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July 15, 1946

Dear Mr. Seligman:

I thank you for your letter of July 9th.

SEURAT "Eiffel Tower" - This painting is on the list of items to be removed to the warehouse while the galleries are closed in August. It is at present at our galleries.

Fifth Avenue Bank of New York - I duly received the letter signed by you as well as the three signature cards, which I mailed to the bank. On said letter I added a PS "enclosing original of the license authorizing the transaction".

Lloyds - Not having heard from Chicago, I am renewing the insurance on the marble statue to September 6th.

COURBET "Femme de Fleurs" - At the time of the sale of the two Bernheim paintings to Helft at a price below the original consignment figure, we wrote a letter to the Federal Reserve Bank asking their opinion on the legality of such transaction. (We did not file application for license.) I am appending a copy of said letter dated April 18, 1946 and the Federal Reserve Bank's answer thereto of April 19, 1946. As this answer was rather ambiguous, you asked Mr. Robbins to communicate with the Federal Reserve Bank with respect to this topic, and he reported to you the result of his conversation with Mr. Green of the Foreign Funds Control, as per enclosed copy of his letter to you on April 22, 1946.

Mr. Robbins tells me now that a precedent was unequivocally established and that in his opinion it will not be necessary to again obtain the Federal Reserve Bank's consent and that we are at liberty to sell below the original consignment prices at Mr. Bernheim's instructions.

Swiss Francs - We cannot make remittance in Swiss Francs be it by direct bank transfer or by check. The manner of payment is the following as per regulations of the Federal Reserve Bank:

To cite an example - we give orders to J.P. Morgan to pay Mr. X. in Colombier, Switzerland the equivalent of 75,000 Swiss francs in dollars. J.P. Morgan will then debit our account with such equivalent - i.e., assuming the rate of that day being 25, with $18,750. - which sum they will credit to the blocked dollar account in their books of a Swiss bank of our or Mr. X's designation.

Such Swiss bank will then, upon request of J.P. Morgan, inform Mr. X in Switzerland that he has been credited with $18,750.- in a blocked bank account, and that is where the difficulty comes in. J.P. Mogan, with whom I had a very long conversation on this subject, tell me that the Swiss banks are extremely reluctant to pay the equivalent of such frozen New York dollars to Mr. X in Swiss francs, as by doing so they themselves become the owners of frozen dollars with which they are already overloaded. Mr. X, therefore, will have to take the risk of waiting for a period of weeks or even months to effect such conversion, and any fluctuation of exchange would, of course, be at ihs risk.

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