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June 17, 1953

Dear Mr. Cecil:

Do have my thanks for your kind lines of June 5th and I am sorry indeed to give you so much trouble with my problems, or should I say with our problems, knowing how interested you also are in them.

As regards the Louis XI Portrait I have no dimensions, nor, in fact, any recollection of the Portrait and, as I believe I wrote you earlier, I truly only know it from the reproduction in The Connoisseur. I agree with you that it is surprising to find such a painting in the Wallace-Bagatelle collection, but these are the facts.

I realize that my description of Louis XVI "black furniture" is rather vague. I do not mean Boulle, nor Levasseur. I am referring to "black", probably mahogany, or tinted wood to look like mahogany without any marquetrie or incrustations of any sort. The merit of the furniture being entirely in its proportions and the beautiful quality of the Ormoulu bronzes adorning them in the manner of de la Fosse or Montigny. Were you to have reproductions of the two or three pieces in Chantilly you would have an immediate impression of the pieces I am referring to. However, I am afraid that from the indications you give me Sir Philip Sassoon evidently did not own any that came from the Wallace-Bagatelle group. I recall his purchasing some from my father and had just a faint hope they might have come from that great collection. 

With best personal regards,
Sincerely yours,
(Germain Seligman)

Robert H. Cecil Esq.
The Wallace Collection
Manchester Square
London, W.I
ENGLAND

TP

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