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'OTHER B-OOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

GEORGES SEURAT 

THE MASTERS OF MODERN ART 

RAYMOND DUCIIAMP-VILLON 

MODERN ART IN AMERICA 

ANANIAS OR THE FALSE ARTIST 

AN HOUR OF ART 

VINCENT VAN GOGH 

QUEER THING, PAINTING 

INGRES 

Translator of 
THE HISTORY OF ART, by ELIE FAURE 

THE JOURNAL OP EUGENE DELACROIX 



THE ART MUSEUM 
IN AMERICA 

by 



WALTER PACK 




uyy^/ 
62 ILLUSTRATIONS 



PANTHEON 



COPYRIGHT 1948 BY PANTHEON BOOKS INC, 
41 WASHINGTON SQUARE, NKW YORK 12, N. Y. 



The reproduction on the title page of a Greek amphora of 
the late sixth century B.C., showing a foot race, was made 
with the permission of The Metropolitan Museum of Ait. 



Printed in United Mm of A 
by 



The Murray Printing Goni[ 
Wakefleld, Maiwohu^t 



ni[any 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Frontispiece; Maya, Statuette of a Man. The National Gallery of Art, 
Washington, D. C. (Robert Woods Bliss Collection) 

1. First Home of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1872. The Metro- 
politan Museum of Art 3 

2. Facade of the Central Part of the Metropolitan Museum, opened 

in 1902. The Metropolitan Museum of Art 7 

3. Project for the Reconstruction of the Metropolitan Museum in the 
near future. The Metropolitan Museum of Art 11 

4. Hanging of Pictures, Old Style, in the Metropolitan Museum. The 
Metropolitan Museum of Art 16 

5. The same Gallery as in Plate 4, about Forty Years later. The Metro- 
politan Museum of Art 17 

6. Egypt, 4th Dynasty: Bust of Ankh-haf. Museum of Fine Arts, 
Boston '. 23 

7. Egypt, 1490-80 B.C.: Queen Hat-Shepsut. The Metropolitan Mu- 
seum of Art 27 

8. Greek (Athenian, probably 7th Century B.C.): Statue of a Youth. 
The Metropolitan Museum of Art 31 

9. Greek (4th Century B.C.) : Goddess. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 35 

10. Greek: Fresco from Boscoreale near Herculaneum, The Metropoli- 
tan Museum of Art 39 

11. France (13th Century): Engaged Capital from Langon. The 
Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Cloisters) 43 

12. France (14th Century) : Virgin and Child. The Metropolitan Mu- 
seum of Art (The Cloisters) 47 

13. Spain (Catalonia, early 12th Century): Byzantine Chapel. Mu- 
seum of Fine Arts, Boston 51 

14. Giotto: St. Francis receiving the Stigmata. The Fogg Museum of 
Art, Harvard University, Cambridge 55 

15. Hubert van Eyck: The Last Judgment (detail). The Metropolitan 
Museum of Art 59 



VI '" - :" \ : ', ! ; '' ; / \ / : LJST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

16,-Tjtarico-Fleniish (late 15th Century) : Third Unicorn Tapestry. The 

Museum of Art (The Cloisters) ..... 63 



17. Piero della Francesca: St. John the Evangelist. The Frick Collec- 
tion, New York ............. 67 

18. Verrocchio: Lorenzo de r Medici. National Gallery of Art, Wash- 
ington, D. C. (Kress Collection) ......... 71 

19. Michelangelo: Study for the Libyan Sibyl (in the Sistinc Chapel), 
The Metropolitan Museum of Art ........ 77 

20. Raphael: The Alba Madonna. National Gallery of Art, Washing- 
ton, D. C. (Mellon Collection) ......... 81 

21. Bronzino: Vittoria Colonna. M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, 

San Francisco .............. 85 

22. Caravaggio: Portrait of a Lady. Museum of Fine Arts, San Diego 89 

23. Giovanni Bellini; The Feast of the Gods. National Gallery of Art, 
Washington, D. C. (Widener Collection) ...... 93 

24. Titian: The Rape of Europa. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 
Boston ............... 97 

25. El Greco: Christ at Gethsemane. The Toledo Museum of Art, 
Toledo ............... 101 

26. Velasquez: Man with a Wine Glass. The Toledo Museum of Art, 
Toledo ................ 105 

27. Goya: Don Ignacio Omuliyan y Rourera. William Rockhill Nelson 
Gallery of Art, Kansas City .......... 109 

28. Diirer: Adam and Eve (study for the engraving). The Picrpont 
Morgan Library, New York .......... 113 

29. Holbein: Lady Guldeford. City Art Museum, St. Louis . . ,117 

30. Bruegel: The Harvesters, The Metropolitan Museum of Art . .121 

31. Rubens: Isabella Brant. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland 125 

32. Hals: Admiral de Ruytcr (so called), The Frick Collection, New 
York ................ 129 

33. Rembrandt; Man with a Beard. The Metropolitan Museum of Art 
(Marquand Collection) ........... 133 

34. Vermeer: Young Woman with a Water Jug. The Metropolitan 
Museum of Art ............. 137 

35. Hogarth: The Lady's Last Stake. Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo . 143 

36. Constable: Stoke-by-Nayland. The Art Institute of Chicago . . 147 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS vn 

37. Jean Goujon: Diane de Poitiers, Worcester Art Museum . . 151 

38. Poussin: The Triumph of Neptune and Amphitrite. Philadelphia 
Museum of Art, Philadelphia 155 

39. Claude Lorrain: Cattle at a Ford. California Palace of the Legion 

of Honor, San Francisco 159 

40. Chardin: Lady with a Bird Organ. The Frick Collection, New York 163 

41. Houdon: Diana the Huntress (tern cotta). The Frick Collection, 
New York 167 

42. Ingres: Madame d'Haussonville. The Frick Collection, New York 171 

43. Delacroix: The Lion Hunt. The Art Institute of Chicago (Potter 
Palmer Collection) 175 

44. Courbet: La Toilette de la Marine. Smith College Museum of Art, 
Northampton 179 

45. Renoir: Le Bal Bougival. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ... 183 

46. C&anne: The Bathers. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia 187 

47. Seurat: Sunday on Grand Jatte Island. The Art Institute of Chi- 
cage 191 

48. Matisse: Studio, Quai St. Michel. The Phillips Memorial Gallery, 
Washington, D. C 195 

49. Rouault: Portrait of Verlaine. The Phillips Memorial Gallery, 
Washington, D. C 199 

50. Duchamp-Villon: The Lovers. Museum of Modern Art, New York 203 

51. China: Wei Altarpiece. The Metropolitan Museum of Art . . 207 

52. Japan (attributed to Tosa Mitsunaga): Kibi Scroll (detail). Mu- 
seum of Fine Arts, Boston 211 

53. Honduras (Copan, Maya art): Limestone Figure. American Mu- 
seum of Natural History, New York 215 

54. Mexico (Aztec art): Basalt Figure of Corn Goddess. American 
Museum of Natural History, New York 219 

55. Ohio (Mound Builder art, Hopewell type): Hawk. Ohio State 
Museum, Columbus 223 

56. Florida: Deer's Head (Calusa, wood-carving). University Museum, 
Philadelphia 227 

57. Copley: Mrs. Seymour Fort. Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford . . 231 



'in LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

58. Eakins: William Rush Carving the Nymph of the Schuylkill. 
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia 235 

59. Ryder: The Resurrection. Phillips Memorial Gallery, Washington, 
D.C 239 

60. Prendergast: Landscape with Figures. Detroit Institute of Arts 251 
61 ; Constant: Waterlilies. Detroit Institute of Arts 259 

62. John B. Flannagan: Monkey and Young. Adclison Gallery of 

American Art, Phillips Academy, Andovcr 265 



PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

THE NEED for a book such as the present one transpired in a conversa- 
tion, a few years ago, between an eminent European scholar-diplomat, 
who was visiting the United States for the first time, and Henry Allen 
Moe who told me of the occurrence. 

"I was somewhat prepared for what I saw here when visiting your 
hospitals, libraries, and universities/' said the ambassador. "But while 
I found them immensely beyond what I had expected, both as to extent 
and quality, there was one thing I discovered here which I had not 
expected in the least, and that is what you have done with your museums. 
The fact is that I had not known that there were any of importance or 
even of interest; now I find that they are everywhere, that they are mag- 
nificent, and that they are doing things for people that our museums 
do not so much as attempt. Perhaps I should blame my ignorance on 
Europe's chronic idea that America is a materialistic place, but on the 
other hand, the fault is partly your own: there ought to be a book from 
which we could learn what has taken place in your country. We have 
known, of course, that Americans have bought and carried off great num- 
bers of mastcrworks from all parts of the world, but how could we know 
that so many of them have been given to the public?" 

The question a challenge, indeed formed part of Mr. Moe's 
thinking for years and, because of his contacts with the Latin-American 
scholars and artists who have been coming to us in steadily increasing 
numbers, he first suggested my writing a sort of handbook in Spanish 
to mahe such visitors aware of what they might see in the various cities 
they would visit. Further discussions convinced us both, however, that 
the people who most need such a book are our own people: they are 
all too often victims of the error confessed to by that ambassador, who 
had accepted the legend of the "dollar land" as one unable to take time 
for the deeper thoughts which find their expression in art. Hence this 
volume is dedicated to a wider knowledge of America's handling of the 
force which has been a chief cause of action in all countries and periods 
even more than the record of those times and places, a thing for which 
art has always been recognized. It is hoped that a translation of the 
book for our friends beyond the southern border of this country may 
follow in due course; and among the important encouragements I have 

IX 



PREFACE 

received, it is a pleasure to recall that of Francis Henry Taylor, who said 
that the work ought to appear in all the chief European languages. 

Though I had had very unusual opportunities to know our art 
resources, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, a new study of them and 
renewed contacts with the men who are building up those resources 
appeared desirable before writing on our institutions, their history, and 
the problems they look forward to. For this purpose The Rockefeller 
Foundation made a generous grant-in-aid, enabling me to visit certain 
collections which I had not known before, and to confer anew with 
museum men and women throughout the country. To list them and 
give an idea of the thought and effort they arc giving to their splendid 
task would be to add too many pages to this book. People who know 
our institutions, however, will be sure to realize that in speaking of the 
Fogg Museum at Harvard, I am alluding to the work of Kclward W. 
Forbes and Paul J. Sachs, and to my conversations with them; the great 
work with the classical collections at the Metropolitan carried on by 
Gisela M. A. Richtcr from the earlier contributions of General Cesnola 
and Edward Robinson, is so well known that the sources of my infor- 
mation from those scholars will again be manifest; the same is true with 
regard to the help I have received from Fiskc Kimball as to the develop- 
ment which the Philadelphia Museum has had at his hands; Laurence 
Vail Coleman, director of the American Association of Museums, was 
also most generous in taking time for discussion of his present activity, 
and in recalling the results of the six years he gave to the monumental 
reference book which I refer to in later pages; James Johnson Sweeney, 
of the Museum of Modern Art, very kindly read the chapter on the 
work which especially interests him; W. G. Constable, of the Museum 
of Fine Arts in Boston, Mr. Taylor of the Metropolitan, again, and Dr, 
William R. Valentincr who, from the three American museums where 
he has served, has exerted so wide an influence, all have read parts of 
the book, and have given me invaluable advice. I cannot forget the day 
in Chicago when Daniel Catton Rich began in the morning to continue 
earlier talks about museum problems, carried on through lunch, and 
finished only when his secretaries came in with the letters he needed to 
sign before closing time, But already I am launched on the list I said 
would be too long and there are still numbers of people, like Grace 
McCann Morley of San Francisco, who have offered me deeply appre- 
ciated assistance. 

Even so, one more source of the help I have received is of such 
importance that I must still record it, if only as an assurance to the 
reader that this book has had the benefit of the most expert counsel 



PREFACE 

to be secured anywhere. That is only a moderate statement as to the 
history and attainments of Henry W. Kent. When I say ? therefore, that 
every page of my manuscript (save for this preface) has been read and 
in many cases reread several times by Mr. Kent, when I say that he 
has been unsparing of his time, his information, his impersonal correction 
as well as his always generous encouragement, it will be understood that 
not only I am indebted to him, but that the debt extends to every one 
interested in my subject. To him, then, as to all who have aided me, 
directly or through their work in our museums, I beg to offer my most 
sincere thanks. 

W.P. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS vi 

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix 

INTRODUCTION i 

CHAPTER I. ON ART MUSEUMS 8 

" II. (1.) SOME AMERICAN HISTORY .... 29 

II. (2.) Our History Continues .... 52 

" III. THE ACHIEVEMENT 74 

" IV. (L) PROBLEMS AND THEORIES .... 140 

IV, (2.) The Problem of the American Artist . . 160 

IV. (3.) The Problem of Modern Art ... 169 

" IV. (4.) Casts and other Reproductions . , . 177 

" IV. (5.) The Museum and Education . , . 196 

IV. (6,) The Museum and the Public . . . 210 

" V. THE MUSEUM OF THE NEW WORLD . . 242 

SUPPLEMENT: A list of Art Museums in the United States 269 

NOTES ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS 289 

INDEX 293 



INTRODUCTION 

GREAT WORKS of art in museums, like the masterpieces of literature and 
music, are things we think of when pondering what are called "perma- 
nent values/' Some of these objects have lasted for centuries or even for 
thousands of years, and the ideas they offer us have a faculty of renewal 
that makes them as true today as at the time when they were created. 

But the museum is not in the same class as the objects it contains. 
A modern phenomenon, it changes in response to the needs of the age, 
and thus vitally expresses it. We have just passed through a war which 
left a barrier between the old world of the past and the new world of 
the present. The conditions under which we are living are so different 
from those we knew before World War II that we recognize them as an 
earnest of a new world. 

Those last two words have long been used, especially when printed 
in capital letters, to mean America. In writing rny last chapter, The 
Museum of the New World, I had in mind two aspects of the term. 
The earlier sections of this book tell of the history, achievements, and 
problems of the art museums of the United States. The final section, 
though not neglecting our own museums, also refers to American coun- 
tries outside our borders, and to the art of the Western Hemisphere 
before the coming of the European, who, as will be seen, has been 
notably changed by "Americanization." 

Everyone knows how different the American of European descent 
is from his cousins in the various parts of the Old World: his appearance, 
his speech, his philosophy, in a word, his whole way of life all have 
been modified by the character of the great double continent he has 
lived in for over four centuries. Yet, few people have thought of 
American art as anything but a provincial form of European art. The 
difference between the two is usually regarded as one of accent, the 
thing which distinguishes the speech of a Chicagoan from a Londoner's, 
a French Canadian's from a Parisian's, and a Mexican's or Peruvian's 
from a native Spaniard's. But more than accent enters the question; 
for we think American far more than we talk American, as everyone 
will agree after comparing life in the Old World with that in the New. 
And just as life has been changed here, art is bound to be different too, 
for art is that which tells most fully and intimately about life. 

1 



2 INTRODUCTION 

The claim made in these pages is not for any newly created forms: 
even those of our most original works in architecture are closely related 
to European forms. Neither do I believe that the great indigenous 
cultures of America will ever dominate modern American art; true, the 
glorious pre-Columbian arts of this hemisphere have never ceased to 
prove their perennial vitality, but European contributions to our thought 
prevent their renascence without material modification. Also, modern 
European art is still too powerful an influence for us to exorcise it, if, 
indeed, a complete break were desirable which is at least open to 
question. 

With European and purely American elements thus united, the two 
senses of the term New World tend to merge into one. As man, or 
Western man (for I cannot speak of the Orient) works out the form of 
civilization under which he is to live, the role of America must become 
more and more important perhaps dominant. At all events, it is in 
this hemisphere, unscarred by World War II and by the worst of those 
hatreds which bred it, that the character of the New World is bound 
to assert itself most clearly. And in achieving an understanding of that 
character, no source of insight can surpass the museum. 

Marshal Joifre, addressing a group of American students of art, said 
that if they wanted to know the secret of France's survival in 1914, 
they could read it in her museums. There her nature and destiny are 
registered. The great old soldier spoke as much of the past as of the 
present. He could as confidently have spoken of the museum in terms 
of the future. 

For the museum, which to many people seems to look only back- 
ward, is in reality one of our chief means of looking forward, Its final 
teaching is that spiritual values transcend material ones. A period of 
enormous scientific, military and economic development forgot this truth 
and World War II resulted. We need to see that the infinitely 
extensible enjoyment of the arts (including, of course, literature and 
music) is not only an ideal but a possible goal, whereas the enjoyment of 
material possessions, being limited by the resources of the soil and of 
the machine, must lead to competitive strife. This may be a necessary 
instrument for mankind's ascent; but when the very existence of the 
human race is threatened, as it was in World War II, the moment is 
ripe for laying emphasis on those elements which we have mastered. 
Since they are embodied in the arts, the museum is necessarily called 
upon to play a great part in making them familiar to us. A moment 
devoted to considering matters dealt with by our museums will show 
the immediacy of their relation to the life of the average person. 




1. First Home of the Metropolitan Museum, New York, 1872. 
Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 



4 INTRODUCTION 

It is a privilege for anyone to see the pyramids of Egypt, the Parthe- 
non and the other temples of Greece, the cathedrals of France, and the 
great monuments of ancient India or of ancient Mexico; but it is not 
necessary to see them in order to realize that the world is a different 
place from what it was when they were built. We no longer produce 
works of such impressiveness: our tallest skyscraper or our most over- 
grown city is a poor substitute for the beauty of Chartres or for the 
unique personality to be felt, let us say, in Siena or Toledo. Arguing 
from such a premise, some people have interpreted the change as 
decadence. But instantly our achievements in the social and physical 
sciences reassure us that we are still tapping, if in other ways, those 
quenchless sources which gave us the great things of the past. It is 
when we try to copy these things that we make our failures: to see the 
academic imitations of Greek sculpture, for example, is indeed to be 
tempted to look on human genius as hopelessly diminished, whereas an 
airplane tells us that we have succeeded where Icarus, Leonardo da 
Vinci, and many another great mind of the past failed. 

The difference between the modern airplane and its forerunners, as 
they existed in the vision of the old-time dreamers, may be pursued a 
step further. Our miracle of flight is not due to individual effort, how- 
ever much certain devoted men may have contributed to it by their 
observations and inventions. It is the collective effort of thousands of 
theorists, experimenters, and mechanics that has permitted us to cross 
the Atlantic at a speed equalling in an hour what Columbus did in a week, 
and to do so with all but mathematical certainty, as contrasted with the 
old navigator's mere faith, sublime though that faith was. 

We are considering, then, the difference between what is accom- 
plished by man acting singly and man acting in groups, often over wide 
areas and long periods of time. It is this latter type of activity which 
produces the most impressive results the pyramids, temples, and 
cathedrals in the past, and, in the modern age, the conquest of plagues, 
of ignorance, and of distance. If disease still offers immense problems, 
we know at least that it can be checked by science we no longer 
attribute it to the whims of evil divinities. If education is still to be 
developed from what are even now its earlier stages, we have instruments 
like the printed book and the limitlessly reproduced images of photog- 
raphy to carry a maximum of enlightenment to the masses of mankind 
which the past barely considered; and if our saving of time by modern 
inventions has not brought with it a knowledge of what to do with that 
time, the wonders of the telephone, the telescope, and the airplane still 
rank with the wonders of the ancient world. 



INTRODUCTION 5 

It is at museums that we become aware of such questions as I have 
just raised, and there are few bigger ones. They are, today, of the most 
fundamental importance to us, for we need to feel that we are worthy 
of our past, in facing a future never more beset with difficulties. The 
New World is heir to enormous problems from the Old. We must 
radically change our attitude toward human affairs, or move, and doubt- 
less move rapidly, toward destruction and chaos. Against these auguries 
of evil, we can confidently advance the heroism, faith, and achievement 
of the modern world. I have mentioned some of its conquests in the 
world of science, but humanity needs other things besides, and it has 
other things to show. At the art museum some of them appear, and if, 
at the museum, we are once more faced with the difference between 
Egyptian, Greek or Gothic achievement and our own, I will make bold 
to say that all the advantage does not belong to the past. 

The museum is itself a collective work, in many ways comparable to 
the pyramid, the temple, or the cathedral. Those monuments drew 
upon the accumulated knowledge and aspirations of man, and we can 
parallel that effort when we collect in our museums the material expres- 
sions of the thought and feeling of the ancients. We know, of course, 
that the greater part of man's past accomplishment has been destroyed by 
time, as far as visible evidences are concerned, though there are survivals 
in our thought, sensibility, and instinct. And without the work that 
our museum men have done, much of what remains of our greatest 
tangible heritage would have been lost. 

But there is infinitely more to the museum than its role as a pre- 
server of old values, though it was this aspect which most interested the 
pioneers in its development. A far greater role is its capacity for clari- 
fying almost for creating our conception of art. Starting as a picture 
gallery or a sculpture collection, the museum now embraces ceramics, 
arms and armor, laces, textiles, and the other applied arts. From the 
European peoples it has reached out, successively, to those of other con- 
tinents, even in our more enlightened museums including the 
ancient works of the American continent. Similarly, museums have 
extended their range in time, and are now coming to realize that their 
biggest problem, as well as their biggest opportunity, resides in imagi- 
natively dealing with the present. 

Europe has temporarily solved the problem of coverage by creating 
museums of the older arts, of modern art, of decoration, and of ethnog- 
raphy. Perhaps, considering the vastness of the Louvre, the British 
Museum, the Museum fur Volkerkunde in Berlin, and other collections 
abroad, the dividing up of the subject may afford a permanent solution 



6 INTRODUCTION 

for Europe. It appears less satisfactory for America. For, while Rome, 
Florence, Paris, Bruges, and many other European cities are, in effect, 
museums themselves, with their wealth of architecture and sculpture, 
American cities often contain only the fewest edifices designed for per- 
manence and even fewer that can be considered works of art. 

To give a comprehensive survey of all forms of art is obviously beyond 
the scope of any conceivable gallery. Yet, our people do look to their 
museums for guidance on all artistic problems, and, to an increasing 
degree, they are getting it. But just as we turned aside from the concep- 
tion of the museum as dealing solely with ancient material, so we must 
now turn away, and even more decidedly, from the museum as a kind 
of scientific or social instrument. It should serve essentially, whether the 
politician, the educator, and the moralist like the conception or not, to 
give the highest type of pleasure a peculiarly intense pleasure to those 
able to experience it. Their number is rapidly increasing, and America 
may have a hundred persons (or, who knows, a thousand) for every one 
it had a generation ago, who can testify from their own experience to 
the truth which made a line of Schiller's a household word for millions, 
in Europe. When the poet wrote the lines to be read at the dedication 
of a new theater, and included in them his now proverbial "Ernst ist 
das Leben, hefter die Kunst," he expressed something already deep in the 
consciousness .of all men that life is earnest, art is joyous. 

The theater, the opera, the ballet, and the concert affirm to us the 
indissoluble relationship between life as a thing of purposeful directing 
and life as rendered for the eyes and ears in terms of nobility, beauty, 
and grace. So also, in the realm of the museum, we may at any visit- 
ing hour of any day in the year see people under the spell of enchant- 
ment which (having not the slightest need to do so) they cannot 
describe or analyze. They recognize it by instinct. That faculty tells 
them that the magic has come down from dimmest prehistory, when 
man first detached himself from the lower animals by giving body to his 
thought and aspiration in works of art. He alone can produce them. 



CHAPTER I 

ON ART MUSEUMS 

FROM TIME to time all ideas may be restudied to advantage. If in even 
so exact and demonstrable a science as mathematics the axioms that con- 
stitute the foundation of all reasoning are proved to be not completely 
valid, we feel no surprise when the less exact sciences are found to be 
in need of revision. Coming to the more controversial fields of thought, 
we expect even such pivotal concepts as justice, government, philosophy, 
and religion to demand re-examination in the light of changing con- 
ditions. And so a book about art museums needs no apology if it begins 
by saying why its subject demands consideration. To those who love 
museums and their contents such an offering of reasons may seem as 
irksome objectionable even as telling why we love our country, the 
faith of our fathers, or certain persons. 

The museum stands quite apart from these. Far from being in the 
sphere of individual faith or choice, it is and increasingly so the 
community's. Beginning as the delight of princes temporal or spiritual, 
or of rich men, the museum changed its character, a century and a half 
ago, when the French Revolution took the Louvre away from the kings 
whose sole possession it had been for hundreds of years, and gave it to 
the people. Since then, under the impact of a number of forces hardly 
conceived before (imperial conquest, democracy and its. concept of the 
common man, science and its ever-widening frontiers, aesthetic innova- 
tions undreamed of in the past and other elements besides ) , the museum 
has been developing beyond recognition. More, it has become so 
thoroughly accepted as one of the institutions essential to civilization 
that most people look on it as having a kind of foreordained value, and 
though they may criticize it and want to change it they would no 
more challenge its position in human affairs than they would attack the 
position of the ballot, the .school, or the church. 

Like those three centers of activity, again, the museum needs periodic 
re-appraisal of the work it performs, or is supposed to perform. Like 
them, it can be a living thing or, falling into a rut, obstruct the path 
of the spirit, for which it was created. Part of our task will be to inquire 
into that creation, and to compare results with cost. The latter item 

8 



ON ART MUSEUMS 9 

is not easy to calculate even in terms of money; for if an estimate were 
made of the outlay for the works of art in our museums, plus all the 
expenses connected with buildings, installation, and related items, we 
should still have to add a sum beyond calculation for the art objects 
acquired by Americans under the impression mistaken or not that 
they were buying things of museum value. In several cases that have 
come to my notice, single individuals have bought a thousand or more 
paintings and sculptures, not one of which has stood the test of time 
even quite short periods of time. The reason for this may have been 
fraud practiced by dealers in "ancient" art, but more often it is the result 
of the conviction that good judgment in business matters, law, finance, 
medicine etc. would automatically translate itself into good judgment 
in art. In the estimate of what museums have cost this country, the 
spending of such persons is also to be entered under the rubric of 
trial and error. 

Multiply it as often as you like to get a figure for the outlay of the 
numberless persons who have bought one or two pictures of no value 
and of the institutions that have collected small groups of such things, 
and the sum will still be less than what Europeans, generally, would 
suppose it to be. There are, indeed, Europeans who realize something 
of the real wealth of our museums; but they have also seen so many 
unskilled and gullible American collectors that the idea of a desert of 
trash here, relieved by an occasional oasis of fine things, is widespread. 
If the trash were as the sands of the desert both in quantity (which it 
is not) and in sterility (which it is), it still would not be too early for 
an affirmation that our mistakes are immeasurably outbalanced by the 
value of our positive achievement. 

To realize that achievement in its entirety, one must visit hundreds of 
museums, not to mention a multitude of private collections. According 
to Laurence Vail Coleman's book, The Museum in America, the number 
of such institutions in 1939 had reached twenty-five hundred, though 
this includes museums of science, industry, etc, (Often, especially in 
the smaller cities, all public collections are housed under one roof. Mr. 
Coleman is careful, however, to particularize as to the galleries wholly 
devoted to art). More significant than even the surprising number of 
our museums is the rapidity of their increase, for they had more than 
quadrupled in thirty years: in 1910 there were only some six hundred. 
Still more remarkable is the development in terms of financial resources. 
The investment in buildings rose from $36,000,000 in 1910 to $180, 
000,000 in 1939, while the increase in income again almost doubles this 
proportion, going from $2,000,000 in the earlier year to $18,000,000 in 



io ON ART MUSEUMS 

the later one. As Mr. Coleman remarks, "Already this country has 
perhaps a quarter surely a fifth of the world's museums. 7 ' 

Crassly quantitative as all these statements must appear, and open 
to some discussion because of the lack, in certain cases, of accurate 
European statistics, these figures have, nevertheless, a very genuine 
meaning. But first, in order to avoid misunderstanding, it may be well 
to state quite formally a thing which might be passed over as too obvious 
for mention: that our fifth of the world's museums does not give us 
a fifth of the world's art, nor a fiftieth of it, nor a five-hundredth of it. 
But since we are here approaching the contents of museums, it is only 
fair to say that the progress in the quality of our possessions was far and 
away more notable, during the thirty years described, than the material 
advance expressed in those statistics. 

What, then, do those statistics signify? Simply this: America believes 
in the museum. It believes in health, and seeks it; it believes in educa- 
tion, and makes a vast effort to attain it. If we have done the startling 
thing of creating out of nothing a fifth of the world's museums, the 
reason is that we want them. Someone may say some do say that 
we are wrong to want them, and that my reasoning is no better than it 
would be if I tried to prove a supernal value in the tulip because the 
hard-headed Dutch once went mad about the flower. "People tell me 
this is the art of my period," said Ingres; "but suppose my period is bad?" 

Suppose that the museum as a goal is bad, that the people who built 
it up were as wrong as the Dutch people at the time of their tulip craze. 
We need all sorts of things hospitals, for example. Many a man, and 
not necessarily a foolish one, has said, "If we want art, let us go ahead 
and produce it, instead of paying fancy prices for a lot of stuff, mostly 
foreign, that may mislead us as to what expresses our thought here and 
now. You say America wants these institutions, and has proved that it 
does by the effort and money it has given to them; you say they are a 
chief expression of our period. But suppose our period is bad in its 
reasoning at this point, and that the future is going to steer clear of our 
record here as it will steer clear of any number of errors we are now 
making. What then?" The question, paraphrasing that of Ingres, is 
one that he never would have asked; for to a' degree reached by few 
other men he understood the museum as the embodiment of all that 
is best in humanity. 

Justifiably, then, the American people want the museum. Do all 
of them want it? Practically all, even though only a few realize it, just as 
slum dweHers are generally unaware of their need for fresh air,- baths, 
books, and the other things they should have. We say, with no sense of 
presumptuousness, that thev should have these thincs because Deoole 



ii ON ART MUSEUMS 

we all consider wise and good have decided that these are not luxuries 
but necessities, if men are to live fully. 

Such a definition of the museum's role is surely close to that in the 
minds of the really superior Americans who have for so long, and with 
such self-sacrificing effort, and with such intensive thinking, above all, 
given to this country its extraordinary if still insufficient opportunity to 
know art. The history of their labors goes back to our earliest times. 
It is a truly representative history; for if the staff of a museum must be 
formed of specialists, if the trustees are men who have, as a rule, art 
collections of their own and are in the great majority of cases persons 
enjoying special contacts with art, the membership of our museums 
people who contribute money, perhaps in very modest sums, and those 
who function solely as eager visitors, form quite an appreciable fraction 
of our population. Yes, from the dreamers and idealists who started 
things to the big public of today, America believes in the museum. 

