Painting: Meadows' Luck

There they were, scattered through the 15-room mansion of Texas Oil Millionaire Algur Hurtle Meadows, elegantly framed paintings by nearly every leading painter of Paris. You name them, Meadows had them—Picasso, Matisse, Dufy, Derain, Modigliani, Bonnard, Degas, and on and on. For insurance purposes, they had been appraised by New York Art Expert Carroll Hogan at $1,362,750. On the market, works by such artists might fetch $3,000,000. But, confided Oilman Meadows to his admiring guests, they had cost him "closer to $400,000 than a million," and maybe as little as $250,000.

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