Excerpt from Art: A Commodity

The American dealer occupies a peculiar place. His posi tion as importer coupled to the vast wealth controlled in this country by careless buyers gives him a prestige that he does not have abroad. There he can furnish collectors little that they cannot get without him, for there it is possible for collectors to deal directly with a greater number of current artists, to attend personally a greater number of noted sales and exhibitions, and there informed buyers outnumber the uninformed. The value of a picture is comparative, - based partly upon a true standard and partly upon a false one. There is a striking similarity be tween the tricks of the picture market and the stock jobbing methods of Wall Street. Picture dealers work up an artificial demand for the productions of those artists they control and pocket the profits. They bear prices on pictures a rival dealer is overstocked with and when they in turn control the supply at once proceed to bull them. By misrepresentation and a nimble juggling of facts they unload worthless canvases upon confiding lambs after the fashion set by Wall Street with watered stocks.

The average picture collector is deficient in the knowledge of a picture's market value, and oft-times doubtful even as to what is best for him to buy. It is natural, therefore, that at the outset he should cast about with some hesitation, commit in numerable blunders and pay dearly for his inexperience. SO much does individual trust and personal magnetism enter into the business that a salesman who has secured the confidence ofa customer has but himself to blame should he forfeit it. There are scores of collectors as willing to accept the word and blindly abide in the judgment of dealers into whose hands they have fallen as was poor old Luther Marsh to receive from an adventuress machine-made daubs as the genuine spirit productions of Ra phael and Rembrandt. A New York banker once remarked that there was but one picture house in the world in which he placed complete reliance, and that his faith in them was such that he frequently ordered pictures without either seeing them or know ing their price. Insiders will appreciate the point when told that the house in question is that Of Arthur Tooth Sons of London.

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