A man, whose lifetime of effort in the Boston museum gave him 
a right to speak with authority on his calling (though his best title came 
through his temperament and intellect), Benjamin Ives Oilman, in his 
invaluable Museum Ideals, lists various accusations against the institu- 
tion. One of the wittiest is that of a German writer who describes a 
museum of art as a place "where every separate object kills every other 
and all of them together, the visitor/' And, indeed, numbers of people 
have played on the similarity of the words "museum" and ''mausoleum/' 

Yet, a fairly wide acquaintance with Americans quite convinces nie 
that even the people who have never set foot in a museum, and who 
have no intention of so doing, willingly acknowledge the great service 
offered by the museum. There are hardened cityfolk who will concede 
anything you like about the beauties of country life if you do not 
ask them to go in for it. General Grant may have been thinking of his 
position as a military man, or even as a politician, when he disclaimed 
any connection with music, saying he knew only two tunes, the one 
that was "Yankee Doodle" and the one that wasn't. But few would 
claim that he was disparaging the art which meant so little to him. 

Robert Henri was asked by an anxious father, "Should I make an 
artist of my boy?" The wise painter and teacher replied, "Why not 
make a man of him?" He expressed a typically American point of view: 
first things first. If others were to be added on, well and good; if not, 
one had done right, anyhow. Part of the problem of the museum, as 
we shall discover, is to be attractive when people feel like turning to it, 
but not shrilly to solicit attention from those who are busy with useful 
and absorbing affairs of their own. 



ON ART MUSEUMS 13 

A little later, I shall have much to say about the businessmen, bank- 
ers, lawyers, and other laymen who have contributed in large measure 
to the organization and support of American museums; to an overwhelm- 
ing extent it will be a favorable opinion, indeed a grateful and admiring 
one. 

But in considering our subject logically, the people of immediate 
interest are those on the museum staff. Like other persons in scholarly 
pursuits, they have only in exceptional cases had personal fortunes at 
all commensurate with the work on which they were engaged, and never 
enough wealth to build up the great public collections. Also, they are 
rarely fitted to manage vast sums of money, reach crucial decisions, enter 
into contracts, and make political arrangements with some branch of 
the government, local or national. 

Yet, if such matters loom large in American life generally, it is our 
pride that we have, from our beginnings, been unsparing of the honor 
given to clergymen, teachers, scientists, and philosophers. We have 
been slower about recognizing and rewarding poets and artists, but 
there is no mistaking our public's good will toward them, even if its 
busy "practical" life has cut pretty deep into the leisure which, at best, 
we have reserved for the difficult problem of art and letters. In passing, 
one may note that Europe, in the same thirty-year period, differed from 
America not so much because it gave more time to aesthetic matters as 
because, opportunities in Europe being so much more widespread (they 
have been so for centuries), the average European starts off at a point 
far in advance of the average American's, Our people's disadvantage is, 
of course, being rapidly reduced above all, by the museum. 

The consciousness of participating in its splendid work gives to 
American directors, to curators, and, indeed, often to the humblest mem- 
bers of museum staffs a sense of mission akin to the one felt by our 
clergymen and teachers, scientists and philosophers. Also, since much 
of museum work still lies in uncharted regions and must discover its 
principles by pioneering experience, there is the stimulus coming from 
new fields of study: the Far East, remote antiquity, and the wealth of 
early America, as well as methods of making the public a full sharer in 
the benefits of the institution. 

Most important of all, considering the nature of the exhibits that 
museum men collect and handle, their success in understanding their 
problem is largely dependent on their entering into the ideas of the 
artists whose work they preserve and display. Indeed, from the time 
of that admirable painter Charles Willson Peale, one of the earliest 
museum directors in America (like John Vanderlyn, his contemporary 



i 4 ON ART MUSEUMS 

and peer, the creator of a museum), many of the best workers in our 
collections have themselves been artists. 

And, still basing my case for the museum on the fact that people 
want it, I come now to the class that speaks with final authority on the 
subject. As the artist does his work primarily out of an urge toward 
such activity, even if, in well-balanced periods, he has also got his liveli- 
hood from it at the same time, so his collecting and the showing of his 
possessions has been for the love of the thing, and without thought of 
gain. Rembrandt, indeed, spent his way to bankruptcy, in his enthusiasm 
for art, and it is an exceptional man, in the profession, who does not 
acquire some ancient or modern examples of his craft and its neighbors. 
The art objects in his studio may be as much a part of his equipment 
as are paints and brushes, hammer and chisels. For does not Poussin 
tell us in so many words that he never felt so much like taking pains 
and going beyond his former achievement as when he had been handling 
some beautiful work of art? Such testimony, a thousand times confirmed 
by the example of artists from ancient days to the present, gives us our 
best key to the secret of the museum. 

The enjoyment it offers is not passive; it is dynamic, it leads to acts, 
and not merely to states of mind, however pleasant and fine these may 
be. And returning to the fact of our having gone from six hundred 
to twenty-five hundred museums in thirty years, with more development 
constantly occurring, we are reminded that the character I describe for 
the institution does not concern the artist alone. The tens of millions 
of dollars that go into American museums every year are, very clearly, 
not contributed solely for the benefit of artists (who could live in grand 
style on a mere tithe of that money). The men who earned it, and 
who have given mature thought to its disposal, have decided that no 
other investment will yield such returns for themselves and their fellow 
citizens. 

They may not have analyzed the precise method by which the 
museum men collect and handle, their success in understanding their 
haps, like that great railroad builder, Sir William Van Home, they have 
themselves gone in for painting as a hobby (and any competent visitor 
to Sir William's house in Montreal knows that his work sometimes 
attained real value as art); or perhaps they merely parallel the artist 
by the type of thought they give to their own affairs (a financier said he 
liked "abstract" painting because he felt that he did something similar 
when calculating the curve of an investment: it was simply the move- 
ment of the market that he found interesting, and not the amount of 



ON ART MUSEUMS 15 

money he would make, or even the intrinsic value of the commodity 
represented by the bonds and shares). 

Lest anyone regard this as suggesting a new type of utility for art, 
I will affirm that the gentleman's explanation, exact or inexact as it 
may be, was not proposed as a formula for success in Wall Street, though 
I did once encounter a man who thought he could, without study, com- 
pose music by a comparable procedure. He made graphs of the lines 
formed by the holes punched into pianola records, combined these lines 
in formations dictated by his own taste and fancy, had the new graph 
punched out as a recording and doubtless got effects that had a 
species of originality; I never listened to any of his "music." 

Our period, with its bewildering succession of scientific inventions, 
and its audacities in the realm of the arts, has led to many an aberration 
as foolish as that of this "composer." But no wrongness is more flagrant 
than that which treats the classics as things of the past. The touchstone 
of anyone's understanding of them is his ability to recognize their actual- 
ity their immediate application to the thought and life of the modern 
world. And the fact that works produced hundreds or even thousands 
of years ago are absolutely living today carries with it the conclusion 
that they will never cease to have the same vitality and significance for 
future ages. 

That would be one fulfillment, at leasd^of Egypt's demand for 
immortality. The word may have had a different, perhaps even a mate- 
rial sense for the ancient people, when they plaqpd food and other useful 
articles in the graves of their dead. Or again, these accompaniments of 
the departed may merely have been symbolic, a part of the ritualism of 
a people not so primitively literal in its thinking as to imagine that their 
bread and beer were to be consumed by the dead man as he used to do 
when alive. Other religions, nearer to us in time, make us familiar with 
a similar mingling of the material and the immaterial; so that the Egyp- 
tian idea of the afterworld may have located it, essentially, in the 
memory of men. If their attempt to reach eternity was so directed, they 
made the right move when they bred their race of artists. There .are 
records of man's presence on the earth far more ancient than those of 
the historic time of Egypt, but none of them has shed upon their makers 
such luster as belongs, by universal consent, to the people of the Nile. 

The span of their recorded existence is the longest in human history, 
but even such extent in time the horizontal dimension of their life 
is small compared to their vertical thrust the height and depth 
attained by their art. No wonder that the men who have offered to this 
country its museums, as an incentive to thinking and as a measure of 



1 8 ON ART MUSEUMS 

thinking, have laid a strong emphasis on our Egyptian collections. Our 
interest in Egyptology goes back a long way; and if anyone should be 
tempted to look on this as preoccupation with "curiosities/' or with 
the morbid thought sometimes associated with mummies, I would refer 
him again to the profound appreciation of Egypt by Herman Melville, 
when that great American writer visited the country, about a hundred 
years ago. 

Perhaps the earliest of "museum ideals/' to use Oilman's words in 
a different sense from his own, Egyptian art is at least approached in 
quality by that of the Chaldeans; but it is only at the Louvre that one 
can see the mighty sculpture of the land of Sumer in anything like its 
full stature. Other museums, like that of the University of Pennsylvania, 
and that of Boston, give a glimpse of this elemental and yet highly 
evolved art. It is, in all likelihood, still to reveal its greatest achievement, 
for even the prodigious things we have are apparently less than its master- 
works. So that here, in the field of man's ultimate expression, one real- 
izes that the work of the museum is as yet only fragmentary. Inviting 
research into things five thousand years old, like the Chaldean, or into 
the not less mysterious mind of today, or into great matters anywhere 
between the two extremes, like the older art of the American continent, 
the museum has so much "unfinished business" that men accustomed 
to order, organization, and clarity in their own affairs have responded 
eagerly to its challenge. As we shall see, much of the significant investiga- 
tion and restoration of our time has been the work of Americans. 

A score of lifetimes would not offer the years needed to know art; 
and our glance at material so incompletely represented as that of the 
Chaldeans illustrates only one type of the mysteries that we encounter 
at every turn in our course through the museum. Surely, one would say, 
this will not be true when we come to the Greeks, after all the centuries 
during which their order, organization, and clarity have been regarded 
as the master models of those qualities. But then we see that mysteries 
can result from a wealth of knowledge, quite as well as from a dearth of 
materials for study. 

In 1944, the Metropolitan Museum, New York, gave an exhibition 
illustrating the use of color by the Greeks, and it threw new light on 
what is unquestionably a major problem of our classical heritage. The 
rich group of objects on view included that greatest of war refugees, one 
of the maidens of the earlier Acropolis; and she is still resplendent in 
color that no one could have imagined before seeing it. Accompanying 
the show was a booklet especially written by the curator of the depart- 
ment; it might well serve as a model in the educational work of museums. 



ON ART MUSEUMS 19 

For it does not obtrude itself between the visitor and the objects of 
his study but, read over after getting home, and inviting him to a return 
match with the fascinating material he has seen, it organizes his impres- 
sions into a logical sequence, directly following out the one through 
which the Greeks themselves evolved from simple to complex forms. 

And here we are faced with another major problem, both as regards 
the Greeks and the later peoples, including especially ourselves: 
what is the relation, in terms of art, between the simple and the com- 
plex forms mentioned just now? A decade or two since, the more 
primitive styles were particularly acclaimed; then, with our study of the 
baroque, we turned once more to sophistication. Perhaps a new surge 
of interest in the great simplicities lies before us, or perhaps the ability 
to recognize in highly evolved periods the persistence of elemental 
instincts such as those which gave us the bare essentials in works like 
our seventh-century (B.C.) statue of a Greek youth, in the Metropolitan 
Museum. 

But certainly, the lesson of Hellas is an anticipation of the lesson 
of France, as Elie Faure showed in his masterly juxtaposition of a series 
of photographs of works of the two great countries a startling feature 
of his book, The Spirit of the Forms. He clarified his illustrations by his 
text, showing a similar evolution in the political and social structure of 
Greece and France, and thus explained their astonishingly parallel expres- 
sion in art. 

And the galleries devoted to Rome in our museum, do they bear 
put the words "pillagers and verbose" which Renoir applied to the men 
of the first world capital? Or is Brancusi nearer to essentials when he 
sees in Roman genius a quality which gave to architecture the gigantic 
sweep that made a river and a whole valley but incidents of such large- 
scale planning that it relegates Greece herself to the role of a perfec- 
tionist? 

The list of museum problems with which the toughest intelligence 
can enjoy a tussle to apply its findings to the world about us may 
scarcely be even glanced at here. What of the Byzantines? Do they tell 
us of a decadence or of a new birth? Seeing them, doubtless, from the 
standpoint of that Greek perfectionism just alluded to, Andr6 Derain 
called them "the people who invented bad taste." But with the mission 
of putting into form and color the greatest romantic adventure that 
humanity has ever known and that seems a none too daring definition 
of Christianity Byzantium was forced to break with classical canons. 

If it is only with an event as recent and as pivotal in importance as 
the restoration of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople that we begin to look 



20 ON ART MUSEUMS 

with some confidence into the enigma of the Byzantines, there are lands 
nearer home where new and vital studies were needed, and are now being 
made. Our notions of Provence, the focus of Italian, French, and other 
arts, during and after the sojourn of the Popes at Avignon, have been all 
too vague. That eminent scholar, the late Henri Focillon, was defining 
another phase of French genius in his later studies. He proposed a new 
title for the art of western France, calling it that of the Atlantic school, 
since its monuments are in parts of the country bathed by that ocean. 
Evidently the eastern shore of the Atlantic is referred to, yet the term 
has its interest for Americans, since their country forms its western shore, 
and since much of our inspiration comes from the lands directly across 
the sea. And the Atlantic school carries on, evidently, into England. 

But we are coming to a better understanding of other regions, some 
of them possibly of even greater consequence to us. To express an idea 
similar to the one in our proverb, "Blood is thicker than water/' the 
Spaniard says, "Near is my shirt, but nearer yet my skin." Our museums 
are engaged in demonstrating that the change in America after 1492, 
from redskin to whiteskin, was not so fundamental as we had been led to 
believe. It was so in the cities, but they are mere dots on the map, 
after all; the "rocks and rills" remained the same, and they with the 
woods, the vast prairies, the coasts, and the climate determine the 
character of life for the great majority of our people, as they did for our 
predecessors on this continent. 

We have always felt for these aborigines at least a vague kind of 
esteem, and in truth, they have taught us much. We are coming to 
realize that the Indian had more to offer us than tobacco and corn, 
woodcraft and games, and the kind of fighting at which we had to meet 
him on what was quite literally his own ground. Now that we 
know that ground more intimately and have less of the ruthless spirit of 
the white pioneers, we find in the soil other things than the arrowheads, 
cooking pots, and beadwork which stirred the imagination of our ances- 
tors, causing them, indeed, to found for the preservation of such relics, 
some of our first museums. 

In our Southwest, in Ohio, in Florida, all over our country, in fact, 
we are becoming acquainted with Indian sculpture of great expressive- 
ness and nobility. As to the countries to the south of us, the extra- 
ordinary merit of their ancient art was recognized by a very great man, 
and from the first moment when he, or anyone else in the Old World, 
saw it. One cannot recall too often or with too much emphasis that 
when, in the very year of the conquest of Mexico, examples of its art 
were sent to Enrone, they were shown to Albrecht Diirer, who wrote in 



ON ART MUSEUMS 21 

his diary that nothing he had ever seen gave him more pleasure than 
these things from the new land. We have been slow in catching up with 
Durer, but it now appears that our museums are beginning to look upon 
the art of early America as the supremely great achievement that it is. 

In saying this, I do not consider that I am departing from my present 
purpose, which is merely to record the fact that this country wants the 
museum. At most, I am going no further than the outermost fringes 
of the vast question as to why that is our will, The easy answer of many 
people is that we have always been devoted to education; and at 
moments, a definition has been offered that the museum is an instrument 
of visual education. The words are inadequate, indeed misleading, a part 
of what has been called the education-disease. It is not the first business 
of art museums to be "educational"; and it is not their business primarily 
to teach; there are schools, colleges, and universities to do that. 

All right then, says somebody, what do you propose that the muse- 
ums do? We propose quite simply that the museums be. It is up 
to the individual to decide what he is going to do. He can begin by 
making another trip to the museum. I rather imagine he hasn't been 
there for quite a while, and he will find, if he gives the place a chance, 
that it will turn out to have the property of making him want to return 
to it oftener and oftener. 

Some of its exhibits have been hinted at in the foregoing pages, 
but how few of them! There has not been a line about that outburst 
of splendor which we call the painting of the Renaissance. The word 
makes us think of Italy, and of men as different as Giotto, with his 
vitality and humanity, and Andrea del Castagno, with the grave, imper- 
sonal beauty of his frescoes. And we have not so much as glanced at the 
amazing extent of this painting, as it goes from the positiveness and 
calm of these Tuscan artists to the ineffable mystery of Giorgione's art, 
when his imagery and his color lead to the maturity of Venice. 

This book does not attempt the criticism, explanation, or apprecia- 
tion of art. Delacroix, in beginning to write on Titian, said he felt 
like the lawyer who drew up a memorial in favor of God. I take it for 
granted that you find art desirable, as I assume that you want to live; 
therefore I merely discuss certain aspects of an institution the human 
race has been evolving since the time it began to live a kind of life it 
prefers to that of the beasts of the field or, at best, to that of men who 
live "by bread alone." 

But as this book will give me only limited opportunities to occupy 
my mind with artists, do bear with me a moment more while I correct 
an impression which might result from such casual references as I have 



22 ON ART MUSEUMS 

made to the contents of American museums. They do possess Egyptian, 
Greek, and Italian works, indeed an amazing wealth of them. But in 
even glancing at the scope of museum work and its significance 
I cannot fail to mention the connection established between the classic 
lands of the Mediterranean and those of northern Europe, from the 
people of which most Americans are descended. The two men who 
chiefly represent the vital tie between the southern countries and the 
people once called the Barbarians are Poussin, a Norman, and Rubens, 
a Fleming both of whom can be known well from our collections. 

By saying this, I suggest that the museum affords us opportunity for 
that exercise of intelligence which consists in seeing as complementary 
aspects of the truth things which, to narrower minds, appeared as irrec- 
oncilables. Poussin and Rubens were, for centuries, supposed to be 
reciprocally destructive forces, just as, at a later time, the blind partisans 
of Ingres and Delacroix would admit no vestige of right in the work of 
the "rival" master whom they fought. To see that both are masters and 
both are right is to achieve that superior level of civilization which is at 
the farthest remove from spineless lack of conviction. 

I fear I am, after all, assigning values to museum study, when all 
I had intended was to allude to the delight awaiting anyone who makes 
the right approach to the collections. For example, take the case of one 
master to whom our country has shown a special devotion. I refer to 
Rembrandt; and it is only fitting if his name leads to mention, in this 
first chapter, of one of the men to whom we owe most in our opportunity 
for a knowledge of art. More than half a century ago, Henry G. Mar- 
quand, a New York bank president, gave to his city the magnificent 
collection which previously had adorned his home. These pictures 
afforded his fellow townsmen their earliest important contact with the 
head of the Dutch School, and even now, with an astonishing increase 
in our treasury of Rembrandt's works, one of Mr. Marquand's pictures 
still holds a first place in our list if I may take, momentarily, a some- 
what personal point of view. I do so the more willingly since the canvas 
has been doubted by a leading expert not only as a Rembrandt, but 
as a thing of his time, and even of his country. So, indulging in the 
luxury of speaking my own idea, I say that portrait of a bearded man, 
his face half in shadow from his broad-brimmed hat, is not only a com- 
pletely authentic work, but one that even Rembrandt could not have 
produced before the last years of his life (the period always assigned to 
the picture). Then, like the old Titian, the old Frans Hals, or the old 
Renoir, and only then, when his experience and insight were at their 
fullest, could he produce a thing of such incomparable beauty. 



& 







6. Egypt, 4th Dynasty: Bust of Ankh-haf . 
Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 



24 ON ART MUSEUMS 

It is with malice aforethought that I write the last word. For, in our 
seeing of the museum and its problems, beauty is still the decisive 
matter, as one may say with complete awareness of the conflict of 
opinion as to what constitutes the beautiful. 

This time I am not offering a merely personal idea when I tell of 
an incident in which I had a share: I am reporting, at what chances to 
be first-hand, a very illuminating example of the misuse of a necessary 
word. And thereby, as in the cases of Poussin and Rubens, or of Ingres 
and Delacroix, an occasion is given to see that museum problems reach 
out far beyond the walls of the building. (Inside it, however, there 
remain problems enough. ) 

Here is my tale and I remember the speech it contains as vividly 
as if I had heard it only forty minutes ago, instead of as many years 
ago. On the walls of my first studio in America, I had reproductions 
of a number of works which had meant much to me during the student 
years abroad from which I had just returned. One print was a facsimile 
of an early Rembrandt etching, the 1628 portrait of his mother; rny own 
first attempt at etching was a copy of it. At about this time, I had a 
visit from an old sculptor, a prominent member of the Academy, and one 
whose statues and whose writing on art are alike insignificant. He gave 
me a lecture (intended altogether for my well-being, I am sure) on the 
danger I was running into by studying that etching. 

"Rembrandt," he said, "deserves his fame because of the great skill 
with which he worked out the problems he set himself; they are difficult 
ones, and he was a great man, of course. But you are a young man, and 
I hate to see you taking chances with getting yourself into a bad way of 
thinking. Because of Rembrandt's mastery, you shut your eyes to the 
fact that his subject is an ugly old woman. If you let such an attitude 
grow stronger in you, the time will come when you will not even realize 
whether a thing has beauty at all which is the state of mind that gives 
us the work of Rodin, and the toleration of it." 

When, on a few occasions, I have told this story to artist friends, it has 
been a signal for hilarity. But I take it seriously, for if the sacrosanct 
name of Rembrandt puts everyone against that sculptor who wanted to 
protect me from Rodin and ruin, not everyone is safe from the fallacy 
of treating ugliness and beauty as well-defined things, like night and 
day. Note how often people use the words as my exhorter used them, 
and generally with his own silly confusion, of the beauty or lack of it in 
a woman with the beauty or lack of it in a work of art. How many 
people will miss the point by a question-begging denial that a woman 
is ugly because she is oldl Or, hating such insipidities as the old acad- 



ON ART MUSEUMS 25 

emician himself produced, they see salvation in departing as far from 
academic work as possible, not stopping to think that one can get just 
as far from art along "modern," nonrealistic roads as by way of the 
sirupy nature-faking of the school they despise. 

I insist on the error of using the word "beauty" as if it were measur- 
able and decided on for all time. A well-known critic once remarked, 
"It is strange that you like Gericault: his work is totally lacking in 
beauty." And similar charges are leveled at Picasso, to whom, on the 
other hand, some men have objected on the ground of his excessive 
devotion to beauty. In short, the term is one that calls for suspended 
judgment. There is never complete unanimity as to the problems of art 
witness the belated opponent of Rembrandt but, with time, we 
do have agreements as nearly general as that which concerns the Dutch 
master. That takes our subject out of the category in which the Sophists 
of ancient Athens placed all matters of truth, denying, as they did, that 
it was more than a relative question, one in which tightness or wrong- 
ness is to be seen merely as a result of one's point of view. To them, 
morality, religion, science, and the rest became meaningless save for 
this person or that, as he attaches to them such values as suit his indi- 
vidual preferences. 

Here again we see that art questions are not to be separated from 
those of life and thought in their other manifestations. But keeping to 
the museum's own problems, it is clear that this world within a world 
offers the best proof of certitude, on the one hand, and of the continu- 
ing evolution of ideas, on the other. 

We are learning how to deal with this condition. France had, to a 
degree, shown us the way by creating two national museums: the 
Louvre, for works approved by long periods of time; the Luxembourg, 
for works still on trial. Both museums had their defects, due chiefly 
to the same cause: insufficient integrity in dealing with exhibits. Before 
the last transfer to the Louvre of works from the modern gallery, too 
many inferior things had been admitted. The Chauchard Collection, 
though it contained magnificent pictures, carried into the Louvre much 
that could be explained only by the financial relations of the owner of 
the collection and an important personage in the government. The 
very bad works which entered from the Luxembourg, about 1929, repre- 
sented a compromise with the evil forces which had all but totally dom- 
inated official art circles, the museums, the schools, and government 
patronage. 

To follow the French model in our country, where art has for- 
tunately been free, or very nearly so, from control by politicians, would 



26 ON ART MUSEUMS 

obviously expose us to danger. France was making progress, as her better 
artists acquired more and more influence; but in view of the slighter 
artistic knowledge of our congressmen and other functionaries, it is all 
too likely that we should pay a heavy price for government management 
a phenomenon foreign, in any case, to our habits and preferences. 

First Chicago, through the influence of the Arts Club, and then New 
York, with the Museum of Modern Art, proved that our old system 
of private initiative could deal with the situation created by the need 
of trying out unfamiliar forms of art. For years the older organization 
in Chicago, the Art Institute, has been profiting by the lessons of the 
more advanced group. Despite the large outlay made for the Modern 
Museum in New York, despite its tempting freedom as a place dedi- 
cated to a single idea, and not forgetting the rarity of trustees capable 
of dealing with both ancient and modern art, we may yet see an amalgam- 
ation with the Metropolitan Museum, at least to the extent of assign- 
ing to each its role in the common cause. Apart from occasional 
duplication of effort, as between the two institutions, it is absurd to 
have the public offered a museum of art and a museum of modern art, 
as if the two fields were separate. Many people, especially among the 
younger ones, have come to think that there really is an essential dif- 
ference between ancient and modern art. The new work offers them 
more excitement and enjoyment, while the old is supposed to represent 
a dead past. 

It is not too much to say that the Modern Museum is the greatest 
mistake the Metropolitan ever made, bringing about, as it did, the 
creation of the newer institution through intolerance of the latter-day 
masters. It can afford the loss of the vast numbers of visitors who would 
otherwise be entering its doors, but it cannot afford the loss of influence 
on its own thinking caused by the diversion from it of some of the 
strongest elements in the community. And obviously, the modern 
museum needs a constant checkup on the tendencies it follows. This 
would come automatically if visitors moved freely between galleries of 
later and earlier works, and had an easy means of comparing the purpose 
and effect of the two. 

But muscology is a very young study, and the record it has already 
made justifies abundant hope for the future. Even the question of 
modern art, which sometimes involves bitter tension between conserva- 
tives and progressives, is being studied intelligently; this is proof as 
are innumerable other services performed by American museums 
that they represent us in the best of our achievement and our aspiration. 

Such matters are not to be realized through compromise, through 




7. Egypt, 1490-80 B.C.: Queen Hat-Shepsut. 
Courtesy of The Metropolitan Muse.um of Art. 



28 ON ART MUSEUMS 

concession to elements among us that are popular in the sense of being 
inferior. Our people saw through such fraudulence when the pictures 
of the older schools were submitted to the test of public approval: tlje 
inferior ones had to go. For a time the public may be fooled by the 
more up-to-date kind of trash, but there is rapidly increasing evidence 
that such things are tolerated today for a far shorter time than formerly. 
Later on, we shall discuss the possibilities of the genuinely popular arts, 
those which have the vitality of the masses, not those the travesty of 
the real ones which commercialize bad taste among the masses. 

In concluding this introductory survey, suffice it to say that the 
museum is a place where all that our race knows of magic allows us to 
see the splendor of the human past, and the way that splendor continues 
and evolves when aristocracy of intellect is united with democracy of 
opportunity. 



CHAPTER H 

1. SOME AMERICAN HISTORY 

THE CREATION and development of museums in the United States con- 
stitute an amazing story, which will probably remain unique. Nowhere, 
whether we look to South America, Australia, Siberia, or any other big 
spaces still underdeveloped as regards museums, can we see the proba- 
bility of a growth paralleling that which has taken place here. The 
ready explanation of many people would be "American millions/' the 
words so often cast up to Dr. Victor Heiser when he was introducing to 
various countries the ideas evolved by the United States for combating 
and preventing disease. 

But the explanation is utterly insufficient. Purchases in astonishing 
quantity were indeed made by our collectors during the past half century, 
when great fortunes piled up and when people discovered that paintings 
and sculpture offer a fascinating means of spending or investing; but the 
history of American museums goes back to times considerably antedating 
the great accumulation of wealth, and is, moreover, the story of effort 
by men who, in many cases, were far from wealthy. No, the determining 
factor in the case is the type of men who gave to this country its special 
character, its ideals, and its attitude toward the great works of the past. 

Childe Hassam, the painter, used to insist that it is a mistake to 
speak of Americans as a young people; they moved over here with a high 
degree of the culture that Europe had when they set forth, and their 
government, with its century and a half of continuity in a single form, 
is today one of the oldest among modern nations. On the other hand, 
we did come to a continent so thinly populated that vast stretches of it 
showed no sign that man had ever been there; it was this wilderness 
which we have turned into a great pattern of busy cities and thriving 
countryside. 

What interests us here is not the land itself, but the people; this 
book deals with one aspect of the people, the attention they have given 
to art. It is a particularly American aspect of them, if we consider the 
way their interest was claimed by other matters. Museum-building, it is 
true, is characteristic of the whole nineteenth century, the Germans 
doing most remarkable things in it. The English, perhaps the greatest 

2.9 



3 o SOME AMERICAN HISTORY 

of travelers and collectors, were early in the field, with the British 
Museum and the National Gallery. But there is nothing in all Europe 
to suggest the way in which the museums of America, in a democratic 
response to a general demand, have spread from coast to coast. In the 
Old World they usually represent the gathering together of material 
already on hand; in America, everything save collections of local relics 
had to be built up from nothing. Most significant of all is that the 
institution is ours as the gift of private citizens and not as a gathering 
of things forfeited to governments. 

The growth of free popular education in America has been written 
about innumerable times, and we know well, for example, about the 
founding of Harvard College when the colonists were still struggling 
for bare existence, only sixteen years after the landing on Plymouth 
Rock. But how many Americans know that the cultural foundations of 
our museums date back to exactly the same period? Just one year after 
the coming of the Pilgrims, there arrived on our shores a man who, 
remaining here from 1621 to 1631, connects us with the love of the 
classics which has always been the forerunner of the museum. This was 
George Sandys, the treasurer of the Virginia Company. He was the 
author of a book of travels in the Holy Land, Cyprus, Sicily, Naples, 
and Rome, which went through many editions in Europe, and was 
translated into various languages. During his stay in America, he con- 
tinued to work on his translation of Ovid, and so gave us, in our earliest 
days, an example of scholarship, which was to be followed by notable 
successors. Their share in preparing America for the development of 
museums will be obvious from the first glance, and it is one of the 
reasons for the magnificent achievement throughout the early United 
States when, in the first part of the nineteenth century, we contributed 
so signally to the Greek Revival. 

Well worthy of so important a subject are Professor W. B. Dins- 
moor's researches into the role of the classics in our country, and it is 
to a paper by him on "Early American Studies of Mediterranean Archae- 
ology," read before the American Philosophical Society in 1943, that I 
am indebted for a large number of facts, including those on George 
Sandys. Among other such contacts with the classical schools by men 
who were to brin^ art, and an understanding of art, to America, I note 
the sojourn of John Smibert in Italy, from 1717 to 1720. This Scotch 
painter, coming to our shores in 1728, and producing many portraits of 
our early countrymen, brought with him a collection of engravings after 
famous paintings. But great difficulties faced our artists at this time 
(and later), so that Smibert was obliged by circumstances to dispose of 




8 Greek (Athenian, probably 7tn Century B.C. ) : Statue of a Youth. 
Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 



32, SOME AMERICAN HISTORY 

his engravings. He was, however, able to retain his collection of casts 
after ancient sculptures, the first to reach America. After his death in 
1752, the inventory of his estate appraised these sculptures at 4, not 
a very great sum even for those days, especially when we consider how 
valuable they would have been for students and laymen. 

