clifford schorer winslow homer
JUDITH RICHARDS: It sounds like you had a natural eye. And it was obsessive. Fortunately, Anthony Crichton-Stuart, who was running Noortman at the timeI went to see him, and I said, you know, "I won't do this unless I know that, you know, you will be available to me.". JUDITH RICHARDS: Had you had a chance to go to Europe by that time? So if Anthony says, you know, "We've got this great work"if he came to me tomorrow and said, "I've got this masterpiece by Rubens that we can buy," it would break my heart, but I would understand that, you know, despite that being a lifelong goal is to have that picture, I understand that that's going to have to be offered through the gallery, and that I'm going to have to be hands-off, which is why it's best just to simply pause in the collecting. I wanted somebody who had been in the market for a long time, who had great relationships with people, that sort of thing. There were definitelyit would definitelyI mean, there are still major goals that are unachieved thatyou know, there's a whole list, yes, and there are some with highlighting, some without, some that are possible, some that are not. [00:56:02]. JUDITH RICHARDS: And not buying a lot, but gaining information and confidence, and then, and then it wentthe volume of activity. We can still do a very large volume in dollars, but a very small volume in picturesyou know, dollars or poundsbut a very small volume in pictures. Not, Were they scientifically designed fakes made to deceive? JUDITH RICHARDS: You're keeping just the gallery in London. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I mean, I'm meeting people in the auction world because I was a denizen of the auction world, which is sort of. In November 2013, a new claimant emerged. Funding for this interview was provided by Barbara Fleischman. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Give up all my business interests and retire to sort of a conversational job where I sat in a shop, and I played shopkeeper, and people came in and looked at my furniture and told me how overpriced it was. And they would bring it to you, and that was incredibly annoying to someone with mywith my type of a brain. JUDITH RICHARDS: Do you speak to art historians who have. CLIFFORD SCHORER: And in a way, I felt absolutely noyou know, that was a, you know, the Buddhist gesture of releasing. It didn't say exactly, but it was a level. I mean, yes, of course. I mean, there wereit was such a different time. And I've been in Boston ever since. CLIFFORD SCHORER: So now there's really, you know, two sales worth attending. [4] The painting was withdrawn with only three lots to go - unusually close to the sale time. I thought it really worked well. CLIFFORD SCHORER: For theyou know, luckily, we have the sands of time to wear away the lesser works from the, you know, from the museum-quality question of whether an Old Master belongs in a museum. I said, "One of the greatest bronzes on the planet is in Plovdiv in the Communist Workers' Party headquarters in a plastic box." CLIFFORD SCHORER: No. CLIFFORD SCHORER: So they depict the crucifixion scene as a maypole party. JUDITH RICHARDS: So coming back to your, CLIFFORD SCHORER: family. CLIFFORD SCHORER: So, I mean, I would say that all of those things would be exciting and fun to do, but unfortunately, I don't have the ability to do them all. JUDITH RICHARDS: Were any ofso these travels weren't anyweren't specifically about collecting? JUDITH RICHARDS: And did thosewere those thingsdid you consider acquiring those things as well to accompany the painting? And I have it at home to remind myself of what an absolutely abysmal painter I am and to really, you know, bring homeyou know, I always think I can put myI can do anything I put my head to. You know, that's, CLIFFORD SCHORER: Being a good steward, yeah. You're doing various business deals and developing that. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I liked Boston, I felt that it, CLIFFORD SCHORER: it's a good city. We can cover a lot of auctions in a night. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Because the path was getting very cluttered. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I said, "No, that's good. [Affirmative.] It's the same problem. So you wouldyou would certainly read all of those. JUDITH RICHARDS: So I'm thinking of 20th century. [Affirmative.] And I understand why; you know, some of the scholars are superannuated, and they're just not in the game anymore, and there's a verythere has been a very forceful cabal of dealers who've manipulated the market. So I walked across the bridge with the gun towers, and you know. So they used to have in their little museumsthey probablyonce, back in the '50s and during communism, they probably had these Thracian pieces, you know, that they found in the ground, and then the National Museum sort of pulled them all into the National Museum. And he was an art collector. [4] It was included in their sale on 21 May 2009. CLIFFORD SCHORER: All of them. The decedent in this case, a Coral Gables resident named Richard JUDITH RICHARDS: Well, this might be a good point to end today. "You want a bottle of mineral water? So, I mean, I rememberI remember buying that because I thought it would be a good decoration. I guess, what kid doesn't like dinosaurs? She just, actually, sold one of my earliest acquisitions to one of her collectors because, you know, now I'm not so focused on that. So I wrote to her several times and said, you know, "Is this Crespi? And so, you know, I bought a territory with a partner, and we have a territory, and basically, you