Art: Three-Month Utrillo

Owl-eyed Alexander Woollcott entertained his public in The New Yorker last week with a description of a new painting in his bedroom, an autumn view of Sannois by Maurice Utrillo in his familiar, cool grey & white manner. News was the fact that Mr. Woollcott did not own the picture, but had rented it from Inventor John Van Nostrand Dorr—rent ($100 for four months) to go to the Greenwich House Music School. He added:

“. . . This has been done, and the Utrillo is mine—until December. I think I look at it oftener, and the more fondly, because I know it is not to be with me long. I also think that by December I will have had it long enough to know it by heart and be ready, therefore, to see another in its place. Perhaps it will work out that every three months a new painting will hang in that space on the same terms. I know I want to spend a few weeks with a Hopper. Has anyone got a good Monet which he would like to rent out? I must talk to Marie Harriman about a Walt Kuhn. . . .”

The idea of renting pictures is by no means original with Scribe Woollcott. Several years ago a number of dealers organized a sort of picture-a-month club to rent good pictures to subscribers with little wall space, rental fees to be applied on the purchase of any picture the subscriber particularly admired. The idea fell through because shipping and insurance costs wiped out the dealers’ profit, damage in transshipment estranged artists. Several modern galleries are willing to rent pictures to people anxious to beautify hotel suites for a few months, or to persons of fickle taste like Mr. Woollcott.