Yet before the death of Smibert, Benjamin Franklin could write 
that "the first drudgery of settling new Colonies, which confines the 
attention of People to mere Necessaries, is now pretty well over; and 
there are many in every Province in Circumstances that set them at 
Ease, and afford Leisure to Cultivate the finer Arts, and improve the 
common Stock of Knowledge." We usually think of our philosopher 
as primarily interested in science and politics; but when we reflect that 
the above statements, from his Proposals for Promoting Useful Knowl- 
edge among the British Plantations in America, were published in the 
Philadelphia of 1743, we have proof that he and doubtless many 
others among our people already regarded the fine arts as a part of 
"Useful Knowledge." 

If Franklin's words were prophetic, as they so often were, he did 
not have to wait long or look far to see them borne out. Books on 
antiquities were appearing in private and public libraries. We know of 
an exhibition of waxworks in 1749, and, in the following year, if not 
earlier, Harvard began collecting "curiosities/' Oxford had set the pace 
for universities by starting its Ashmolean Museum in 1683, and so our 
own seats of learning were following a distinguished precedent. In 1718 
Elihu Yale gave to Yale University, founded seventeen years before as 
the Collegiate School, a portrait of George I, painted in the workshop 
of Sir Godfrey Kneller. It was not until 1831, however, that Yale's art 
collections became part of the University's active interests, through the 
purchase of Colonel John Trumbull's paintings of the Revolution. The 
following year the Trumbull Gallery was erected on the campus, the 
"first art gallery to be built by a university in this country." 

We must turn back, however. Without the slightest pretense to 
giving a complete account of the early museum history of America, we 
should note that the oldest of all such institutions in this country is that 
of Charleston, South Carolina, established in 1773 under the auspices of 
the Charleston Library Society. Like so many of the pioneering attempts 
here, it is not entirely an art museum, though important collections were 
early brought to Charleston. 

Philadelphia claims attention again as it will repeatedly. Gustavus 
Hesselius, the Swedish artist, had arrived there in 1711, and the city saw 
the birth of the first native American painter, James Claypoole, in 1720, 



SOME AMERICAN HISTORY 33 

as also of our first native sculptor William Rush, in 1756. The two earli- 
est exhibitions of pictures in this country were held in the old State 
House, and by 1782, P. E. du Simitiere of Philadelphia opened a museum 
in his home. 

The following year, again in Philadelphia, our fine native painter, 
Charles Willson Peale, gave an exhibition of his portraits. In 1784, in his 
own house, he added zoological specimens, the collection being trans- 
ferred in 1794 to the American Philosophical Society, which had been 
founded more than half a century earlier; in 1802, it was moved to 
Independence Hall. Later, some of the numerous artists of the Peale 
family tried to continue the museum, but without success. 

In 1791, Charles Willson Peale himself had founded a drawing 
school which, in 1805, has as its successor the Pennsylvania Academy of 
the Fine Arts. William Rush joined Peale in teaching there, as did 
Giuseppe Ceracchi, the Italian sculptor of the well-known bust of 
George Washington. 

Already in 1795, Peale had drawn up plans for the Columbianurn, 
or American Academy of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, in Phila- 
delphia. The English painter, Robert Edge Pine, arriving in 1784, had 
brought with him a cast of the Venus de' Medici. Peale borrowed it to 
initiate the hall of casts. "Moral scruples also affected the art school and 
the Columbianurn failed in its turn." And this occurred despite the fact, 
recorded by H. G. Dwight, that in urban Philadelphia, "delicacy required 
that ladies be admitted to an exhibition of classical sculpture at separate 
hours from gentlemen." Similar difficulties attended the Boston Athe- 
naeum in the early days of the nineteenth century, when an essay on the 
Greeks, read by one of the members, was objected to by another because 
it contained too much "nakedness." 

As early as 1779, Thomas Jefferson had brought forward a bill to 
amend the constitution of William and Mary College, and proposed the 
"inclusion of professors who should instruct in the fine arts as well as in 
ancient languages." The contact of our country with the great art of 
Houdon and with classical architecture, as a result of Jefferson's deep 
interest in such matters, is too well known to require more than a men- 
tion here. It was he who influenced the eminent architect, Charles 
Bulfinch, to turn his studies toward classical works, the results being 
visible in many famous buildings. Talbot Hamlin's book on the Greek 
Revival in America, and the notable exhibition of that development 
given in 1944 by the Metropolitan Museum are further proofs of the 
vitality of early classical studies by our countrymen. They connect, very 
naturally, with the devotion to classical languages and literature which 



34 SOME AMERICAN HISTORY 

had so decisive an effect on the thinking and the writing of the men who 
founded this nation. It was natural for them to ask a Frenchman, 
L'Enfant, influenced by David's renewal of the antique, to draw the 
plans for our new capital city of Washington. 

In 1760, Benjamin West, arriving in Rome, was presented to 
Winckelmann's great patron, Cardinal Alessandro Albani. Conducted 
by this arbiter of the arts, he saw the statue then regarded as the ideal of 
masculine beauty, the Apollo Belvedere. It drew from him the exclama- 
tion: "My God, how like it is to a young Mohawk warrior!" (In his boy- 
hood West had had contacts with the Indians which gave him the right to 
speak in this vein. ) He soon attached himself to Anton Raphael Mengs, 
the Romanized German in love with classical art. "Fifty-six years later, 
as the venerable president of the Royal Academy, West's evidence was 
one of the most decisive factors in persuading Parliament to acquire the 
Elgin Marbles for the British Museum." The rewards of the old Quaker 
were not in prestige alone; the price paid for his Christ Rejected, at the 
sale after his death, in 1820, was 3000 guineas, an indication of the 
material success of the "American Raphael." 

Other early American artists brought home echoes, at least, of the 
great masters. Thus, we recall Henry Benbridge who arrived in Italy in 
1764 or '65. He was followed, ten years later, by John Singleton Copley, 
whose vivid interest in ancient art ran side by side with his passion for 
the exact character of his personages. And so the letters he wrote from 
Rome and other places still repay a reading, if only to show this firm 
double basis for our first great art. The earliest American to behold Greek 
temples, those at Paestum, he was led by his feeling for the Greeks to 
paint, in the background of his portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Izard 
(now in the Boston Museum), figures of Electra and Orestes, and also a 
vase whose decoration is so accurately copied that archaeologists have 
been able to identify it exactty, as to its school and date (about 450 B.C.) . 

This incident in the career of the greatest painter among the founders 
of our school is evidently unusual, but it may still fairly illustrate the 
attitude of the long line of artists and writers who went abroad, even if 
they did not approach Copley in talent. Their point of view is expressed 
in the writings of Horatio Greenough, the sculptor (born 1805), who 
studies the ancient works with eager admiration, goes pretty deeply into 
their significance and vigorously defends his pioneering country against 
European misunderstanding. His analyses of aesthetic problems are not 
inferior to those of many of his able contemporaries in the Old World. 

But John Vanderlyn offers a far more striking example of the way 
that ability in the arts was inherent among the Americans of this time, 




9. Greek (4th Century B.C.) : Goddess. 
Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 



36 SOME AMERICAN HISTORY 

when they had so few masterworks to guide them. Greenough's talent, 
developing from a boy's skill at carving with his jackknif e, soon attracted 
attention in his native Boston, and led to his getting orders for works of 
sculpture. Vanderlyn, born in the small Hudson River town of Kingston, 
might easily have gone through life without a chance to profit by his 
extraordinary gift for painting. Fortunately, the artistic sensibilities of 
an eminent American, at the very beginning of the nineteenth century, 
changed the young man's whole career. Aaron Burr, happening to visit 
Kingston, was shown some of the work of Vanderlyn, then a carriage- 
painter in his twenties. Jefferson's vice-president may well have learned 
from his chief how to value talent; at all events he promptly invited the 
young man to New York, and then sent him to Paris the earliest of 
our artists to get his training there. A few years later, when Napoleon 
instituted a competition in historical painting, one that attracted over a 
thousand participants, it was Vanderlyn who won the medal, which 
Napoleon in person bestowed upon him. 

The prize-winning picture, now in one of the museums of San 
Francisco, seems cold and stilted to most people today, even to those 
who can look with enthusiasm upon portraits by Vanderlyn. Indeed, like 
so many men dominated by David, he is at his best in them. Yet we have 
the indisputable fact of the rating his Marius amid the Ruins of Carthage 
was given in that magnificent art world of Paris during the First Empire. 
When the painter returned to America, it was with the devoted purpose 
of giving to his countrymen a share of the benefit he had received from 
that world, which had afforded him his splendid training. 

The prestige resulting from his decoration by the Emperor helped 
him on his arrival in New York, but was not sufficient to bring perma- 
nent success to the ambitious scheme he soon started, that of endowing 
the city with an art gallery such as he had seen in various European 
capitals. Going heavily into debt for the project, and unable to meet his 
obligations, he was in his latter years a disappointed, even a bitter man. 
His experience doubtless furnishes the most regrettable example of the 
price paid by Americans ahead of their time in the effort which has given 
us our museums. 

That effort, largely forgotten today, was, however, far more widespread 
than we realize. In 1790, John Pintard, a distinguished citizen of New 
York, had persuaded the Society of St. Tammany, later so prominent in 
politics, to found a museum. As was natural for an institution named in 
honor of an Indian chief, and reflecting the very general interest in the 
older peoples, the museum consisted largely of Indian relics. The serious- 
ness of the enterprise was attested by Pintard's securing "all that could 



SOME AMERICAN HISTORY 37 

be found of Indian literature in war-songs, hieroglyphic writings on 
stone, bark, skins, etc/' At first, a room in the City Hall was assigned to 
the collections; then followed a number of vicissitudes at the end of 
which the enthusiastic founder having no true successor (he later 
helped to organize the New-York Historical Society) the contents of 
the museum were sold to P. T. Barnum for his display of curiosities. 

But our early failures are constantly balanced by new attempts that 
widen the field of interest. Many of these measures have a distinctly 
democratic quality. Thus, early in the nineteenth century, the New York 
City Common Council voted a recommendation that citizens visit the 
exhibitions of art dealers; and it gave further impetus to such ideas by 
authorizing the painting of portraits for a collection in the City Hall. 
This continued for seventy-five years, and explains the city's ownership 
of eleven works by John Trumbull, the great portrait of Lafayette by 
Morse, and pictures by Vanderlyn, William Page, and other fine artists. 
It is notable how, from the first, the men who represent the country at 
its best in every field are the ones who aid in the movement for art. Still 
considering the initial years of the Republic, we find Edward Livingston, 
one of New York's most distinguished mayors, arranging that his brother 
Robert, our minister to France, secure casts of great sculpture as an aid 
to the new aspirations of the city. A subscription was made for their 
purchase and, to house the statues, an academy was founded in 1803, 
Mayor Livingston being its first president. Napoleon and his minister of 
fine arts, Vivant Denon, were made honorary members, the former 
responding with a gift of twenty-seven volumes of engravings by Piranesi. 
When Philadelphia decided to add to its store of casts in 1805, Napoleon 
again showed his interest in American culture by calling on the sculptor 
Houdon to help in the work, which was successfully carried through. 

As mention has several times been made of the aid given by artists in 
the efforts leading to our museums, it is only just that the reverse of such 
influence should be noticed. Thus, in 1810, a group of Philadelphia 
artists formed a society in opposition to the Pennsylvania Academy. The 
reason they gave for their action was that they considered the latter 
institution to be "intended merely as a museum, and consequently not 
likely to become of much importance, either in the improvement of 
artists or in correcting public taste." What they obviously wanted was 
the sale of their own pictures. No one can object to their desire to live 
by their work, the natural and proper course for all men provided the 
work is worth paying for. Doubt on this last point immediately arises 
if we find artists setting their pecuniary reward above the principles of 
their profession. And that accusation holds when men who are supposed 



38 SOME AMERICAN HISTORY 

to care above all for the excellence of their painting or sculpture are so 
shortsighted as to look on a museum as anything but the best of means 
to "correct public taste/' and so establish standards which really work 
for "the improvement of artists/ 7 

Other such cases are only too frequent in our history. On the very 
day of the inauguration of the Metropolitan Museum in 1872, it was 
denounced as a "damned humbug" by an artist who doubtlessly mis- 
interpreted the function of a museum as so many others do: they look on 
it as their customer, or as a source of customers, through exhibitions of 
their works. The matter was stated with unconscious humor by an artist 
who wrote to a museum official during the great depression: "At a time 
like this, you have no right to buy works of art: you ought to buy our 
pictures/' It is doubtful whether men of this type would care to see real 
art works purchased at any time, especially if such buying diminished their 
own revenue. 

And yet it must be admitted that such self-interest had good effects 
in some cases. Aggressively going after business, the artist often launched 
new collectors. If the first pictures they acquired were poor ones (and 
indeed, in many cases, the last they acquired were no better), certain 
men did progress from bad beginnings, and bought fine things later on. 
We may regret the inferior works that went into the homes of many 
idealistic men, but for the better things to be appreciated, it was neces- 
sary to have numbers of collectors. 

In the early times we are reviewing, art patronage ponderably 
increased, and not merely in the cities previously mentioned. James 
Bowdoin, returning from Europe in 1811, brought with him a most 
creditable collection of paintings and drawings. He gave it to the college 
which bears his name, at Brunswick, Maine, and so formed the -nucleus 
of what is today one of the most attractive of our smaller museums. 
Because of its comparative isolation, it performs a specially useful work. 
Harvard and Yale, as we have seen, had also been pioneers in exposing 
students to the influence of works of art. Later on, Princeton, the 
University of Pennsylvania, Smith College, Phillips Academy at Andover, 
and other centers of learning followed these examples. 

The Boston Athenaeum, beginning its work in 1807 with a library, 
held its first art exhibition twenty years later. It continued to do so until 
1876, when its collections were placed in the young Museum of Fine 
Arts. How important to the city its showings were may be judged from 
Emerson's letter, dated 1822, in which he speaks of the beautiful collec- 
tion of casts from ancient statues "which attract the eye in every corner 
from the tedious joys of reading and writing." 




10. Greek: Fresco from Boscoreale near Herculaneum. 
Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 



4 o SOME AMERICAN HISTORY 

Beginning in 1828 with the purchase of a Carracci, the Athenaeum 
went on to acquire works by Bourdon, Ruisdael, van de Velde, Poussin, 
Bronzino, and other masters. The evolution of a museum was thus clearly 
forecast. 

In Hartford, Connecticut, "on December 1, 1841, Daniel Wadsworth 
offered the lot of land on Main Street on which stood his grandfather's 
house, as a site for a building to contain a Gallery of Fine Arts, the 
Hartford Young Men's Institute, and the Connecticut Historical Society. 
The next year, the Wadsworth Atheneum was incorporated and the 
money was raised." The Gallery of Fine Arts was opened in 1844 with 
some eighty paintings. 

In Washington, casts of ancient sculpture appear as early as 1842, and 
in 1846, Congress founded the Smithsonian Institute. With its varied 
contents, it was the biggest museum in America, and if it is only in part 
an art museum (following the character given it from the start), it does 
contain the "largest, most comprehensive collection of American aborig- 
inal pottery in the world," to quote from Helen W. Henderson's book 
on our capital city. The group of works is important not only in extent, 
but also for the scientific scholarship which has gone into their assem- 
bling and cataloguing. Examples of sculpture from Mexico and the other 
countries south of us, exhibited near the productions of our own part of 
America, give irrefutable testimony to the cultural unity of the continent. 

This latter point will bear a good deal of future demonstration, for 
too many of our museums fail to treat as art even the most remarkable 
sculpture, ceramics, and decoration of the great races who once peopled 
our entire hemisphere, and still do, very largely, various parts of Latin 
America. A notable exception and perhaps the first among our chief art 
museums to see the matter correctly was that of Detroit, where Dr. 
Valentiner pioneered in exhibiting ancient Mexican art. His example 
has been followed at Cleveland, Worcester, and other cities. The present- 
day painting of our own Southwestern Indians is so fine that it is causing 
a realization of their immense talent for art. But as a rule, we still 
relegate the work of the original Americans to natural-history museums, 
where it is entered under the heading of anthropology. There is, of 
course, an explanation for this in the history of thought, as will be 
apparent if we recall that the great art objects of China were at first 
regarded merely as curios. (For an amusing example of nineteenth- 
century contempt for the Far East, see Collingwood's Grammar of 
Ornament) Similarly, the vast artistic expression of Egypt was revealed 
as a by-product of curiosity about a people mentioned in the Bible. 

A great advance was made in the cultural standing of the national 



SOME AMERICAN HISTORY 41 

capital when William Wilson Corcoran (1798-1888) opened his gallery 
in Washington. It was soon enriched by other collectors who were 
sympathetic to the founder as a patron of American art. He is to be 
remembered as one whose individual effort gave a museum to his city. 
One of its admirable features is the collection of bronzes by Barye, which 
a trustee of the Corcoran Gallery, William T. Walters of Baltimore, 
ordered in 1873 from the artist himself. When that collector, on one of 
his visits to Paris, gave to Barye Corcoran's request for an example of 
every bronze he had produced, the great old sculptor, who still main- 
tained the Spartan reserve with which he had faced so much adversity, 
was deeply moved, and said, "M. Walters, that is more than my whole 
country has done for me." 

This incident deserves a notable place in our records, especially as 
this recognition of a living genius did not date from Barye's last years, 
but went back to the time, over two decades before, when Mr. Walters 
first visited him in his studio. This was the result of the admiration for 
the sculptor that had moved Mr. Walters 7 fellow townsman, George A. 
Lucas, for more than fifty years a resident of Paris, to bring Barye and 
the railroad builder together. Walters ordered, for Monument Square, 
in Baltimore, bronze casts of the models of Barye's decoration for the 
Louvre. Beginning in 1850, there grew up, in Mr. Walters' home, 
another of our very personal museums. For his Oriental collection, the 
first to be formed in America by a private individual, William T. Walters 
himself wrote the 1884 catalogue, covering forty-one hundred objects. 
Henry Walters, the founder's son, so greatly increased the wealth of the 
museum that its handbook can say: "It is estimated that when a proper 
catalogue is made, the number of items in the collection may reach 
twenty thousand." The estimate has proved, since the time of that 
publication, to be too conservative, the still incomplete count running 
well over twenty-two thousand. 

And this quantitative measure of buying by the Walters is matched 
to a very great extent by the high quality of their possessions, now given 
to the public. Henry Walters attended a lycee in Paris at the time of 
our Civil War, and had as a schoolmate Paul Durand-Ruel, who, after 
entering the family business, became the pioneer patron of the impres- 
sionists. Though a lifelong association united the American and the 
Frenchman (both of them lived to be old men) 7 Walters seems to have 
accepted Durand-Ruel's advice chiefly about the romantics, favored by 
the firm of Durand-Ruel. Henry Walters' other interests ranging from 
Greek to Oriental, from medieval to Mexican art almost always 
trended to the older things, splendid examples of which can be seen at 



42 SOME AMERICAN HISTORY 

the Walters Gallery. Collecting modern art had to wait for a different 
generation of collectors. 

At this point, we are coming into contact with the collectors whose 
buying had passed far beyond the stage reached by the earlier art patrons 
of America, men like Luman Reed, Thomas J. Bryan, and Louis Durr, 
whose collections are still the backbone of the New-York Historical 
Society. From 1804, when this body was founded, it was the main 
repository for bequests of collections until the Metropolitan Museum 
offered a more specialized place for works of art. Yet with knowledge 
and opportunities far more limited than those which a later day afforded, 
the collectors just mentioned gave vital support to the love of art in this 
country. Already many splendid works mingled with the mediocre, poor, 
and fraudulent productions remembered by visitors to the Historical 
Society's former home on Second Avenue. 1 By exhibiting its important 
American works in galleries where their neighbors were Italian and 
Flemish primitives of a high order, or later masters like Philippe de 
Champaigne, Rubens, and Rembrandt, the Historical Society gave our 
artists a chance to see how their work bore up when confronted with the 
classics. Poorer examples were demolished, to be sure, but many a sturdy 
portrait by the older Americans stands its ground as a fine thing if 
not as a world masterpiece. 

It* took time, naturally, for people to realize the difference between a 
historical collection and one devoted solely to art. In the former, it was 
quite right to assemble everything connected with our development, 
showing that the first needs of colonists were for articles of use, and then 
of well-being. Our mistakes belong there as well as our successes: poor 
works, copies, and even forgeries as well as our fine production. Only 
later, when the quality of the objects was studied, and finally made the 
subject of experts, like the curators of museums, did these institutions 
attain their true character, which is embodied in their privilege, their 
duty of showing only the most characteristic and best examples of the 
artists. In the presence of this problem, they have found out anew 
the truth of the words that Hippocrates uttered, about 400 B.C.: "Life 
is short, opportunity fleeting, experience treacherous, and judgment 
difficult." 

Glancing again at the time represented by painters like Copley and 
Stuart, we are proud to find that their public contained men worthy to 
supplement their effort through lay appreciation. Together the artists 
and the art appreciators laid firm the foundation of American culture. 

1 The New-York Historical Society is now commodiously lodged on Central Parlc West. 
Most of its record of our age of innocence is now kept in storage. 




1 1 France ( 1 3th Century) : Engaged Capital from Langon 
Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Cloisters). 



44 SOME AMERICAN HISTORY 

Thus, when our famous old fighting ship, the Constitution, made an 
extended voyage through Mediterranean waters, George Jones, the chap- 
lain of the frigate, was well aware of his opportunities for classical study. 
It was with eager interest that he visited the plains of Troy in 1826, 
and Mycenae and Tiryns in 1827 Indeed, the captain of the ship, 
realizing the importance of two colossal marble statues he came upon in 
Greece, purchased them and brought them to Philadelphia, where one 
remained at the Pennsylvania Academy as late as 1937. As Professor 
Dinsmoor observes, it is embarrassing to report the destruction of this 
work, for it was broken up to avoid the expense of shoring it up. If not 
of the highest order of classical sculpture, it was at least good enough to 
throw added luster on "Old Ironsides/' and on a generation including 
the intelligent men who sailed her. 

That generation was interested not only in the art of Greece and 
Rome, but also in that of Egypt. As far back as 1823, at least, a mummy 
was sent to Boston. The first American collection of Egyptian antiquities 
was assembled at Thebes by Col. Mendes I. Cohen of Baltimore; after 
his death, it was given to Johns Hopkins University. Further accessions 
to our store of such art were the Lowell Collection, sent to Boston in 
1834; the Egyptian pieces which went to the National Institution in 
Washington in 1842, and the important collection made by Dr. Henry 
Abbott, an English physician in Cairo, between 1832 and 1852. It 
contains the first known Cretan artifact, one imported into Egypt around 
1 500 B.C. After eight years in America, the collection was bought by the 
New-York Historical Society in 1860. 

The Near East came also within our ken at an early date. In 1817, 
bricks with cuneiform inscriptions were brought to our shores, and the 
languages of the Bible lands were studied by numerous American mis- 
sionaries. Thus, the way was prepared for the founding of the American 
Oriental Society in 1842. In the following year, its Journal began to 
appear and, from the first, gave space to archaeological studies. In 1851, 
William F. Williams, a missionary, arrived in Mosul. For services he 
rendered to the ruler of the country he was rewarded by the gift of vari- 
ous slabs from the great palace of Assurnasirpal, which had already fur- 
nished to the British Museum and the Louvre their treasures of Assyrian 
sculpture. Mr. Williams sent the slabs to America and they were 
distributed to centers of theological study. Thus, Amherst, Andover, 
Auburn, Bowdoin, Dartmouth, Union, Vermont, Williams, and Yale 
received works that were to stir many a New England imagination. The 
examples at Andover finally entered the Boston Museum, and the large 
and splendid pieces at Auburn were acquired for the Metropolitan 



SOME AMERICAN HISTOKY 45 

Museum. Other sculptures from the same palace went successively 
through the hands of Henry Stevens and James Lenox (whose great 
book collection was one of the basic bequests of the New York Public 
Library) and at length passed to the New-York Historical Society. 

The westward spread of such interests is not marked in the earlier 
times by events of historical importance comparable to those just 
recorded. Having seen the role of New England's great colleges in the 
development of our culture, we are not surprised to find a continuation 
of such influence when, early in the nineteenth century, first Ohio and 
then other Middle Western states founded institutions of learning 
directed by scholars from the older universities. When no permanent 
center existed, there would at least be lecturers like Emerson and Agassiz 
who visited the provinces more or less regularly. A speaker on Egyptol- 
ogy, getting as far as St. Louis in the early eighteen-f orties, had audiences 
sometimes numbering two thousand. 

As so often in other phases of our history, the fascination of the 
Indian now helped in developing our museums. It had given to Fern- 
more Cooper his countless readers, not only in America, but in Europe, 
where the art of our early peoples was studied at a later time by such 
great institutions as the British Museum or the Volkerkunde, in Berlin. 
Fortunately our own scholars were alive to the importance of Indian 
collections, as we may see in the marvelous group of sculptures at the 
Ohio State Museum, the basketry shown at the Southwestern Museum 
in Los Angeles, and other groups of work in New York, Philadelphia, 
Chicago, Milwaukee, and Seattle to name almost at random a few of the 
cities where such collections exist. As has been said, the Smithsonian is 
pre-eminent among them, its study of Indian culture dating back a full 
century. 

The history of Chicago's art development is almost as old. Already 
in 1859, the city had a sufficient store of paintings to furnish a very 
extensive loan exhibition. It was organized by prominent citizens, and a 
catalogue was prepared. Its entries show a degree of connoisseurship, 
indeed, which was by no means universal at this time; for even in Europe 
the most famous names in art were freely bestowed on old pictures. 
Instead, we read here such attributions as "supposed Rembrandt," or 
"after Claude/' There were not a few works called copies and much 
of our study in early times was based on copies. But, along with the 
more modest Old Masters like Pompeo Batoni, we find names such as 
Correggio, Titian, and da Vinci attributions we must "view with 
alarm." 

Looking forward to the day of Chicago's important role in the 



46 SOME AMERICAN HISTORY 

sponsorship of American art, the exhibition of 1859 contained pictures 
by George Caleb Bingham, William Hart, Christopher Cranch, and 
many other painters of the day. The intrinsic value of their work is not 
always the -essential point in the record. Many of them were teachers 
and all of them exerted influence, sometimes bringing people to an 
interest in art by the mere fact that those around the early painters felt 
their seriousness and purpose. Many an artistic effort by some small- 
town boy or farm boy has been due to the presence in his home of a 
picture that he could realize later (but only later) to be crude or dull 
It is common experience, when one visits our Western cities, to find 
groups of artists doing good work because they have been inspired by 
some older man who will never be admired for his own production, but 
who could transmit the ideas he brought from the East or from Europe. 

To this day, numbers of towns, all over the country, give us a picture 
of what our chief cities were before the founding of great museums 
began, seventy-odd years ago. Perhaps there will be only a single art lover 
in the place but he may be very clear-sighted. Thus, from a small town 
in New Mexico a New York critic received an urgent suggestion to write 
a book on Poussin. Of course, this lover of Pbussin was not a cowboy, 
but the mere idea of anyone in that section of the ''Wild West" interest- 
ing himself in the most classical and perhaps the most difficult of French 
painters indicates the quality of mind that is found not infrequently in 
any part of the country. 

Sometimes these isolated art lovers are women. In a city of the corn 
belt, where old inhabitants still have memories of battles with the 
Indians, a lady founded a reading club, some forty years ago, and led her 
circle to concentrate on art matters. Daughters and then grand-daughters 
of the original group carried on the activity, in which many men of the 
community participated with conviction. In time, the association raised 
substantial sums to purchase pictures from the exhibitions it brought to 
the public library, where its acquisitions were placed for all to enjoy. 
And many of them were worthy to be enjoyed, as one might reasonably 
expect. For, when I first visited this city, so far from the great museums, 
each member of the group had a copy of Sir Arthur Evans 7 book on 
Crete; one would read a report on a chapter, together with her added 
research and comment, which was eagerly followed by her associates 
through reference to their own study of the passage assigned for that 
meeting. 

Thus, in the course of time, there was developed that surest founda- 
tionrfor a museum: an intelligent and sympathetic public. Unfortunately 
in this particular case the institution which crowned the labors of so 




12. France (14th Century): Virgin and Child. 
Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Cloisters). 



48 SOME AMERICAN HISTORY 

many years did not continue its fine preliminary work. A large money 
gift from a well-intending citizen somewhat outside the original group 
took the movement from their hands, and placed it in those of other 
people. A big building was erected and, though the space thus created 
did not exemplify the worst fate of such a vacuum, the orderly evolution 
of the community was destroyed. 

Another case where important developments can be attributed to a 
woman is that of a college in Montana. The head of its art department 
was indefatigable in corresponding with the best authorities in the East, 
bringing them out as visiting instructors, if only for a day or two. Her 
staff made up for its small numbers by intelligence and enthusiasm, 
qualities that it communicated to the students (including Indian boys 
and girls). 

Still another idealist was the librarian of a town on the Pacific coast. 
She made her institution the center of the community's interest in art, 
arranged for lectures and exhibitions, encouraged buyers (who got some 
fine works), and lived long enough to see the art association she had 
created obtain a splendid site for its museum, which bids fair to become 
a fine one. 

Always the best results follow when the tradition of a town has pre- 
pared it for the expansion that comes with wealth. Thus Detroit, with 
memories of an old French culture evolved while its name really meant 
"the strait" to everyone, was ready for the coming of artists. They, in 
turn, built up a taste for a living art so that when the great industries of 
the city invited a new and wider development, it was based on something 
more significant than the little museum already existing. The studios of 
the painters and sculptors and their Scarab Club, quite as much as the 
big fortunes of the community, influenced the city's purchase of art 
works. All these resources were so admirably drawn upon by a great 
museum director that, in a few years' time, he carried the collections 
from insignificance to a position of international renown. 

It would be invidious to name other cities where vast funds have 
failed to produce similarly satisfactory results. Failure must be blamed 
on trustees who had not been prepared to disburse intelligently the funds 
they controlled, either personally or by employing experts. Sometimes 
they would thwart the experts through sheer ignorance, and sometimes 
they would fail to secure truly expert personnel 

Such matters are part of the record of a country in which many 
places are new and inexperienced. When to these drawbacks is added 
the cocksureness of self-made men who see themselves as capable of 
solving any problem they choose to tackle, we see the explanation of the 



SOME AMERICAN HISTORY 49 

fakes which have deluged the country. An old employee at the customs 
house in New York used to say he could tell just how far west a picture 
was going by the badness of the forgery. To be sure, this amusing diag- 
nosis dates back many years, and conditions have changed since then. 
Such a place as Oklahoma, whose very name suggests Indian fighting and 
other frontier conditions, now contains some really beautiful collections, 
which will undoubtedly come before the public at a later day. When we 
reach the National Gallery in Washington, we shall see how modern 
scholarship has permitted great collectors to create overnight (as it 
seemed) an assemblage of works characterized not merely by genuine- 
ness but by the highest quality. The foundation for further achievement 
along these lines is being laid in quite remote parts of the country, as 
understanding spreads. Yet there is no reason to blink the fact that our 
beginnings, away from the centers of culture, have often been marked 
by incompetence or even absurdity. Some museums did not contain a 
single genuine work by an artist of any consequence, the names of even 
third-rate painters being attached to reproductions of their minor 
followers. 

