Thomas J. Watson Sr. sold the increasingly valuable Salvador Dali painting back to Sulzberger, for the same amount of money which the correspondent had received for selling it to Thomas J. Watson Sr. a decade earlier. . . . 

Tom Watson Sr. paid the dealer's commission himself.

Thomas J. Watson Sr., Cy Sulzberger and a Salvador Dali Work of Art
Date Published: August 4, 2021
Date Modified: June 12, 2026
"I think troubled times make for an increase in spirituality, and art is spirituality."
Tom Watson, National Art Week, The Corsicana Daily Sun, 1941
 Tracking Down an Original Salvador Dali
The following is a story written by Leonard Lyons in "The Lyons Den" that was carried in numerous newspapers in November of 1944.
 Acquiring and Selling a Salvador Dali Painting
​"Cy Sulzberger, the head of the N.Y. Times' foreign bureau, started his newspaper career in Pittsburgh in 1934. At a Carnegie art show he saw a painting by a rising artist named Salvador Dali. He bought it for $300, paying for it from his $25-a-week salary in installments.

"In 1938 Sulzberger went abroad as a correspondent. He went broke In Bulgaria and wired the New York art dealer with whom he was storing his painting to sell it and cable the proceeds to him. The sale was made.   . . . Almost ten years after initially purchasing the painting, Sulzberger returned and wanted to purchase his painting back.
"He learned that the man who had bought it from him was Thomas J. Watson Sr.—head of the International Business Machines Corporation."
 Desiring the Return of the Painting
"Sulzberger wrote to Mr. Watson and explained the circumstances under which he had sold his Dali painting, and said that he was anxious to get it back. The price of Dali paintings, of course, had increased tremendously over the years. Watson replied, expressing sympathy for the correspondent's desire to reacquire the first painting he had ever ​owned.

​"Thomas J. Watson Sr. resold the valuable painting to Sulzberger, for the exact amount of money which the correspondent had received for selling it almost a decade earlier, and ...

"Thomas J. Watson Sr. paid the dealer's commission himself."
Leonard Lyons, ​"The Lyons Den," The New York Post, November 17, 1944
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