FORTUNE’S WHEEL.

Hokitika Guardian, 13 January 1930, Page 7

FORTUNE’S WHEEL.

MILLIONAIRE'S FATE

A TRAGEDY OF THE AVAIk

One of the richest men. in Moscow before the war was a textile manufacturer named Isehtmikiii'. He had a magnificent house and had turned some of his rooms in to a pictuie gallery of modern paintings. His collection, particularly the works of the great impressionists like Renoir, was so very fine that all art lovers wished to see it. Accordingly lie threw open the Sell tonkin Museum every Sunday afternoon for the enjoyment of the public. Then came the war, in which AT. Sell ton kin made still more money, and the Revolution, in which he lost everything and barely escaped with his life. The Bolshevists confiscated his house and “nationalised ’ his ait collection, renaming it the First-Sov-iet Museum of Western European Art. i ; - The other day the director of the museum, Madams Svedkova, was Spending a holiday in the South of France. There are many Russian exiles living in that part of the world, some of them Tsarists, some infederate Socialists. The leadei oi the Socialist section is the ; famous historian, Professor Miliukoff, once the champion of the working people in the Duma, the forgotten Russian parliament.

Svcdkova, though a Bolshevist official, is a friend of Professor Miliukoff and ca,lied on him as a friend. At his house she noticed a number of very attractive landscapes signed Train, an artist she had never heard of before, and on inquiry she found that he was a wealthy wine grower of the neighbourhood who had been taught painting when a child by the great Camille Pissarro and had painted pictures all his life. He had nevei exhibited before, Hut just at that time kb had been persuaded by his friends to have a show in' London. For the most part, <>~’ v over, the worthy wine grower still gives bis pieturos to his friends. Svedkova greatly admiied * > Train’s work. “I must have some of these,” she said; “the First Soviet Museum of Western European Art would not he complete without them.” So she bought three of the landscapes, giving cpiite a good price for them. At that very moment, only a mile or two away, the once wealthy M. Bclit'U’lfin was living forlorn, exiled, and almost destitute. While (pictures were Uni”" . bought, by those whose decree had despoiled him for the museum which had once- been his, the price of oiie of those picturc-js would have been a god-send to him.