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On July 4 an important auction at Christie's will dispose of a newly authenticated Rembrandt, Two Men Conversing, with certificates attached, and 63 of the Duke of Westminster's collection, including important canvases by Rubens, Van Dyck, Bellini, Murillo, Raphael, del Sarto, Titian, Veronese.
On July 18 Christie's will sell by order of the Princess Royal, Duchess of Fife, eldest daughter of King Edward, part of her private collection, with well-known paintings by Sir Henry Raeburn and Sir Joshua Reynolds.
Mrs. E. M. Ward celebrated her 92nd birthday by bringing out a fat volume of reminiscences, Memories of go Years*. Still active with the brush and able to receive many visitors in her small house in Chelsea's art colony, she recalls the guns saluting the coronation of Queen Victoria when she was a child of six, the assistance offered her by Wilkie Collins on the occasion of her elopement at the age of 16 with E. M. Ward, R.A., also an artist, her stay at Windsor Castle in 1857 when she was commissioned to paint the portrait of the infant Princess Beatrice. The great painters of the mid-Victorian days she knew as young men—Millais, Leighton, Alma-Tadema, and among her intimate acquaintances in the field of literature were those household giants, Dickens and Thackeray. Her grandfather and uncle were R.A.'s and her father was one of the most famed engravers of his time.
*Published by Hutchinson.