1912-08-26

Peter Johansen. Esq.
Docent in art history at the royal Academie

Dear Sir.
You ask me to describe the conversation I had with Mr. Mario Krohn that day he came to my house to see my Greco-picture.
This I very easy can do, as Mr Krohn only was here about five ten minutes as he seemed to be in a great hurry.
When I bought the picture in Florence,^{x   x}It gave to me the impression to be a work of Greco.   I came from Spain where I again had seen the Grecopictures in Madrid and on my journey to Florence I saw the Greco-pictures in Strasburg and Parma, ^{xx   xx} and had still the Greco spirit fresh in my eyes.  
As nearly all the early pictures of Greco have been mistaken for pictures of Tintoretto or Bassano. and to lead up to the right painter, I started with asking him if he thought it a Bassano. He answered No – The Bassano

are like a picture factory where the same subjects are reproduced over and over again, and this subject cannot be found among them^{x)   x)}This was not right I know, that in Dresden there is a "Adoration of the sheepherds" of Francisco Bassano.   I showed him a photograph of a donkey after a drawing of Fr. Bassano. the treatment of the hair and mane and the donkeys pose was alike the donkey in my picture, but he thought that the picture had nothing to do with Bassano.
Then I asked him if he thought it might be an early work of Tintoretto, as there were much of his style in S. Joseph and the two ladys in the window, and as to the colours. I told him there was a picture in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence reprecenting the sacrifice of

Abraham painted nearly with the same precious glowing colours as my picture.
He answered, he did not know the picture I spoke about, but in any way, he said, it had no resemblance with that sketsh of the "Canaan wedding" of Tintoretto we have in our gallery.
At last I asked him: if the thought it a Greco, and he answered that the caractere of the head of the kneeling man on my picture had some resemblance with the Greco portrait in our gallery but he did not think that my picture was of Greco, as it did not have the same colouring especialy the yellow and blue, as he rememered them from the pictures he had seen in Dresden Wien and London.
But, he said, he did not know much about the production of Greco, as he had not seen the pictures in Spain and had not read the Cossio book

on Greco. He promised me to lend me his collection of photographs from Tintoretto, which hed did but I knew them well and there[fore] of no use to me.
About the colours in the early pictures of Greco you know there are not two alike. There are pictures that have a tone like slate pencil drawings on slate (Julio Clovio portrait in Naple), others are brown like walnut tree (St. Francisco in Zuloaga collect), others again are black and grown   ([Rasing a] flame Cherfils Paris), some are ^are very precious in colours and only few have that blue and yellow of wich^which Mr. Krohn speaks.
And the same difference is again in the handling of the brush, some have no touch at all others have a very brutal touch. It is necessary to know the Greco spirit that will do it.
Yours very truly
J. F. Willumsen
26 Aug 1912