Reputation Saved

The late John ("Wichita Bill") Noble was a Latin Quarter Bohemian, a noted painter of cowboys, sunrises and seascapes. He wore a five-gallon hat, called himself the "first white child born in Wichita." And he was hell on his own paintings. He often advised prospective customers not to buy them, often slashed them up, sometimes even bought back pictures he had sold, just to destroy them.

One picture Wichita Bill would have slashed up if he could: a sentimental landscape of a sunrise over Boulogne, France. As Wichita Bill's brush left it, it was not so bad, but after the picture was sold in 1921 for $3,500, it was badly retouched, finally found its way into the collection of William Randolph Hearst.

Last week, Wichita Bill's widow got her hands on this travesty. She had spotted it among the Hearst Collection items put on view last winter at Gimbel's Department Store in Manhattan. To buy it back she spent $295 she had saved to get Wichita Bill a tombstone for his grave. Carefully she cut out and saved the sunrise from the center of the canvas (she thought this part was up to scratch), then took a carving knife and slashed the rest to ribbons.

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