Some years ago, while walking through the office of the president of the Galerie Charpentier, I saw hanging on a wall some fifty feet long, and twenty feet high, a single painting: a large Matisse of four bathers by a river, which I immediately liked. I was given the size in centimeters, and, not being too quick at conversion to feet and inches, the painting didn't look so large to me in that setting. Not until it arrived in the United States and I received the shipping costs did I realize I had purchased a painting thirteen feet long and six feet high. When I saw it at the dock and realized that I couldn't possibly hang it anywhere, I frantically telephoned various museums about housing it. The Philadelphia Museum of Art offered to house the painting, and it remained there for more than a year, until it was included in the large Matisse retrospective exhibition, which traveled to the West Coast museums and the Art Institute of Chicago. The Art Institute happened to be looking for a large Matisse, and in return for the Bathers they offered me a Toulouse-Lautrec of the opera Messaline which was of a more easily hangable size. I was quite pleased with it, and as a result of the exchange both parties were well satisfied.