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Chris Scott
Inspector
Username: Chris
Post Number: 374
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, August 09, 2003 - 7:39 pm: |       |
Hi all
Found this interesting anecdote of how Lord Salisbury bought a piicture from the young Sickert in Dieppe. It is from "Noble Essences: A Book of Characters" by Osbert Sitwell in his chapter on Sickert and thought it might be of interest:
He told me, also, I recollect, of how the great Lord Salisbury, accompanied by his wife and family, had stayed a summer in Dieppe -- I think in the early 'eighties -and of his kindly purchase of a picture. Lord Salisbury was, as all those who have read his life will recall, more interested in science, and in such then recent inventions as electric light, than in art in general; and of modern art he in no way professed to be an amateur. One day, however, he allowed himself to be taken to see the work of a quasi-Impressionist painter, who lived at Dieppe in circumstances of great poverty. Lord Salisbury had felt sorry for the artist, and had determined to help him. And so, on being shown a picture of the river at Dieppe, he had generously said:
"I will buy that river scene for five hundred pounds if you will paint in a boat containing my family and myself."
Enchanted at the idea of a sum that was at least ten times as large as any he had ever asked, and even though, perhaps, a little startled by the stipulation that his new patron had imposed, the painter had eagerly agreed, and had interjected upon the nebulous waters a fishing vessel containing the members of this distinguished English family. . . . This story, in its turn, produced a pleasant sequel, for, remembering it, I repeated it to Lady Cranborne some years later, and asked her if the picture still hung at Hatfield. . . . Its existence had been forgotten, but her mother-in-law, Lady Salisbury, looked for it, and sure enough, it was found, as described, put away in the attics there.
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