know, we go to an annual meeting, and we have a dinner with the managers, and that's ourso, in a sense, I was able to sort of extract myself from project-based businesses to at least have this background income that would support a very marginal lifestyle, which is what I live. I wasI was alwaysintimidated was not really my MO. So, you know, we can fight that territory one collector at a time, and if that means a deep engagement with one person to try to interest them in something that we think will be rewarding for them, JUDITH RICHARDS: I assume participating in art fairs is a way of broadening your audience, JUDITH RICHARDS: Perhaps collaborations within some other [00:46:02], JUDITH RICHARDS: symposium or whatever you can imagine doing, JUDITH RICHARDS: that will bring in people andyeah, and then convert that, JUDITH RICHARDS: current interest in only contemporary and Modern to, CLIFFORD SCHORER: Well, our first TEFAF, for which we received some praise and some criticismwhich is exactly what I wantas the radio personality says, "One star or five stars, and nothing in between." JUDITH RICHARDS: I notice that there was a major contribution from, maybe, from your business to the Museum of Science. You know, along with Ai Weiwei as the eyeballs or something, you know. I'm reasonably good at language, and I tried. So when I went to see Anthony and said, you know, "I would do this if you are available and you want to do it with me," and he said, "Well, ironically enough, they just told me that I'm on gardening leave." And I said, "Well, whatever your normal process is, just do your normal process. I mean, I know that. JUDITH RICHARDS: So you're collecting Italianroughly Italian Baroque; that's around 1600 to 17how do you define it? JUDITH RICHARDS: Probably there's a few things that happened before that, we haven't touched on. 
I wrote in English and I got a response in English, so. And usually it would be a letter at that point. CLIFFORD SCHORER: And I have two very young friends in Italy now. CLIFFORD SCHORER: But anyway, I would say thatI would say that, you know, I was very happy when I arrived in Boston. And that's not my world at all. It's fascinating to me to see the roots of sea travel that were established by that point to move these goods around at incredibly low cost. [00:08:00]. And I brought it to the museum and delivered it, and they installed it directly. CLIFFORD SCHORER: So I shouldn't say 5,000; 3,500 years. And I think I needed more of a therapist than a decorator. But, and I went right toI went right to the paintings. I can't play anymore. I mean, the output of those workshops was massive, massive. It was a good job. I was likethis is incredible. CLIFFORD SCHORER: But, I mean, I love opening those folders and just finding out what was sold in 1937 to. I have a very common eye, meaning that, you know, obviously, I can go through his catalogues, and I call him up about four lots, and he says, "Yes, you and every other dealer," meaning that, you know, of course, those are the four lots that, you know, that the 12 people that he knows are going to call him about. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Well, I mean, you know, the only thing I would add to that last statement is that, in the gallery world, I think that everybody I know does it for love and not for money. However, the Sebastiano Ricci that they had was also a masterpiece, and, you know, I spent a lot of time staring at it, and I remember the detail that made me think, All right, I'll ask about that as well. Not a lot of pieces, because they were much more expensive. JUDITH RICHARDS: What's his name? CLIFFORD SCHORER: I was a willful and independent child. JUDITH RICHARDS: Is that a new revelation? But no, I mean, it's not [00:40:05]. CLIFFORD SCHORER: we made everything. You know, someI mean, certainly, the newer collectors who are in the Dutch and Flemish world, I think they're less scholar-collectors. Well, that's because it's a posthumous portrait. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I spentat Boston University? JUDITH RICHARDS: What kind ofdo you have any plans or ambitions or goals about collecting in the future? So my father was encouraged by that, and sort of dragged me on a little field trip to Boston and took me around to the colleges. CLIFFORD SCHORER: You know, it's very arbitrary, and I think maybe they were going to open it later, and maybe they weren't. JUDITH RICHARDS: That would mean three or four years? They had a big sale in the '80s, and just three or four weeks ago they had a sale of Dodo Dorrance, who was the daughter of Jack Dorrance, and in that sale was a beautiful Cezanne, really beautiful Cezanne. CLIFFORD SCHORER: No, I'm not that interested. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yeah. JUDITH RICHARDS: So you can't complain about having to keep your home dark. JUDITH RICHARDS: Was that coincidence that you ran into them? CLIFFORD SCHORER: Oh, I've alwaysI don't know. It just wasn'tI mean until 1999when, unfortunately, the auction houses forced me to come out of the closet, thatthat's really the only time, you know, when the Christie's and the Sotheby's, when they became so socially engaged with me, and they were trying to drag me out, you know, that they werethey were seeing a younger person buying things at a sale, and they wanted to know who they are, and what theyyou know, they're doing market research, and in their market research, they want to drag you to a dinner and plop you next to the ambassador and, you know. JUDITH RICHARDS: Okay, justI suddenly wasn't hearing the mic. 
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