Subtler but just as resonant as the ballyhooing of the late Phineas Taylor Barnum was the publicity which preceded, last week, the public auction of two Renaissance paintings from the collection of Carl W. Hamilton of Manhattan. The two pictures were hung in a shadowy chamber in the Anderson Galleries. Tall candles gave an air of piety to the occasion. Uniformed Negroes stood gravely beside each canvas, so immobile, so harmonious with the austere gloom, that they were nearly invisible. Visitors hushed their voices, lightened their footsteps.
One of the paintings was a Crucifixion, painted by Piero della Francesca (circa 1406-92) on a tiny wood panel (14" x 16"). Into a golden sky, grievously cracked with age, were lifted the cross, the scarlet banners of the soldiery. Humans and horses were drawn with that rude simplicity of Italian Primitives which is pronounced charming by modern sophisticates. This painting, according to gallery officials, had been appraised by experts at $800,000. The other, a similarly styled Madonna and Child by Fra Filippo Lippi (circa 1406-69), was said to have been appraised at $650,000.
Loudly intoned by the press, these astonishing appraisals produced country-wide reverberations. The world's auction room record for a painting was a mere $377,000.* The U. S. record was only $360,000.† The record for a private sale was $750,000.** Even this last figure, in the face of the announced appraisals seemed likely to be surpassed.
From the offices of sleek Sir Joseph Duveen, international art dealer, who had originally sold the paintings to Collector Hamilton, came a gala descriptive brochure. In it were pontifical utterances of Bernhard Berenson, famed European art critic who hovers eruditely in the background of most Duveen dealings.
Thus was the public prepared for a tremendous fiscal-esthetic event. The art world whispered names that would surely stir the auction—Mellon, Bache, Widener, Ringling. Preparations were made to broadcast the epochal proceedings to the nation. When the bald auctioneer briskly mounted the rostrum, he surveyed a tight-packed attendance of more than 1,000.
Then, while the crowd gazed at each other for ten minutes of increasing bewilderment, the auction proved a fiasco. True, the Crucifixion was sold for $375,000, breaking the U. S. record. But there was no feverish bidding, there were no great names. The picture was quietly repurchased by Sir Joseph Duveen himself. The Madonna and Child went to Leon Schinasi, Manhattan tobacco merchant, for a paltry $125,000. The auctioneer had to face the fact that between the appraisal total and the realized total was a difference of $950,000.
A persistent rumor described Collector Hamilton as Dealer Duveen's close colleague, the sale as, in reality, a Duveen sale. Collector Hamilton's careful avoidance of reporters and photographers enhanced this rumor.
Carl Hamilton is one of the least publicized, most picturesque figures in Manhattan life. A laborer's son, he was born about 40 years ago in the mining town of Hollidaysburg, Pa. There were several other children. His zealous mother gave a biblical stamp to his mind which it still retains.