Old Masters, New World

by Cynthia Saltzman

  On July 19, Carstairs acknowledged to Roland Knoedler, in New York, that their purchase of the Ilchester portrait was far from certain. “There are a great many complications about the Rembrandt. They have agreed to sell it to us but have to get an order of court & are certain someone may overbid us and we may lose it,” he explained. He kept the details of the complications from Knoedler and only mentioned that Pierpont Morgan and Roger Fry ­were “after” the painting. Carstairs downplayed his worries over the deal he had struck with the Metropolitan’s curator. Morgan and Fry “have withdrawn in order not to run the price up and we on the other hand have promised to hand [it] on to the Metropolitan without profit,” he reported. “We will merely get a little glory. There was nothing ­else we could do.” Nevertheless, he noted, “the Metropolitan may not be able to arrange [it]. This is our only hope.”

  About a week later, that hope was realized when Fry cabled Deprez at Colnaghi’s:

  MR. MORGAN WIRES ME THAT HE WILL DO NOTHING FURTHER IN THE MATTER OF THE REMBRANDT. I REGRET THIS BUT IT LEAVES YOU ENTIRELY FREE.

  “Their chance disappeared & one can have the picture,” Carstairs later told Knoedler. Morgan is “unfortunately a man of many moods,” he added. But, it took months before he heard any news from Ilchester. “The Rembrandt matter comes up Monday next for decision and I think before you get this letter the picture will be ours,” Carstairs wrote Knoedler on November 2. He conveyed his certainty about the picture’s value, claiming he “would not have hesitated a moment at [paying] 40,000 pounds ($200,000)” for it. Problematically, Morgan had returned to New York. “I don’t think it matters that Morgan has spoken to Frick.” But he knew it might, as the banker probably told his friend that the dealers had paid 31,000 pounds ($155,000) for the Rembrandt. (To that they added the 20 percent tariff, bringing the picture’s cost to $186,000. If the painting had gone directly to the Metropolitan Museum, the tariff would not have applied.)

  “We [Colnaghi and Knoedler] must have “$15,000 each,” he explained to Knoedler. If they charged Frick $215,000, “prompt cash. Money cable,” he reasoned then Knoedler could make close to the $15,000 and avoid the added cost of borrowing from a bank at “8% about.” But, if Frick refused to pay immediately, “we must have $225,000.” Only two months before, the collector had spent $275,000 on two English portraits—Lady Harcourt and Selina, Lady Skipwith—by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Even at $250,000, Carstairs asserted, this Rembrandt would be “cheap,” and he sniped, “less than Morgan paid (if duty is considered) for his Lawrence ‘Miss Farren.’ ” That the banker recently spent $200,000 for the ­full-­length En­glish portrait but lost interest in the Rembrandt mystified the American dealer. “I don’t think anything further need be said about his judgment, for the Rembrandt is certainly worth 3 times as much.” Finally, on November 5, Carstairs learned that he and Gutekunst had won the picture and immediately told Knoedler that the Rembrandt was theirs.

  A day later, Frick received Carstairs’s cable about the Ilchester portrait in New York. Following Carstairs’s instructions “to see Roland for particulars,” Frick telephoned the dealer at the Fifth Avenue gallery. On the phone, Knoedler repeated to Frick the figure Carstairs had named in the cable: $225,000. Frick’s response was blunt and dismissive; he snapped that he did “not want to be bothered with pictures at these times.”

  Well acquainted with his volatile client, Roland Knoedler stopped by the Vanderbilt ­house the next day. “He was very nice, but looking around, said he had bought sufficiently, & that even at cost he would not be interested in it,” Knoedler reported to Carstairs.

  “I am sorry Clay is not in the mood,” Carstairs calmly replied from London. “It is a great picture and one that he will regret not owning in years to come.” He added, “I realize he has bought a great deal.” Characteristically, Carstairs resolutely refused to acknowledge that Frick had dealt a blow, and M. Knoedler & Co. didn’t have enough capital to hold on to the picture until the tycoon changed his mind. Works of art had their highest value when fresh to the market. If it became widely known that Frick had rejected the Rembrandt, the dealer might have difficulty selling it to someone ­else. In the small, overheated art world, news spread faster than in the past. Even a nearly perfect Rembrandt could become damaged goods. “Mr. F must keep the price absolutely secret as we may conclude to ask much more for it. It is a wonderful purchase. I think the Berlin Museum might give a great deal for it.”

