THE ARTISTS

The Artists - My studies in Art History in college paid off somewhat when familiar faces started showing up in my Internet “honey-hole.” I was not as familiar with the French Impressionists as I was about to become, but I knew Edouard Manet when I saw him. And Berthe Morisot, and Edgar Degas. In a bizarre, if not impossible alignment of the stars, eventually fifty tintypes emerged featuring Victorian era artists, or to skeptics, their look-alikes. All of them without context. All from one seller.

American ex-patriot and accomplished watercolorist, Edward Darley Boit and prominent American Impressionist Childe Hassam pose with two well-connected French girls... and artist's models; Julie Manet (center) and Genevieve Mallarme.

This was a veritable cascade of coincidences, or a valuable record to Art History. Were they doppelgangers? Surely it was my strong imagination which turned these mundane photographs into tin gold. It was absurd. How could so many unpublished images of famous artists be found together, and unbeknownst to the person who owned them? But then, how could so many doppelgangers be found together as well? It’s not like they naturally hang out together. I had no time to question the veracity of my suppositions, but instead entered into a deep study of these artists and their associations. Because I was discovering not only doppelgangers of famous artists, but of their families and friends as well. To buy or not to buy? A tintype of Berthe Morisot with her family, labeled “four people posing” was selling for a pittance, and HISTORY MUST BE SAVED! I searched the Internet, bought art books… and one by one, purchased this amazing collection.

Pierre Auguste Renoir seated, (I beleive) with his very secret baby son and two young women... Berthe Morisot, (acting as an adoption facilitator?) and his model and the child's mother, Lise Trehot. Little Pierre, (not to be confused with Renoir's oldest legitimate son) was given to a Foster home and never heard from again. Trehot and Renoir had a daughter later, again out of wedlock, but whom Renoir was notably, yet secretly faithful to. Trehot is not believed to have ever shown interest in either of the children.

A dozen books later, and many purchases, I was convinced, I had made the most important discovery in Art History in the century! At the same time these rare images were surfacing, so were tintypes of more doppelgangers, of American artists, actors, writers and even Pinkerton detectives. Then a First Lady, or her look-alike, and some prominent Women’s Suffragists. They could not all possibly be real, but I had to buy them and find out. If only a few were what I thought they were, they would justify the expense. If nothing else, I would have amassed the world’s most amazing doppelganger collection! And then I discovered a secret weapon.