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Dr. W. R. Valentiner   -3-   November 13, 1926

P.S. -- The three pictures which are mentioned here, I consider are very representative of the masters.

The DROUAIS is, according to Mr. de Nolhac, one of the most important pictures by DROUAIS known, and even at the Salon of 1761 where it was exhibited with another portrait by DROUAIS of Mlle. de Verrieres' sister, it was already so much admired that St. Aubin sketched it, as he did, only of the very important and best pictures of the Salons.

The BOUCHER is important in size and also quite rare, as it is a religious subject, whereas, you know BOUCHER very seldom did anything of this kind, but the brush stroke and the colors especially the tints of the flesh are very characteristic of the master.

BOILLY, the great master of La Bassee near Lille, has in the latter years acquired a great deal of value in the international market and also of notoriety due to the fact that several pictures of this Master were in the Lehmann collection in Paris, and were auctioned off for high prices. The Estate of Albert Lehmann gave one of them to the Louvre which already has quite a rich collection of them. The finest esemble of BOILLY pictures, outside of the ones shown in the Louvre, are at the Lille Museum.

BOILLY can be considered, I believe, as one of the best painters of fabrics and his "scenes d'interieur" e expresses a continuancy of the tradition of "scenes de genre" in which Lavrince Freudeberg Eisen Mallet became so famous. In the latter part of his life, BOILLY painted these famous caricatures which have been engraved and became so popular under the Restoration Period.

Of the same master as I telegraphed to you, I am trying to obtain a very important picture whish was exhibited in the Cent Chefs d'Oeuvre, and it was previously in the Richard Wallace Collection. If we could have it for your exhibition, it would be, I believe, and interesting asset for this type of painting and for this master.

G.S.