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Mar Monte Hotel 
SANTA BARBARA 
CALIFORNIA 
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Sequoia National Park 
California,September 14,1941 

Dear Germain: 

Your telephone call caught me just an hour or two before I left Santa Barbara on my way to this magnificent place. As I had to stop at the Museum on leaving Santa Barbara to say good-bye to Donald Bear,it was a good opportunity to bring up the matter of N. It could not have come about more easily;and I got the facts without going into details. They are these: 

N. has a group of paintings in which he has been trying to interest Mrs.McCormick for a year;an $80,000. deal which Bear assures me is not at all likely to come off. Also,were the paintings to be proposed to the Museum Committee as a gift,he would be inclined to urge something more important. I do not know just what is in the group proposed by N.;but evidently yours are among them;and may compose the lot,so far as I know. Bear said:"We have several paintings from Seligmann,which have been submitted,but most of them are rather slight,but good. So far as the museum is concerned,I would be for acquiring something more important." I think he referred to some of the Durand-Ruel paintings which are now on exhibition. 

Apparently N.has also offered some of his own paintings about,the ones I saw in his apartment in New York, The "Van Gogh,Daumier," and one or two others,in which neither Bear nor McKinney believes,-and I must say that I felt the same way about them when I saw them at his place in New York, and I know that that was Venturi's reaction. N.bought them in Paris years ago and seems to believe in them. I think that both Bear and McKinney feel that N. is an honest and well meaning person;and Bear said:"I will recommend to friends of the Museum any fine picture,whoever owns it",-and I don't think he plays favorites;but I did get the impression when I met Elfers of D-R there at dinner,that he had supplied the Impressionists which Bear liked best,andis most likely to 

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OVERLOOKING THE BLUE WATER OF THE PACIFIC 
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