In one museum of the Far West hung canvases labeled da Vinci and 
Rembrandt, about which the most remarkable thing was the family 
resemblance of the signatures very large and legible in both cases; 
they were so clearly from the same hand that visitors from afar were 
amazed that the many cultivated citizens of this large community did 
not rise up and rid it of the scandal. The fact was that the museum was 
the pet interest of an all-powerful newspaper editor and politician. He 
took on jobs that would have required an entire staff of experts, buying, 
with equal cheerfulness and ignorance, paintings, sculpture, Oriental 
works, and other art objects, A responsible citizen assured me that he 
had seen this worthy take out his jackknife and "improve" the nose and 
mouth of a terra-cotta bust. I can believe the fantastic tale because the 
same thing was told me and about himself by a college president 
in New York. Without a smile or a blush, he related how he had "cor- 
rected" the modeling of some of the sculptures in his institution. 

Yet in that Western city, there turned up a very notable collection 
which had quietly been formed by a man of culture; and no one can 
say what other such surprises are in store for us. The leading native 
authority on the colonial painting of Mexico, Don Manuel Toussaint, 
was advised to go and see the collection of it at the museum of Daven- 
port, Iowa. The name meant nothing to him or to those whom he con- 
sulted; but finding himself in Chicago not too far away for a flying 
visit he decided to investigate. His resulting discoveries, including 



50 SOME AMERICAN HISTORY 

numerous photographs of important works, were published in the 
Gazette des Beaux-Arts for September, 1943, with a statement of his 
complete conversion to the view that masterpieces might well be found 
in the most obscure collections. 

Some years ago, meeting a member of the old French aristocracy of 
New Orleans, I was asked what I would like to see. My natural reply, 
that anything my host would care to show would interest me, was not 
accepted: I must name what I myself wanted to see the great city 
could evidently furnish it. Finally giving in, and thinking there might 
indeed be a chance that one or more of the five lost Gericault pictures of 
the madmen could have reached the Creole capital, I asked to see 
paintings by that artist- None was forthcoming. But shortly after my 
return to New York, a dealer telephoned, asking me to come and look 
at a picture which had been sent him as a Gericault. It was, indeed, a 
very fine work; it had turned up unexpectedly among the possessions of 
an old New Orleans family. 

The fullest insight I had into the resources of the country came 
when, in 1940, 1 was assembling the pictures for the New York World's 
Fair. In 1939, the Fair had drawn so heavily upon our collections that 
many people feared the success of the show could not be repeated. To be 
sure, it was not the unknown masterpieces that saved us, the second 
year, but they helped and above all, by convincing the country of its 
achievement in collecting. For, instead of the magnificent loans from 
Europe which had done so much for the first exhibition, we had to 
depend, in that war year, upon works in America, and upon no others. 
The country stood the test, and as few persons thought it could. 

In assembling pictures for the Fair, I went to Seattle, Washington, 
on the Northwest, to San Diego, California on the Southwest, to San 
Antonio, Texas (where a private collection furnished a splendid Greco), 
and to Maine, where I saw again the outstanding works of Copley, Feke, 
and Stuart at Bowdoin College. It was my constant experience to find 
masterpieces in the most unlikely places as they might seem to many 
people; thus, there was a grand work by Delacroix in Portland, Oregon, 
and a supreme Renoir in New Orleans. Naturally, the museums known 
to everybody furnished many superb canvases. 

To be sure, great works were usually recent arrivals in the collections. 
But there was every evidence of distinguished antecedents for such works 
either materially or spiritually. The more remote centers, whose cul- 
ture was somewhat similar to that which cities like Boston and New 
York had reached in the past, testified vividly to the spiritual and material 
foundations on which our great museums were built. 




13 Spain (Catalonia, early 12th Centuiy): Byzantine Chapel. 
Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 



52 

2. OUR HISTORY CONTINUES 

HAVING NOTICED certain phases of the spread westward of American 
interest in art, we return to the eastern cities and to the developments 
that preceded the great museums and the new era they inaugurate. 

For some time, the public had to be turned toward art, and an 
important share of this work was done by the exhibitions of our artists, 
especially at the National Academy of Design. Founded to give to its 
members more freedom than did the old American Academy of Fine 
Arts, which we have seen receiving the casts sent from Paris by Robert 
R. Livingston, it eventually took over those works and early began to add 
others. From its foundation in 1826, Samuel F. B. Morse, the first 
president, was its leading spirit. Though his struggle to perfect telegraphy 
and spread its use took much time from the painting he practiced so 
admirably, Morse remained an artist throughout his life. When Yale, his 
alma mater, opened its art gallery in 1864, Morse donated the first new 
work it received, a painting by his old teacher, Washington Allston. He 
himself taught at the Academy and gave courses of lectures at New York 
University, where he continued as professor of fine arts until his death 
in 1872. 

Meanwhile, with the growth of collecting (that great art lover, 
Luman Reed, beginning his work in 1830), the dealers' galleries became 
more numerous and more secure in their patronage. They could thus 
offer work of better quality, due to the increasing discernment of pur- 
chasers. Although frequently berated by artists and collectors, the 
dealers, by their enterprise and connoisseurship, have brought to America 
a large share of its possessions. Also, by stimulating public interest in 
art, they have done invaluable work in attracting more buyers still one 
of the greatest needs of this country. Keeping up with the development 
of our art appreciation (or, rather, keeping just a little ahead of it) , the 
dealers' galleries are today an Aladdin's cave for treasure. 

The importance of the dealers' role may be gauged by the record of 
the American Art Union. That body functioned for thirteen years, from 
1838, when it gave its first exhibition, until 1851, when, because of its 
method of distributing pictures to its members, it fell under the ban of 
the law against lotteries. It listed 16,000 subscribers for engravings, and 
an astounding estimate of attendance at its 1844 exhibition places the 
number of visitors at over 500,000. Besides the engravings, it distributed 
some 2400 other works during its period of existence. No wonder that 
the biographer of Asher B. Durand, the painter, states that the Union 
saw artists increase from a number one could "count on one's fingers" 



OUR HISTORY CONTINUES 53 

(doubtless an understatement) to "a large body of workers." The Union, 
like the dealers, unquestionably contributed very much to the developing 
of our interest in art. 

Nor should we forget our great fairs, beginning with the Crystal 
Palace Exhibition of 1853. It took its name from the show, of the same 
name, held in London two years earlier. This had been followed, in 1852, 
by the founding of the Victoria and Albert Museum, "the first fruit of 
the effort to meet the problems of the industrial age/' At a later time 
this institution had a marked influence on our own museums, particu- 
larly and frankly the Metropolitan. 

No immediate results of great importance can be claimed for our 
own fair; but its collection of 675 paintings and sculptures exerted some 
influence none the less: art-buying increased and, as a consequence, 
knowledge of art spread. And it is probable that the showing affected 
the plans that Peter Cooper was maturing at this time. These plans 
eventuated, six years later, in his founding the very important Union 
devoted "To Science and Art." The opportunities Cooper Union has 
afforded to countless thousands of underprivileged people give it a 
secure place in the history of the United States; and its collection of 
decorative art objects (especially textiles, the gift of J. Pierpont Morgan), 
which Mr. Cooper's daughter, Mrs. Abram S. Hewitt, and her daughters, 
the Misses Sarah and Eleanor Hewitt, continued to develop from 1889 
until their deaths, ranks very high among such monuments to the genius 
of the craftsman, chiefly European, especially French. 

The old building where Lincoln made one of his most important 
speeches has a thousand other memories of lecturers, artists, and stu- 
dents; of William Rimmer, for example, our great anatomist, sculptor 
and painter, who taught there for many years. And so the museum of 
Cooper Union, with its school and fine library, is one of the places 
especially dear to New Yorkers who care for their city. It looks forward 
to another monument, left us by a great citizen, many years later, the 
American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum. There, preserving the 
facade of the Assay Office, a splendid building dating from old New 
York, Robert W. be Forest and Mrs. De Forest gave us the series of 
period rooms in which we may realize the good sense as well as the taste 
for gracious living that characterized so many Americans of Colonial 
and early republican days. 

Let us now glance at what some of our nineteenth-century writers 
and scholars did to prepare for museum development. This was surveyed 
in a very informing study of early American art literature by John B. 
Montignani, of the Metropolitan, who published it in that museum's 



54 OUR HISTORY CONTINUES 

Bulletin for January, 1941. His later researches have yielded little to be 
added to the bibliography he collected at that time. 

Mr. Montignani found that the first book "of any importance is one 
which deals with the artists of our own country, William Dunlap's 
History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United 
States," It appeared in 1834; then, in 1847, there followed Henry Theo- 
dore Tuckerman's less comprehensive book on the same subject. In 
1845, Samuel Gray Ward published his translation of Goethe's Essays 
on Art; mention should also be made of Giles Henry Lodge's translation 
of Winckelmann's History of Ancient Art, which appeared in four vol- 
umes between 1849 and 1873. Clearly enough, our public was finding 
out how Europe had evolved ideas and their transmission was done 
by our own men. 

Returning to original writing, in 1850, we find Richard Henry Dana, 
Jr., editing a volume of Washington Allston's lectures on art, together 
with his poems; the painter had died in 1843. An example of current 
aesthetics, as furnished by an anonymous critic, writing on the New 
York exhibition of 1853, follows: 

"Success in sculpture has always been in proportion to its reproduc- 
tion of Greek subjects in the Greek spirit." This may sound a bit quaint 
to an age which has been able to see in its museums the marvels of 
Gothic, Chinese, and Mexican sculpture, but we must not forget that 
nearly all Europeans were, at this time, capable of remarks quite as 
erroneous as that of our writer. 

Mr. Montignani says that it was James Jackson Jarves (born 1818) 
who was "the first American to write extensively in a philosophical and 
critical vein on the arts." It is appropriate that this should be so, for 
the collection of Italian paintings he formed is, of course, very high in 
quality, its Pollaiuolo of Hercules and De/anira being one of our most 
superb examples of quattrocento painting, even today. Ranging from the 
thirteenth to the seventeenth century, the bulk of the 119 Jarves pictures 
would compare very well with many collections that Europeans were 
forming at the time. "Jarves is the real type of the pioneer in the field 
of Italian art," as Lionello Venturi has written. America was not ready 
for the things that this remarkable student brought back to his country; 
it was in vain that he offered them in one place after another, for years. 
Finally, in 1871, they were bought by the gallery at Yale. This was largely 
through the efforts of Professor Noah Porter (later the president of the 
University), and Professor John F. Weir, himself a noted painter and a 
son of the art teacher at West Point who gave Whistler, among others, 
admirable instruction. 




14. Giotto: St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata, 
of The Fogg Meseum of Ait, Harvard University, Cambridge. 



5 6 OUR HISTORY CONTINUES 

And so, after a hint as to the paintings themselves, we are brought 
back to the scholars and writers. An important work appearing in Jarves' 
day, and showing that this collector was not a lone voice, was Tuscan 
Sculptors, by C. C. Perkins, published in 1864. It was followed by books 
on kindred subjects containing many a passage that a "modern" can 
still reflect upon. Among the writers mentioned, William Dunlap, 
painter, theater manager, and the "American Vasari," as he has half 
humorously been called, lived in New York; most of the rest of this 
immensely useful work centered in Boston. John La Farge was visiting 
relatives in France, at this period, and preparing himself by contact with 
artists and critics (but of course by his painting, above all) for the 
distinguished writing on art he was to do later. His contemporary, 
Whistler, was also absorbing the new ideas that Paris brought forth in 
the sixties; a decade later, men like Thomas Eakins, William M. Chase, 
and Kenyon Cox were to spend long periods of study in Europe, as was 
J. Alden Weir, another son of Whistler's old teacher at West Point, and 
so a brother of the man whom we have seen working for the purchase 
of the Jarves pictures for Yale. 

All of these artists were important influences in the period that saw 
the astonishing development of our museums. But the painter who did 
most in this respect was William Morris Hunt (1824-1879). I quote 
from Martha A. Shannon's Boston Days of William Morris Hunt: 
"Admirable as was the art Hunt displayed in the portraits and all the 
other lines in which he exercised his skill so successfully, we owe our 
greatest debt to him for hastening the recognition and appreciation of 
what was best and most deserving in the art of others." He was the first 
man of our country to own bronzes by Barye, a master who had given 
to the young American most valuable help with his art. Another who 
contributed to his growth was the painter whose work was so prominent 
in his collection and in those of the men he advised. This was Jean 
Frangois Millet, so many of whose pictures are to be seen in Boston as 
a result of Hunt's influence; he considered Barye and Millet "the greatest 
men of their time." When accused of cramming Boston with French 
art, he replied that "to hold that art was confined to a school or a people 
was as silly as to maintain that art criticism could only be written with a 
quill from the great bald-headed American eagle; that it was not worth 
while to be alarmed about the influence of French art. It would not be 
mortifying if a Millet or a Delacroix should be developed in Boston. It 
is not our fault that we inherit ignorance of art, but we are not obliged 
to advertise it." Further evidence of Hunt's receptivity to great schools 
at a time when they were as yet little appreciated is to be seen in his 



OUR HISTORY CONTINUES 57 

early admiration for Japanese prints. As to these, Horatio Greenough, 
the sculptor, said, "Japanese things were not le beau ideal but le laid 
ideal." Mrs. Shannon comments: "He [Greenough] was, however, in 
the minority/ 7 and ideas like Hunt's laid the foundation for Boston's 
vast collections of Oriental art. 

Hunt's appreciation of the most diverse work explains the sympathy 
he extended to different temperaments among his many pupils. Such 
sympathy is one of the most valuable factors in the make-up of a teacher, 
especially when added to solid understanding of the masters. That Hunt 
knew such study to be essential is proved by one of his sayings: "No- 
body ever did well without learning from those who had opportunity to 
know what was good and great. Michelangelo, Titian, Raphael, were 
they self-taught? I rather guess not." 

Balancing this reference to the past is another statement in his Tallcs 
on Art, a book compiled by his pupils, and which had great influence. 
One feels how healthy that influence was when one reads: "Art belongs 
to this age just as the air belongs to it. 'Classic': who would have said 
two thousand years ago that Millet and Delacroix would be classic? 
Give me the fellow that can find honey in the flower that grows. Talk 
about Hymettus. .We have just as good material to make painters of as 
we have to make poets. The poets have had the libraries of the world 
to read, while the painters have had to expatriate themselves." 

On this important point, with its direct bearing on the formation of 
museums in America, we may also recall the visit that Hunt, in company 
with another artist, Elihu Vedder, made to Emerson. The philosopher 
asked the two young painters to explain their ideas, saying, "Nature being 
the same on the banks of the Kennebec as on the banks of the Tiber 
why go to Europe?" To this Vedder replied (not without a sense of his 
own temerity), "Nature is the same everywhere, but literature and art 
are nature seen through other eyes, and a literary man in Patagonia, 
without books to consult, would be at a great disadvantage. Here he has 
all that is essential in the way of books; but to the artist, whose books 
are pictures, this land is Patagonia." 

The artists, determined to reduce the likeness of this land to the 
howling wilderness, in 1866 founded the Allston Club, with Hunt as 
president. During its short life, it was largely instrumental in raising 
the $5000 needed to buy a Courbet masterpiece, The Quany, now in 
the Boston Museum. The great realist, on hearing of the purchase of his 
picture, is said to have exclaimed, "What care I for the Salon, what care 
I for honors, when the art students of a new and great country know and 
appreciate and buy my works!" The words sound like Courbet; and what 



5 g OUR HISTORY CONTINUES 

sounds right also, though again I have no proof of it, is that another 
great painting given to the Boston Museum in memory of Martin 
Brimmer, the first president of the institution, was chosen on Hunt's 
advice. Certainly he was a friend of Mr. Brimmer's, and it is natural 
that the latter's family and associates would seek the advice of the artist 
who, more than any other at the time, influenced the collectors of 
Boston. The picture was by one of Hunt's great admirations, Delacroix, 
and the subject, The Deposition from the Cross, treated in the noble 
manner so reminiscent of Poussin, was particularly appropriate for a 
memorial. (Incidentally, this early example of using an art work to 
commemorate a fine American life, revived a beautiful custom dating 
back to the time of the Egyptians and the Greeks. It has been followed 
in our museums on many subsequent occasions, and is particularly 
fitting in a country where memorials to the dead so often take the form 
of works or funds to bring about the welfare or the happiness of the 
living). 

Hunt's attitude toward Delacroix reminds us again of his constant 
insistence on learning from the classics, a point of view that became 
increasingly influential in the development of museums in America. 
Replying to statements that he was excessively devoted to the French 
school, and writing of the admiration of Gericault and other French 
masters for English painting (and of the inspiration that English artists 
have derived from the French), he said, "Those who have succeeded in 
art have always loved and respected one another's work." 

It was such an attitude that made Hunt help a man who did much 
to create among Bostonians a high level of judgment. As far back as 
1852, Seth M. Vose began to buy the work of one of Hunt's, ideals among 
modern painters, Corot. By 1881, he had 165 paintings by the master. 
He continued to acquire them, despite the fact that in 1873, when he 
offered his collection of Corots for sale, not one of them found a pur- 
chaser, though not one, in that difficult time, was priced at over $1250, 
and some of them were masterpieces. Despite the efforts of men like 
Hunt, Vose, and their successors among the artists and dealers of this 
country, one is sorely tempted to say that the difficult time for great 
painters is their lifetime. When Vose vainly tried to sell his Corots, their 
painter was already in his seventy-seventh year. But perhaps we are yet 
to do better for the artists and, above all, for the public. A good painter 
will always go on with his work, and so loses little through neglect; but 
the public, which needs his art most at the time when it is being pro- 
duced and when it could give men the thrill of feeling their age to be 
a great age, is defrauded if its true representatives are left in obscurity. 




15. Hubert van Eyck: The Last Judgment (defail) . 
Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 



60 OUR HISTORY CONTINUES 

One more quotation will show how keenly William Morris Hunt, 
with all his admiration for the past, understood the diEcult question of 
the art of one's own period. To a person who compared Millet and Corot 
to their disadvantage with Claude, Ruisdael, and others, Hunt 
spoke of things that his contemporaries were doing (things never 
attempted in the past), adding, "To equal what had been done before 
is not enough to put a man on a level with the greatest. The best must 
be surpassed in some aspects." The intellectual courage needed for a 
statement like that was the basis of American thinking when our 
museum pioneers faced their innumerable problems. 

Returning to the printed word in criticism and art teaching, we 
approach the most eminent figure in that field, Professor Charles Eliot 
Norton. Before considering him, however, let us round out our brief 
survey of early American writing on art by noting three of the attempts 
to provide this country with journals of a professional character. These 
are the Bulletin of the American Art Union, published in New York 
from 1847 to 1853; The Crayon, which followed it two years later, and 
lasted until 1861; and finally showing again how the interest in art 
spread to new territory The Western Art Journal, founded in Cin- 
cinnati in 1855. 

It is still with a sense of pioneering that we must regard the earlier 
contribution of the colleges to America's understanding of art. Yale 
claims to have been "first in this country or abroad, to include a School 
of Fine Arts 7 ' in its curriculum, though Robert L. Duffus, in his study of 
the- matter, observes that at Princeton "a species of instruction in art 
seems to have been begun earlier." We may pass by the question of 
precedence in view of Mr. Duffus's own delightful irreverence in describ- 
ing the early teaching (or some of the early teaching) at Yale as "a school 
where young ladies prepared themselves for the responsibilities of matri- 
mony by learning to paint china/' It may be, as he suggests, that the 
coeducational "blight" kept the institution back for a long time: in 
general, in its earlier days, Yale affected a rather stern attitude toward 
aesthetic affairs, and willingly left them to Harvard and its "rosewater/ 7 

But it was a very true scion of the first New England stock that 
brought Harvard to its great distinction in art study. Charles Eliot 
Norton, born in 1827, is described by Mr. Duffus in these words: "There 
is no more striking instance of the successful grafting of the ideal of 
fine art to the stem of Puritan morality. Norton never got over the habits 
of the ethical approach/' It had been his guide from the serious days 
of the old college of the eighteen-forties, when he had studied there; it 
had been his guide, after graduation, when varied occupations and travels. 



OUR HISTORY CONTINUES 61 

formed his mind anew. But if "to be a good man" was his lifetime's 
conscious motto, for himself and his students, there simultaneously 
evolved the conviction that "a complete and satisfactory education could 
not be obtained without . . . culture of the aesthetic faculties." This 
was pretty strange doctrine to most New Englanders (and many other 
people), but not to Charles William Eliot. That great Harvard man, 
Norton's cousin, saw eye to eye with the latter who, in 1873, began to 
teach in the halls of his alma mater. Year after year he lectured on art, 
widening the scope of his own attainments and deepening the feeling 
for beauty among increasingly large and increasingly influential 
groups of young men. His fastidious nature made him express himself 
as "horrified" at the great number of his listeners, but nothing in his 
record would make us doubt his belief in the value of his influence. 

For Norton's influence had behind it the authority of Ruskin, whom 
Norton pretty thoroughly represented in America. It was further based 
on his researches in medieval architecture, on which he wrote a valuable 
work. 1 It went back, indeed, to Dante, whom Norton had translated and 
edited. Nay, when the Archaeological Institute of America appeared in 
1879, it was Norton who proposed it. Francis Parkman was asked to be 
president and, could he have assented, he would have enforced his inter- 
pretation of the word "America," in the name of the Institute, by direct- 
ing its studies to the Indians, the living representatives of the earlier 
cultures of this country. But the great historian's age and health com- 
pelled him to let the preferences of other men have sway, and so Nor- 
ton's proposal to excavate Assos, near the site of ancient Troy, was 
accepted. Schliemann's discoveries in the Greece of Homer were before 
the minds of all scholars, Crete was giving up its treasures, and General 
Louis P. di Cesnola, the first director of the Metropolitan Museum, had 
made his important excavations in Cyprus. The American School at 
Athens was to begin its work in 1881, and Edward Robinson, later to 
play a notable role in the museums of Boston and New York, was con- 
ducting his researches on classical soil. The classical tradition was there- 
fore the logical one for Norton to espouse; the Indians had to wait for a 
more advanced stage in our own culture, when the scope of archaeology 
would include the continent we inhabit. 

In directing our studies to the European classics, Norton was doing, 
in his way, what American collectors were doing in theirs: laying the 
foundations of our museums within the boundaries of the peoples we 
principally descend from and of those who have, like the Egyptians and 
the Assyrians, influenced our ancestral ideas. 

^Historical Studies of Church Building in the Middle Ages, New York, 1880. 



62 OUR HISTORY CONTINUES 

The Civil War had interrupted the interest in art which had been 
taking such firm root and spreading so widely among us, as was shown 
by the statistics on the powerful Art Union, on the private collections 
now at the New-York Historical Society, on those of the Boston Athe- 
naeum (later transferred to the Museum of that city), and on those 
formed at Philadelphia, Hartford, and other places. But the conflict 
ended, railroads spread across the nation, manufacturing increased, new 
settlements dotted the West, shipping crammed the harbors of the East, 
and more money than ever was devoted to the arts. The centenary 
of American independence was approaching and, for years, preparations 
were made for the great Exposition at Philadelphia. Its art exhibit is 
one of the landmarks in our history. But the showing, important as it 
was, would not have had its effect if men's thought had not been turned 
in that direction by events six years earlier, when the museums of New 
York and Boston were founded; Cincinnati, with a long record of previ- 
ous effort, got under way with its permanent gallery at about the same 
time. 

Thus, 1870 is the most significant date in our record, the American 
Museum of Natural History, moreover, being founded the same year. 
For people who think of these vast and rich institutions as they are 
today, it is difficult to imagine them as mere embryos in the minds of the 
men who conceived them, more than three quarters of a century ago. 
To grasp that condition, one must look back further, to almost an equal 
length of time before, during which every attempt to give to New York 
and Boston a permanent museum had died a more or less lingering 
death. The Athenaeum survived, to be sure, but as a library association; 
the New-York Historical Society, while possessing, as it still does, cer- 
tain very beautiful pictures, was always essentially centered on the pur- 
pose denoted by its name; the Pennsylvania Academy, though wholly 
dedicated to art, existed more for its school and its annual showing of 
contemporary art than for the collections that it housed. 

Recalling the failure of preceding attempts, there was needed a high 
order of intelligence, courage, and idealism for the men of 1870 to give 
to their country the institutions they founded. And when we speak of 
giving them, we need to see the record of the time in order to know how 
literally the word applies. One of the most significant factors in the case 
is that the funds to start these enterprises came out of the pockets of 
private individuals. Soon, it is true, there were grants of city land for 
buildings, and appropriations for construction and maintenance. 
Through these democratic measures, public money had its share in the 
development; but the collections of objects the one essential of 






so 



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64 OUR HISTORY CONTINUES 

museums was not the gift of the community, but of men and women 
whose love of art caused them to see it as the greatest benefaction they 
could offer to -their fellow citizens. Other lands can show splendid 
contributions of the kind made by public-spirited collectors to their city 
or nation; in America alone are the museums wholly constituted in this 
way. 

The list of those who have built up our institutions by contributing 
time and effort, or works of art (or sometimes all these donations 
together) could be obtained only by extreme patience from the archives 
of our museums. To be sure, in producing such a document, there 
would be innumerable moments when the searcher would thrill with 
patriotism as he came upon the names of great leaders of thought, of art, 
literature, and religion, of law and government, of commerce and finance 
bracketed, of course, with contributors whose identity is all but lost. 
To this splendid honor roll of the men who organized our museums and 
sustained them through years of difficult struggle, there should be added 
the names of those who, within the institutions, have given devoted 
study to the works of art themselves, protecting the collections from the 
danger of imposture, seeking out essential directions for growth, and 
studying the means to make of the objects in their care the greatest 
possible source of inspiration to the public. 

The present volume can linger in only the briefest way over indi- 
vidual records, however gratifying it would be to pay tribute to men and 
women who have deserved the thanks of their country, not only in their 
own day, but for all time. Fortunately we have, and in the case of our 
greatest museum, a record of its development which does justice to what 
may be called its human side. When Winifred E. Howe was preparing 
the first volume of her History of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 
which appeared in 1913, there still lived a member of the committee 
which broke ground for the institution; and he could give her first-hand 
recollections of the meeting of 1869, when the venerable William Cullen 
Bryant appealed to an assembly of distinguished citizens to give to the 
community the museum for which it was fitted by its character, its 
wealth, and its culture. The admirable words of the poet (who, as a 
newspaper editor, was versed in practical affairs) and various speeches 
and writings of John Taylor Johnston, Joseph H. Choate, and other 
eminent men among the founders are preserved in Miss Howe's book, 
which also contains an invaluable account of the earlier art institutions 
of New York. 

Her pictures of those old days, when men of great wealth were not 
above doing the manual labor of the museum, are most revealing. "An 



OUR HISTORY CONTINUES 65 

employee of the Park Department, who had been delegated as watchman 
at the new building, after watching these two Trustees for an hour as 
they lifted object after object from the moving van and safely deposited 
them in the large hall, took off his coat and helped." 

But the public spirit which makes our early records so inspiring is 
only part of the story. We need to look again at the marvelous Frans 
Hals, the Poussin, Canaletto, and many other splendid works still on 
our walls from the Metropolitan's first purchase (1871), in order to 
realize the fact that the idealism of the founders was sustained by 
genuine taste and knowledge. This high standard of appreciation, which 
prevailed before there was an American museum worthy of the name, 
was based at least partly on the continuance in our country, of the 
tradition of the Grand Tour. It had been the accepted thing in England 
for centuries, and there were fairly well-defined routes to be taken by 
persons usually young, but also those who repeated the journey in 
later life to cover the great centers of art and culture, above all in 
Italy. From innumerable passages in the English writers we gain a most 
valuable insight as to the development of ideas, depending on whether 
the traveler preferred the "Golden Century" or the "Silver Century." 

For our present purposes, it is important to remember that a feature 
of, the Grand Tour, especially significant to men of wealth, was the pur- 
chase of art works originals or copies to mark their preference while 
in the famous cities of the Continent. It is to this custom that England 
owes the seemingly inexhaustible supply of Old Masters to be found in 
its great mansions, all over the British Isles. Sometimes forgotten for 
centuries, an unknown masterpiece a Titian, a Holbein, or a Velasquez 
will reappear to startle the connoisseurs. Before Holland was properly 
appreciative of her great painters, English travelers were bringing home 
the choicest productions of the Low Countries, many of which still 
remain among the descendants of the original purchasers. 

In the earlier days of America, the Grand Tour was undertaken by 
large numbers of our countrymen, and many of them acquired art works 
(or, often, merely copies of art works) quite as their forebears in the older 
land had done. We have noted how the taste thus developed was applied 
in the Metropolitan Museum; we may now observe it though in relation 
to a later time, by glancing at a chapter in the history of our other great 
pioneer museum. 

A Boston curator once remarked, "We are as poor as New York is 
rich." Taking the statement at face value, one would have to say that 
it would not be suggested by the appearance of the galleries. There is not, 
it is true, such a wealth of paintings that everyone knows to be the most 



66 OUR HISTORY CONTINUES 

costly. But what of" the Oriental works? A booklet reviewing the first 
fifty years could say, "Our museum has a more important collection of 
Japanese and Chinese art than exists anywhere else in the world under 
one roof." But above all, there are the classical and Egyptian works. 
How did a group of such extent and quality come to a city so much 
smaller than various others in America, and so much behind them in 
financial resources? 

.The answer is again to be found in that old American interest in 
Greece and Rome of which New England colleges had been foremost 
representatives. And so Edward Perry Warren was well prepared to 
understand the importance of classical sculptures and ceramics when 
they came up for sale in Europe. He had supplemented the training 
Norton gave him at Harvard by various sojourns in Europe where, at a 
later time, he maintained a splendid residence. At thirty, he had little 
to fear from forgers, having learned, as he said, by purchasing their 
products in his earlier years and so had come to his appreciation of real 
things by proving their superiority to the false. As a result, in speaking of 
things largely bought by Mr. Warren, Furtwaengler could write, in 1904, 
"The collection of terra-cottas ranks not only as equal to the best in 
Europe, but in some respects surpasses them, a fact that is particularly 
noteworthy for the reason that there is no class of antiquities which offers 
such difficulties to collectors, as forgeries are exceedingly numerous in 
this domain, and often very clever. I know no museum in Europe, except 
that of Athens, which is so entirely free from false, restored, or other- 
wise 'improved' Greek terra-cottas as that of Boston/' It is risky to 
suggest another name to so famous an authority as Furtwaengler, and I 
should not do so without the most serious backing; but the terra-cottas 
of the Louvre appear to be no less irreproachable. This tremendous com- 
mendation of our museum and its benefactor may give us honest satis- 
faction none the less; and far greater successes than its terra-cottas, its 
glorious vases, and other works of Kleinkunst are still to be noted. For 
out of the 134 sculptures mentioned in the catalogue of 1925, no less 
than 108 were obtained through Mr. Warren. 

