Viewing page 31 of 144

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

The Wallace Collection
Manchester Square, 
London W.1.

17th September 1965

Dear Mr. Seligman,

Thank you very much indeed for your letters of 13th September. I am very pleased to hear that the copy of Apollo has arrived and that you enjoyed reading my article on the sculpture.

I am most interested as always in what you have to say. It is indeed strange about the Houdon bust, but both de Champeaux and Lady Dilke are fairly precise about it, and it does seem to have been exhibited by Sir Richard Wallace in 1888, but is not described very fully. I am fairly convinced now that this cannot be the Cagliostro which we thought at one time. Both writers merely say that it resembles Frankin but not that it is a bust of him. It also seems rather unlikely that it is the bust mentioned on page 77 of the Probate Inventory of the rue Laffitte. I suppose it is possible that it was disposed of privately by Sir John Murray Scott, like some other pieces, when he sold Bagatelle in 1904. It is odd that your father never mentioned it to you. 

Incidentially [[Incidentally]], what do you imagine the statue grandeur nature en marbre blanc - baigneuse assise is on the same page of the Inventory? Can this be a copy of the Houdon Baigneuse?

The price of the Frileuse comes from Réau's new but posthumous book on Houdon, which does not look as if it is terribly accurate on points of detail. 

I had a letter the other day from a Dr. Flemming R. Curz of Odense, Denmark, enclosing a photograph of an oval marble portrait medallion of Louis XIV in his possession and which was formerly in the Gorm Rasmussen collection. He had read my recent article and was wondering possibly if this came from the rue Laffitte. I could not find any reverence to it in the Inventory and suggested his writing to you, which he may have done by this time. I know nothing more about him. 

With kind regards,

Yours sincerely,
Robert S. Cecil

Mr. Germain Seligman,
5 East 57th Street, 
New York, N. Y. 10022.