A CURIOUS PICTURE.

Thames Star, Volume XI, Issue 3556, 20 May 1880, Page 2

A CURIOUS PICTURE.

A curious picture was sold a few days since at the auction rooms in the Rue Drouot. It was purchased for eleven thousand francs by a well-known Parisian amateur. The particularity . connected with the picture was the strange fact that it is painted on human skin. Its origin is attributed to a shipwreck which oo« curred on a savage coast, and which led to the capture of a number of the victims by a party of Indians. One of the shipwrecked was an artist, and as the ceremony of tatooing was being proceeded with by the Indians, the artist, who had saved his painting utensils and colours,-volunteered to paint the grand chief. The offer, was accepted, and the French artist at once painted a magnificent view of the harbour and the king's palace on the breast of the savage. Towards the end of 1876 some of the Indian tribes revolted, and pursued by the Americans, several of them were killed or made prisoners; one of the latter died in the hospital, and when his chest covering was withdrawn, the landscape in question, in an excellent state of preservation, was discovered on the breast of an Indiau. A Frenchman purchased the body, took off the skin of the chest, had it framed, and brought it to Paris, where it has been knocked down to the highest bidder by a tap from the auctioneer's hammer.—Danbury News.