Treasures from The Lant Collection: Dr. Jeffrey Lant, Founder. Vol. 2: Treasures From The Lant Collection, #2

By Jeffrey Lant

Volume 2 of "Treasures from The Lant Collection". Dr. Jeffrey Lant, Founder.
- One of the most personal book ever written on art, artifacts,
auctions, conservators, and the great yarns that constitute the better part of provenance.
- Written by a man who has been privileged to visit many of the world's great museums.
- A man who has had an interested in arts, its attributions, conservations, and sheer beauties since he was a young boy.
- What was written here is the result of constant exploration, research, gut hunches, and downright blind luck.
Dr. Lant can honestly say he has enjoyed every
moment in his quest to find not just objects of beauty, but objects of history, often fleshed out by himself, who is, after all, a history Ph.D. from Harvard.

Dr. Lant uses his "eye" to find value in rubbish.

In this volume you’ll find a selection of portraits he has restored and bought back to life.

Now dig in, for what follows will sure to delight you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jeffrey Lant
• Release date: Nov 20, 2016
• ISBN: 9781540152442

Jeffrey Lant

Dr. Jeffrey Lant is known worldwide. He started in the media business when he was 5 years old, a Kindergartner in Downers Grove, Illinois, publishing his first newspaper article. Since then Dr. Lant has earned four university degrees, including the PhD from Harvard. He has taught at over 40 colleges and universities and is quite possibly the first to offer satellite courses. He has written over 50 books, thousands of articles and been a welcome guest on hundreds of radio and television programs. He has founded several successful corporations and businesses including his latest at …writerssecrets.com His memoirs “A Connoisseur’s Journey” has garnered nine literary prizes that ensure its classic status. Its subtitle is “Being the artful memoirs of a man of wit, discernment, pluck, and joy.” A good read by this man of so many letters. Such a man can offer you thousands of insights into the business of becoming a successful writer. Be sure to sign up now at www.writerssecrets.co

Book preview

Preface

Once upon a time, a friend of mine spent the weekend, as people will do who come to my residence in Cambridge. I am centrally located, across the street from Harvard University, and the price is always right, zip.

On the morning after the night before, I asked my guest how he had slept, and he said with irritation and more than a little bit of anger, I didn't sleep a single minute in your blankety-blank 'chamber de nuit'. Why? I asked with puzzlement. Why!  All those damned eyes staring at me throughout the night... they give me the creeps! And that is one man's version of what collecting portraits is all about.

P.S. He has never visited my home since. That is just as well, since the number of eyes has increased dramatically since his visit.

Portraits you see are like that... if the eyes are properly painted, these eyes follow you on your progress... they know everything, they have been everywhere, and they know how to keep a secret. That's one reason why I love portraits, and why that love will shine through in this second volume of Treasures from The Lant Collection.

I have been interested in portraiture since I was a young boy in Illinois so very many years ago. I like watching people, and I like watching people who are anything but what they seem. And so many great portraits are that.

People who don't understand portraits as a genre for collecting seem to suggests that portraits are dull, old-hat, even boring, whereas in fact, it is the untutored sayer of such balderdash who is dull, old-hat, and boring, not to mention, garrulous and uninformed..

Throughout history, portraits have not only recorded history, but on numerous occasions have actually made history themselves. To wit, consider the famous situation between Anne of Cleves (1515-1557) and Henry VIII (1491-1547).  Her portrait painter sent him, shall we say, an enhanced portrait, for she was in fact plain as the day is long. Amongst the ladies of Cleves, this didn't matter a wit, for they were as plain as she, but given the fact that three of Henry's previous Queens had died either by royal fiat or Nature's, it mattered a great deal. Anne's portrait painter quite simply lied, making her seem a beauty, when she was merely pedestrian.

By comparison, Henry, grossly overweight and increasingly subject to life's

ailments, commissioned a portrait of himself that shall we say, improved his many features, when in fact, so many were in obvious decay or decline. Anne's painter lied, the King's painter lied, and had it not been for Anne's quick wits, she too might have gone to a premature expiration date. Thus, the portraits in question did not merely record history, they made it.

Think too, of Princess Caroline of Brunswick (1768-1821). It's the same old story. Her portrait painter delivered to her suitor, the Prince Regent, later King George IV (1762-1830), a painting that might have been of Helen of Troy, who possessed every element of delightful femininity, whereas Princess Caroline was known to not wash for weeks at a time, and gave off an odor at once earthy and reeking, always noticeable.

By the same token, the Prince Regent's envoy in the pursuit for Princess

Caroline's under washed hand, took with him to his assignment a portrait of His Royal Highness. Now it is true the Prince Regent had, in his salad days, been a handsome fellow, and well figured. But those days had gone by, buried by too much food, too much liquor, too many medicaments, and a paucity of any exercise whatsoever, for he deemed the royal perspiration so important, that he hoarded it for himself.

Thus, Princess Caroline harbored in her brain, an image to delight any Princess, when such a handsome fellow brought with him not just good looks, but the Crown of England. Sadly, a minute or two after her introduction to the Prince Regent, she turned to the British envoy to Brunswick, and said, I find him very fat and nothing like as handsome as his portrait.

The Prince Regent returned the compliment, drinking himself into a stupor, and passing out in the fire grate. Such was the power of the painting. Then, when totally inebriated, drunk as a skunk, he impregnated the Princess, to whom he was already legally married by proxy. That was the only known instance of their marital bliss.

However, it did produce Princess Charlotte of Wales, that hoiden girl. She had no need for a portrait, for her husband was Prince Leopold, universally known as one of the most dashing princes of his age. She did not need a true portrait, but her successor as Leopold's second wife most assuredly did, for he was witheredand pinched by then, yet he gave her the portraits which had worked on Princess Charlotte so very many years before.

Again my point. Portraits not only record history, you see, they also can make history. Not least by the little tweaks, the minute changes that flatter, the painting out of imperfections, and replacing them with rosy pink flesh. Oh, yes, how many people have been snookered in by a portrait, people at the very highest level of human society? The number is incalculable, and the backstage arguments resulting therefrom, loud, and reverberating for all time.

Portrait painters know all the rejuvenation and improvement techniques, but they should be more careful as to when they use them. And so, I introduce you to ten master works from my collection, that is to say, ten people. I have found each and every one of them in dismay and degradation. I have found them near dissolution. I have found them in places no Prince or King should ever be, and neither should their portraits.

I was told by experts that some of these master works were too far gone to