Viewing page 21 of 23

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

- Page V - 

December 16th, 1937

VIII. I am fully sympathetic and I mean this sincerely with your desire to keep the collections intact and also with your desire to withhold five drawings from the entire collection for yourself; notably amongst these the Hugo Van der Goes. However, I must again point out that it will be impossible and impractical for me to approach Miss Greene with the preconceived notion that none of these five drawings could be sold. In other words, if I were to do so, my approach would in reality be identical to yours in the past conversations and correspondence that you have had with her, to which she was entirely unsympathetic and, I gather from you, irritated after a while. In other words, unless I can go to her with a completely fresh point of view, from scratch, as it were, I do not feel that I should be able to accomplish as much as you would like to think. The fact that she has already seen these five drawings or even knows about them, cannot be undone and it is something completely beyond my power to obliterate. Therefore, I know perfectly well that the subject of the van der Goes or the other drawings will most definitely come up in the conversation, and I cannot approach her unless I have a free reign in this matter. A free in-so-far as I will represent to her that if it is at all possible, I would like her to buy the whole collection "en bloc" (minus the five drawings), but if she is absolutely insistent on including these five with the entire collection, then I think I must be free to make her a price for all propositions. On the other hand, if she only wants, say ten drawings out of the whole collection amongst which might be the van der Goes, then again I think it would be extremely important as well as an extremely interesting business proposition to feel free to include all of the above-mentioned five drawings. 

IX. It is absolutely essential that after we come to terms about all this, you let me have all the documents, bibliographical references, opinions, full pedigrees, references as to where any of these drawings might be reproduced, as well as catalogue references (other than the Oppenheimer Sale) etc., etc. This information is, unfortunately, absolutely necessary and invaluable to do business in America and this point differs somewhat from the European approach, but not only will enable me to have all the information about the drawings on my finger-tips so that I can talk better to different people, but it will be absolutely necessary to include this information on the bill of sale when the drawings are sold. 

I realize that this has been terribly long letter, but as you can readily see, there were so many points that had to be taken up in great detail. I think we both agree that if anything is to be done, it must be done with the greatest rapidity, and therefore I look forward to an early reply from you covering all the above points. Please understand that all these points which I have enumerated are absolutely sound business, and believe me when I say that if you agree to them, as I hope you will, I feel confident that they will make for a successful conclusion to this whole matter. 

t.s.v.p.