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April 2, 1954

Dear William:

To receive your telegram in answer to mine give me a great relief, for as I wired you your silence truly worried me, and a few hours later arrived your good and interesting letter, for which I thank you.

Contrary to what you think your letter is very constructive, for I have now come to the conclusion that these two statues are French, and probably of the region of the Loire or from a region extending as far East as Troyes in the Champagne, or around 1540-50.

This change in attribution is due, amusingly enough, to my consultation with art historians of German origin, who all share your views - in other words who were unable to find any comparable material among the known German sculptures.

In fact Dr. Theo[[strikethrough]] r [[/strikethrough]]dore Muller to whom I had written meanwhile - his assistant Dr. Weihrauch answered me - wrote that he definitely considered them French, and also indicated a reference to a bas-relief in the museum of Lyons.

Dr. Oswald Goetz, to whom I showed them a few days ago, came also to the same conclusion, and finally Mr. William Milliken, whose visit I had at the beginning of the week, told me spontaneously when I asked him what he thought as regards the origin "the Loire region of course, and under the influence of Michel Colombe....."

Now as regards the stone, here again you are right and it must be a certain type of very hard and most unusual limestone.  In this connection I was also informed that of Kelheim stones one only knows very small pieces, and being used as a lithographic stone it could be easily scratched, which is not the case with this very hard medium.

As you can readily imagine, I have done a considerable amount of research since writing my letter to you, and I must admit that I have found quite a number of sculptures extending from Nantes to Caen and to Troyes, and which if not definitely by the same master can all be connected or related to the stylistic characteristics of my two statues, so that my mind today is at ease with this new attribution.  I do hope that you also will agree.

I was sorry that you returned the check for after all as I said above even a negative information is at times very useful, and I am very grateful to you for all the time and thought you have this matter.

With best regards,
Sincerely,

^[[GS]]
Germain Seligman

Dr. William R. Valentiner
10340 Wilshire Boulevard
Los Angeles, California