href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@17215@[email protected]#THE_HOLY_FAMILY_WITH_THE_ANGELS" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">The Holy Family with the Angels

The illustrations in this volume have been
engraved and printed at the Menpes Press.

CHAPTER I

THE RECOVERERS OF REMBRANDT

Imagine a man, a citizen of London, healthy, middle-aged, successful in business, whose interest in golf is as keen, according to his lights and limitations, as the absorption of Rembrandt in art. Suppose this citizen, having one day a loose half-hour of time to fill in the neighbourhood of South Kensington, remembers the articles he has skimmed in the papers about the Constantine Ionides bequest: suppose he strolls into the Museum and asks his way of a patient policeman to the Ionides collection. Suppose he stands before the revolving frame of Rembrandt etchings, idly pushing from right to left the varied creations of the master, would he be charmed? would his imagination be stirred? Perhaps so: perhaps not. Perhaps, being a man of importance in the city, knowing the markets, his eye-brows would unconsciously elevate themselves, and his lips shape into the position that produces the polite movement of astonishment, if some one whispered in his ear—"At the Holford sale the Hundred Guilder Print fetched £1750, and Ephraim Bonus with the Black Ring, £1950; and M. Edmund de Rothschild paid £1160 for a first state of the Dr. A. Tholinx." Those figures might stimulate his curiosity, but being, as I have said, a golfer, his interest in Rembrandt would certainly receive a quick impulse when he observed in the revolving frame the etching No. 683, 2-7/8 inches wide, 5-1/8 inches high, called The Sport of Kolef or Golf.

  PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN OF EIGHTY-THREE

1634. National Gallery, London.

Is it fantastical to assume that his interest in Rembrandt dated from that little golf etching? Great events ofttimes spring from small causes. We will follow the Rembrandtish adventures of this citizen of London, and