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WELbeck { 0687 0688

THE WALLACE COLLECTION
MANCHESTER SQUARE
LONDON, W.1

7th February, 1955

Dear Mr. Seligman,
You have been so kind in answering questions that my friend and colleague, Robert Cecil, has been putting to you, that I wonder whether you can help me to resolve a little problem I am interested in and in which your firm is slightly involved.

In the Chester Beatty collection (which I am engaged in cataloguing) there is a chaise longue signed by Tilliard. This is illustrated in Theunissen (Meubles et Sièges du xviiie Siècle, pl. LX) and in the accompanying text, pp. 170-171, Theunissen says that he saw it in September 1933 in the possession of Monsieur Jean Seligman and that it had been purchased at a sale at the Grand Trianon after the Revolution of 1848 when it passed into the collection of Louis Burat.

In an article on "Les Tilliards" which will appear in the February issue of Connaissance des Arts, another and different chaise longue signed by Tilliard is illustrated. According to the text (of which I have seen a proof) this, too, is said to have come from the Grand Trianon sale of 1848, through the Burat collection into the possession of Monsieur Arnold Seligman and is now in a private collection in France. This chaise-longue is very different in shape from the other, with much more deeply rounded ends both of the same height. In fact, it is much more like what I would call canapé en corbeille.

It occurs to me that the two stories may have become confused, for it seems improbably that both should have had exactly the identical history, especially as 

both/