AN ARTIST'S SUICIDE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 383, 18 November 1932, Page 7

AN ARTIST'S SUICIDE

FORCED TO SELL TREASURES. The noted New York artist and col$ector, Mr. James Stjewart Carstairs, who found himself reduced from wealth to poverty, recently committed suicide by taking an overdose of poisonous drug. In debt to an amount exceeding £12,000, he was forced to auction his book and art treasures which he estimated were worth more than £30,000. The auction brought him only £1500. Mr. Carstairs immediately proelaimed his intention of -ending his life. "People," he said, "came and sat on a bed of Charles II which I would not have let anyone so much as touch. They bought my 57 first editions of Anatole France for £7, paid £80 for a William and Mary mirror worth £1300, and £16 for a William and Mary table worth £1000. "As an artist I am ruined. I have been butcbered in a most cold-blooded way. I refuse to enter another profession that will bore me to death merely to nauseate myself with bad food and live in mediocre squalor. So, failing a congenial occupation. I prefer to destroy myself."