II.—ART AND THE SHERIFF

But before the end of the summer an opportunity was given to connoisseurs in the same town to acquire, at the expenditure of a few pounds, a collection of pictures that would do credit to any private gallery in the kingdom. Announcements appeared placarded on every dead wall that “by order of the Sheriff” a magnificent collection of paintings by Turner, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Lawrence, George Morland, David Cox, and numerous other Masters, as well as drawings by Birket Foster, Keeley Hallswelle, George Cattermole, and a host of others. Being a Sheriff's sale this superb collection was to be disposed of without reserve, and the pictures were to be on view in the spacious commercial-room of an hotel.

People flocked to the place where these treasures were hung, and as a knowledge of pictures is born with most people, they were not slow to appreciate the fact that at last a chance had come to acquire at a merely nominal cost pictures by artists of world-wide fame. Most persons had read of the enormous prices brought by some prints after pictures by George Morland, but here were the actual pictures themselves in frames of the finest Dutch metal: no frames protected the high-priced prints in Christie's! And not merely was Morland highly represented here, but quite half a dozen exquisite genre pictures by Josef Israels were to be seen in a row, and it was whispered among the cognoscenti that this painter had just died and the Studio had contained an eulogistic article, with illustrations, on his work! Another chance! Of course Sidney Cooper's “Cows in Canterbury Meadows” spoke for itself. Every tyro knew that no one could ever paint cattle like Sidney Cooper. And Birket Foster—no one could ever approach Birket Foster in showing children swinging on a gate. There was the gate, sure enough, and the children, and the pet lamb—all the genuine Birket Foster properties. And “by order of the Sheriff.”

It was a treat to see the cognoscenti examining the pictures, subjecting individual works to the severest tests of light and magnifying glasses, and then whispering gravely together in corners on the subject of their merits. Some of them had pencils, which they had pressed to their lips while they scrutinised the masterpieces, preparatory to making notes on their catalogues—all just like a London picture sale in King Street, St. James's Street, London, W.

And then some fool came into the room and laughed. He was a man who pretended to know a lot about pictures, and he was usually disposed to question the authenticity of things in the possession of everybody but himself. He glanced around the walls and went away, still laughing, after being in the place no longer than three minutes.

That was a trick on his part, the cognoscenti said. He wished to put them off buying and so make a haul for himself.

They were confirmed in this belief when the one dealer in the town told a gentleman, who had come to him with a commission to purchase some of the pictures, that the man had just been to caution him against buying any of them on his own account.

“He said that they are being hawked round from town to town, and that they are really all fakes—that there is not a genuine picture among the lot, and that the Sheriff's sale is not a bona fide one, but one of the oldest tricks of picture fakers.”

But the knowing person said to the dealer—“Does he mean to say that in a town like this any man would dare to put 'by order of the Sheriff' at the top of the bill if it was not bona fide?He would pretty soon find himself in trouble. You attend the auction and bid for the numbers that I have marked in the catalogue.”

The auction came off and was largely attended by the public, but, strange to say, by not a single outside dealer, only by the local one who had received many commissions. And a fortnight before an ordinary sale at a private house in the town, at which half a dozen pictures by fourth-class artists, and some only “attributed to” these artists, drew dealers from places fifty and sixty miles away!

It seemed pretty clear that the Sheriff had not taken a great deal of trouble to advertise this particular sale—he could not have given it his personal attention, or perhaps he had never before had a chance of handling the “fine arts” on so opulent a scale, or the dealers would certainly not have missed the chance of their lives.

However this may be, the pictures were bought by the dozen, as much as six pounds being given for each of the Israels, and a pair of Birket Foster's fetching ten, frames included in all cases. There was a keen struggle for the Turner, and it was run up to nine pounds—not by any means too much for a Turner as things go nowadays. Altogether, I suppose, about fifty pictures were sold. At the evening sale the auctioneer announced that a sufficient number had been disposed of to satisfy the Sheriffs claim, but that a gentleman in the trade had bought the remainder en bloc, and instructed him to put them all up for sale to the highest bidder; and he would have great pleasure in carrying out his instructions. On went the bidding down to the last lot, and so ended a memorable picture sale—probably the last of the kind to be perpetrated in England, for within a fortnight the gentlemen under whose direction the enterprise had been carried on from place to place for several years were arrested, tried, and convicted of perjury in making an affidavit with intent to deceive the Sheriff of some county and cause him to issue his writ for the sale of their bogus pictures. Fifteen months' imprisonment was certainly not too long a sentence for these practitioners; though really one can have but little sympathy for people who are such fools as to expect to buy pictures, with a name value of thousands of pounds, for a few shillings.

But for several weeks after the sale the fortunate purchasers of the bogus masterpieces lost no opportunity of exhibiting their treasures. Teas and At Homes were given to enable their less alert friends to. appreciate their varied charms, for it was understood in the town that the educational value of great works of art should not be neglected; and at the Mayor's Reception a short time afterwards two of the pictures were exhibited, for the educational benefit of the company, in their original Dutch-metal frames—the sort that one may buy for half a crown in a cash chemist's. In these days the man who had laughed at the private view was referred to in accents of scorn. But he continued to laugh, even when in the most kindly spirit he was advised by one of the successful bidders to remember that it was distinctly slanderous to suggest that a sale conducted under the auspices of the Sheriff of the county was a bogus affair. Then it was that the critic laughed loudest; and, so far as I can gather, he is laughing still.

One interesting point was brought out at the trial of the men. It was in respect of the actual manufacturer's price of the fraudulent pictures. The artist who had executed them was put into the box and stated that he received from five to fifteen shillings for each. The average trade price of a George Morland worked out at a fraction over seven shillings, so that to refer to these works as valueless would be wrong: those purchasers who were fortunate enough to secure good specimens of George Morland at the sale have the satisfaction of dwelling upon their varied beauties and reflecting that the actual value of each work is in the bogus market something between seven shillings and seven and twopence! (The “Sheriffs Sale” price of a Morland was six pounds.)