Hacker Anceaux

Heavy-footed guards creaked slowly up and down the Amsterdam Ryks Museum last week before a row of Rembrandt van Rijn's great canvases. If they noticed a little, shabby, middle-aged Dutchman in a loose overcoat standing nervously before Rembrandt's Anatomy Lesson, they paid little attention to him. A minute later they did. The little Dutchman had suddenly produced a small ax, was furiously hacking the Anatomy Lesson to ribbons. Quietly he submitted to arrest. At the station house he said he was 46 years old, that his name was Anceaux. Bluntly he refused to give any explanation for his Rembrandt hacking.

"I am a bookkeeper," said Hacker Anceaux, "but I cannot find work. I have been out of work for months."

Correspondents and foreign editors quickly confused the slashed picture with Rembrandt's great Anatomy Lesson by Dr. Tulp which, safe and sound at The Hague last week, is as well known as Rembrandt's Night Watch. The Amsterdam Lesson shows but three figures--the lecturer, a Dr. Deyman, the corpse, strongly foreshortened with its large, pale feet pointing at the spectator, and an assistant gingerly holding a piece of skull. Last week's was not its first misadventure. In 1723 it was nearly destroyed by fire; only Dr. Deyman, the corpse and the hands of the assistant were preserved.

Many have been the hackings of great works of art, seldom is the damage irreparable. In the Ryks Museum itself, The Night Watch, perhaps Rembrandt's greatest picture, had a small hole torn in it several years ago. But the most famed cases of art vandalism occurred in the staid British Museum and National Gallery, concerned the Portland Vase and Rokeby Venus.

The Portland Vase remains to this day the property of the Dukes of Portland though it has been on loan to the British Museum since 1810.* It is a blue glass Roman vase of the First Century on which were imposed beautifully carved opaque white figures. When discovered in 1550, the Portland Vase was that ultra rarity among classical antiques, a perfect piece, without a crack. In 1845 a wild-eyed individual, one William Lloyd, suddenly dashed it from its pedestal, smashed it in a hundred pieces which were painstakingly fastened together again.

On March 10, 1914 one May Richardson, famed militant suffraget, strode masterfully into the National Gallery, ad- vanced grimly upon a beautiful Venus by Velasquez. It was known as the Rokeby Venus because it had hung for generations in Rokeby Hall, Yorkshire, was purchased by the nation in 1905 for $225,000. March 1914 was the height of the suffraget agitation in Britain: ladies were chaining themselves to the railings of the Houses of Parliament, shouting themselves hoarse on street corners, smashing windows on Bond Street. Suffraget May Richardson had already distinguished herself by setting fire to the Countess of Carlisle's home at Hampton-on-Thames. Up to the Rokeby Venus walked she, suddenly produced a hatchet from her muff, slashed the picture across and across.

In court Suffraget Richardson announced the whole affair was a protest against the incarceration of Chief Suffraget Emmeline Pankhurst, at the time on a hunger strike in Holloway Jail.

Bulgar Potter's Prize

A committee of grave judges (Mrs. John Davison Rockefeller, Sculptors James Earle Fraser, Harriet Whitney Frishmuth, Critic Elisabeth Luther Gary) wandered around the tables of Ovington's New York china shop, awarded the $1,500

Small Sculptor Prize of the Rosenthal China Corp. to the newest U. S. sculptor : Atanas Katchamakoff of Palm Springs, Calif. Sculptor Katchamakoff has been a U. S. sculptor some six weeks, received his final citizenship papers just before the contest closed.

Idea for the contest and money for the prizes came from wealthy, white-mustached Herr Geheimrat Doktor Philipp Rosenthal, president and founder of Rosenthal China Corp. Largest of German potters, his various factories make every thing from fine porcelain dinner services to lighting fixtures, kitchen appliances, high tension insulators. German business men know that he is directly responsible for the revival in 1921 of the Leipsig Fair, great European trade exposition, which seemed doomed in the days of Germany's post-War depression. Potter Rosenthal, who makes most of his money from utilitarian crockery, is proudest of the delicate porcelain statuettes which his factories mould from designs by Germany's best known sculptors. Months ago Rosenthal managers pointed out a curious fact: the company has branch offices in Berlin, London, Paris, Munich, Vienna, Chicago, New York. U. S. Citizens hasten to buy Rosenthal figures in all the European branches, will not buy them in their own country. Potter Rosenthal admires the U. S. The Wanderjahr to which every well-to-do German youth feels entitled, Potter Rosenthal spent on the western plains in 1874 as "ein wirklicher Cowboy." Through the Art Alliance of America he offered in 1930 three prizes, $1,500, $750, $500 for small sculpture "typically American in theme," suitable for reproducing in Rosenthal china and by sculptors living in the U. S. First prize last week went to Atanas Katchamakoff for an amusing little Papoose and Squaw. Simple in detail, it will be inexpensive to cast.

Until January Sculptor Katchamakoff was a Bulgar. Born in Sofia 33 years ago, he practiced law just one year. A plausible talker, he successfully argued himself out of a libel suit for modelling and exhibiting a head of the Mayor of Sofia in his cups. Entering the National Art Academy, he was promptly disowned by his father. In 1922, 1924 he won sculpture prizes in Berlin, Venice, came to the U. S., got a job making models for Hollywood super-spectacles. Came the talkies and the end of such pageants, but Sculptor Katchamakoff was not disheartened. He moved to Palm Springs, desert oasis, rapidly growing as a health resort and Hollywood hideaway, there opened an art gallery, started an art school, earnestly advocated himself as Palm Springs' first mayor. Well aware of the value of publicity, Sculptor Katchamakoff flooded the U. S. press last week with photographs of his work, typed autobiographies in which he described himself as "a charming and cultured individual, an idealist, but also one of those rare beings who actually works to materialize their [sic] dreams."

*In May 1929 the present Duke of Portland attempted to sell the vase at public auction. Bids stopped at $147,000. His Grace's agents indignantly withdrew it from sale, returned it to the museum.

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