Viewing page 46 of 207

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

October 1, 1958

Dear John,

The family ambient as well as the chlorophyll have already had their effect on your general well-being and I hope that you are able to relax and forget the daily New York vicissitudes.

I thought you would like to hear about Miss Trapier's visit.  She was as charming as usual and delighted to be able to examine the Valdes Leal, especially the colors, for writing another book  on this artist, and never having seen the original - she knows it only from a photograph - she was anxious to be able to describe it more accurately.  I promised her a photograph of the infra-red of the signature which I had already ordered as well as enlargement of the skull and flowers on the table.

As the Spanish Primitive, she very modestly claimed to know very little about Spanish Primitives and thus expressed no further opinion, though I truly believe that she was impressed with the link to be established between the "Descent from the Cross" and the Barcelona Bermejo "Pieta".

In the course of my Sunday readings I ran across the name of Mrs. Wm. H. Singer, Jr who had given a portrait by Frans Hals to some museum and I was wondering whether she was your friend, though it seems to me the initials were different.

Also, from a comment in the "Cronique des Arts" I gather that though a large number of the paintings from the Cook Collection were auctioned as I showed you in the catalogue, there are still quite a few available, in part on loan with British Institutions.

Do not go to the trouble of writing for these lines really require no answer and with cordial greetings, 

Sincerely yours,

Germain Seligman

Mr. John J. Cunningham
6 Ft. Amherst Road
Glens Falls, New York

^[[GS]]