  Already rumors ­were flying. Bernard Berenson had heard that the portrait’s buyer was Isabella Stewart Gardner. “I told you I was going to find out whether you had bought the Ilchester Rembrandt,” he wrote Gardner. “The scandal regarding it almost rivals the Marlborough affair. It seems Ilchester sold the picture on the assurance it would not go to America. And he has heard that you said to somebody in Italy that you ­were stony broke because you had just bought his Rembrandt.’It looks as if you had bought ­it—and I heartily congratulate you, for it is one of the crack pictures of that ­over-­admired Dutchman.”

  At some point, Carstairs had promised a right of second refusal on the Rembrandt Self-­Portrait to Scott & Fowles, a gallery in New York, but he waited two weeks for Frick to come around. Finally, on November 23, Carstairs cabled Scott & Fowles: “Am in position to offer you Ilchester Rembrandt are you interested.” He held to the $225,000 price, and agreed to give them “four months” to pay. That same day, Scott & Fowles dealers declined the picture.

  Even now, Carstairs and Knoedler refused to give up on Frick, hoping he would purchase the Rembrandt and pay full price. Knoedler wrote him a letter. Although Frick seems not to have answered, he did invite the dealer to come and see the mansion he had just finished building on a bluff over the Atlantic, in Prides Crossing, the New En­gland watering place on Boston’s North Shore where Isabella Gardner had a house. The “trip to Prides was delightful. Beautiful weather-golf-walking-driving, fine bracing air,” Knoedler reported to Carstairs on November 23. And, at some point, “Frick asked what had become of the Rembrandt.”

  Not long after, back in New York, Frick stopped by Knoedler’s, wanting to see Bode’s Rembrandt book, so he could study the ­black-­and-­white photograph of what he referred to as “that ridiculous priced picture.” The ­five-­by-­eight-­inch grayish photograph gave a ghostly and diminutive glimpse of the Rembrandt; but the tycoon offered Knoedler $200,000 for ­it—“one hundred thousand cash & one hundred, delivery of picture.” Frick had confessed that he never thought that “he would have made the offer.”

  Relieved and delighted, Carstairs and Knoedler wanted to accept Frick’s $200,000 in cash. But in London, Gutekunst disagreed, arguing that he could get the same sum from his own client in Berlin and expected more from the American market. Gutekunst’s rebuff strengthened Carstairs’s resolve. “Colnaghi refuse,” he wrote Knoedler. “Will consent sell Clay 225,000. Otherwise’advise holding for $250,000.”

  In fact, Carstairs was of two minds: “I did my best to influence them [Gutekunst and Deprez] to accept it,” he told Knoedler, “but I ­can’t help but think it absurd to sell this great picture for so little profit & I would love dearly to see our good friend F have it but’it is not beyond the bounds of chance to have such [a] picture sell for 300 or even 4 hundred thousand dollars.”

  Problematically, the Rembrandt was still hanging at Colnaghi’s in London, and Frick had yet to lay eyes on it. On November 23, Carstairs himself launched an assault on behalf of the Rembrandt, in a letter he tailored to change the mind of the stubborn Frick. He began by stating simply that the Self-­Portrait represented “Rembrandt at the zenith of his powers.” He claimed to regret “having been unsuccessful in arranging the purchase of the Rembrandt for you at $200,000.” Mostly, however, the art dealer focused on the painting’s monetary value, citing evidence that this par­tic­u­lar Rembrandt canvas was worth considerably more than the $225,000 he was asking. “I should imagine’you consider it expensive,” he wrote Frick. “In this you are mistake
n, for it is the greatest single portrait existing.”

  Carstairs cited rising prices. The Rembrandt that Frick had turned down in 1900 for $55,000, the dealer now claimed was worth $150,000. In Amsterdam, the own­ers of the famous Jan Six, a “somewhat smaller picture than ours,” had been offered 80,000 pounds ($400,000). “This,” he asserted “is the value of our picture.” With characteristic candor, he spelled out the financial situation the gallery faced:

  “We must have a profit out of such a picture for after all a fine Rembrandt is the rarest and most saleable thing in the world & we have done no end of work getting it and had to keep the payment of it for over 4 months in mind when we might have used our money more advantageously from the standpoint of profit. I recognize my duty toward you & am trying to fulfill it and in advising you to take this picture at $225,000. I put myself on record and want you to remember my advice in the future.”

