Studio: international art (45.1909)

Studio-Talk

“SOLITUDE” by PERCY FRENCH

(See Dublin Studio- Talk, next page )

voted him a load of peat
fuel and a pension of
200 gulden (less than
T,2o) to relieve his desti-
tution in his hoary old
age ! Perhaps the vagaries
of artistic reputation have
never been so poignantly
illustrated as in the case
of Franz Hals, that is it
such reputation is to be
measured by auction
prices, for until some forty
years ago, when Lord
Hertford astonished the
art world by paying 2,000
guineas for The Laughing
Cavalier of the Wallace
Collection, a Franz Hals

says, “has suffered more
than most men from lack
of appreciation.” But our
readers will not require to
be told that England is
not the only country in
which the vagaries of
artistic reputation are
strange enough to excite
astonishment. Only last
month reference was made
to an American landscape
painter whose pictures are
now fetching substantial
prices, whereas right up
to his death, some ten
years ago, he found it
difficult to sell one. And
is not the Dutch master
whose art forms the sub-
ject of our first article this
month another case in
point ? And, again, what of
that great Dutch painter of
an earlier generation, one
of whose works has been
recently acquired by the
British nation for the enor-
mous sum of ^25,000 ?
Yet Franz Hals’ country-
men no doubt thought
they were treating him
very generously when they

“l’école” (Salon des Humoristes, Paris) by poulbot

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