Volume 57, Number 3 · February 25, 2010
Not So Grand Illusion
By Walter Kaiser
The American Leonardo: A Tale of Obsession, Art and Money
by John Brewer
Oxford University Press, 310 pp., $24.95
In 1929, Hilaire Belloc published, both in England and in America, a novel entitled The Missing Masterpiece, with illustrations by G.K. Chesterton. This forgotten potboiler concerns a highly successful, pompous, unprincipled art dealer in London named Sir Henry Bessington, who is confronted with two versions of a 'Symbolist' painting called Âme Bourgeoise—Middle-Class Soul. (The humor throughout the book is at that English public school level.) Eventually, after a prolonged series of unlikely events involving each of the paintings, the owners of them go to court to determine which is the authentic picture, with arguments made to a jury distinguished by its ignorance.
Review, 3934 words
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