  Finally, he turned to the substance of the painting, and what it would mean to Frick: “If you could only see the picture over your mantel dominating the entire gallery just as you dominate those you come in contact with, you ­wouldn’t let it pass for $500,000.” He concluded, “I ­can’t imagine a more suitable picture for you.” Shrewdly he invoked Wilhelm von Bode, explaining that Gutekunst was “wiring to send the picture to Berlin where he thinks he can sell it for ­ £40,000—probably to the Berlin gallery.” Nonetheless, he promised to reserve the Rembrandt for Frick until Wednesday, December 5.

  On Monday, Frick telephoned Knoedler and asked to see him. Frick mentioned that “Fry had praised” the Rembrandt, and stated to the dealer that “for such a fine work, the question of price for a man like him was a secondary matter, ­etc.” Nevertheless, he still refused to pay $225,000. Knoedler stood his ground: “I said no,” he told Carstairs.

  “Well,” Frick replied, “I suppose I ought to have the picture.”

  Roland Knoedler was jubilant. They had battled with Henry Clay Frick and had won. But within days the dealers realized that Frick in fact had not ended negotiations: he ­wasn’t going to pay for the picture now. Instead, he would wait until June 30, six months away. Knoedler requested Frick to compromise, asking if he would pay on “April 30,” the day the gallery closed its books. Frick shot back: “It depends on how much I like the picture.”

  Beholden to the steel tycoon, Knoedler had little choice but to accept Frick’s terms. On December 6, Roland wrote: “The Ilchester Rembrandt sold to you for Two hundred & twenty five thousand dollars payable June 20th next.” Ever hopeful, he added “or April 30th if you wish.” By December 15, the Colnaghi handlers packed the picture in a crate and shipped it to Le Havre, where it was to sail for New York. By Christmas, the canvas took its place in the Vanderbilt mansion.

  Suddenly, Frick began negotiating again. To pay for part of the Rembrandt, he would return Jules Breton’s Last Gleanings. Although he had paid $14,000 for the French picture eleven years before, he calculated it was now worth $25,000. Thus Frick knocked down the cost of the Rembrandt to exactly as much as he had originally wanted to pay. In his mind, he had prevailed. That, in fact, the collector paid the $200,000 for the painting on January 16, well before the June 20 date he had negotiated, suggests just how pleased he was. ­Face-­to-­face with the extraordinary canvas, Frick recognized that Carstairs in his effusive praise had hardly exaggerated.

  In the end, Frick paid Knoedler a commission of only $7,500, or half the minimum that Carstairs had hoped for. Nevertheless, Carstairs insisted on taking the long view and saw the Rembrandt sale as a triumph. “I was delighted to get your cable & to know Frick was pleased with the Rembrandt but how could he be otherwise. He certainly has one of the great pictures of the world. & I should say the greatest in America all things considered.”

  But the Knoedler dealers struggled to cope with financial problems caused by their best client, who saw paintings as investments. They quickly became familiar with Frick’s tactics. When Gutekunst was negotiating for the Youssoupoff Rembrandts, Carstairs warned him not to reveal in his correspondence how much he would actually pay for the pictures: “If you cable cost of Rembrandts, include the commissions so I can show him the cable & ask him [Frick] for 20% above that.” In February 1906, Carstairs was pressing Frick to buy Joshua Reynolds’s Lady Harcourt for $110,000. “Frick is very much interested and offered $100,000 which I of course refused,” he told the dealer W. D. Lawrie. “He says nothing more and asks all sorts of questions. I told him we bought it. A/C [ joint account] with you. He is not an easy man to sell & has many moods.” When earlier Knoedler offered Frick Turner’s seascape Antwerp: Van Goyen Looking Out for a Subject for $90,000, the dealer felt compelled to explain: “I know that you would approve of our profit. In fact I am inclined to think that you would say that we are entitled to a larger percentage on such an exceptionally fine work.” Nevertheless, for the Turner, Frick paid only $80,000. After Frick agreed to buy a pair of pictures at what Carstairs believed was below the market, he fretted that the collector would manipulate the price down further. “These ­were my prices to him at which he took them without making an offer,” he told Knoedler. “Therefore, I cannot tell just when we will be paid, as sometimes when I refuse to accept his offers he takes it out by keeping us waiting.”

