

placed its value at $1,000,000, almost 40 times the price for

which it had been sold in 1910 and nearly 15 times what I

had paid for it.

In the same year that I bought the Ardabil carpet, I also

acquired the fine Rembrandt portrait of Marten Looten,

which the great Dutch master had painted in 1632. I paid

$65,000 for the picture and considered it a bargain, for I

had been quite prepared to go as high as $100,000 to obtain

it. The market value of the painting increased fantastically

through the years. How much it would fetch at a sale today

is a purely academic question, for the portrait was also do-

nated to the Los Angeles County Museum. However, the

record $2,300,000 paid for Rembrandt’s

Aristotle

Contemplating the Bust o f Homer

would seem to

indicate that

Marten Looten

would bring a price many

times greater than what I paid for it.

But one does not have to buy the works of acknowledged

old masters to obtain fine works of art—or, for that matter,

to make excellent investments.

For example, the Spanish artist Joaquin Sorolla y

Bastida lived from 1893 to 1923. In 1933, I attended an art

sale in New York City, saw some of his work and thought it

excellent. I bought ten of Sorolla y Bastida’s paintings for a

total of well under $10,000. By 1938, the world had begun

to really appreciate the artist’s talent, and the ten

paintings had risen in value to a total of $40,000. Today

Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida is ranked among the top 20

Spanish painters of all time— and I hesitate to guess what

the ten paintings I bought in 1933 would bring if placed on

sale.

Nor is it even necessary to spend thousands—or even

many hundreds—of dollars to start and build an art

collection that will almost certainly increase in value in the

years to come. There are—and always have been—many

opportunities to obtain real bargains in art.

I might add that, in some remote corner of every art col-

lector’s heart, there always lurks a secret hope of making a

discovery, of picking up a painting at a bargain price and

then learning it is really the long-lost work of some great

master. This does happen on occasion. I know, for it

happened to me.

About 25 years ago, I attended an art sale at Sotheby’s

in London. Among the objects on sale was a rather battered

Italian painting of a madonna—a work, the Sotheby

experts declared, produced by some unknown artist.

Although the madonna was badly begrimed and in a poor

state of preservation, I liked the picture; it was, I thought,

reminiscent of Raphael. I bought it—for $200.

In 1963, I decided to have the painting cleaned. The job

was entrusted to the famous firm of restorers, Thomas

Agnew & Sons. Representatives of the firm soon called me

excitedly. The painting was, indeed, the work of Raphael,

they said— and this was quickly authenticated by such

leading art experts as Alfred Scharf. The painting I

purchased for $200 has proved to be Raphael’s

Madonna

di Loreto,

painted in 1508-1509. Its real value: upwards

of a million dollars.

I’ll grant there isn’t much likelihood that the average

art buyer will pick up a $300,000 Gauguin, a $155,000

Braque or even a $1500 Tiepolo for pennies in a corner junk

shop. On the other hand, such remarkable finds as a

London art critic’s recent discovery in a Dublin shed of five

soot-blackened canvases which proved to be important

Guardi figure compositions se

rve to keep all art buyers’

hopes high.

In addition to the million-dollar

Ardabil carpet

and Rembrandt’s

Marten Looten,

J. Paul Getty has donated other extremely valuable

pieces of fine art to the Los Ange

les County Museum.

Incidentally, he

derived no tax benefits for himself by

making the gifts to

the institution.

He still has a multimillion-dollar collec

tion, but even a large part of this

has been donated to the J. Paul Ge

tty Museum. The collection includes

Boucher tapestries, rare carpets and a collection of French 18th

Century furniture which Sir James

Mann, director of the Wallace

Collection and an outstanding authori

ty on the subject,

has judged to be

finer than the one owned by the Lo

uvre. There are also Fourth and

Fifth Century,

B.C.,

Greek marbles-including some of the famed Elgin

marbles—terra cottas, bronzes, Roma

n portraits and sculpture and the

renowned Lansdowne

Hercules.

Among the paintings are works by

Titian, Lotto, Tintoretto,

Rubens, Gainsborough

and other masters. All

the items are sumptuously hous

ed and displayed in Getty’s own

magnificent Ranch-Museum on the

Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu,

California. The museum is open

to the public without charge.

Editor