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FOGG ART MUSEUM · HARVARD UNIVERSITY
CAMBRIDGE 38, MASSACHUSETTS

May 25, 1955

Mr. Germain Seligman
5 East 57th Street
New York 22
New York

Dear Germain:

I have had a chance to look at the Prud'hon drawings again and also to get at the background of the prices. Certainly what you are asking is not unreasonable in view of what was paid for ours. Certainly I like your drawing better. On the other hand, a museum with as limited funds as ours has to consider not the market value of a work of art, but its competitive usefulness in teaching. Looked at from that point of view, I cannot offer a figure that is anything but insulting, and I don't want to do that. I feel I know you well enough to realize that you appreciate an honest statement of the facts as I see them. If we were not, thanks to Mr. Winthrop's and other people's generosity, so well endowed with Prud'hon drawings, we would be prepared to pay a fair value for a work of art as beautiful as this.

For once, I seem to have been living in a faint approximation of the rush which is so often your lot. I have made a trip to Cincinnati, two trips to Washington and a trip to New York, all in the last few weeks. But with all the distractions of this spring, I still think with tremendous joy of the acquisition of the Monet. I hope you are as happy to see it join the Wertheim Collection as we are to have it.

Best to you both,

As ever, 

John 
John Coolidge

Acknowledged 5/26