The Old Rug Merchant
Netherlandish, c.1650
The favorable resolution of The Janus Museum's recent court battle against the only remaining descendant of Allan Janus has brought several important art works to The Museum. It was decided to inaugurate our new East Wing with the first public display of these pictures. As with other artifacts in The Janus Collection, these pictures display curious similarities with other, somewhat better-known works. Generous donations to The Museum's Research Fund would allow the Curator to make a vital fact-finding tour of the World's great museums, and to think about writing a book on The Collection (why not visit the Museum Shop on your way out?).
After decades of mystery, this superb canvas was recently returned to The Janus Museum after having been recovered from a trailer park in Rockville, MD, where it had been hidden by one the ex-wives of the last descendant of Allan Janus.
John Wallingford (1603-1676) was awarded a grant of lands, called Wallingford Hundred, in the unsettled central region of the Maryland colony in 1654 by Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector. Curiously, Wallingford had been a Royalist officer, active at the Battle of Naseby (1645). The Colonel built a manor house called Wallingford Grove, now the site of the town of Washington Grove.
