Buyer Ringling

"Sold to Mr. Ringling," said an art dealer in a low tone to an assistant, who wrote "John Ringling" on a slip of paper and attached the slip to a painting by Emile van Marcke, showing masses of sturdy cattle in a meadow. Again and again through the afternoon on the second day of the sale of the paintings and furnishings of the Astor residence, 840 Fifth Ave., Manhattan, the name of Mr. Ringling was repeated. More than a hundred Astor pictures were sold in two days (for a total of $35,295) and John Ringling bought a great many of them, paying $1,750 for Ferdinand Roybet's "The Connoisseurs", $1,350 for a picture by Constant Troyon of a dog herding sheep. When the report of the sale appeared, certain supercilious people made bold to ask, "Since when have circus men been picture buyers?"

The supercilious ones were, as usual, uninformed. The Ringling family has been for many years rich, refined. Of the five original brothers who started the circus, John and Charles Ringling were the ablest; their wealth, owing to wise investments in Texas oil, in Florida land, is now immense; the yearly profit of the circus, sturdy as it is, hardly exceeds the income tax of one of them. Wherever the circus stops, a private dining tent, equipped with an English butler, a polished floor, silver and glass and napery, is set up near the big top, for nobody knows when one of the Ringlings will drop across the continent and pick up the show. This gentility, in the second generation of Ringlings, has taken the form of an active flair for things artistic: Robert, son of Charles, is now singing opera in Munich.

Mr. John Ringling, having eliminated wild beasts from his circus, prefers pictures of such docile animals as dogs, horses, camels, mice, sheep.