Corinthian Vases in Montreal and Saint John

IT HAS FOR some time been the intention of the writer to make available to the scholarly world a knowledge of the Corinthian pottery existing in the northeastern states and eastern Canada, in smaller collections where the prospects of a corpus publication may not be immediately in evidence. So far this project has advanced only slowly, owing to the pressure of other commitments.1 However, it is a pleasure to present and comment on the vases in two Canadian collections. There is, of course, a fair representation of Corinthian pottery in the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto already published. Apart from this, I am not aware of any other pieces east of, say, Toronto, other than the series in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and a solitary cup in the New Brunswick Museum in Saint John, to be described below. I should be glad to be corrected on this score, if readers have better knowledge, or access to private collections about which I have not been able to obtain any information. Needless to say, it is now becoming possible to attribute Corinthian vases to masters, or at least to relate them to known masters, with greater conviction than was possible a generation ago. As almost any vase may throw a revealing light on this concern, even if it cannot immediately be assigned to a painter, it becomes a matter of some importance that unrecorded specimens be brought to light. The most striking vase of this entire group is a large, handsome kotyle in a relatively good state of preservation, decorated with two friezes and closely set rays at the base (pl. 1).a A smaller set of rays is superimposed over the normal rays so that long, vertically extended, staggered triangles rise above the flaring foot. The painting of the rays and the frieze subjects is steady and careful, and the incisions are careful. The centre of the principal side (pl. 1, top right) is denoted by a double

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