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143

While in Berlin in September I went with Mr. Mortimer to the gallery where I so disliked the young fat sleek dark Jew who has inherited the business from his father. Unfortunately at this moment I neither recall his name neither find any advertisements of his gallery in any of my magazines nor find any reference to his gallery in my former list or among my collected bills. I think that either in the summer or in the autumn you went with me once to this gallery and so you should remember that there was one gallery where everybody was particularly unpleasant (I do not refer to Cassirer), but to that gallery to which one comes after walking through a court and in which hung a lithograph by Munch of a semi-nude female figure, a lithograph which was not for sale. I trust this identifies the gallery sufficiently. You will further remember that this art dealer wrote me in the autumn, and indeed I think you answered the letter for me, offering me the statue by Archivenko which I already bought from the artist himself. The point is that I selected in the presence of this dealer with great care four pieces of sculpture by Milly Steger, the sculptress whose work had interested you and me when seen a year before in the first exhibition where we also liked the de Fioris. Intimidated by Flechtheim at that time I did not take any Stegers for the Dial. But this gallery, whose name I forget, was opening an exhibition in October and so I was able to renew there my acquaintance with the work of Steger and Mortimer joined in my appreciation of it.

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The art dealer promised to send me here to Vienna black shiny photographs of the four things I had chosen and I promised to have them run in the Dial giving him the credit for them. Never a word from him! Now in Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration (January 1923 Heft 4) there is an article upon Stegler together with many photographs of her work. It is now of course impossible for me to remember what I chose at the gallery, so rather than to have those photographs of the things I selected, which is now presumably impossible since presumably the man has thrown away the notes he made in my presence, I prefer to take good photographs of two of the things reproduced in Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, viz - the picture upon page 200 entitled Modell für Holzplastik and the picture upon the page facing this picture entitled Stehendes Mädchen. You know my requirements in re photographs. I am sorry to have to bother you to get these, and trust with the diplomacy necessary, you will extract the photographs from the dealer without any payment other than the advertising his gallery will get from its name attached to the pictures. Also please get from him or from the artist herself who lives in Berlin a suitable contributors note and send the photographs, together with the contributors note and a note explaining my directions to the Dial.

You have my sympathy in your new difficulties brought about by the unjust action of the French. But I see no hope of immediate amelioration.

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Please make my compliments to Mrs. von Erdberg and extend
to her my thanks for all the bother she has been at in this Kaiser-
ling business.

Ever gratefully,