A man of large fortune, he was wont to buy as if for himself alone, 
and then let the museum select what it needed. His brother was the 
president of the institution for many years, and even before that, when 
Edward Robinson was the curator (going there in 1887, he became the 
director in 1902, and three years later resigned to become director of 
the Metropolitan), Mr. Warren could be sure that his purchases would 
be taken over by the museum of his city and, at a later time, by that 
of New York. 




17. Piero della Francesca: St. John the Evangelist. 
Courtesy of The Frick Collection, New York. 



68 OUR HISTORY CONTINUES 

Associating with him the great English connoisseur of classical art, 
John Marshall, Mr. Warren built up an organization about which a 
leading authority wrote, "As the result of many years of" effort, he had 
obtained complete control of the market in classical antiquities. Almost 
anything that was good, whether a new find or an old, came to him for 
first refusal. Competition had all but ceased. The chief private collectors 
in Europe were dead, or had withdrawn from the field. The museums 
were comparatively sluggish. The British Museum could do nothing; 
Berlin could do nothing. The Louvre did nothing." What counts most 
in the foregoing statement is not that Mr. Warren happened to come at a 
time when European collecting had turned to other fields; the essential 
point is that he saw the need of our galleries for that art on which, more 
than on any other, all later arts are founded. Having made this discovery, 
he went systematically about providing his countrymen with the things 
of greatest importance. 

Beside Boston and New York, Providence and Bowdoin were among 
Mr. Warren's beneficiaries; and his association with the great European 
scholars who delighted to honor him led him to present splendid 
material to the Ashmolean at Oxford, to the Louvre, and to Leipzig 
University. 

In our next chapter we shall reach some of the most striking examples 
of development in the classical field, when we observe the actual contents 
of our museums. It suffices to say here that when Mr. Robinson went to 
New York, it was the signal for the Metropolitan to resume its effort to 
extend those collections of ancient art so extraordinarily launched by 
the first director, General di Cesnola. 

Having noted typical examples of our museum development in New 
York and Boston, we may turn to a different phase of the history, as 
shown by the experience of Chicago. Its Art Institute had grown to a 
very considerable size when, around 1920, this country was becoming 
convinced of the validity and importance of the modern masters. But 
the trustees of the museum, many of whom were themselves donors of 
the glorious Old Masters in the galleries, were old men, as a rule, and 
opposed to innovation. For years there was a deadlock between the 
eager, open-minded city and the officials who held back the forces of 
new life so urgently needed by the public collection. 

To meet this problem, a group of forward-looking people, guided 
largely by two women, formed the Arts Club. It rapidly became the 
expression of all that was best in Chicago's appreciation of art, bringing 
to the city not only modern works, but also an exhibition of Greek 
sculpture, a thing badly lacking in the museum. Before many years, the 



OUR HISTORY CONTINUES 69 

Institute offered space to the Arts Club, so that it might give its exhibi- 
tions in the place whose magnificent location offered easy access to the 
population of the city, beside the innumerable visitors from the region 
centering about Chicago. With the galleries once opened to modem art, 
and with the accession of the prodigious Seurat and other masterworks 
of the Birch-Bartlett Collection, the Institute soon veered from its 
extreme conservatism of the preceding period to its present unequaled 
position as an exponent of understanding art at the time of its produc- 
tion. This problem, the most difficult in the whole field, is the one which 
the Museum of Modern Art, in New York, has set itself the task of 
studying. 

Philadelphia's problem was a different one. This city, which had 
been our cultural capital in the days before the Revolution and for some 
time after, had developed its collections rather chaotically. Besides the 
old Academy, which was chiefly a school and an exhibition gallery, a 
building left by the Centennial housed art works left to the city by 
certain notable collectors. Perhaps the most remarkable of them, John 
G. Johnson, had provided in his will that his residence become a museum. 
But changes in the neighborhood of the old mansion made it hazardous 
to leave the large group of pictures, many of them priceless, in a place 
that was not safe from fire. The great need was to bring together the 
scattered treasures in which Philadelphia was so rich, and this was finally 
done. A new building, in a commanding location, was erected, though 
its designers were strangely unmindful of the progress made in museum 
architecture, since the all-important matter of daylight for painting was 
sadly slighted. The drawbacks of the building may or may not have lost 
for the city one of Philadelphia's very great collections, that founded by 
Peter A. B. Widener and expanded by his son, who finally gave it to 
the National Gallery. 

President Franklin D. Roosevelt welcomed the National Gallery as 
finally securing for Washington a cultural asset comparable to those 
which are the pride of European capitals. It is, once more, in its concep- 
tion, and very largely in its execution, a one-man affair. For if the term 
"Mellon Gallery" (as it was at first generally called) is gradually being 
absorbed in its official and proper title, its extraordinary nuclear collection 
and the vast building it occupies were presented to the nation by Andrew 
W. Mellon. At the time it was opened, a large group of pictures from 
the collection of Samuel H. Kress were already included, and he has since 
added to his gift. 

Besides the Widener paintings, and art objects which still further 
enriched the National Gallerv, there are modern works from the Chester 



7o OUR HISTORY CONTINUES 

Dale collection, and there is the marvelous assemblage of prints formed 
by Lessing J. Rosenwald. The magnificent group of works lent to 
America by the French government just before the World War and later 
shown in the Gallery, gave it, at the time, a particular attraction. A com- 
plete and splendid museum from its beginnings, it is doubtless the culmi- 
nation of America's unique effort in the field, for it is more than a private 
collection made public, as was the case of Mrs. Jack Gardner's extra- 
ordinary possessions at Fenway Court, in Boston, or the contents of 
Henry C. Prick's mansion in New York. It is true that the last named of 
these remarkable assemblages has a fund for purchases, out of which 
many of the finest works have been added, since the death of Mr. Frick. 

Again and again, we are brought to the same conclusion, whether we 
think of the great collectors just mentioned or, when looking backward, 
we review most of the public domain in art, what was once the private 
property of Henry G. Marquand, J. Pierpont Morgan, Benjamin Altman, 
Mr. and Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (with his gift 
of the Cloisters, a museum in itself), Marie Antoinette Evans, Paul J. 
Sachs, Grenville L. Winthrop, Martin Ryerson, Charles L. Hutchinson, 
Potter Palmer, Charles L. Freer, Edward D. Libbey, and numbers of 
others in our various cities. We are constantly reminded that our aston- 
ishing art wealth is the result of the imagination and enthusiasm of indi- 
viduals. Economists tell us that the day of the vast private fortunes is 
over, and that the buying of such men as we saw in the past half century 
cannot occur again. If so, and if our museums can be built up only by 
the few great collections still in the homes that saw them develop, then 
the urgent need of museums is to achieve an ability to do by collective 
action what our magnates did for their personal pleasure. 

The road ahead is not clear. In Philadelphia and in St. Louis, the 
purchase of very important works by their museums roused violent criti- 
cism on the ground that the considerable sums involved should have 
been devoted to the material well-being of the community. Such oppo- 
sition has arisen in other places, and will arise again. A board of trustees, 
with or without political restraints by public officials, can never have the 
individual collector's freedom in buying. On the other hand, a museum 
expert whose entire time is given to studying the needs of his institution 
and the resources of the world's market for meeting these needs is in a 
better position to make wise choices than the men of the past (or pres- 
ent), whose best guide was their own preference. If a work of art lay 
within the field of their previous study, if it aroused their imagination (as 
the possessions of our great collectors clearly did), they might pay any 
price for it. But the same men were sometimes appealed to in vain to buy 




18. Veirocchio: Lorenzo de j Medici. 
Courtesy <rf the National Galfciy of Art, Washington, D. C. (Kress Collection). 



72 OUR HISTORY CONTINUES 

things that the foremost authorities declared to be important or even 
necessary. 

To take only two cases: the countless persons who have stood before 
that supreme masterpiece of Rembrandt, the David and Sau], now at 
The Hague, can hardly credit the fact that it was brought to America for 
sale at a price far lower than that which one of our very rich men offered 
for it, too late, when it was in the firm hands of a Dutch collector. Since 
such a mistake could be made about a master whom our people know 
well, a similarly flagrant misunderstanding in the less familiar field of 
Greek antiquities will cause no surprise. Edward Perry Warren used 
amusedly to tell how he had come to Providence, Rhode Island, to super- 
vise the placing of some sculpture he had sent to the museum. As it lay 
on the ground, one of the trustees said, "It looks like a lot of junk; but of 
course you and I know it isn't." Some doubt is permissible as to whether 
both of the gentlemen were quite sure that it wasn't. 

But any multiplication of such anecdotes would take away nothing 
from the essential truth we have been arriving at in the brief survey we 
have made of our museum development: it is the record of a most admir- 
able concern for the public welfare shown by a large number of Ameri- 
cans, and their activity has had the most splendid results. When we take 
up our collections in detail, we shall find them to possess quality as well 
as quantity such as no one in the world, a hundred years ago, or even far 
later, would have dared to prophesy. 

But great developments are still needed. Men are studying them, and 
in any number of places. They do not necessarily involve questions of 
acquisition: indeed, small museums which will probably never have funds 
for important purchases may evolve ideas for the use of works of art, for 
the increase of communal participation in art enjoyment, and for ways of 
inciting and supporting the talent of living artists, above all those of the 
town or region involved. This achievement, desirable as it is, must not 
obscure the more general purpose of the museum: to let the artists them- 
selves and the people as a whole know the best that has been done; they 
can then arrive at values suited to the age in which they live. Before 
surveying our museums themselves, to see how far they go in meeting this 
test, let me cite one great scholar's opinion on the subject at hand. 

In 1910, Dr. Jean Paul Richter wrote in his introduction to the Mond 
Catalogue, "Art collections are not the outcome of accident, but of the 
taste, temperament, and mental equipment of the collector who, in his 
turn, was moulded by the spirit of the times, and limited by his oppor- 
tunities . . . The history of culture abounds in examples of the influence 
of exotic works of art on the civilization of the countries into which they 



OUR HISTORY CONTINUES 73 

have been transplanted. It also bears eloquent witness to the indestruct- 
ible power of the masterpieces of great artists of all times; misunderstood 
or neglected for centuries, their value has always been eventually recog- 
nized, and their message accepted as a revelation/' 



CHAPTER III 

THE ACHIEVEMENT 

THE WORD "revelation" that Dr. Richter so suggestively employed in the 
lines concluding the previous chapter is neither too strong nor too Biblical 
in connotation to characterize the effect achieved by American museum 
development. I said before that our art lovers revealed a deep concern for 
the public welfare by founding and supporting museums; the possibilities 
for creating collections of the highest excellence have been revealed also; 
above all, there is the revelation of a force that our country, as it was even 
a couple of generations ago, could scarcely have imagined: art as an effec- 
tive influence on human affairs. The estimated number of visitors to our 
museums, some 20,000,000 a year, is proof of this statement, for their 
experiences, unknown to people of our pre-museum period, cannot be 
other than an influence on their thinking, and therefore their lives. 

To see the truth of this last statement, we need do no more than 
glance at American conditions. Down to the time when the museums 
began to have adequate collections, and when they began to enter the 
general experience of our people, the material and intellectual factors in 
our civilization were balanced, to a degree, by spiritual forces like religion, 
literature and music, but not by the graphic and plastic arts. Even music 
was still far less generally accessible than it is today, when concerts, the 
phonograph, and the radio have strengthened its effect and more 
through making us acquainted with the better composers than merely 
through the enormous increase of opportunity for hearing music. No one 
who believes that a people's emotional life is related to its character and 
conduct can doubt that our new resources for knowing and using the 
contents of the museum mean a change in America, and for the better. 

To doubt this is to fly in the face of centuries of accumulated evidence 
that mankind expresses in an axiom like "Let me make the songs of a 
nation, and I care not who makes its laws." Bach and Beethoven out- 
weigh Hitler and Himmler in our thinking about the Germans, even 
today. The Psalms have outweighed as an influence all the laws against 
the people who first chanted them, and all the persecutions which that 
people has endured. The spirituals of the American Negro reduce to 
silent awe the men who most bitterly oppose the granting of human 

74 



THE ACHIEVEMENT 75 

rights to the black race (and I say this from actual observation in our 
South) . Similarly, the Sphinx and the Pyramids of Egypt, the sculpture 
of Greece, the architecture and allied arts of medieval France impose 
upon the world a respect for the three nations represented by those works; 
and it is such admiring and grateful respect as no material achievement 
or intellectual prowess could account for. Hugo von Hofmannsthal, in a 
poem on death, says, "A great god of the soul stands before you" and, 
better than to death, the words apply to the force we call art. 

What we had of art before the period of our museums was of course 
not to be compared, even distantly, with what we have today. Yet the 
fact that it was no inconsiderable thing, even then, is essential to remem- 
ber. A glance at our Colonial painters and craftsmen suffices to prove 
what I had said on a previous page, that when our people came here from 
Europe, they were not primitives. For if they were pioneers, and without 
much material evidence of their descent from the cultured stock of 
Europe, they brought with them inherited instincts which, at a bound, 
could produce our great early portraitists, the splendid architects of our 
Colonial buildings, the silversmiths, the glassworkers, and the rest. But 
the gap between instinct and knowledge is a very big one. And the decline 
of artistic genius here, after the Colonial and early republican period, is 
not to be explained by the increase of material activity any more than it 
is to be attributed to the Revolution and our cutting off the ties to the 
mother countries. 

No, our history shows that when we were ready to bring forth another 
line of creative men, like Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins, their 
talent, even if inborn as is proved by their early work demanded 
renewed contact with the great arts of Europe. Whistler, Sargent, and 
Mary Cassatt spent most of their lives abroad. In so doing, they followed 
the example set by Copley and West, when they went to reside in Eng- 
land at an earlier period. And I am positive that all these artists remained 
in Europe so as to do better work. Just after the two painters of our 
Colonial days, Vanderlyn drew the decisive influence on his art from his 
years in Paris. Connecting him in time with the generation I have men- 
tioned (to which also belonged John La Farge and Homer Martin, men 
who likewise derived inspiration from the Old World) , we have William 
Morris Hunt, whose position as an artist and as a teacher is unthinkable 
without his contacts with the galleries of Europe and his personal influ- 
ences, Couture and Millet. 

Today we have a case which apparently reverses the rule just con- 
sidered. Uniquely among our major artists, John Sloan has never been 
across the Atlantic. But his friends, Henri, Glackens, and Prendergast, 



76 THE ACHIEVEMENT 

had lived abroad; and it is clear that the ideas and influences which shaped 
their evolution were at work with Sloan also. His time was already that 
of the museums, the great exhibitions, and the deluge of art books and 
reproductions; so that he is not to be thought of as a man working only 
from inherited instincts such as guided the artless youth of Copley and 
West. Incidentally, for those who imagine that isolation from Europe 
an impossible thing today is needed for the artist to have an American 
character in his work, I will affirm that Prendergast, with his many visits 
to Paris, and with his great technical debt to the modern French school, 
has a Yankee tang to his painting which makes him as American as Sloan. 

So that the fruit of the tree of knowledge need not here be thought 
of as forbidden fruit, we may join with Leonardo once again in his 
words, "The greater the knowledge, the greater the love," that is to say, 
the greater the art. Of course, in recent years the "modern primitives" 
men with little or no knowledge have enjoyed a certain vogue. From 
most of them people are turning away and increasingly, having found that 
Henri Rousseau is sui generis, and that only the most special form of 
talent does not need to develop itself through study of the masters. Those 
last four words sum up Renoir's definition of the training of artists, and 
he very specifically told where it is to be had: in the museum. 

Our excursion into the history of American painters unquestionably 
proves that they confirm the principle uttered by Renoir: having had less 
of art in their surroundings than their European contemporaries, they 
have needed to give stricter attention to the rules (those rendered acces- 
sible in museums) than do Frenchmen, for example, who may be 
directed, almost unconsciously, by the pressure of the artistic atmosphere 
about them. When we can have the same confidence in our surroundings, 
and can feel that our traditions are giving us true guidance (and the sense 
of that sure support is the priceless heritage of the French artist, above 
all) 7 then we shall develop as spontaneously, as naturally, as the men who, 
from birth, stand in the classical line. 

What thus applies to our artists is no less true for our public in general. 
The development of a sense of being at home with art, of feeling it as a 
native, everyday force in our lives, must begin, for most people, with their 
visits to the museum. As the country progresses in understanding, people 
will derive this sense, more and more, from the things they have always 
known in the places where they have lived. Already, there is a responsive- 
ness to art that was not discernible a generation ago. Children who have 
never set foot in the museum are today ready to see its values in a manner 
that their elders, at their age, were not. Ask any educator who has con- 
sidered the matter, even in the parts of the country where opportunities 




19. Michelangelo: Study for the Libyan Sibyl (in the Sistine Chapel) . 
Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 



7 8 THE ACHIEVEMENT 

for experience with art are the most limited, and he will confirm the 
fact of our developing appreciation. The thing is in the air, which is to 
say that it is in the minds of our people. 

The bringing about of such a condition is the real achievement of our 
museum builders, and their work is not to be measured in terms of so and 
so many examples of this master's art, so and so many institutions devoted 
to collecting, exhibiting, or otherwise educating. To speak of these is to 
discuss the means: the end to be attained resides in the character of the 
country. And the museum, in its really brief span of activity, has had 
effects there which defy any estimating today: we se.e them on every 
hand, but only with the passing of time shall we be able to point to 
concrete results. 

Agreeing, as I hope, that the intangible achievement of our museums 
is the essential one, we may proceed to the actual buildings and their 
contents. I find at least 132 institutions, distributed through seventy-five 
cities in all parts of the country, worthy of serious study and, as I have 
said in listing them at the end of this volume, our resources in art works 
are not exhausted by this group of collections. Leaving aside the vast store 
of fine things in private hands as being unconnected with our subject at 
present (though such works will in most cases gravitate to the museums, 
in time) /we omit also the large number of places which have either few 
objects of value, or have not yet reached the stage of discerning perma- 
nent values at all. 

Let no one think, though, that such art galleries should be cast into 
the outer darkness. The histories of some of our greatest collectors record 
that they began with very poor, even absurd, pictures. Sometimes they 
covered up all vestiges of them when they came to understand the fine 
things; but in a few cases at least, the)' retained examples of their errors 
of youth as a lesson in humility; with it, one may add, went the pride of 
overcoming the drawbacks due to lack of opportunity in their early years. 
What is true of individuals applies also to communities. One hates to say 
that poor art works are better than none: often they are the worst 
obstacles to progress, since they impose a false standard, which may cause 
painful effort when the time comes to break its hold. But we can say that 
a poor museum is better than none. At least there is a center for the art 
interest of the community; the person with an idea knows where to turn 
when he wants to give his fellow citizens the benefit of his trip to Min- 
neapolis, to Washington or New York. Or perhaps he has just been 
reading, and the magazine or book that fell into his hands had illustrations 
of works that showed up the poverty of the ones at the public gallery in 
his town. He convinces a group of friends that they ought to give their 



THE ACHIEVEMENT 79 

collection a fresh start, a modest subscription is raised by the committee 
he forms, and before you know it, that community is on its way to have a 
place worthy of the ideals so widely prevalent throughout the country. 

As things stand today, many of our institutions are so far from the 
ideals of the intelligent people who may be found in thousands of places 
that the lack of connection between the gallery and those who might aid 
it is deplorable. Everyone interested in the subject knows such cases. 
Perhaps there is a college professor who sees the weakness of the museum, 
and is afraid to speak up because he may arouse the opposition of a rich 
man who has endowed both museum and the college where our professor 
teaches. Perhaps it is a private collector whose carefully chosen possessions 
make him shrink from discussion with certain tougher-minded persons 
who are in power, and who may cause him to be ridiculed as a highbrow 
or a faddist. Supposing him to be neither, and supposing that college 
professor to have constructive ideas and not just the intellectual smugness 
sometimes found among people who have had leisure for study and 
travel, the two typical individuals I have described are completely wrong 
if they do not take a hand in bettering conditions. 

They may be licked the first time they start something, but the record 
of America shows that with the necessary ability to face resistance, the 
necessary faith in a worth-while effort, and the necessary tact and intelli- 
gence in presenting ideas in advance of those generally held, their fellows 
are not so different from themselves but that progress will be made. 
Sometimes it will come almost overnight: not one of us can realize how 
many people are privately wishing the same thing as ourselves, and need 
only one man's example in order to take a stand in support of him. At 
other times, there has got to be a development of opinion through outside 
influence. It may even start through one town rivaling another in its 
commerce or industry, and then in being more fortunate in those who 
direct its cultural interests. Or the evolution may depend on less easily 
definable causes. 

I can illustrate through telling how this country grew in appreciation 
of a particular artist, van Gogh. There had been a number of fine show- 
ings of his work, any one of which would have been enough to convince 
people of his greatness on one condition: their being ready to see his 
magnificent qualities. But they were not. Finally the tide turned, and 
the artist was acclaimed wherever a big exhibition of his work was shown. 
Was it really because the collection was so big? Was it, as many said, 
because a sensational novel based on the painter's life had just had very 
extensive sales? But Europe, starting off with incomparably more resist- 
ance to van Gogh, had been convinced by his art alone long before the 



8o THE ACHIEVEMENT 

time of that best-seller. One museum after another, in Holland, Germany, 
France and other countries, was securing canvases by the master and 
with no more urging by publicity than that which goes to any artist from 
those inconspicuous people, the critics. Was our public swayed by Euro- 
pean critics or by the European museum directors? It hardly knew of 
their existence, and to talk of the immense number of people who enjoyed 
the exhibition in question as influenced by these factors is as far from the 
truth as the cynical joke that the one thing needed to make the show a 
complete success was a glass case containing the ear that van Gogh cut 
off in a fit of exasperation and despair. 

The explanation of people's change of attitude must be sought in 
workings of the mind far more complex than those indicated by any 
among the various circumstances just enumerated. As with the swing 
of public opinion in wartime or in politics, we were witnessing the effect 
of underground currents or, as they are sometimes called, ground swells; 
few persons could be aware of them until the general movement of 
thought had revolved to a point where it burst forth as the conviction of 
an overwhelming majority. To have told those people, only a few years 
before, that they would come to such ideas would have seemed like telling 
them the impossible. And, a hundred years ago, telling people they 
would have such art possessions as ours would have seemed likewise to 
talk of the impossible. 

If America has museums, it is because, in widely separated places, we 
have brought forth a succession of men who have sensed in themselves 
the need of art, and who have had such belief in their communities as 
made them credit others with thinking as good as their own. Many of 
them lived to see their judgment confirmed by enthusiastic support from 
their cities of the museums they founded. It is a pity that artists espe- 
cially those who die young cannot witness the devotion of later periods 
to their work. With them as individuals, as with museums in the matter 
of art as a whole, time alone is needed to bring about acceptance, and 
sometimes far fewer years than were first imagined. The example of what 
seemed a sudden change of mind about van Gogh may serve to make 
clear what appears, on the surface, to be a sudden growth of museums in 
America. We need to see both phenomena as the result of gradual 
development from within. The statistics on our many hundreds of insti- 
tutions and the expenditure of a great many millions of dollars that I cited 
from Mr, Coleman's book in my first chapter, have greater significance, 
moreover, than the acceptance of a single new artist, even one of van 
Gogh's immense talent. In his case, I have given my reasons for seeing 
our evolution as the result of a necessary change of ideas; and in the mat- 




20. Raphael: The Alba Madonna. 
Courtesy of the National Gafleiy of Art, Washington, D. C. (Mellon ColfectionJ. 



82 THE ACHIEVEMENT 

ter of museums, it is far and away more certain that only an instinct for 
art, latent within us during our early days but ready to come to fruition at 
the right moment, can explain the quite consistent and determined effort 
which this country has devoted to museums for over a century. 

The material results of that effort the great number of fine works 
of all kinds to be seen in many of our cities make one want to go on at 
once to the objects themselves. But before doing so, I am compelled to 
pause once more over an element in those small museums omitted from 
my list. The work of local artists, which friendly fellow townsmen have 
hung in a public place, may appear pretty dull to some visitor accustomed 
to looking for masterpieces. For such a person, let me borrow the story, 
which Van Wyck Brooks retells, of a conversation between Matthew 
Arnold and Sainte-Beuve. The English critic had said that Lamartine was 
not an important poet, to which the Frenchman replied, "Ah, but he is 
important to us." The remark of that great student of literature was not 
a form of chauvinism. It meant that the poet had certain things to say 
which unimportant for a foreign audience were of deep concern to 
the people of his own land. A writer of first-rate genius would, it is true, 
have given to such ideas a universal appeal to which Matthew Arnold 
would not have failed to respond. 

But as a composer often builds his great symphonies on the material 
furnished him by folk tunes, the naive little songs and dances of country 
people, so a painter will use the observation of landscape or human beings 
that he inherits from his predecessors, men who may be of small value in 
themselves; in the hands of the major artist, these seemingly humble 
things develop to the point of deep expression. That explains why we 
now find more of interest in certain works of our Hudson River school 
than we did, say a generation ago. We were not wrong then in seeing the 
pictures as rather uninspired performances; we are not wrong now in 
seeing in them the possibilities of an important art expressing the special 
look of our country, and profiting by the sincerity (even if a weakly 
expressed sincerity) evidenced by those earlier men. Similarly, and in the 
field of things already accomplished, the fine portraits of Copley were 
prepared for by many an old limner, who, in his day, gave a crabbed but 
striking record of the faces of New England worthies; and John Vander- 
lyn produced his superb work partly because there was an earlier artist of 
his name, Pieter Vanderlyn/if that attribution is correctly given to certain 
stiff and harsh paintings that have come down to us. 

Evidently, the character of these primitives is entirely distinct from 
that of our provincials of today. Yet the two types are to be approached 
in the same fashion. We came to enjoy those early men through recep- 



THE ACHIEVEMENT 83 

tiveness toward painting or sculpture that is unskilled, or inadequately 
grounded in a study of the masters, or that lacks contact with any creative 
school. Let an open-minded person approach the present-day men out- 
side the big centers in the same spirit as that which led us to admire our 
"primitives," and there will result the pleasure to be derived from minor 
artists of genuine talent; their number may well run, throughout the 
country, into the thousands. 

Raising my eyes from this page, I see on my walls the work of several 
of such painters. They are so good that only when using the exacting 
discrimination of the critic would one speak of them as "minor"; they are 
artists; and, most often, that is enough to say. There is nothing in com- 
mon between them and certain accomplished but empty producers of 
work that has at times been accepted as "American," perhaps to disguise 
the fact that it is in reality no more than bad European. Such censure, 
both of the artists and the "appreciators," is pretty direct, as I am well 
aware. But it does not go a bit too far, in view of what is no less than a 
belittling of the whole country: and that is an accurate phrase for what 
is done when bad work is held up as "American/ 7 The circumstance that 
it usually deals with American themes is of course quite irrelevant: we 
are not discussing the landscape or other features of this country, but the 
pictures and their painters. "Name them!" was the crisp injunction 
that an old friend of mine, a lawyer, used to come out with, on occasions 
like this one. Sometimes one should indeed be specific, but in a book like 
the present one, I believe it preferable to let any reader who feels so dis- 
posed do the naming by himself. 

If you grant that inferior works have been received into our galleries 
on an ill-founded claim that they were "important to us," as Sainte-Beuve 
put it, you may still ask, "How could we have distinguished them from 
the genuine things which, even if admittedly less than master work, you 
were defending a moment ago?" The question really means, "How are 
we to distinguish a work of art?" For what the bad pictures referred to 
essentially lack are the constant and permanent qualities of art. Matters 
as important as those, and alleged to be well decided, ought to be avail- 
able for reference, like the laws in the statute books. And so they are, 
these laws of art, only (and again as with our national or state laws) 
questions of interpretation arise. In the great majority of art questions, 
as in most legal questions, a glance at the authorities is enough. But 
sometimes there come before us problems that were not provided for in 
our code; or again a case arises in which equally honest contestants claim 
to see quite opposing results, when the accepted precedents are laid in 
the balance. 



84 THE ACHIEVEMENT 

To be more specific, there is the always new question of modern art 
with most of its practitioners destined for rejection, while others will 
be added to the roll of the masters; how are we to tell them apart? And in 
the second class of cases I have proposed, how are we to tell whether a 
newly discovered "Vermeer" is really a sensational addition to the scant 
list of the great painter's works, or a shameless ( if skillful ) forgery? Where 
are your vaunted "authorities/* your law and your prophets? 

The answer is very simple: in the museums (see the supplementary 
list at the back of this book, as far as the art resources of the United 
States are concerned.) And no statement about those arbiters of 
decision 7 those museums of our country, is more weighty than this one: 
that the idea of art deriving from them is no less than identical with the 
idea of art afforded by the great ancient museums and monuments of the 
Old World. The men who have built up our galleries have given us very 
ample material for arriving at a dependable knowledge of art, even if we 
could still use many more documents than we have. Since the basic 
things in human nature do not change from century to century, and since 
the essentials of art change no more than the race, whose deeper instincts 
and ideals they express, the one question we need to ask ourselves is not 
among those asked just before: in facing an issue of art, ancient or mod- 
ern, the question is whether we have looked deeply enough into the 
classic works. All of truth is there; and it is not I who am laying down the 
law; to give but one example: Renoir uttered the words, "There is nothing 
outside the classics." But even as he did, immediately after saying that, 
we must recall the necessity of being able to recognize the classics, for 
they often appear in forms that were previously unknown. 

After making so big a claim for the significance of our museums, we 
may at last go on to a review of their contents. Exclusion from them 
might seem to be the lot of one of the supreme arts of mankind, which is 
architecture. (For the moment, I leave aside reproductions, like models 
of buildings, casts, and photographs.) But there have been coming into 
our museums, especially in recent years, considerable fragments of archi- 
tecture such as Gothic portals, with columns, sculpture from the actual 
buildings, and other significant pieces from the great old cities. And so, 
persons of educated and lively imagination can, in their minds, recon- 
struct ensembles. It must not be forgotten that no work of art is abso- 
lutely complete in itself: a painting by Diirer which seems so perfect that 
nothing could be added to it was perhaps once part of an altar, which was 
part of a chapel; and you did not get the full effect, even of the Diirer, 
until you saw that chapel in connection with a larger whole, the buildings 
of which it was but a single unit. Or, restricting oneself just to the picture, 




21. Bronzino: Vittoria Cotonna. 
Courtesy of the Al H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco. 



86 THE ACHIEVEMENT 

we know how the masters borrowed from one another, and it may well be 
that you cannot appreciate thoroughly the work in question, seemingly 
so independent of everything else, until you have seen what a certain 
figure in the composition owes to a sketch that Diirer made from some- 
thing by Bellini or Raphael. 