  M. Knoedler & Co., like many galleries, was undercapitalized and struggled against a chronic shortage of liquid assets. The dealers sold most of their paintings in the summer “principally to Americans” and delivered the pictures in the fall, when they ­were paid. “The nature of our business, owing to the character of our clients, is such that we cannot ask for money owed us, neither can we force sales,” Knoedler explained to a banker. The dealers constantly searched for sources of capital and periodically went into debt. “Money is scarce and coming in very slowly,” Knoedler’s Henry Thole wrote Carstairs. On July 10, 1906, three days before a $49,000 payment to the French dealer Trotti was due, Carstairs asked Frick if he would pay the $65,000 he owed the gallery. Two days later, the Knoedler dealers anxiously awaited the check but “were disappointed.” The next morning they arranged to borrow $150,000 from First National Bank. By the “second mail,” Frick’s check arrived.

  The Knoedler dealers also depended upon Frick for capital. In 1902, he loaned the gallery $100,000 at 6 percent for 90 days, a note which was renewed in January 1903 for four months. In March, the dealers repaid him. “I have been kept very busy and have already been to Holland & to En­gland & find good pictures very scarce and higher than ever,” Knoedler wrote. A month later, he again borrowed money from Frick. “I do not like to miss opportunities of gathering good things which is the reason I trouble you as my capital is not large enough for the business we are doing.”

  By January 1, 1907, Frick had moved the Rembrandt Self-­Portrait to his dining room, where, Knoedler told Carstairs, “it looks superb.” When added to El Greco’s St. Jerome and Titian’s Pietro Aretino, the Dutch portrait gave Frick a small gallery of “Great Men,” befitting a collector who believed himself and wanted others to see him in such a company. In fulfilling Frick’s ambitions for masterpieces, the Dutch painting tightened his partnership with Charles Carstairs and secured the dealer’s place as the collector’s most trusted art adviser.

  On February 18, Carstairs wrote Frick from the Hermitage Hotel in Monte Carlo. “I appreciated your cable New Year’s time & I am ­delighted you are so pleased with the great Rembrandt, it will always be a great joy to you & we ­were all very lucky to have it.” The Rembrandt sharpened the dealers’ focus. “Carstairs’ recent remark that it was much better to confine ourselves to fine pictures is absolutely true,” Roland Knoedler wrote to a colleague in Paris. “For instance, we have just now too many small Diazs and it seems difficult to get people interested in them.”

  Frick did not have to wait long for tributes to start pouring in. To announce his new acquisition, he put it on public ­display—loaning it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the summer. Two years later, he seized t
he chance to place it center stage, at the New York museum, in a major exhibition of Dutch art or­ga­nized by Wilhelm Valentiner, a Rembrandt expert and Bode protégé from Germany, whom Morgan appointed as the museum’s curator of decorative arts. The Dutch paintings show (along with an exhibition of American decorative arts) had a patriotic ­purpose—to celebrate the discovery of the Hudson River and also Robert Fulton’s “first use of Steam in the Navigation of Said River.” Intent on showing America’s rich and recently gotten holdings of Dutch paintings, Valentiner borrowed 6 Vermeers, 20 Frans Hals, and 37 Rembrandts from private collections. He estimated that there ­were now 70 Rembrandts in the United States, of which 65 ­were portraits. “No such resplendent show has hitherto been made in this country, and in all probability it will be many a year before anything like it is or­ga­nized again,” wrote the critic Royal Cortissoz in the Tribune.

  Valentiner described Frick’s Rembrandt as “supreme,” gave it a prominent place in the Metropolitan, and reproduced it on the cover of the museum’s Bulletin. Now Frick ranked with Morgan and Benjamin Altman as collectors of Rembrandt, singled out even in this enviable company as possessing one of the artist’s very best pictures. “If there are two Rembrandts ­here which more than any others might be chosen as revealing the full height of his genius, they are the ‘Portrait of Himself,’ the majestic canvas of 1658 lent by Mr. Frick, and Mrs. Huntington’s solemn ‘Savant’ [Aristotle with the Bust of Homer],” Valentiner wrote. “One thinks of Michelangelo in the presence of the two portraits, of his largeness of form, his way of lifting the human body on to a plane of high imaginative significance.”