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ART NOTES.
The Thomas B. Clarke Collection.

    The rumor that Mr. Thomas B. Clarke was
going to sell his collection of pictures has
been verified. The sale will take place for the pictures each night, and Mr.Thomas E. Kirby
of the American Art Association will be the
auctioneer. Before the sale there will
be an exhibition beginning in the first
days of February. It is needless to say
that the exhibition will attract crowds
of visitors. Mr. Clarke began collecting
years ago, paying for his acquisitions with
hard cash, and supporting by his purchases
the native school of painters. Sometimes he 
bought close and sometimes he bought high,
but the result was a collection of pictures that
no other collector can duplicate. It includes
groups of landscapes by the great master
Inness, thirty-five in number; by
Homer Martin, by Tyron, twelve: by
Wyant, seven; by that other master, Winslow
Homer, thirty works in oil and water
color, including the famous "Eight Bells"
and "The Life Line;" by John La Farge,
William M. Hunt, C. H. Davis, Picknell, Murphey,
Dearth, Thomas Allen, Ochtman, Coffin,
Bolten Jones, Reid, Hassam, George Fuller,
Abbot Thayer, Eastman JOhnson, Thomas
Moran, Eakins, Dewing, Dielman, F. S.
Church, Blum, Volk, George De Forest
Brush, Millet, Jaul, Abbey, Sprague Pearce,
Dannat, Blashfield, Shirlaw. Elihu Vedder,
Charles X. Harris, Freer, George H. Boughton
and Alfred Kappes. There are groups
of figure works by Louis Moeller, Siddons
Mowbray, Curran, George Butler, Francis
C. Jones, Hovenden, Henry O. Wlker and
Horatio Walker. Furt her back in the history
of American art we find represented in the collection
the names of McEntee, Kensett, Gilbert
Stuart, F. E. Church, and Homer Martin.
    The objects of art will be sold at the galleries
of the American Art Association in the afternoons,
the same days as the sales of the pictures
at Chickering Hall. Greek vases, statuettes
and iridescent glass will come up the first day.
On the second day will be sold the Hispano-
Mauresque, Indian and Persian plaques and
other objects of art. On the third day the antique
Chinese porcelains and curios will come
under the hammer. On the fourth day of the
sale the French, Russian, Dutch, Spanish and
Oriental metals, plaques and vases will be sold.
    Among the Greek art pieces may be specially
mentioned a collection of most beautiful vases,
dating from about 600 B.C. TO 200 A.D. The
most notable statuettes are those of "Esculapius
and Hygea," the "Kneeling Muse," and the celbrated Farnese family piece, a vase in
black and red, found at Aapulia in 1786, It
is about 3 feet 6 inches in height
and is one of the finest specimens ever brought to
light. A notable antique statuette is a Venus
arranging her headdress (engraved in the De Charmiac Musee de Sculpture) of the art period
belonging to the time of Nero. This statuette
was presented by the King of Naples to the
Empress Josephine, and the Empress kept it
for many years at Malmaison. She afterward
gave it to the Count Portales, and it was sold
in his collection at Paris in 1865.
    There are exquisite specimens in the Chines
collection, such as the small vases in blue
and white. These form the keynote in Mr.
Clarke's  collection, so to speak, for they
reveal the love of the true collector.
It would be impossible to imagine anything
finer. After these come the lustrous
plaques of Hispano-Mauresque manufacture,
mostly of the sixteenth century. Mr. Clarke
has been collecting them for some fifteen years
or longer. His Persian, Indian, and Turkish
things came in large part from the former
United States Minister to Persian, S. G. W. Benjamin.
    This sale will be the most notable one of the
year. The owner of the collections is an
amateur, whose influence has been for good
wherever he has exerted it. He is Chairman
of the Union League Club Art Committee,
likewise of the New York Athletic Club. He
has organized exhibitions at the Manhattan
and "The Lambs." He has presented to various
clubs during his career some $20,000 worth of
pictures, including a collection of single color
porcelains, to the Union League Club, and a
frieze painted by H. Siddons Mowbray, called
"The Month of Roses," to the New York Athletic
Club. To "The Lambs" he has given
some 300 mugs and flagons, endeavoring to
bring art within the range of daily vision,
for it is not often that one shakes off
one's lethargy sufficiently to make a visit to
the Metropolitan Museum, where the best of
these things may be seen and admired. In
short, Mr. Clarke had pursued a long career of
usefulness as a collector and it will be a treat
to see his treasures when they are exposed to
view next month.