More important yet, since an artist's whole life is a process of attempt- 
ing to surpass his former achievement, one needs to know the relation of 
a given performance to what, in the master's career, went before it and 
to what came after it. We thought we knew him, after years of loving 
study; all at once we find him different (usually better) than what we 
thought, for the sight of a work unknown to us before amplifies our 
comprehension, and affects every element in it. 

With such a conception of our necessary completing of the impres- 
sions from art objects of every kind, one may agree that architecture, with 
all its dependence on size, light, and a thousand other circumstances, may 
yet create a part of its effect through the fragments that our museums can 
show. In the Metropolitan Museum in New York, a thrilling example of 
this is a small bit of marble broken from the egg-and-dart decoration of 
the Erechtheum. To watch the light move in that translucent material, 
to see the trace of the stone-cutter's chisel as he worked, now with a long 
regular plane, as in the "dart," now with sensitive, curving planes, as in 
the "egg," is to follow the course of the Greek architect at the very height 
of his country's glory; for he himself worked in masses of moving light 
and shadow, dividing them up and reuniting them as in that small frag- 
ment, by firm, clear lines and by subtle, unseizable transitions which no 
later men (not even those of the time just after his own) could use again. 
Emerson said that the universe globes itself in a drop of dew. Evidently 
that is the truth only for the person whose mind can grasp such a relation- 
ship; and the ability to rebuild as a mental image the wonderful thing 
that was the Erechtheum in the fifth century B.C. is not to be achieved 
at a blow; but the effort to reach it (if "effort" is the right word for so 
joyous an experience) is well rewarded. 

To see again the close relationship of sculpture and architecture, 
glance now at the throne (or altar) in the Boston Museum, an object of 
such importance that with it we equaled the achievement of the Museo 
delle Terme in Rome when it acquired the famous Ludovisi throne. The 
design of the work as a whole is the work of an architect; the carving of 
the figures on the sides is sculpture. And if we grasp the fact that the two 
arts are inseparable here, we have made a step, at least, toward under- 
standing the closeness to architecture of the Italian frescoes which we 
possess, for they were a necessary part of their buildings. In many cases, 



THE ACHIEVEMENT 87 

the buildings were indeed conceived from the start as being illuminated 
by the painter's work on walls which, without such aid, would have had 
their severe spaces diversified by architectural ornament. Mention of that 
minor craft, if it may be so designated, brings us back to our idea that all 
forms of art have the same source. The beauty of architectural ornament 
during the Renaissance causes us to remember that men turned from vast 
frescoes to paintings of a miniature fineness or to the work of the gold- 
smith. Once again we have proof of the truth in those Roman words 
affirming that art is one thing. If I am dividing it up by means of the 
several techniques it employs, I do so to bring a semblance of order into 
this survey of material covering the entire world. 

To attempt a description of the collections of classical art in our two 
chief museums would be to expose oneself to overmuch of temptation in 
a book of this compass. Two general observations must be made. One is 
that precisely the institutions which have.had the longest experience of 
their problem, and the greatest opportunity to deal with it, are the ones 
which exhibit with incomparably the greatest fullness the arts of Greece 
and Rome. For centuries looked on as the foundation and chief support 
of European (including American) thought, it is significant that, as our 
museums reach maturity, the classic works should again receive such 
attention. The other point may be summed up in the observation made 
by a Viennese student, on first seeing our collections: "In Europe, we 
have huge quantities of objects that have been deposited in the museums 
from time to time, when great private collections have entered our 
galleries, or when the results of excavations have been acquired there. Of 
course there are tremendously important things amid this mass of 
material; but here I see careful selection, to bring out by appropriate 
examples the various developments among these arts, with regard also foi 
types of execution and of subject matter. There is little repetition, and an 
astonishingly wide field is covered." 

Applying also to the policy of American curators in assembling collec- 
tions of paintings, prints, and other art works, the remarks of our visitor 
were especially true of the classical objects referred to at the moment. 
The words quoted describe, to a great extent, the advantage of a sys- 
tematic building up of a museum, in contrast to the chance purchasing 
(even when most happy in its result) characteristic of individual collec- 
tions. And the desire to make our possessions in the classical field illustra- 
tive of historical and aesthetic evolution has not prevented our obtaining 
things which, seen in isolation, are of surpassing importance. Among 
these, mention may be made of the seventh-century statue of a youth, in 
the Metropolitan's hall of the earlier Greek arts; it is to be classed with the 



88 THE ACHIEVEMENT 

chief examples of its type anywhere in the world. Now consider the 
Cesnola collection of Cypriote antiquities in the same museum. It is 
unequaled for works of such provenance, and recalls the results in Euro- 
pean galleries, of excavations like that which General di Cesnola con- 
ducted when he was the American consul in Cyprus. To pass on from 
even the limited part of the collection now shown, and to stand before 
the great archaic figure referred to just before, is to realize the aptness of 
that Viennese observer's noting of the difference between possessing 
quantity (a most valuable thing in its allowing a subject to be viewed 
from many sides) and possessing single, carefully selected objects of out- 
standing merit. 

At the same museum, once more, there is no lack of other pieces of a 
very high order, some of them among the small archaic works, others of 
large dimension and riper development. Such a one is the fifth-century 
male torso, which, though a mere fragment, is yet charged with the liber- 
ating power that permits a competent student to complete it in his mind. 
Seeing it by this means as it was twenty-four centuries ago, one great 
authority insists that it is from the hand of Phidias himself. Certainly we 
have something very near to what we know of the work of Scopas in the 
head of a youth in warmly colored marble. A fragment from a grave stele 
shows us sculpture in the round as Greece knew it at the highest point of 
her development; another work, the head of a young goddess, gives us 
again the strong wine that only the originals of Hellas can offer, while 
important marbles of Roman workmanship allow us at least to glimpse 
certain lost works of the older school, especially those of Polyclitus. An 
entire court, suggested by such places in ancient buildings, reviews the 
sculpture of purely Roman conception; the examples of the Republican 
period, when portraiture was at its finest, are particularly fortunate. 

We turn again to Boston, and see fourth-century works like the lovely 
Maiden of Chios, and another girl's head of the highest quality that 
Greece knew at the time of Praxiteles. Enthralling as they are, they still 
do not attain the impressiveness of a sculpture representing a woman's 
head, perhaps that of a goddess, and doubtless but little later than the 
Elgin marbles; it has that same unapproachable beauty which dis- 
tinguishes the masterpieces from the Parthenon. At the dawn of the art 
which was to reach that culmination stands one of the great rarities among 
Boston's treasures: a small figure from Crete, one of the few originals of 
importance to leave the island. 

Something comparable to its primitive fecundity is seen again in New 
York when we reach the three Etruscan works representing warriors, and 
the chariot entirely covered with reliefs in bronze, where similar figures 




22. Caiavaggio: Portrait of a Lady. 
Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, San Diego. 



o THE ACHIEVEMENT 

appear. The discovery of the giant sculptures in the round was one of the 
outstanding events in recent archeology; no other museum, save one in 
Rome, can show such pieces. And again a unique exhibit from Italian 
soil is the series of frescoes found at a villa near Herculaneum. Save at 
neighboring Pompeii and Naples, no such works are to be seen anywhere 
in the world; so that many a European artist, coming to our country with- 
out having visited southern Italy, has been struck by the opportunity 
offered by New York for knowing what the art of painting was among the 
Greeks. Of its earlier periods, everything has vanished; and it is only 
through the incredible preservation of the two towns at the foot of 
Vesuvius that we have the source of inspiration these works afford. For, 
more impressive than their rarity or the miracle of their very existence, is 
their value as art. We return to them when we have studied the greatest 
achievements of European painting from its renascence, a thousand and 
more years after Pompeii, through its development in the centuries that 
followed, and until today: the perfection with which the Greeks mastered 
the art seems only the more astounding. Their vision continues in the 
related, if less free forms of ancient mosaics, such as are to be seen in 
splendid examples from Antioch, in the collections of the Worcester 
Museum and the Baltimore Museum. 

With these works, we are reaching out to sources of art beyond the 
limits of our chief ancestral countries, those of Europe. Still intimately 
related to them is Egypt, which exercised a power of fascination for 
Americans during a considerable part of our history. That led them, as 
we have seen it do also in Cyprus, to original work in exploring and pre- 
serving the heritage of the past. Results of this are to be seen in the 
Metropolitan's fine collections from the ancient land of the Nile. A tomb 
of massive stone blocks, transported to our shores and set up again as it 
was in Egypt, bears witness to the static genius of the mighty civilization; 
it is again an example in our museums of important specimens of architec- 
ture. Entire walls, with incised and painted decoration, magnificent 
sculpture in the round or in relief, statuettes of a perfection that only 
Egypt knew (seen also in the master models of her sculptors), ceramics, 
jewelry, and other art forms round out the story of the race whose span of 
existence exceeds all others. 

As is so often the case in the arts, supreme examples of Egyptian cul- 
ture are found at a very early stage in its evolution. Of these greatest 
marvels, as most authorities regard them, the museum of Boston displays 
a large group. It aroused the especial enthusiasm of Julius Meier-Graefe, 
when that distinguished critic visited this country, soon after a sojourn in 
Egypt which led him to consider its art as the summit of all human effort. 



THE ACHIEVEMENT 9 i 

These Mycerinus sculptures, of the first historic period of the great land, 
usher in a succession of grand works, and we follow their course from 
millennium to millennium until, with the invasion of Alexander, Greek 
influences merge with the older ones to produce an art uniting the two 
continents. The incredibly living portraits of this last Egypt are to be seen 
at their best in a group belonging to the Metropolitan. Again it is our two 
chief museums which afford by far the widest opportunity in America to 
enjoy Egyptian art. 

If a patriotic Egyptian of today were to oppose a mention of those 
portraits from the Fayum region as marking the final subsiding of his 
country, the reply would be that Christianity inaugurates an era so com- 
pletely creative that the beautiful art of the Copts, even though produced 
in the ancient land, owes most to the new impulses in human life. With 
all the rare quality it draws from the age-old traditions of Egypt, it is still 
only a provincial expression of the genius which centered at Byzantium 
and there produced the first masterpieces of the new era. They are largely 
in the form of great mosaics, which must perforce remain on the walls at 
Istanbul and the other places for which they were created. That precludes 
our having them in our museums; yet we may claim credit for their being 
restored to the world, since Americans were active in persuading the 
Turkish government to allow the removal of the whitewash applied when 
Islam decreed the covering up of the great images. We added to the 
museum record we had made abroad when our scholars and workmen 
helped to give the stupendous mosaics back to the world. (Not to return 
to the question too often, let a few others among our achievements in 
conservation be mentioned here. They include such widely separated 
sites as those of the Agora in Athens, Rheims and Versailles in France, 
and the ancient cities of the Mayas in Yucatan. ) 

Admirable copies of the Santa Sophia mosaics in Istanbul were ex- 
hibited at the Metropolitan, and had as one of their results an increase 
of our realization that the enamels in the Morgan collection at the same 
museum, and also of a Byzantine school, were possessions of simply 
inestimable importance. Small in size and in number, the changeless 
glow of their material carries on across the centuries the wonder that 
occurred when the spirituality of the early Christians united with the 
Orient's love of color. Other, and magnificent examples of Byzantine art 
are to be seen at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, where Harvard Uni- 
versity conducts courses for advanced students. 

We see this quality in ceramics, rugs, Persian illumination, textiles, 
and other expressions of the "abstract" genius of peoples who care more 
for the aesthetic properties, color and design, than for a full representing 



z, THE ACHIEVEMENT 

if appearances. Rich stores of their work appear in a number of our 
nuseums. Among them mention may be made of the Iranian Institute in 
v[ew York, and the Philadelphia Museum, with its ensembles of Near 
Eastern art. 

Such matters bring us to quite modern times; but now our geographic 
progression takes us back to an age as remote as the oldest Egypt. The 
Mesopotamian lands, which saw the mighty civilization of the Sumerians 
or Chaldeans, have yet to give back to the world their most important 
production. The Louvre, until now the incomparable repository for such 
art, still points to work more impressive than any that we know today. 
The University of Pennsylvania, at the University Museum, in Philadel- 
phia, has a good number of remarkable minor works of this art, obtained 
through its own researches; Boston has a head of the finest type like those 
in Paris; but on the whole, our institutions are poor in Babylonian mate- 
rial. The same must be said, however, of the British and German 
museums. 

The Assyrians, who followed the Chaldeans at a later time, can be 
better studied in our collections. Their grandiose production may be 
appreciated in an important group of sculptures at the Metropolitan, and 
I have shown (p. 44) the wide distribution of such material at our old 
centers of theological study; they display objects from the same vast palace 
that sent to the British Museum and the Louvre their wonderful examples 
of Assyrian art. 

Going farther into Asia, we are beginning to get a conception of 
India's artistic genius through the expert research and collecting of the 
Boston Museum, and through work being done by the galleries of New 
York, Chicago, Kansas City, and other places. If the viewing of life, reli- 
gion, and art thereby revealed seems distant, and alien to our own, the 
creative role of the museum is rendered only the clearer for that reason. 
Should we indeed allow ourselves to make decisions as to a superiority on 
the part of one culture or the other (and the result of art study tends to 
destroy the notion that differences mean either superiority or the reverse) , 
at least we should be judging on the first-hand evidence of work that leaps 
over the barriers of language, time, and space. 

These barriers are formidable when we approach that world-in-itself 
which China may easily appear to be. Yet it is with notable success that 
our institutions have faced the immense span of centuries, and the vast 
spaces covered by this faraway art. To be sure, commercial importation 
had for hundreds of years familiarized us with certain of the later produc- 
tion of the country, and at Dresden, at Delft, in England, in France, and 
in Mexico, ceramics were produced under the influence of the Chinese. 



94 THE ACHIEVEMENT 

Meticulousness was denoted in French by a special use of the word 
chinois, while in a different allusion to the race, chinoiseries were decora- 
tive works, usually with an element of the grotesque, based on the design 
and material of Chinese lacquer and porcelain; they were also produced 
by English craftsmen. Of all such work, European as well as Oriental, 
there is a very wide representation in our museums, often those of old 
seaports that once traded with the East. 

But knowledge of what were, in reality, decadent arts of China rend- 
ered all the more astonishing the contact, reserved for the nineteenth and 
twentieth centuries, with the great classical schools which now determine 
our thought of the ancient people. Its expression in masterpieces, traced 
back to ever more remote periods, is accessible to students in the galleries 
of a goodly number of our cities. Observation of their visitors will furnish 
very ample testimony to the fact that we have long since passed the stage 
represented by Horatio Greenough when he spoke of Oriental art as the 
ideal of ugliness (thereby merely sharing the opinion of innumerable 
Europeans, including some in high places) . "The greater the knowledge, 
the greater the love" is the true phrase returning to one's lips still another 
time when we see the crowds that enjoy the rooms displaying China's 
grand sculpture, her majestically proportioned bronze vessels, and her 
endlessly varied ceramics. 

For our progress along these lines, or certainly for the pioneer work 
in it, we have to look again to Boston's great collections. Other cities are 
forging ahead, however, under the spur of our eager enthusiasm for 
Chinese art a field so wide that we do not need to pause over claims 
for pre-eminence made for one museum or another, according as it has 
developed its holdings among the periods covered by this school. In 
Boston, again, the early prominence of Japanese experts, among those 
who developed the collections there, explains the emphasis on the art of 
the island empire. Yet, if the latter's monumental sculpture and classical 
painting do not equal the Chinese models for such work, they have certain 
qualities of their own, and the humbler art of the Japanese print was a 
real creation. It has been widely appreciated in our country, and the color 
prints are to be found in important groups throughout our cities. Often, 
indeed, Japanese collectors have bought back, at American auctions, 
examples of their art which had been sought for here during the time 
when native connoisseurship had been at fault, and had allowed too 
important specimens to depart to the West. 

That phenomenon occurred when Japan, having been opened up to 
Occidental ideas after long centuries of isolation, came to attach to 
European art such value as made the country tend to become oblivious 



THE ACHIEVEMENT 95 

to the beauty of the things which had sprung from its own soil. If there is 
excuse for such a mistake, it is one, nevertheless. We can see this very 
plainly about a distant people, but we do not so easily see it about a people 
nearer home in fact, the Americans. 

This term, which usually denotes the inhabitants of the United States, 
has however been universally employed in a wider sdnse by Spain and her 
former colonies, and for centuries. It is their very correct word for all the 
peoples of America which is indeed a far bigger and older place than 
the United States. The great monumental arts of the older America 
were produced in the lands to the south of our border; but some of the 
most poignant expressions of the American soil are those which saw the 
light in our own part of the continent. I shall have more to say of this 
question on later pages. Our present concern is with museums, and so I 
must register a fact which, to many of us, means only one thing: that we 
have very seriously underestimated our resources. The fact is, then, that 
in most cases our museums of art are not the ones where we have been 
keeping magnificent native works which look back to the long past of the 
land before the white man saw it. For the art of our ancient peoples, one 
must usually go to the museums of natural history, which the original 
Americans enter for reasons of anthropology, a somewhat superior branch 
of zoology. 

Because of this placing I have included institutions of science in the 
supplementary list. Fortunately, there are certain museums devoted 
wholly to art which devote space to the works containing our pre-Colum- 
bian heritage. Some of it is very much alive today, as with the Indians of 
our Southwest. They have indeed been bringing forth painting and 
pottery of renewed and creative vitality, thanks in part to help which they 
have had from museums like that of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and to 
officials of the Department of the Interior at Washington. Thus, in the 
strictest interpretation of the institution we are considering, the art of the 
Indians comes within its purview; for if there is one point where museums 
are important, it is in their influence on living art. Even when we come to 
peoples now dispersed or killed off, we are still dealing with art of such 
quality that it stands comparison with the finest of the Old World I 
regret that Meier-Graefe, when in this country, did not visit the Ohio 
State Museum, at Columbus. Having been in Egypt only a short time 
before, he was still under the spell of its greatness, as was noted pre- 
viously; he would none the less (or perhaps, all the more) have felt the 
kinship of genius between the men who fashioned the old Egyptian 
hawks, dogs, and other beasts, and the old Ohio men who carved the 
same animals for their delight and ours. 



96 THE ACHIEVEMENT 

As for the mighty things of the Aztecs, the Toltecs, the Mayas, and 
the other great peoples of the lands to the south of us, we need no art 
critic to tell us that they are on the plane reached by Chaldea and Assyria 
and the China of the classic arts. Lately, a painter, seeing the photograph 
of an Aztec head at Harvard's Fogg Museum, exclaimed, "Why, it's just 
like the archaic Greek!" And similar thoughts come even to laymen who 
visit the collections of the Museum of Natural History and the Museum 
of the American Indian in New York, the Brooklyn Museum, the Univer- 
sity Museum in Philadelphia, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Chicago 
Museum of Natural History, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the 
Museum of Tulane University in New Orleans or indeed any of our col- 
lections where the ancient art of America is adequately displayed. 

Also to be seen mainly in museums of natural science are the arts of 
the African Negroes and of the South Sea islanders. Yet the work of the 
first-named group exercised an important influence on modern art, and 
that of the second is being discovered as a thing of enormous expressive- 
ness; the same is true of certain creations of the Eskimo, a race which, of 
course, connects America with Asia and Europe. 

Mention of the latter continent, to which most of our people trace 
their descent, leads to the statement of a belief increasingly held by 
students, even among those who have looked with intelligence at the won- 
derful things of the exotic races. No breach of modesty occurs if we affirm 
that it is in Europe, after all, that art attains its highest development. I 
say this without opposing an idea once expressed in admirable words by 
Egisto Fabbri, who was as important for his thinking on art as for his own 
production in painting and architecture. He said that very frequently the 
most impressive art is the one which comes earliest in the history of a 
people, with the so-called primitives. He illustrated this idea by the par- 
ticular grandeur of the oldest books of the Bible and the awe-inspiring 
quality in the oldest arts of Egypt. The observation holds again when we 
come to the first great expressions of Italy and France. And so Mr. Fabbri 
had a firm basis for his differentiation of science and art: the former piles 
its attainment always higher through cumulative effort, while the latter 
may soar to its loftiest flight at its beginnings, which no successors to the 
founders of the school can equal. Therefore I did not speak of the art 
we now approach in our museums as the grandest, but as the one which 
has been brought to the highest development 

European painting, as rather few men have noticed, partakes of both 
the mental activities described by the Italo-American artist I have just 
recalled: it has a scientific character as well as an aesthetic one. Perhaps 
that double virtue, shared by no other school to any similar degree, gives 



98 THE ACHIEVEMENT 

to our art its peculiar vitality and its mysterious richness. Therefore our 
museums have a strong argument for studying the historical evolution of 
European painting. Since we are speaking of art museums, the criterion 
of first importance is, of course, the art in painting. It is this which has 
primarily occuped the minds of our officials, as we must recognize even 
when we think of their judgment as faulty. I am under no illusion about 
there being any finality in my own judgment, but at least I have attempted 
to consider our collections from the standpoint of their artistic soundness. 

A splendidly high level has been attained in them, as should be 
affirmed from the outset The condition did not come about all at once: 
no one who can recall the look of our galleries as they were, say forty years 
ago, will fail to agree that their progress in quantity of possessions, extra- 
ordinary as it is, nowhere nearly equals their rise in the scale of quality. 
One need not go back even half of these forty years to remember on our 
walls pictures that would not be tolerated for a week, if they were hung 
again today. Protests would come spontaneously from artists and laymen, 
collectors and critics. The museums, incomparably more than any other 
agency, have been building up in our public a sense of what is valid 
and to a degree that no one would have ventured to prophesy. As this 
section of the present book is entitled "The Achievement," it seems clear 
that the state of affairs I have just described is to be written large into the 
record. And this is of course worlds away from any thought that the 
process has gone far enough. 

But it is high time to pass on to at least the most salient of our posses- 
sions among the paintings themselves. Far more than sculpture, they are 
that expression of art which has chiefly fascinated American buyers. Even 
so, and with the outlay of prodigious sums of money, by far the larger part 
of the master work in painting still remains across the Atlantic, and also 
the best of it. The galleries of Europe had a long start over ours, and were 
from the beginning enormously closer to the sources of great works, not 
to mention frescoes and other decorations which must always remain in 
the places where they were painted. Coming, however, to nineteenth- 
and twentieth-century painting, in collecting which we began on equal 
terms with the Europeans, it is possible to see certain phases of the great 
modern development that may be studied in America as well if not better 
than abroad. Once again, comparisons are odious; besides, Frenchmen 
might say that when they let their modern works depart, it was after 
extracting from them what was essential, and that as the possessors of a 
living art, their real concern was to assimilate its qualities, and not simply 
to own certain rectangles of framed canvas. 

Our verv success in collecting modern art brings up, however, buying 



THE ACHIEVEMENT 99 

problems that may as well be faced here. The argument of French collec- 
tors in defending themselves for letting masterpieces leave their country 
is not to be divorced from the money side of the matter from, in short, 
the buying problems just mentioned This observation may seem to 
accord with the sneering of a certain type of persons in Europe, Latin- 
America, and elsewhere who have dubbed our country "the land of the 
dollar." But the money we have been sending abroad for art works, this 
last hundred years or so, is not the significant part of the matter. 

Barye remained poor, and so you may, if you like, interpret his words 
of gratitude to William Walters on a material basis, though, to an artist 
of his grand character, the American collector's insight into the beauty of 
his work was probably what counted most. Millet, also in need of money 
as he usually was, could not have been indifferent to the financial support 
given him by William Morris Hunt; but what is even more certain to 
anyone able to appreciate that "man out of the Bible" (Theophile Sil- 
vestre's description of Millet) is that the painter cared most of all for the 
encouragement that a talented colleague gave him at a time when but 
few realized his greatness. We have heard the words of Courbet when the 
Boston artists and collectors raised their subscription to buy The Quariy: 
they tell far more about his triumph over hostile criticism and the stupid- 
ity of the Salon than about the money he got. Corot, Manet, and 
Cezanne, to name three others who had early and important aid from 
America, were men of means; so that what was essential to them was 
certainly the moral support with which to face the attacks constantly 
leveled at their art. 

All of this adds up to a conviction that what we really did, as regards 
these artists, was to offer. an example of creative connoisseurship not 
unworthy of the best traditions of Europe. When a special pride of its 
princes was their ability to obtain the finest art works of their time, they 
did so less by money than by a species of judgment that testifies to a 
patron's affinity with the artists, and to his being worthy to have their 
work within his walls. Moreover, during the period of the Old Masters, 
things were simpler for a painter. All he had to do was excel in his work. 
Raphael and Titian had rivals, as we know, but it was among great men 
who had nothing in common with the false artists so generally accepted 
throughout the nineteenth century. Their hold on the juries of exhibi- 
tions, on commissions for official portraits or decorations, and on the 
museums, was almost absolute. It remains so in too many quarters even 
today, but when Renoir and Degas, Pissarro and Sisley appeared, they had 
to struggle amid a mass of spurious productions such as we find in no 
time throughout the period of the Old Masters. 



ioo THE ACHIEVEMENT 

Samuel P. Avery, our commissioner to the Paris Exposition of 1867, 
had done yeoman service in educating our public to appreciate the great 
Frenchmen of the romantic period. He had helped in obtaining master- 
pieces for the Walters and Vanderbilt collections, and had presented to 
the New York Public Library his own collection of prints, numbering 
well over 17,000 items. But it was only when Durand-Ruel launched the 
work of the great Impressionists in America that the turning point in their 
fight for recognition was reached. Before that, however, two of our artists, 
William M. Chase and J. Alden Weir, had gone to Manet's studio and 
bought from him the Girl with a Parrot and the Boy with a Sword. They 
had been commissioned to get pictures for a New York lawyer, Erwin 
Davis, who soon afterward presented the two magnificent works to the 
Metropolitan at a time when every other museum in the world still 
shut its doors against the great painter. 

The story continued, with ever more emphasis on the appreciation of 
contemporary work in this country. And so in 1913, American collectors 
were simply following along their own road when they bought all four of 
the pictures that Marcel Duchamp exhibited at the Armory Show. The 
painter did not have the immense European reputation which rendered 
easier our acceptance of Barye, Courbet, and Manet. It was on its merits 
that Duchamp's work was acquired; the buyers wanted it for their study 
and enjoyment, as I know personally, having been in charge of sales at 
the exhibition. In one case, the purchase was made by a man of modest 
means, for whom the money meant a sacrifice. The fact belongs in the 
record of our museums, since all four of the Duchamp pictures are now 
in public collections. And if the most striking examples of the American 
attitude toward buying are those concerned with modern art, where reli- 
ance on one's own judgment is more necessary than with works which 
have stood the test of time, the characterization here given still holds 
when we observe many of our collectors of the older arts. 

Yet, the most remarkable performance of all was not with the 
ancients, but with the moderns, for they were the always more compelling 
interest of that farsighted student of politics and finance, literature and 
art, John Quinn. A successful lawyer, he had every reason to believe that 
his large earnings would continue; but the point is that he put every cent 
of them into his collection, and, at his death, it was necessary to take 
drastic measures with the twenty-two hundred works he owned for his 
estate to amount to anything at all. Thanks to the general level of appre- 
ciation in this country, the paintings and sculpture were sold for what 
seemed a considerable sum, which would today seem a very small sum 
for Quinn's superb treasury of the great moderns. 



102 THE ACHIEVEMENT 

It is not for the sake of our patriotic pride that I recount such facts, 
but for their relation to museum policy. If it were proper for our galleries 
to speculate on the winners in the grand handicap race for high prices, 
we might garnish our records with sensational rises in the market. That 
is, however, one aspect of the matter that does not concern the museum 
rightly understood or the good private collector either. Both buy 
from conviction, irrespective of the passing whims of fashion or com- 
merce. It is when we approach master work (about which conviction 
must be strongest) that we come to very important factors in a program 
for acquisitions. 

A museum's purchasing policy may set itself the goal of stimulating 
the public or that of developing broadly representative collections. The 
small museum, which cannot hope to have a sufficient number of works 
to cover the whole field of art, may well decide to use its resources for 
acquiring a relatively few paintings, pieces of sculpture, etc., but such as 
will most effectively stir the visitors' admiration. Indeed, even in a large 
collection, like that formed by Andrew W. Mellon, it is clear that he 
concentrated on masterpieces. A too easy observation made by visitors to 
the National Gallery is that the Kress contributions do not equal the 
Mellon in quality. But Mr. Kress was not competing for sensational 
possessions. Although many of his pictures are of the highest importance, 
the ideal of collecting they represent is a rounded vision of the various 
periods under study. 

This distinction masterpieces only or a rounded vision is to be 
noted in the purchasing done by a number of our best museums. It 
should not be confused with the thing that a stamp collector does when 
he tries to cover all the blank spaces in his album. We do have buying of 
that mechanical type, just as we have men whose purchases arise from 
snobbery, prestige hunting, a desire to make their names live on after 
their deaths, the mere competitive instinct, and other causes of no 
interest here or anywhere else, save for the individuals concerned. But 
if American as well as foreign museums have in the long run reaped 
profit from even quite unpleasant traits among their benefactors, our 
concern at present is with the way we have developed collections of 
general and not merely personal interest. 

The buying of a work far below the masterpiece class may be of great 
importance for the understanding of a historical evolution. With what a 
thrill does one discover, at the museum of Brussels, the relatively insig- 
nificant pictures by the teachers of Rubens, whose rise to dazzling heights 
becomes far more explicable when one sees how much was done to pre- 
pare his flight. I return also to the idea of European art as a thing having 



THE ACHIEVEMENT ,03 

some of the elements of a science. The constant preoccupation of the 
Chinese with pure beauty is accompanied by a willingness to resume the 
course of his ancestors if an Occidental, speaking under correction, 
may so express the idea. It would explain what for so many of us is a lack 
of live evolution in their art, a "monotonous grandeur," as even an Orien- 
tal, Okakura Kakuzo, the brilliant Japanese critic, expressed the matter. 

If to the sense of beauty and to the study of the classics is added 
research into aspects of nature and vision that have not previously 
appeared in art, we have that attitude of the scientist which is so charac- 
teristic among European artists, and which has restored movement to 
their schools at moments when perfect attainment seemed about to cause 
stagnation. Often it takes time before we can appreciate the aesthetic 
value of a man who at first seemed merely to advance scientific knowledge. 
Thus, the old Italian writers dwell on the discovery of perspective by 
Paolo Uccello who, to modern art lovers, is simply one of the very great 
men of painting, and that because of the beauty of his work. People tend 
to underestimate Claude Monet because he gave such intense study to 
the phenomena of light; but his wide production contains a large majority 
of pictures possessing indubitable aesthetic value. 

