My name is Alan and I'm the new curator of Down County Museum. I received your recent correspondence via email and letter and I understand that you also rang yesterday. Apologies, I was on leave yesterday and was sorry to miss your call.

We have searched for your painting of Stan Daley within our collection and can confirm that it is catalogued under the number DOWDM:1997_665.

However, upon checking our stores, the painting cannot be located and there is a note on the catalogue entry, dated from June 2001, to say that the painting could not be found.

I appreciate that this may be frustrating and not the answer you were hoping for but we will of course keep an eye out for it and be in touch when it is found. I have also asked ex staff members for their recollection of the painting and its location, and we will also be in touch with Belinda Loftus too.

Please do not hesitate to get in touch if you have any further questions and apologies once again.

Kind Regards,

Alan Freeburn

My reaction to this is one of glee. Somebody has stolen it, so it may have (or have had) a life beyond the dismal fate of paintings packed off to museum-mausoleums and lost to view forever.

(Yet another Alan! It must be one of the most popular names in the United Kingdom. It is sometimes spelled Alun. As I said earlier, I think it derives from the Welsh for handsome. The Irish for handsome is álainn.

From: stephen k
Sent: 14 January 2024 11:54

Subject: A painting

Hi Anthony,

I have come into possession of one of your paintings and I love it.
It's called Pan, or the Sabine Women.
From 1972.
Just thought I would send you an appreciative email, and also, I love your ancient history photos.
Regards,
Stephen

=====

From: Anthony <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, January 14, 2024 12:03:56 PM
To: stephen k
Subject: RE: A painting

Hi Stephen,

Very many thanks for your e-mail.

That is one of my several Lost Works. I don't even have a photo of it - so if you could send me one...?
I used to give pictures away and didn't note (and of course don't remember) who I gave them to.
I hope you got it for free. Or did you find it in a junk-shop...or a skip...?

More of my stuff here: https://beyondthepale.pixieset.com/anthonyweirpaintings/

Yours agog,

Anthony.

=====

From: stephen k
Sent: 14 January 2024 13:23
To: Anthony
Subject: Re: A painting

Hi Anthony,

Genuinely, for some odd reason, I wasn't expecting a reply!!

God no, not found, or in a skip ?? it's way to cool for that! ?? got it at an auction,
I love it, purely bought for the moon and the creature colours.
Yes, I have a photo of the front and rear.
I would be very grateful if you could shed any light on the painting, and messages on the rear,

Stephen.

=====

From: Anthony <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, January 14, 2024 2:34:17 PM
To: stephen k
Subject: RE: A painting

Hi Stephen,

Many thanks for the photos!

This fabulous artwork was painted on a rather horrible coffee-table top. Almost all my paintings are on scrap wood (old shelves, odd pieces of chipboard, plywood etc.)
It was painted at Kilnatierney, a mile north of Greyabbey, county Down. It comes rather early in my 'œuvre'. I didn't 'get going' properly until around 1981. I more or less stopped around 1996.

Pan (the god of panic etc.) is sometimes depicted as a goat. Here his willy is discreetly shown as a thorn (reference St Paul ?)
Chagall depicted goats (and other animals). This goat is fairly Chagallian,
The hump on Pan's back is Mount Fuji, famously depicted many times by Hiroshige.
David's painting of The Rape of the Sabine Women is referenced by the moon as a shield.
I'm not sure where Hieronymus Bosch fits in...it's a long time since I painted it.
I think the 11th century ? Tibberaghny pillar is referred to by the axe. See www.irishmegaliths.org.uk/crosses.htm

It looks as if it was painted when stoned, but I had no experience of cannabis or magic mushrooms until 10 years after it was painted, and I have been drunk only twice in my life (I'm now 82.)

This is the only goat I have painted. I did a few bulls before this. I'm more into dogs.

I assume the auction was in Belfast...?

