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ist exercised such esthetic imagination and conception as to justify his completed work being classified as an original painting."

But there is no such "weight of evidence" for the "originality" of the dozens of slick portraits of pretty girls that arrive weekly at the Fort of New York. To the GIs who took their first bold step into the world of art by entrusting photographs of their sweethearts to bereted artists on the Left Bank, it is a disillusioning shock to discover their genuinely "hand-painted" dream-girls are "copies" requiring duty.

Frequently the question of "original" involves the more delicate business of attribution. For if a painting is purported to be by So-and-So, it is not an original unless it actually is by So-and-So. If it is not, it is dutiable as a relica, a copy or a reproduction, all of which may be polite eupheuisms for that ugly word "fake." And in these fields, where art experts fear to tread (and where, indeed, they often dare not tread lest they get sued under laws of slander of title), the U.S. art examiners rush fearlessly ahead.

Their task is not always an easy one. In 1933, for instance, a customs inspector was confronted with an oil portrait of Benjamin Franklin allegedly by the French artist, Deplessis (who died in 1802). Since he had never seen this painter's work, he was at a loss to evaluate the picture's authenticity. He resorted to an ingenious yardstick for judgment. He compared its value with that of an accredited painting by the same artist in the Boston Museum, Finding an enormous discrepancy between them, he would not pass the import as an original--but the court overruled him.

The court overruled, too, another appraiser who declared that a batch of English portraits were not originals because they were not by Romney and Reynolds et al as was claimed by the New York dealer importing them. The dealer was caught in a somewhat embarrassing position since he has already