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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.