Among American artists represented in our museums, three may be 
mentioned in this connection; significantly enough, all of them were 
great teachers. Only in recent times have people realized that S. F. B. 
Morse was an admirable painter, and not just the man who gave us 
telegraphy. Then there is Dr. William Rimmer, who was long thought of 
only for his knowledge of anatomy. His own drawings and sculptures are 
eloquent of this absorbing interest. But certain figures he produced are of 
a largeness, almost a grandeur of conception, that goes beyond the state- 
ment of scientific facts; and there are paintings by him that show his 
feeling for a very real, even moving, though sober beauty. 

There is a more general understanding today of Thomas Eakins, the 
third of these artists. He delighted in the society of scientific men, and 
shared the curiosity for new discovery that was so strong in his period of 
great inventors and speculators on natural phenomena. There are works 
by Eakins where the position of the oar, propelling a racing scull, is 
figured out in mathematical diagrams that the painter preserved, with 
obvious satisfaction in his accuracy. Again, we know how tireless he was 
in his attendance at hospitals where he could work in the dissecting 
rooms, and form his mind on the structural secrets of men and animals, 
separating muscles and bones quite as a surgeon does. Photography was 
one of the developing studies, during the lifetime of Eakins, and he was of 
those who made new researches with it, at one moment standing on the 



io 4 THE ACHIEVEMENT 

verge of giving us the motion picture camera as it was later evolved. Later 
on, Bryson Burroughs, probably the real discoverer of Eakins' importance, 
used to remark on the absolutely photographic look of the little waves in 
the painting of The Swimming Hole, now in the museum of Fort 
Worth, Texas. For most of the earlier commentators on Eakins, all such 
matters as I have just reviewed were evidence that his work relied on the 
rendering of facts to do duty for inspiration. Today nearly everybody sees 
a nobility in his art that mere accumulation of facts could never explain. 
The spring of line connecting each detail with all the others in The Swim- 
ming Hole is of the great tradition of painting as it was developed by the 
Florentines; and the interplay of solid and void in his work, apparently as 
impersonal as the mathematical equations that Eakins enjoyed solving, is 
felt by later students to be of the very stuff which makes up the art of 
composition. 

It may now be clearer that great numbers of seemingly unrelated or 
even hostile elements work together to give us the complex art of Occi- 
dental painting. Its mystery (which seems no mystery to the superficial) 
needs the presence of a diverse and rich series of pictures if we are to profit 
by it in any adequate way. The achievement of our museums in meeting 
this need is so considerable that we can think of it only with gratitude, for 
the moment dismissing from our minds any thought of opportunities we 
have missed in the past, and of the sore need for more understanding in 
the future. Such insight is bound to come; we feel confident of that when 
seeing the work of which we shall now attempt a summary. 

This summary can begin where the history of painting begins as a 
purely European achievement, with Cimabue. The still debated question 
as to what he actually produced can be left aside, for the picture called by 
his name at the National Gallery is of the same quality as the works 
credited to him in Europe. When someone said that in painting there is 
no master to represent what Bach does in music, Matisse said: "Yes, there 
is Cimabue." The art of painting at the time of Cimabue was at a stage 
where high religious expression was vented through newly created form; 
very much the same thing occurs in the art of music, through the vast and 
impersonal production of Bach. It is no wonder that there are difficulties 
of attribution, of saying whether Cimabue did this picture or that- And 
at the National Gallery another great work of the time, the full length 
figure of St. Paul, has to be fathered on a vague anonymity. 

Of the same august, elemental character is Giotto's St. Francis, at the 
Fogg Museum. Again, questions of attribution may arise if we apply to 
this picture the criterion of personal work that the Germans call Eigen- 
handigkeit. An idea evolved in later periods, it is out of place here: even 




26. Velasquez: Man with a Wine Glass. 
Courtesy of Tfee Toledo Museum of Art, Tofedo. 



106 THE ACHIEVEMENT 

though the grand figure kneeling to receive the stigmata occurs in other 
places, and therefore causes us to recall that assistant painters executed 
many of a master's designs at this time, the great fresco at Cambridge is 
sufficiently near to Giotto for this country to have the means of knowing 
at first-hand one of the supreme masters. Ravaged by the centuries or, 
more exactly, by the hands of barbarous men, it has been restored, accord- 
ing to the sound technical principles that the school at Harvard is fol- 
lowing and constantly developing. Much attention is given in the 
collection there to pictures which may be in part retrieved from ruin, and 
at times, here as at other places, one has to ask oneself (or the catalogue) 
how much of what one sees is original, how much replaced by skillful 
hands, even if traces of the process are purposely left visible to prevent 
any idea of imposture. 

Such considerations vanish when we come to a masterpiece in the 
same gallery, The Crucifixion, by Simone Martini. The religious purity 
of medieval Siena channels the emotional intensity of the work into 
spaces so grand that the little panel seems big; but aside from the spiritual 
content here, the actual substance of the paint emphasizes anew the 
irreplaceable advantage of an original over a reproduction, or over a work 
that has been tampered with. 

That becomes important when we ask ourselves why the next great 
man we come to, in this reduced sequence of art history, fails to stir us 
as he did when we stood before his works in Florence. Or if those frescoes 
by Masaccio at the Carmine are not of the right scale for comparison with 
the panel at the National Gallery, we can think back to the easel picture 
at Naples. It moves us through the same unique power that is in the 
masterpiece of the Carmine frescoes, The Expulsion of Adam and Eve. 
And if the Madonna picture in Washington has hints of the largeness of 
that Masaccio who influenced the later masters of Florence, its voice is 
muted to a whisper by the layers of restoration which try to bring back to 
the work the impressiveness it probably had in the past. For the general 
public, which is necessarily unskilled in such questions, a warning on the 
label of a picture like this, or on one that is debatable as to its attribution, 
might well be useful. These considerations apply to a great many pictures 
in our galleries, and also to a vast number in the museums of Europe. In 
the case of Masaccio or other ultimately important masters, it seems 
hardly fair to a visitor to let him come to an idea that he lacks the capacity 
to appreciate such art when the fault really lies with the opportunity 
afforded him, 

How different one feels about the National Gallery's Saint John in the 
Desert, by Domenico Veneziano. It is no less than the fourth of the 



THE ACHIEVEMENT 107 

small pictures by this most rare master to be added to the great collection 
in Washington, and its beauty and power go far to explain the prepara- 
tion he could give to his extraordinary pupil, Piero della Francesca. That 
master's work being of the utmost scarcity outside Italy, we are fortunate 
to have even a few works by him. At the Gardner Collection in Boston, 
the fresco of Hercules is of a stark severity that gives no hint of the beauty 
in the Resurrection which Piero painted at about the same time, after 
returning to his native city. But it has the unique grandeur of his later 
life, and to see it in America is to echo the wonder expressed by John B. 
Potter, for so long the keeper of the paintings at the Boston Museum: 
"I used to stand before it in Piero's own house, w r here he painted it on the 
wall and now to think of its being over here!" 

No less extraordinary is America's good fortune in owning another 
work by the same transcending genius. Piero's panel of A Saint, repre- 
senting almost if not quite the highest point of the Frick Collection in 
New York, came to light only a few years ago, and doubtless required the 
great financial resources of such an institution for its purchase. Certainly 
(to forsake the chronological order we are following), Ingres' Mme. 
cf Haussonville at the same gallery was considered most desirable for the 
Metropolitan which let it go because of its "unreasonable" price. That 
could be paid by a private collection, the Frick still being that at the time, 
just as Mr. Widener could buy the Bellini Feast of the Gods, which the 
museum in New York greatly coveted, as it did various other works it 
has lost. 

When they are turned over to the public, in one or another of our 
cities, only local pride suffers if the collection of a given place has failed 
to secure the masterpieces. But sometimes they are lost forever. It seems 
unlikely that Holland will let the Rembrandt I mentioned before, his 
David and Saul, leave the country again; the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in 
Berlin bought that incomparable Georges de La Tour, the St. Sebastian, 
from right under our noses when it was publicly sold in New York as 
part of an American collection; and only less vexing was the case of the 
superlatively fine Mme. Moitessier, by Ingres. A greater work, as I believe, 
than the master's portrait of the same lady recently added by Mr. Kress to 
his splendid gifts to Washington, the picture in question was announced 
in the newspapers as being brought to this country by a dealer, about 
1938, when the National Gallery of London stepped in and bought the 
great painting. It is true that the English museum needed such a work; 
but then few would blame America if it had reversed the magnanimous 
words of Sir Philip Sidney, "Thy necessity is greater than mine," and 
secured the masterpiece for itself. 



io8 THE ACHIEVEMENT 

Concern for the welfare of even friendly rivals plays no larger a part 
among institutions than among individuals; and our losses of splendid 
worts have too often been due to hesitation or timidity about cutting into 
resources (there are times when capital itself can be wisely spent) . Other 
opportunities will arise in the future, and as we grow more mature, we 
shall attach more importance to them; we shall learn, also, how to select 
and trust the men to do our buying. I return to my belief that we have 
done remarkably well so far, and the point we have reached in the review 
of our Italian paintings is a good one to support such an idea, especially as 
our museums have another beautiful work by Piero della Francesca, the 
St. Apollonia in the National Caller}'. 

Any picture by Michelangelo is doubtless permanently beyond the 
lines of the possible for us, and it may be that the same is true about 
Leonardo, unless the predella at Worcester, Massachusetts, is accepted as 
entirely by the master. But among works by very great pupils of his, the 
delightful Portrait of a Girl at the Metropolitan, now convincingly 
ascribed to Ambrogio de Predis, was for a long time thought to be a 
painting by Leonardo himself. And at the National Gallery we have an 
amazing representation of the chief members of his school-. These works 
include the noble Venus by Bernardino Luini, and his entire series of nine 
exquisite frescoes covering the story of Cephalus and Procris. 

With the Bellini mentioned just before, which Mr. Widener included 
in his gift to the National Gallery, America could stand comparison with 
any country, as regards the finest work of the great Venetian. To confirm 
our position in the matter, there is the remarkable St. Francis at the Frick 
Collection; and numbers of our galleries can show smaller Bellinis of the 
most beautiful character. Of a very nearly unparalleled quality is his 
Christ Bearing the Cross at the museum of Toledo, Ohio. Its acquisition 
was peculiarly important for this country, since it throws light on the 
master-and-pupil relationship of Bellini and Giorgione. The masterpiece 
at Toledo is unquestioned in its attribution, whereas an astonishingly 
similar picture at the Gardner Collection, called a Giorgione, is of those 
paintings which render enigmatic any listing of works by the greatest 
painter of his school. Though the Gypsy Madonna in Venice has an 
almost unshakable pedigree, the history ,of even this final refuge of 
Giorgione scholarship has been questioned. And so we are in the position, 
at once perilous and stimulating, of making our own decisions about 
works attributed to Giorgione in our possession. While among them, I 
will profit by the situation to interpolate a personal preference for the 
Portrait of a Gentleman at the Metropolitan. 

No doubt as to our unsurpassable good fortune is possible when we 




27. Goya: Don Ignatio Omuhyan y Rourm, 
Courtesy of the William Rocknifl Nelson Galfciy of Art, Kansas City. 



no THE ACHIEVEMENT 

come to a work by Giorgione's fellow pupil under Bellini. Titian's Rape 
of Europa, in the Gardner collection, is none other than the canvas which 
Rubens gazed on and which caused him to state with the double 
authority of his genius and of his experience in making glorious copies of 
Titian that the picture now in Boston is the greatest painting in the 
world! Since he had shoulders like Atlas, we will not trouble about his 
bearing the weight of this affirmation. 

Within a few feet of the Titian hangs Raphael's Tommaso Inghirami, 
which Mr. Berenson, with his deep judgment, tells us is finer than the 
corresponding work in the Pitti Palace at Florence. Still in that great 
Boston collection is another painting by the Umbrian; it is of special 
interest as we go from one of our galleries to another, for this predella 
piece once formed part of the ensemble of five accompanying the Raphael 
Madonna of the Colonna Family, at the Metropolitan; that museum has, 
in recent years, acquired another of the predelle to accompany its master- 
piece, which is further supplemented by a famous portrait from the same 
hand, the Giuliano de' Medici. 

The group of works by the "Prince of Painters" at the National Gal- 
lery would in itself justify the title of this section of the present book. It 
is achievement indeed when we can go from that jewel of Raphael's 
youth, the St. Michael, to three madonnas of great importance (one, 
formerly of the House of Alba, being a veritable revelation in its beauty, 
especially for people who had never been able to make the journey to 
Leningrad, where it hung for centuries); and finally there is a great 
portrait of the master's late manner. 

It is tempting to go on with our rich store of later Italian works, those 
by Bronzino (including a grand one at the De Young Museum in San 
Francisco and a perfect one at the Metropolitan), Tintoretto, Veronese, 
Tiepolo, Canaletto, and Guardi, for fine pictures by each of them are to 
be found in various cities. The magnificent baroque pictures at Chicago 
give a vivid idea of the power of that school, as does the superb Caravaggio 
at Detroit, and the impressive portrait by the same master at San Diego; 
Hartford amazes one also with the extent and fineness of its collections 
along these lines. 

But already I have dwelt for very long on our Italian pictures alone, 
and even so without mention of more than the one Titian. Yet the 
Venus at the Metropolitan is a work to be enjoyed more deeply the more 
one learns about painting, a portrait at Baltimore is a most noble thing, 
Detroit has two important works by the master, Boston has one, Kansas 
City has one and still we are not at the end of our Titians. 

We have not said a word about such great masters as Duccio and 



THE ACHIEVEMENT in 

Castagno at the Frick Collection, nor about glorious early and late works 
by the Italians at the Boston Museum. Not many connoisseurs have left 
such a record of energy and intelligence as did John G. Johnson, whose 
Italian pictures, a lesser part of his collection at the Philadelphia Museum, 
contain most inspiring material. We have not glanced at a whole 
ensemble of Italian frescoes at Worcester, nor the famous Pollaiuolo and 
other treasures of Italian art at Yale, nor the remarkable Holden Collec- 
tion in the Cleveland Museum. Bryson Burroughs used to say that no 
other work of all those under his care at the Metropolitan gave him quite 
the intimate and personal pleasure that he got from the Paradise by 
Giovanni di Paolo, a master to be seen at Chicago and in other American 
collections. Of course, says somebody, Mr. Burroughs could not have 
said that if Sassetta's Journey of the Magi, from the Maitland F. Griggs 
Collection, had been part of the museum while he was the curator. And 
so one person after another, in one city after another, can go on with well- 
founded demands for additions to the works I have mentioned. 

Yet our purpose is attained if we let the partial survey just made stand 
as a token of American achievement in the sovereign field of Italian 
painting. The record of our museums here offers more than a fair test of 
what we have done as regards the art in all the other countries. For col- 
lecting great Italian pictures is a problem of special difficulty. With the 
Northern schools, our possessions of high importance are sometimes more 
numerous and more completely representative; yet we did a bigger job 
when obtaining for our museums their treasures of Italian art. The reason 
is that, during centuries, this school was the one of chief interest to great 
monarchs like Philip II of Spain, Louis XIV of France, Charles I of 
England, August the Strong of Saxony, and Catherine the Great of 
Russia, with large numbers of lesser nobles, prelates, and rich commoners 
eagerly buying what was generally to go, later on, to the museums of their 
countries. Meanwhile, or usually before the rest, the Medici and other 
great Italian collectors were securing for their land its rightful lion's share 
of the heritage. 

Therefore, we may regard it as well established that scarcely three 
generations of Americans, beginning at a very late time in the history of 
collecting, have provided their country with material that bespeaks intelli- 
gence and courage in splendid measure. To go on with the account, 
through lists of our paintings among the great number of masters of all 
the schools not yet mentioned, would be an almost interminable business. 
Moreover, it would be unprofitable. At times, one can gain something 
from art discussion that throws light on the evolution of schools or indi- 



ii2 THE ACHIEVEAfENT 

viduals, that shows the relation of their work to the religious, scientific, or 
economic activity of their day, and that otherwise furnishes understanding 
of technical or spiritual phenomena. But even the absurdly insufficient 
review of our Italian paintings has had to reduce itself practically to 
enumeration, and it were dull indeed to go on with more of that. 

Therefore we shall proceed categorically, taking the other painters 
almost by whole schools. If we must, for all time, look to Madrid, with 
the Prado, as the incomparable repository of Spanish art, particularly for 
the large compositions of Velasquez, our holdings in the splendid field 
that goes from the primitives of Spain to her late masters are very con- 
siderable. The appreciation of El Greco having been delayed till the 
nineteenth century, alert action by our collectors gave us such works as 
the prodigious Assumption at Chicago, one of the greatest masterpieces 
of portraiture, the Fray Hortensio Palavicino at Boston, and a whole 
series of noble works, including the unique Toledo at the Metropolitan. 
Similarly Goya, as a distinctly modern genius, was accessible to us 
with the result that a tour of our public collections (or of just a few 
among them) will reveal the salient qualities of the man's art and in 
examples of the highest quality. 

The dark and rich problem of early German painting is dealt with by 
our museums in only an insufficient manner. Not to mention Griine- 
wald, since no example of his supreme art is to be seen in Rome, Paris, 
or London (indeed, only a very few cities can show a Griinewald), we 
lack material to give an idea of the extent and variety of the school. 
(To offer at least one exception to this rule, there is the delightful 
picture by an unknown master, the Lovers, at the Cleveland Museum.) 
On the other hand, we do have Holbein in a good number of impressive 
works, one can know Cranach, and so grand a Diirer as the one in the 
Altman Collection at the Metropolitan is enough to reveal much of his 
stature, though we have few other paintings by him. 

Moving on to the Low Countries, we find ourselves far better placed. 
The two van Eycks that the Metropolitan secured from the Hermitage 
are works of capital importance; and at that museum also, fine connois- 
seurship has recently identified another beautiful picture as coming from 
the hand of the same epoch-making painter or by someone very close to 
him. His art is to be seen again at the John G. Johnson Collection in 
Philadelphia, at the National Gallery, and at Detroit. Other great artists 
of the early Flemish School, van der Weyden, Bouts, Memling, and 
Gerard David are widely distributed through our cities. Bosch is increas- 
ingly sought after (an important example having gone to San Diego in 




:^^Si 

28. Durer: Adam and Eve { study for fe engraving) 
Caurtesy of tbe Pierpont Moigan Library, New Yak." 



1 1 4 THE ACHIEVEMENT 

recent years), and we have a few pictures by that most creative painter, 
Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The one at the Metropolitan is such a master- 
piece that we are forced to stop for a mention of it. 

The New York museum, once more, compels acknowledgment of its 
great service in revealing the genius of Rubens, the Venus and Adonis 
being a picture on which any gallery in the world would look with pride; 
there are other canvases of large size and most admirable quality; and then 
sketches, which give the never failing surprise that is reserved when 
the intervening centuries being abolished we have the privilege of 
being present at the very dawn of his painting; a monochrome foundation 
is suffused with growing light as washes of sky-blue, rose, and other colors 
repeat before our eyes that miracle of nature, daybreak. No less than 
seven of these wonderful studies are in the museum of Philadelphia and, 
with Detroit again doing excellent work in its showing of Rubens, other 
collections in various parts of the country continue the account, though 
one hopes that they will still add to it in large measure. The school of the 
Northern colossus is well represented, particularly by Van Dyck. 

When we come to Dutch painting, the record of American collecting 
becomes particularly admirable. Rembrandt and Hals appear in extraordi- 
nary quantity and quality, the old Marquand Collection in New York still 
offering especially fine examples: one would like to pause over the 
Rembrandts in Detroit, Cleveland, and Toledo; Chicago has a particu- 
larly appealing work by him. Boston has splendid ones, while at the 
Frick Collection, with the Admiral de Ruyter, as it has at times been 
called, perhaps the masterpiece among all single figures by Hals, the 
Polish Rider is unique among Rembrandts. Even so, and with every 
desire to press on in our survey, we must note that the Prick's other two 
examples of the great Dutchman stand up most grandly beside the famous 
equestrian picture; for many people, they even exceed it in effect. Later 
on, we shall come to problems of gallery instruction; but the present 
moment is so appropriate that I will note here a sentence which the 
Kansas City Museum has in the little handbook that visitors may consult 
in the gallery of the Dutch pictures. It quotes Max Liebermann: "When 
I see a work by Hals, I feel like painting; when I see a work by Rem- 
brandt, I feel like giving up painting. 1 * That impulse in him must have 
been almost dangerous if he ever saw the work by the master at Kansas 
City: even for experienced students of Rembrandt, this Youth with a 
Black Cap still reserves surprise as to what the last years of the glorious 
lifetime were yet to reveal. Here the final evolution is one attaining 
tranquil perfection, whereas in the Lucretia at Minneapolis, the stormy 
drama of the technique matches that of the subject. 



THE ACHIEVEMENT 1 1 5 

Jan Steen, whom Dr. Bredius places so high, is less well seen in our 
collections, which is a pity. Vermeer, on the contrary, is astonishingly 
represented, and we have fine works by Terburg and others of the so-called 
Little Masters. Dutch landscape art, with van Goyen, Ruisdael, and 
Hobbema, may be thoroughly appreciated in a number of our museums. 

The English school is shown from Maine to California, quite literally. 
In the latter state, indeed, the Huntington Collection, at San Marino, 
consists very largely of a group of pictures by famous English painters. 
We have been slow about recognizing the superiority of Hogarth, and 
only a very few of our people have collected the marvelous works of Blake. 
We cannot adequately show the greatness of Constable, though Chi- 
cago's splendid landscape by the master exhibits him at a high level. 
Turner's impressiveness is seen in a number of fine works, again of wide 
distribution. 

The genius of France is one that for over a hundred years has had a 
particular attraction for our country. At the Worcester Museum an 
unusually fine example of the Fontainebleau school may open our discus- 
sion of French painting in America; the effect of the picture is signifi- 
cantly reinforced at the same gallery by a statue of the period, a work very 
plausibly attributed to that great master, Jean Goujon. At Toledo, an 
important Clouet continues the story of this art, which rises to great 
heights with our showing of its seventeenth-century masters. In New 
York, the old Historical Society has one of Philippe de Champaigne's 
noble portraits, and Detroit represents him by a pure and severe Last 
Supper. At the same museum is Poussin's Diana and Endymion, a work 
which by itself can reveal how completely the heritage of Greece and 
Rome was introduced to northern Europe by French artists. Yet, to feel 
this in an example of culminating power and beauty, one must see the 
great Poussin's Neptune and Amphitrite, at the Philadelphia Museum. 
The importance of the supreme classicist being so pivotal, we may list 
the other museums which have his works: Hartford, Boston, Smith Col- 
lege, New York, Washington, Cleveland, Chicago, Minneapolis, and 
Kansas City, beside the Fogg at Harvard, where one finds two glorious 
pictures by him. Add to these our considerable store of paintings by his 
contemporary, Claude, and you have proof, as with our Italian collections, 
of the solidity with which our galleries have built for the future. The 
impression strengthens when we think of our fine, if not too extensive 
representation of the other phase of the grand siede, in the work of the 
brothers Le Nain, Hartford again showing a marvelous painting (as it 
does with its tremendous Crucifixion, by Poussin). 

Since the eighteenth century is so particularly French, it seems strange 



n6 THE ACHIEVEMENT 

that our public galleries do not represent it more adequately. The Metro- 
politan has two admirable Watteau canvases, but the first was acquired 
only a few years ago, and the second came later, almost fortuitously, when 
the Bache Collection was added to the museum. Other works by this 
amazing master are to be seen at the National Gallery, at Boston, and at 
Cleveland, but Americans are still too prone to confuse his painting with 
that of his followers, remarkable as the latter often are. Our Chardins are 
also less numerous and, as a rule, less fine than one would wish; and 
though the Fogg Museum now has the marvelous portraits by Perronneau 
that the Winthrop Collection gave it, and though there is a fine one at 
the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, his accomplished and 
one would think easily appreciated contemporaries still appear to be 
underestimated. As against this impression, we may recall two excellent 
works by Largilliere, two beautiful Nattiers, Fragonard's famous Billet- 
doux, his even finer Lady with a Dog, and two characteristic works by 
Boucher at the Metropolitan. By the last-named master also, the small 
picture of a nymph, at Chicago, is so exceptionally charming as to deserve 
affectionate mention, while Boston has large and important compositions 
by him. 

Supplementary gifts to the National Gallery by Mr. Kress bring that 
museum's collection of French eighteenth-century paintings to a high 
level; they include, beside the two by Watteau, three pictures by Frago- 
nard, three by Boucher, one by Largilliere, and that masterpiece by 
Frangois Hubert Drouais, the very large Family Group which so stirred 
public admiration when shown at the New York World's Fair. It is, 
however, to the Frick Collection that we must turn for what is doubtless 
our most extraordinary showing of this period. Boucher is represented 
once more with an exquisite portrait and with decorations for an interior. 
These are, however, eclipsed when, in a neighboring room, we come on a 
unique ensemble by Fragonard. The large panels which that master 
painted for Mm'e. Du Barry are installed as they were planned to be, their 
beauty and completeness placing them among the most astonishing docu- 
ments on their exquisite century. The Frick, again, shows us a Chardin 
which, this time, is a masterpiece. Another lovely canvas by the master, 
at the Phillips Memorial Gallery in Washington, illustrates the type of 
work which affords a firm foundation for modern art the chief concern 
of that collection. 

It is when we approach our own time that we realize one of the really 
splendid achievements of American art appreciation. For if people 
deserve credit for a fine response to painting when they fathom even a 
part of the mysterious depths in the older arts, the question always arises, 




29. Holbein: Lady GuMeford. 
Courtesy of the City Art Museum, St. Louis. 



n8 THE ACHIEVEMENT 

are they really doing so, or are they merely accepting the judgment of the 
past? How much of what they say is mere lip service to authority? To 
give no more than that is to react in pretty weak fashion to the creative 
power of art. Since America, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, 
was itself giving an example of creative power, it logically responded to 
the men who so defined the period that we recognize ourselves in their 
description. 

At the time of our beginnings as a nation, our wars with the mother 
country still left us so English in mentality that comparatively few people 
found themselves in complete sympathy with the French Revolution and 
with Napoleon. 1 For that reason, doubtless, painters of the British tradi- 
tion continued to be preferred among us, and men like David, Gros, 
Ingres, Gericault, and Delacroix the heroes of France in her rise to 
new mastery could not be accepted until later. It is only in recent 
times that their immense value is being appreciated. Delacroix, it is true, 
frequently appears in collections dating back fifty or seventy-five years, 
but almost invariably in the company of the commercial favorites of the 
time, his work having been sold to our people on the strength of its 
European reputation, and not simply because they wanted it. Therefore, 
until recently at least, when such collections were auctioned off here, 
American bidding would be so weak that the Delacroix pictures were 
almost always bought by French dealers. The low prices they paid allowed 
them to send the works back to Paris, where they found ready sale. 

Since I have thus arraigned American appreciation, I may be per- 
mitted to support my remarks by two personal recollections: one is when 
I tried in vain to persuade Mr. Charles Taft, the Cincinnati collector, to 
preserve for us a magnificent Delacroix in the big Yerkes sale of 1910; the 
other memory is of our loss of the uniquely beautiful canvas, Le Reveil, 
one of Senator Clark's pictures which were not placed in the Corcoran 
Gallery. Auctioned off in New York at a low price, it soon found its way 
to the finest private collection in France, that of M. David-Weill. 

Even now our acceptance of the first group of the great French mod- 
erns appears to owe more to able museum directors than to a general 
appeal of these masters. Thus the two superb works by David and Ingres 
in the Frick Collection were acquired since the death of the founder. 
One of our prominent museum officials has stated that the splendid 
Ingres in the Taft Collection is popular mainly because it represents a 
beautiful woman; similarly, the success of David's magnificent Mile, du 

1 Writing for the Virginia Quarterly Review (Autumn, 1945), Professor Samuel Flagg 
Bemis, of Yale, says, "The American people had less love for Napoleon than for England, 
the enemy." And this was during the war of 1812. 



THE ACHIEVEMENT 119 

Val d'Ognes, at the Metropolitan, is very certainly to be attributed, in 
large measure, to the charm of the girl She is, indeed, so pretty as to lend 
support to doubts which have been expressed about the authorship of the 
picture. One theory, not to be lightly dismissed, would give the canvas 
to David's brilliant pupil, Gerard. To credit it to the older master would 
be to assign to him a painting characterized by an appeal of femininity 
found nowhere else in his massive production, but which, in Gerard, is 
quite typical. Turning to an indubitable David at the Metropolitan, we 
learn that the Death of Socrates entered the gallery partly through the 
prestige of Sir Joshua Reynolds' still resounding affirmation that David, 
in this canvas, had attained the greatest height in the art of painting since 
Michelangelo and Raphael, a claim that certainly does credit to the Eng- 
lish master's capacity for enthusiasm about a grand picture. 

Though two of the Metropolitan's beautiful canvases by Ingres also 
had in their favor the admiration of a great artist (that of Degas, from 
whose collection they were sold, after his death), their acquisition was 
strongly opposed, and they reached our walls as one of the rare conces- 
sions granted to the desires of the curator. Such great museums as those 
of Boston and Chicago still lack a David or an Ingres. The Walters Gal- 
lery, in Baltimore, represents both masters, as does Cleveland; but Gros 
is to be seen in only one American museum, that of Smith College (with, 
however, a superb canvas at Detroit probably attributable to the great 
painter) . The immense position in modern art of Delacroix must be con- 
sidered the explanation of his presence in many of our galleries; it can 
scarcely derive from our idea of his value as an artist or the pleasure he 
can give, to speak with painful frankness. Such an opinion is forced upon 
one by the still scant popular appeal of the man whom Renoir and others 
have called the greatest painter of the French school. Genius such as his 
often takes long to be esteemed at full value, yet some signs do point to 
increased appreciation. 

It is with the next group of masters, headed by Corot, Millet, and 
Theodore Rousseau, that American admiration for a new movement in 
France manifested itself particularly; our possessions in this field are most 
notable. They are also so well distributed throughout the country that 
no single institution need be mentioned. 

Works by Courbet including masterpieces the Woman with a 
Parrot, for example, give to the Metropolitan a representation of the 
famous realist that is equaled by no museum in the world, save the 
Louvre. After that statement I should perhaps add that a private collec- 
tion in Berlin is said to have more than we. I regret not having seen it, 
but believe, even so, that it has nothing more important than the great 



120 THE ACHIEVEMENT 

Bride picture at Smith College, to mention that interesting museum 
again. The master's work is to be enjoyed in various of our public gal- 
leries, and so one sees cause for the warm acceptance of Manet which I 
have dwelt on in previous pages. His work and that of the Impressionists, 
who followed his initiative, are represented in so many American cities 
that no further affirmation is needed of our response to that vital school. 

