Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1904-03-12
PORTRAITS

An itinerant purchasing agent for noted
New York dealer in antiques and old fur
niture was in Washington recently. He is
starting out on his annual buying tour
through Maryland, Virginia and North and
South Carolina He takes in the little old
out-of-the-way towns Of these states, driv-
ing about a great deal to reach ancient
| mansions that have fallen more or less into
| neglect and decay, and he says that he finds
the section which he thus traverses the
richest in America for the picking up of
rich old gean capable of being furnished up
and restored. and then resold for ten or
| fifteen times the prices at which he ac-
quires the stuff. The demand in and around
New York for genuine old colonial side
| boards and cabinets and buffet tables and
such like, he says, is so vastly greater than
| the supply that he is enabled to pay first
| rate prices for the stuff that he picks up
| on his travels. and at the same time feels
| assured that his firm will make profit of
| several hundred per cent on everything that
| he ships to New York for rehabilitation.
You wouldn't be able in a hundred
| years., to guess correctly the nature of one
| line of stuff that buy in these states that
! comprise my territory this buying agent
| said in conversation with some acquaint-
ances here. 81 refer to ancestral portraits.
| If any of you happen to know where there
| are any colonial portraits tucked away, no
matter what their state of dimness or dill
| apidatiOn, I'll undertake to make dicker
| for them and to pay you good commission
| for directing me to them.
1.-The ancestral portrait business has had
| a mighty boom during recent years, and,
prowl about as / will, can't begin to get
| hold Of enough of them to supply my firms
| demand for them. l am not going to go on
record by even limiting that this boom in
| the ancestral portrait line was coincident
| with the prominence attained by certain as
| sociations organized by persons who felt
| very certain that they had had great-grand-
! fathers and Observation-Disclosures; but you
| are at liberty to draw your own differences
and form your own conclusions as to that.
| q is certain that before the organization
| of these associations the old colonial por-
| traits, both of men and women, hadn't as
much value, except when In the possession
| of persons actually descended from the sub
| jects of the portraits, as the original cost
| of the gilt upon the frames, whereas, to-
| day, any old portrait dating to the tail-end
| Of the eighteenth or the early years OF the
nineteenth century is acknowledgement
| proposition for the man who gets hold Of 1t
| and knows how and where to market it.
II found my territory pretty rich in these
old portraits when l first began to cast
about for them, less than five years ago.
but fear that the supply will not hold out
much longer. have to drive far into the
gone-to-seed sections OF my territory to
find them nowadays, whereas at the out
set had no trouble at all in picking up a
few Of the old portraits in almost every
community / visited
ut is not to be supposed that the persons
from whom I buy these old portraits are
the descendants of the persons whose coun-
tenances they depict. People who have
genuine ancestral portraits are pretty liable
to hang onto them, no matter how embar-
raised for funds they may be, and south
erners would be the last persons to permit
themselves to part with portraits of their
progenitors Tor a financial consideration.
All Of the old colonial portraits that have
picked up have been those of persons whose
lines are, extinct, and the pictures have
been in the possession of persons who con-
sequentfy had no sentimental interest IN
them. Most, Of them have been slowed
away in attics or cellars or in storerooms
agents got along with requests to look
them over were esteemed of little or no
value by their possessors They were at
the outset purchasable for few dollars,
but the werd travelled about that the
portraits were1in big demand the ante was
raised to what the people holding them
deemed enormous prices. The highest
price that ever paid for one of them was
in little town in North Carolina. The
portrait represented a good-looking young
chap in 1.-THE uniform of an officer of the
American revolutionary army. The picture
was a good piece of work, although 1t had
faded ard .he dust and spider webs of a
century were ground into it. I paid the
proprietor of a mean little country grocery,
who owned it. $40 for the picture, and it
was obvious hat he thought he had bun
coed me sadly m grueling that much money
out u Hit LOT tup Inc
was restored by New York artist who Is
employed by my firm for this sort of work
and sold to a New York customer for
81, 500 Bad percentage that Ell?
IA good many of these old portraits are
actual works of art, for it is to be remem-
bered that number of very clever English
and French and Italian portrait painters,
chaps of an adventurous disposition,
proWled about the southern states before
and after the American revolution, making
portraits of members of the great families,
sometimes in return for the hospitality ex-
tended to them. Very few of the portraits
dating back hundred years or more are
capable of being described as inferior in
point of artistic merit, to the best por-
traits Of the present day, although southern
homes. l find. are cluttered with the most
exccrable family portraits dating in execu-
| ton from, say 1916 to 1860.
Il am pretty keen, too, in search of fine
old miniatures. for which there is a steady
demand, atrshig prices, in New York and
| othern eastern cities. In one of the bottom
drawers of an ancient mahogany dressing
table that 1 bought n southern Virginia a
| few years ago | found miniature, painted
| on ivory of lovely young girl. 1t was
! choice and an artistic piece of work, with
| the date. 1914, on the reverse side. The
| coors were seemingly as good as they had
| been on the day the miniature was COM
pleted, and it required absolutely no touch
| ing up. New York woman of the new
type, high in the councils Of feminine club
| dom and all that, paid S7CO for this gem,
| surrounded it with diamonds cut in imita-
| ton of old-mine stones and wore it with
| tremendous effect at meetings which she
attended of a certain dating-back women's
association of which she is a prominent
member. Far be 1T from me to say that
the good lady at length began to believe
herself that the miniature actually por-
trayed colonial woman of her own family
| in direct or collateral line-I am merely
relating the circumstances attending her
acquisition of it