The Descent from the Cross 16.

A Young Woman in a Red Chair holding a Pink in her Right Hand _The illustrations in this volume have been engraved and printed at the Menpes Press._ REMBRANDT CHAPTER I THE RECOVERERS OF REMBRANDT Imagine a man, a citizen of London, healthy, middle-aged, successful in business, whose interest in golf is as keen, according to his lights and limitations, as the absorption of Rembrandt in art.

Suppose this citizen, having one day a loose half-hour of time to fill in the neighbourhood of South Kensington, remembers the articles he has skimmed in the papers about the Constantine Ionides bequest: suppose he strolls into the Museum and asks his way of a patient policeman to the Ionides collection.

Suppose he stands before the revolving frame of Rembrandt etchings, idly pushing from right to left the varied creations of the master, would he be charmed?
would his imagination be stirred?
Perhaps so: perhaps not.

Perhaps, being a man of importance in the city, knowing the markets, his eye-brows would unconsciously elevate themselves, and his lips shape into the position that produces the polite movement of astonishment, if some one whispered in his ear--"At the Holford sale the _Hundred Guilder Print_ fetched L1750, and _Ephraim Bonus with the Black Ring_, L1950; and M.Edmund de Rothschild paid L1160 for a first state of the _Dr.A.Tholinx_." Those figures might stimulate his curiosity, but being, as I have said, a golfer, his interest in Rembrandt would certainly receive a quick impulse when he observed in the revolving frame the etching No.