I'm really pleased that you like it. Some things in auctions are actually rescued from bins. In fact someone I know bought a missionary house-clearance tea-chest of 'junk' for £20 because he had seen a wooden figure in it, which he eventually sold for £30,000 to a museum in the USA.

I sold 4 pictures last year (for small sums since I'm not really "into trade"). One to an artist in Belfast, and 3 to people here in 'my' French village who enthusiastically show my masterpieces in their summertime, not-very-often-open art gallery.

Yours artistically-senile,

Anthony

=====

From: stephen k
Sent: 15 January 2024 18:02
To: Anthony
Subject: Re: A painting

Hi Anthony,

Many thanks for the detailed reply.
And congrats on seeing 82. You've a marvellous memory.

Yes, it was an auction jn Belfast, there were a few bids for it, it went from £60 starting and finished at £110.

I'm familiar with Greyabbey, having spent from 1999 to 2017 doing some single seater car racing in Kirkistown.

Interesting , the Mt Fuji part, I would never have noticed that!

I wonder where it has been since you painted it!!

I am a telescope and astronomy equipment supplier here in Dublin, I've been looking at the stars since I was 10, in 1986, and will hang the painting in my showroom.

Regards,

Stephen

===

From: Anthony <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, January 15, 2024 1:25:47 PM
To: stephen k
Subject: RE: A painting

Hi Stephen,

I wouldn't have remembered the details of Pan without the comments on the back.
And considering the back of it, with leg-holes and other defacing, I'm surprised that it was put into auction at all.

I used to hear the traffic (a quarter-mile away) going past on the main road, to and from Kirkistown. Some drivers thought they were racers, of course, especially on that straight between the end of the Mount Stewart wall and the village.

My second interest as a kid was astronomy. My first one (millennia before Jurassic Park, which I have never seen) was dinosaurs. I guess I was about 7. Many adults hadn't heard of them in the late forties/early fifties. Later on (aged 12 maybe) I discovered astronomy, and dragged my mother to lectures at QUB which must have been pretty dull. I did a lot of moon-gazing on cold nights in the garden through an old brass naval telescope on a primitive tripod...too much, probably. My interest then shifted to UFOs (popular in the 'fifties, about which I wrote in the school magazine). They were popularly known as Flying Saucers. Now UFOs are 'getting another go' since the Pentagon is refusing to publish the results of their decades-long inquiries and research. Statistically, they're improbable, of course... But maybe one will land in Gaza bringing Peace on Earth!

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/jan/14/what-happens-if-we-have-been-visited-by-aliens-lied-to-ufos-uaps-grusch-congress

I'm chuffed not only that you Spent Good Money (as my aunt used to say) on my painting, but that you have hung it in your showroom.

I spend my (small amounts of) good money on Berber rugs. I go to Morocco to a dealer/collector I have known since 1996, and get some lovely (portable) examples woven by women in co-operatives in the Middle Atlas. Attached is a picture of one that I have hung over my stairs, together with a painting from the 1980s on another wall. Berber designs have symbolic meanings.

You didn't pay too much; I sell only to people I like, and my current rate is 100 euros. In the little gallery here they are priced far higher than that for no reason that I can fathom. A small gallery which is rarely open in a not-much-visited French village, the odd passing tourist or visitor who might see them is not going to fork out 500 euros or more. But I'm asked to exhibit (always in a group show of 2 or 3) so I oblige.

I have never been particularly interested in showing or selling my stuff. I painted for fun, and originally to have something on the walls of my little 'basic' house rented for nothing from the National Trust just outside Belfast, near the Giant's Ring. (Handy for Queen's.) I have exhibited only when invited, except in one case when I showed my Metamorphotos in a small but famous gallery/café in Berlin - once (I discovered only last week) frequented by such luminaries as David Bowie and Michel Foucault.

My letters are always too long; it's the Asperger tendency to offer too much information, I'm afraid. So I'll end,

With best wishes,

Anthony