Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Mary LaskerMary Lasker
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Part:         Session:         Page of 1143

about paintings. If he doesn't like paintings, I can't help it.” However, every once in a while I would go to see an exhibition and I'd try to get him to go with me, or I'd go to a dealer to see something. And once I saw a picture that was going to be in a sale that I liked very much, which is that Renoir with the two pussy cats, and I thought I would bid $10,000 of my own money for it and that it would look very pretty here and that Albert wouldn't object to it and I could steal it because it was in a sale that was very obscure and very few other good pictures were in the sale, and I thought no one would notice it.

I went to the door of the sale with Albert and he said, “Well, I'll wait for you out here,” and I said, “Oh, why don't you come in?” “Well,” he said, “It will take too long.” I said, “No, come in, sit with me.” Well, then, there were no chairs, so he sat behind me, and I bid for the picture and when I stopped bidding at $10,000, heard two other people bidding and I looked around and one of them was Albert. He bid up to $25,000 against Paul Rosenberg. He didn't know who he was bidding against, and then he got frightened because he had never bid for a picture in his life before and he thought maybe he had gone mad, so he stopped bidding at $25,000. And we didn't get the picture; Mr. Rosenberg got it.

Well, after a time, we bought this house--first we rented it, and it was partly furnished and then we bought it--and Albert looked around the house one day and said, “What we need around here are some good paintings,” and I was absolutely





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help