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New York, N.Y. 10022

December 16, 1970

Dear Mr. Cecil;

Ever so many thanks for your most pleasant letter of December 9th. Of course, I should have remembered the review you wrote of "Merchants of Art", for I now recall how impressed I was at the time with your understanding comments and sympathetic approach to my writing.

This of course made my question rathersuperfluous and meaningless, however, I shall be happy to send you another copy. Nevertheless, I shall wait until after New Year's, for Christmas taxes the already pretty bad mail service and this, I assume in England as well as over here.

As to the large Boucher painting from Bagatelle, I am not otherwise surprised that it should not figure in your archives. For, as you suggest, it may well have appeared in some French auction.

Jules Féral,(one of the two Paris experts, the other one having been Marius Paulme, also a collector) in his statement of October, 1928, wrote on the back of an enlarged photograph:

"Le tableau ci-contre que j'ai admiré autrefois chez Sir John Murray Scott qui le tenait de la veuve de Sir Richard Wallace est une magnifique peinture de François Boucher."

I would gladly send you this very large photograph - the only one I have - but in view of the size of the canvas, it is evidently an enlargement, and loses thus some of its crispness.

The painting is thinner and slightly paler than your magnificent canvases, there is no doubt, and I would even go so far as to say that it is treated as an unfinished work. Nevertheless it seems difficult to doubt its authorship and furthermore, to my knowledge, no other artist has every approached Boucher's general treatment and characteristics.

The doubt, in my opinion, was instilled by a jealous competitor who, at that time, was held in high esteem, as I know well, by the then curator. Later on, impressed by the first statement, and unwilling to take further responsibilities - due also to a lack of knowledge of this particular period and artist - doubt was repeated and thus remained as a blemish on this truly superb and impressive canvas, the like of which, of course, is not represented anywhere else in this country. I do hope, therefore, that in spite of the wanderings of

(T.S.V.P.)