The one which follows the generation which, for the moment, 
represents modern art is that, however, which furnishes the best evi- 
dence of this country's ability to recognize the essential expression of its 
day without waiting for later acclaim to make it acceptable. Even so, we 
must admit that, for very long, the poorer things of the time held sway 
here. Chicago took the first decisive step in correcting this condition. 
With the Museum of Modern Art, New York reaffirmed its character as 
our chief center of appreciation. Some years later, Philadelphia, by wel- 
coming the collections of Albert Eugene Gallatin, Alfred Stieglitz, and 
others, added strongly to our standing as appreciators of modern art; 
Columbus, Ohio, had had for years an important showing of it, especially 
of the Americans in the movement, and there is evidence on every 
hand that an understanding of the modern trends is rapidly developing 
throughout the country. 

Very special problems are presented by modern art to the persons who 
guide museum policy, and we shall return to this matter on a later page. 
But having at last gone through the annals of European painting, as 
revealed by our galleries, we may now round out our account of America's 
achievement in collecting, the next step, logically, taking us to the field 
of drawings and prints. 

For some idea of the places which house our great wealth of such 
material, I must again refer the reader to the supplementary list. It cannot 
suggest the names of even the greatest among the artists represented. But 
mentioning a few of those by whom we own original drawings and they 
include masters like Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Diirer, Holbein, 
and Rembrandt will suggest how such works amplify the enjoyment 
and learning to be derived from paintings. The lover of drawings and 
prints will, indeed, almost resent considering those arts as subsidiary, for 
they contain much of what is most profound, most immediate, and most 
intimate in the work of the great men. Odilon Redon, an artist with a 
very special interest in black-and-white, called it "the art of the North/* 
in contrast to the things having the play of color beloved in the lands of 
the sun. And, what may appropriately be recalled here, drawings and 
prints reach out to all the other visual arts. 

They are, of course, immediately associated with the craft of the book 



122 THE ACHIEVEMENT 

in its aesthetic aspect, and also in its incalculably important role of multi- 
plying without limit the number of persons to be benefited by art. Obvi- 
ously, there is a close connection between this element and the survival of 
the work, for time deals rigorously with things of which there is but one 
example. 

Almost more suggestive of the value of the collections we are observ- 
ing is the way they orient us in the thought of architects, sculptors, paint- 
ers, and (sometimes the same individuals) the masters who furnish 
designs for the multitude of the applied arts, the grand forms of the 
armorer, the enchanting field of tapestry, the infinitely varied patterns of 
textile designers and lacemakers, of ceramists, of wood carvers (for the 
paneling of rooms, e.g. or for furniture, with its architectural forms), 
of the jewelers and goldsmiths, of the workers in iron, leather, lacquer, 
enamel, ivory, and glass. 

Of all these and other forms of the applied arts, our public collections 
have, in their ensemble, a magnificent representation. It is not confined 
to collections like those of Cooper Union, in New York, which specialize 
in them, nor to the big museums, which do have fine and constantly 
increasing displays of the material; it may be found in institutions which 
are yet too far from importance as repositories of art in general to claim 
much attention in our supplementary list which may indeed have 
omitted them outright (to my regret). 

A mere mention of armor, just above, demands some amplification, 
even as we hasten on in our survey. To take the most notable collection 
in America, the one at the Metropolitan, as typifying our possessions of 
arms and armor in various cities, it is important to put a true valuation on 
the interest displayed by the crowd usually found in that noble hall. The 
full-panoplied equestrian pieces, the sinister or heroic or elegant figures 
of men on foot, the shape of helmets (now of elemental simplicity, now 
engraved with the most complex patterns), the gesture of swords, the 
splendid expanses of shields reinforced with design to emphasize their use 
or merely to express the pride in them of their makers or the knights who 
bore them, the infinite ingenuity expended on the anatomy of a gauntlet 
and on the design and decoration of small arms and firearms, all these 
things may appear, superficially, to impress the public mostly for reasons 
alien to art (thoughts of killing, romantic fancies connected with old 
novels, or questions of economics in a feudal and military world). 

Yet, if the severest of aestheticians will analyze the appeal that he 
himself finds in arms and armor, he must realize that many a man who 
would fail to see the beauty of painting and sculpture may receive sure and 
profound effects from the art elements in these objects, utilitarian as they 



THE ACHIEVEMENT 123 

are in their first origin. Indeed, I think that armor room at the Metro- 
politan is now admirably placed in the museum for purposes of art propa- 
ganda. Formerly in a distant wing, where many people might miss it, the 
collection has been installed in a most central location, so that visitors are 
certain to see it and from two floors. 2 Whether they come to it with 
wide aesthetic experience, or with the simple and human interests referred 
to above, their thoughts are, to a great extent, running parallel. 

The unsophisticated observer may say that he is interested only in 
those various things outside of art, and that, as a matter of fact, he knows 
nothing about the subject. Perhaps that was true when he came into the 
gallery: it is so no longer, if he has given real attention to the objects sur- 
rounding him there. He will, if he persists a bit, find himself far along 
the road that the museum wants to open to him. And his course, just 
because it is devoid of conscious purpose, and because it is unaffected by 
the jargon of the professionals, has that natural and healthy character 
which is desirable above all others. 

Perhaps, later on, he becomes aware of the architectural quality in the 
design unifying the elements of a suit of armor; perhaps he sees the iden- 
tity of genius in the man who planned the curves of a helmet and the man 
who carved similar curves when executing a portrait, whether in ancient 
Sumer, five thousand years ago, in Mexico, one thousand years ago, or in 
our own time, as with Brancusf s Mile. Pogany at the Philadelphia 
Museum. When art, rather than a given school or period, is what occu- 
pies his mind, he can utter the old words ars una as a spontaneous dis- 
covery of his own. If so, well and good. But if he never does, and just 
enjoys art objects, without comparing their qualities and analyzing their 
nature: well and good, too. The theorist has, however, a right to look at 
museum possessions, and not only our sublimated man in the street. 

With the mention just made of certain works of sculpture, we return 
to the major arts. And with all the relationship we have noted between 
their essential psychology and that of the great craftsmen, we may as well 
remind ourselves that logic has been used by the world during all the time 
when it has made a distinction between the fine arts (belle arti or beaux 



2 A story told by one of the devoted men who served the Metropolitan Museum as 
president has significance here. It was doubtless that "first citizen of New York/' Robert 
W. De Forest himself, who was the interlocutor referred to, an old gentleman who, on a 
visit to the galleries, had been noticing with pleasure the way two small children, unaccom- 
panied by any grown person, were enjoying the exhibits. Hearing the little girl say to her 
brother, "Now shall be go and see the armor?" the observer could no longer refrain from 
speaking to them, and offered to be their guide. \\Tiereupon the girl, drawing herself up to 
her full height, replied, "Thank you, sir, but don't you think I know my way about my 
own museum?" 



i2 4 THE ACHIEVEMENT 

arts, as they are called in other languages) and the applied arts. The 
question is one of having clear ideas, rather than of establishing a hier- 
archy based on importance or merit. 

We may agree that a Greek vase (one, let us say, that has on it no 
pictorial design ) can be so fine in proportion, in the sweep and yet dis- 
cretion of its contours, and in the power of its red and black, that it is 
immeasurably preferable to a mediocre painting, of one period or another. 
Similarly, a Turkish rug may be so noble in pattern, so suggestive of 
nature's drama, of the light and color in the garden of an oasis, that this 
impersonal work of splendid craftsmen tells more of the character of man 
as the artist than does an inferior sculpture. Such confrontations, how- 
ever, befog the issue, one which must recognize the fact that the applied 
arts impose limitations, through matters like utility, treatment of mate- 
rials, etc. These obstacles to the free play of the mind prevent the fullest 
expression of idea and aspiration, which are prerogatives only of the major 
arts, as they may perhaps best be designated. 

That much said, we can enter a field as yet untouched in our vast 
review. The words "mind" and "aspiration/ 7 used just now in defining 
the fine arts (to call them that, once more), were chosen for the way they 
prepare an approach to the work of the Middle Ages. We have previously 
mentioned the Copts as an example of a Christian people who produced 
things of great beauty but who did not free themselves from their debt to 
preceding civilizations. We have glanced at the mighty arts of the Byzan- 
tine world, already plunged to the full in the current of an era which 
stands in strongest contrast to that of the glorious world we call pagan. 
Yet, even with the spread of Byzantine culture to the north of Europe, 
so many Oriental elements persist in it that the race to which most 
Americans belong does not feel that it has spoken its most characteristic 
thought until France, Spain, England, and Germany have greatly modi- 
fied the arts brought to them from the East. 

When that occurs, we have the Romanesque and the Gothic schools 
whose hold on our loyalty and imagination is explained by their posi- 
tion as fundamentals in the expression which concerns us most directly. 
Therefore, also, one can understand why, despite the difficulty of collect- 
ing material generally fixed in place as parts of buildings, Americans 
have done such extraordinary work in transporting overseas the great 
architectural ensembles that are necessary for any insight into the gran- 
deur and completeness of the period they represent. 

Once more referring the reader to our supplementary list for a detailed 
statement of the institutions possessing the material in question, we may 
again concentrate on the largest and finest showing of it at the Clois- 




31. Rubens; Isabella Brant. 
Coaitesyof The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland . 



126 THE ACHIEVEMENT 

ters, that branch museum of the Metropolitan, in New York. Philadel- 
phia's effort is, however, so considerable, and has yielded such admirable 
results, that mention must be made of it, even here. Again, certain 
objects in the important group at Chicago are so very fine as to deserve 
attention also, although one more attempt is being made to keep our 
statement within some bounds of brevity. 

The Cloisters, while containing individual objects, or groups of 
objects, no less than superlative in quality, enters a larger category of 
ideas, as the most considerable attempt yet made in our country to 
re-create the whole effect of arts of the past. Coming down to a part of 
that time very near our own, the restoration of an entire town, Williams- 
burg, Virginia, while spread over a wider area, offered no such difficulty 
as the assembling of elements which succeed, to an amazing degree, in 
recapturing the impressiveness of the Romanesque and Gothic eras. 
Leaping over the centuries again, another example of such imagination 
by an American (the same one in all three cases) is the essay in architec- 
tural unity that has given us a pioneer success, to many of us a very 
important one, in the magnitude of its scope. The reference here is, of 
course, to that unique ensemble of buildings, in the heart of New York, 
which constitute the collective work called Rockefeller Center. 

One needs such a reminder of the city planning which went on in the 
great capitals, the provincial towns, and the big monastic communities of 
the medieval time. The art of Mont-Saint-Michel would not have been 
itself if applied to any spot in the world save that rock in the sea. The 
personality of Spain asserts itself as different from that of France in the 
way the houses at Toledo are related to the slopes on which they stand, 
and in their relation to the cathedral spires of the wonderful city. The 
genius of a people expresses itself in the ensemble of a town or in any 
detail found in it. Thus, a fragment of Greek marble preserved in a 
museum is enough to tell us of the life that circulated through the whole 
statue of which it was once a part; and so a person of sufficient experience 
and judgment can see recorded in an isolated figure or head the character 
of some mighty collective work of the Middle Ages, It is tempting to 
let one's mind tarry over certain sublime things of the thirteenth century 
and the fourteenth century at the Cloisters, but we must resist, save to 
say that there is sculpture there to give an idea of the greatest art that the 
Christian era has produced. And of the arts allied with it in medieval 
buildings, we have superb examples also. To change our point of observa- 
tion and see two others of such works, let us note the stained glass window 
from Chartres at the museum of Princeton University, and the frescoes 
in the Catalan chapel preserved entire at the Boston Museum; then 



THE ACHIEVEMENT 127 

returning to New York, we take delight once more in the story of the 
unicorn as told in tapestries which have perhaps not yet failed to enchant 
even one person of the thousands who have seen them at the towered 
building overlooking the Hudson. 

And still the essential point about the Cloisters, with its courts and 
gardens, its chapels and treasure chambers, is the one we have touched 
on before, the re-creation of a distant period. In various of our museums 
we essay that feat, more or less exactly, through rooms dealing with the 
later centuries, the eighteenth in France and England for example, or 
even the earlier nineteenth in America. Always the museum man must 
remember one thing above all: that he is of the twentieth century, and 
that his vision is that of his time. His understanding contains elements 
that the past did not have, and so the expressions of earlier periods have 
aspects of quaintness, or of nostalgia for the beauty of long ago, that 
could have no place in the minds of the people who first planned the 
rooms and lived in them. The warming pan that today is restored to its 
place on the hearth because of the pleasant gleam of its brass was once a 
thing that inspired quite different ideas; and the flintlock, which, for us, 
makes a fine, sturdy note as its dark metal and wood detach against a 
white wall, to our forebears was a reminder of the deadly threat of the 
Indians. 

And so, even with the things of our own soil and of a time almost 
within the memory of living man, we cannot create a truly authentic 
interior of that past age. We are always in danger that something of self- 
conscious make-believe will enter the job, something of stage setting. 
In the theater, this is acceptable as a help to following the play of emo- 
tions which remain constant in men and women, no matter how much 
time has passed. But when the properties are examined and turn out to 
be mere cardboard and paint, their power of illusion vanishes. The classic 
example is that burlesque of the strong-man act in which a Hercules- 
actor, with bulging muscles and at the cost of terrific effort, lifts a "500 
Ib. weight" above his head, and then, a minute or two later, a little dog 
wanders onto the stage and trots off with the mass of "iron" in his mouth. 

Returning to the period rooms of the museum, we may see more 
clearly now that if on the stage the true realm of illusion unreality 
is fit only to be laughed at, how much more flagrantly is it the contrary 
of art when we come to the genuine objects which alone have a right to 
space in our galleries! The stimulating of relationships amongst them 
that they had only when they were in actual use, the substitution of space 



izS THE ACHIEVEMENT 

relations among them dictated by another period's notion of "aesthetic 
effect" becomes intolerable when once we perceive that it is a thing of 
artifice like the "500 Ib. weight" that the little dog picked up so charm- 
ingly. And so the wise museum man keeps to his role of giving sympa- 
thetic exhibition to his material, and does not confuse a period room with 
a stage set. 

It may appear that I am going to extremes in applying this reasoning 
to early American interiors, so near to us in time and place, as has been 
remarked. But to locate them outside the rule we have been trying to 
make understandable is to put them outside the category of works of art. 
Here the challenge to "define your terms" crops up with all of its old 
vitality. For present purposes, I can give a definition, and fortunately in 
the words of a great man. Renoir said, "Shall I tell you what is needed 
for a work of art? Two things: it must be indescribable and it must be 
inimitable.'* He went on to illustrate with modern buildings, describable 
to the last detail by measurements, in contrast to the columns of a Gothic 
cathedral, which he said were "as various and inimitable as the trees in 
the forest." If the twentieth century even in America could imitate 
the nineteenth century, it would prove that there was no art then; and 
we must believe that there was, or admit that the life coming down from 
the long past had suddenly failed to continue. And we do not believe that. 

But the Renaissance, says someone, does not its very name declare 
that the genius of antiquity was reborn at a new time and on new soil? 
We return to our museum (where all questions are answered or should 
be) and enter galleries that we have not yet looked at, those of Renais- 
sance sculpture. They answer the question asked above far better than 
does the splendid representation of Renaissance painting previously 
touched upon. For that art does not tell as much about its relation with 
antiquity, since it had to evolve with but little help from classical 
examples in its own field. Almost none of these were accessible till 
Pompeii and Herculaneum began to reappear, in the eighteenth century. 
It was through sculpture that Italy was fired to emulate the antique, and 
so it is through sculpture that we shall presently answer the question 
about the rebirth of Greece and Rome. For a long time the galleries of 
Renaissance sculpture in our museums lagged far behind those devoted 
to painting. That art always makes the first appeal; and then there was 
more difficulty in getting fine specimens, since Europe had most of them 
in places beyond the reach of the collector who satisfied himself, for 
educational purposes, with casts. 

But now the situation is changing. For some years, indeed, our older 
collections, in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and other cities, have had 




mis: Admiral deRnjfer (so called) 



1 30 THE ACHIEVEMENT 

splendid works in various media. Masters like Matteo Civitali, Benedetto 
da Maiano, Francesco Laurana, and members of the Pisano and della 
Robbia families are represented. A cup by Benvenuto Cellini, with a 
deftly perfect small figure, is in the Metropolitan, where we follow that 
Florentine sculptor to France in his inspiring of Jean Goujon; for at the 
same museum there is a marble relief by the Frenchman who, by the bye, 
surpasses the art of his preceptor. At Worcester, as was previously noted, 
there is a large and important statue by the same sixteenth-century genius. 

But with the creation of the National Gallery, the public was made 
heir to pieces of an importance unknown before in American museums. 
The mighty name of Donatello appears, with the accession of the Wide- 
ner gift, and it is not with work in stucco, by which his school 
widened the numbers of his contemporary public, but with marbles of 
unique importance. With the Mellon and Kress Collections (since added 
to as the latter benefactor became further aware of the needs of the gal- 
lery), we have come into possession of portraits of Lorenzo de' Medici 
and his brother Giuliano, both by Verroechio, and the former a pro- 
digious masterpiece. Together with sculptures by such men as Ghiberti, 
Desiderio da Settignano, Rossellino, Pollaiuolo, Giovanni Amedeo, and 
Bernini, with Germain Pilon and Coysevox again representing the 
development in France, we now have a group that our national museum 
can describe as "one of the most comprehensive in the world, rivaled only 
by the four leading European collections in Florence, London, Paris, and 
Berlin." 

I intentionally keep this part of the statement as to our achievement 
in collecting to terms even more general than those used in telling of our 
work in the galleries of painting. For my purpose, here, is to get back to 
that question of the word "Renaissance." Benvenuto Cellini boasts in 
his autobiography that he replaced the missing part of an antique marble 
in a manner so perfect that no one could tell where the ancient workman- 
ship ended and his own began. As I have related elsewhere, I have seen 
this claim disproved by quite inexpert observers who, today, clearly per- 
ceive the difference between the work of the old Roman who carved the 
original and the sixteenth-century sculptor who restored it. Perhaps 
Benvenuto told the truth in saying that his contemporaries saw no dif- 
ference; but that would be but one more example of the rule that men 
need time to arrive at full appreciation in art matters (or, very frequently, 
at any appreciation) . 

The outstanding idea forced upon us by the Cellini story (and it could 
be confirmed by innumerable others of the kind) is that the Renaissance 
ic Q ^priori with its own character, one so powerfully asserted that it is in 



THE ACHIEVEMENT 131 

no wise to be confused with that of antiquity. Understanding of a truth 
like that one is doubtless a more precious thing than the enjoyment of 
even such masterworks as we have mentioned. How high they rank in 
the history of sculpture is a relative matter, for it depends on the valuation 
put on them by different individuals or periods, according to the needs of 
each. What is no relative matter is the significance of the Renaissance 
as a rebirth, not of the past, but of human genius. After the Dark Ages 
(which were less dark than we once thought them to be), man brings 
forth new art on new soil. 

The fact demands insistent statement because it applies so intimately 
to the last section of our museums that we inspect, the last one to arrive 
in history, and the first one in importance to Americans; for it is the one 
devoted to the art of their country. On later pages, there will be much to 
say about the new problems opened up by American art. But, coming 
to it just after our consideration of the Renaissance, we are led to notice 
certain differences. The first is that American art, unlike that which 
began with Cimabue and Niccolo Pisano, does not inaugurate a vastly 
different period; also, since it does not stem from men who had to create 
new forms, as those two Italians did, it develops, hand in hand, with the 
European art of its time; yet as a final characterization, it shows a con- 
stant eagerness for some new expression, one suited to a people increas- 
ingly more detached from the past, as we indeed are. Two possibilities for 
such a development seem to exist: one deriving from our architectural or 
engineering accomplishment, a thing suggesting machine forms, while the 
other rests on elements in the ancient traditions of America, our heritage 
from the soil and the earlier peoples who told of it in terms of drama, 
humor, and beauty. 

Both of these developments are still matters for the future, to a very 
great extent, though some results of each are already to be noticed, and 
others will doubtless be recognized when more fully evolved works show 
us the role, as forerunners, of certain earlier things. Such a case has pre- 
viously been noticed in these pages. It is that of the limners of our 
Colonial days. The very names of these American primitives have usually 
been lost, and their pictures, but a few years ago, had a standing hardly- 
above that of curios; yet today it is recognized pretty generally that they 
already register essential characteristics which were to persist in our art. 
In the same way, the sturdy simplicity of many an old New England jug, 
which had been prized merely as an antique, turns out to have a better 
claim to our interest- For the logic of its forms appears again, after a 
century or two, in the legible, functional outlines of a silo, and the one 
thing is as American as the other; the sense of proportion in both is again 



i 3 2 THE ACHIEVEMENT 

what makes us admire the best of our great buildings in the cities. Seeing 
the photograph of an ensemble of such buildings in the skyline of New 
York, a great sculptor-architect, Duchamp-Villon, said that the pattern of 
the modern cathedral was there. Another artist, Diego Rivera, was com- 
menting on the frequently noted similarity between the plan of our mod- 
ern apartment houses and the dwellings that the Indians piled one upon 
the other in the cliffs of our Southwest; he observed that the same cause 
produces the same effect. It explains the name of a Chicago club, the 
Cliff-dwellers, in one of the great buildings facing the lake front. 

It needs more than the lifetime our museums have thus far had for 
them to do their work of clarifying our ideas about American art. Much 
more remains to be done, especially in the wide fields just glanced at. But 
our galleries have already done much to bring about the better under- 
standing we have today. A single example, from the field of painting, will 
be enough to illustrate the point. The Mellon Collection contains one 
picture by the old-time American artist, John Quidor, Loaned to a great 
exhibition held at the Metropolitan Museum in 1939, it told numbers of 
people who had never heard even a mention of his name that here was a 
genuine and vital figure in our school. Then the Brooklyn Museum made 
patient and thorough researches into old documents, the records of exhi- 
bitions and collections, and there resulted a showing at the institution 
of a considerable part of Quidor's surviving production. It was not only 
fine in itself, but threw light on the mentality of his time. A master like 
Albert P. Ryder thus stood revealed as far less the isolated talent he had 
formerly seemed; he took his logical, historical place with the newly found 
painter, who stands between him and Washington Allston; for that 
splendid dreamer is also in the succession represented by Quidor when we 
follow, in retrospect, the line to which he belongs. 

The work of the museum with American art is not confined to cases 
like that just described, where an artist is brought back from obscurity, or 
indeed from oblivion. It is a basic principle of art appreciation that many 
types of painting and sculpture are to be seen in their true light only when 
people have had very extended opportunity for contact with them. Thus, 
New York had had a picture by Thomas Eakins on the walls of its 
museum from 1881 continuously. A work of small dimensions and with- 
out sensational qualities of any kind, it was overlooked by most people. 
Even those who gave it some attention had to have their impressions 
amplified by further examples of the painter's art. Bryson Burroughs, 
whose understanding of Eakins' great talent caused him to add other 
paintings, when the chance to do so came along (or could be created), 
built up, at the Metropolitan, a fine group of the artist's work, the first one 




33. Rembrandt: Man with a Beard. 
Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Marquand Collection). 



i 34 THE ACHIEVEMENT 

in this country. Long before it reached its present extent, it had con- 
vinced a great dealer as to the significance of Eakins. One-man shows at 
an influential gallery were the result, great collectors bought there, and 
other museums secured pictures by the artist for their walls. An achieve- 
ment of the kind especially to be demanded of the public galleries of 
America was thus added to those previously cited in this chapter; our 
collective Museum of the New World had done immeasurably more 
than increase its possessions, for it had given its people a wider and deeper 
understanding of their nature. 

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the handling of all our 
important artists. Consider, for example, Maurice B. Prendergast, with 
his rare and beautiful qualities; it must regretfully be noted that his 
success came almost in spite of museum attitudes. Boston and New York, 
the cities where he spent his entire life (save for the trips to Europe), 
kept the doors of their great museums closed to him, and with hostility 
rather than with indifference, for admirers of the artist repeatedly pro- 
posed his work in both places. Neither of them can claim to represent it, 
even at present writing, when other public institutions have long since 
welcomed it, and the best of our collectors see in it the one American art 
of its period that can be set beside that of its important contemporaries 
in France. 

Before leaving this part of the subject, we may return to its pleasanter 
side in recalling the way the Philadelphia Museum made known the work 
of that founder of art appreciation in the city, William Rush, the earliest 
of American sculptors a man of delightful talent. The same galleries 
house the most extensive collection of works by Eakins, a gift of the 
artist's widow. 

In the nature of things, as they have been and still are in nearly all 
museums, it would be wrong to judge the institution on the too narrow 
basis of its successes and failures at recognizing individual talents. Its 
mission has been to show as much as it could of the country's art, when 
such production has met with general sanction. We hope for increased 
leadership, and title to leadership, as our museums gain in mature dis- 
cernment, and are willing to risk being ahead of the public. Meanwhile, 
they have done important service in letting artist and layman see Ameri- 
can work on walls that also show the fine things of Europe, both by its old 
masters and its moderns. To a long-continued test of this kind, the 
country owes most of its conviction that our art is a valid link in the long 
chain we have been reviewing. 

The historian and the philosopher doubtless take pride in having 
established a connection with the past; but, thank goodness! our people 



THE ACHIEVEMENT 135 

as a whole give but little thought to such matters. They go to their 
museum for enjoyment, a matter not of the past but of the vivid present; 
they do not, however, despise their scholars for assurances that the things 
to be enjoyed in the galleries have their foundation in solid and healthy 
tradition. And could there be a better tradition than that of the respect 
for humanity to be seen in the portraits by John Singleton Copley? It is 
the kind of respect that Americans can understand, for it includes that 
frankness which made the old painter register the straight-laced primness 
of the New England lady, shrewd housewife that she was, as well as a 
sense of humor, and a generosity befitting the helpmate of so opulent and 
influential a person as her husband. (The two magnificent effigies referred 
to, those of Seymour Fort and his wife, are at the Hartford Atheneum.) 

Copley stands as the best of our Colonial painters because he adds, to 
the human element just noted, the splendid technical qualities which 
place him with great painters generally, irrespective of time or country. 
But as Americans, we have a right to take an especial pleasure in pictures 
like those of Ralph Earle, which, though lacking much of the drawing 
and color we have seen in the great masters, still can tell us of local charac- 
ter and life. Young William Carpenter, in his red suit, sitting bolt upright 
in his chair, as Earle portrayed him in the Worcester Museum picture, 
looks out at us, after a century and a half, with all the manly and thought- 
ful reserve of the well-bred boy that we should like for a brother or a son. 
The satisfaction our people take in a true statement like that is akin to 
their recognition of a beautiful statement. Such a one was made by 
Washington Allston in his painting of a moonlight night at the Boston 
Museum. 

What if Allston struggled for years in vain over his big picture of Bel- 
shazzar's Feast? If his personal talent did not fit him for a work of such 
scope, if only men like David, Gericault, and Delacroix in his period were 
equal to the problem of a vast composition, then the wise appreciator of 
art will turn to Allston for the things he could and did give; they are of a 
high order and generously offered. With William Morris Hunt and 
John La Farge, as we have seen, America tried again to reach the stage of 
evolution that France had attained. In a later generation, Twachtman's 
picture of The Hemlock Pool, in the Phillips Academy gallery at Ando- 
ver, tells how near our painters stood to the pioneers of Impressionism. 
Certain canvases by Childe Hassam might well be mistaken for the 
work of Monet or Sisley, and without casting on our painter any sus- 
picion of his having merely copied the splendid art of the Frenchmen: 
it contained the most important teaching of its time, but the approach 
to it, by Twachtman, Hassam, and Alden Weir, was simply that of intelli- 



t 3 6 THE ACHIEVEMENT 

gent men who recognized the problem they had to study. How fine a 
use they could make of what they learned is shown by Weir's portrait of 
Albert P. Ryder, in the collection of the National Academy of Design. 

Yet immediately, Ryder having been mentioned, we are reminded that 
the painting we enjoy most in the American sections of our museum is 
not that which emphasizes the school study which set out to bring us 
abreast of Europe, but the things which sprang from a native urge to 
express ideas inherent among ourselves. Thus Ryder's grand picture of 
the Resurrection, at the Phillips Memorial Gallery, or his Macbeth and 
the Witches, at the Cleveland Museum, are on themes which have occu- 
pied the minds of millions of our countrymen, and the treatment of the 
themes is one evolved in intense meditation and hard work in a New 
York slum. Although Ryder had been abroad, and retained till old age 
the luminous memories of Rembrandt that entered into his own poetic 
fantasy, his connection with the great school of romanticism was one of 
feeling its dominance in his formative years, and thus continuing its 
qualities not by imitation but by instinct. 

Those same words apply to Thomas Eakins. The head of that master- 
piece, the Signora Gomez d'Arza at the Metropolitan, suggests some 
noble Spanish portrait, while the tremendous power of observation and 
rendering to be observed in the veined hand is reminiscent of the scrutiny 
that the French primitives gave to their subjects. Yet, though Eakins 
spent years in France and Spain, and profited mightily by their teaching, 
his vision remained so much the one he had from nature that the real key 
to his art is to be had from another picture in the same gallery, that of 
Max Schmitt in his two-oared scull on the Schuylkill River. The observa- 
tion of those waters (on which the painter himself is seen rowing, in the 
distance) , the rendering of the silhouette of tree stems and foliage against 
the sky, at an hour of the day accurately registered, everything tells of the 
"return of the native/' and the renewed strength he felt on his own soil 
scant as was the welcome that its people accorded him. 

Yet, to see the teaching of our museum simply in terms of national 
qualities is to miss by miles the goal it sets and the use that artists have 
made of the institution. Having convinced ourselves of the astoundingly 
local note struck by the Max Schmitt picture, we must also envisage it, 
in the way that Eakins did, as a problem in perspective. We have studies 
for it, where a geometrical network of lines tells him, for the final paint- 
ing, where he is to place each detail. Knowledge like that could not be 
acquired in full by even a sovereign genius like Paolo Uccello, the founder 
of the science. It needed the contribution of one student after another 
to bring the matter to the point we see attained in the Eakins picture. He 




34. Venneer: Young Woman with a Water fug. 
Courtesy of Tie Metropolitan Museum of Art. 



i 3 8 THE ACHIEVEMENT 

would have been the first to say so, and his own patient work in the 
museums found its continuation when he, a teacher for many years, regu- 
larly brought his pupils from Philadelphia to New York in order to take 
them through the Metropolitan. 

I have already called attention to the purely American side of Prender- 
gast's work. The museum, for him, was largely a matter of his great con- 
temporaries in France. He rarely spoke of the Old Masters, though, at 
the very end of his life, a volume of reproductions after Giotto was his 
constant companion, and others of the old mural painters had fired his 
imagination and led him to try his hand at mosaic. Yet the great aesthetic 
experience of his life was due to the art of Cezanne universally sought 
by museums today, though unknown there in Prendergast's early years. 
That he could be the first of American painters to recognize the genius 
of Cezanne and then, with all the excitement of such a discovery, still 
have so much quality of his own as to remain but slightly or not at all 
influenced by the great Frenchman, is why his pictures form an essential 
part of our museum's teaching that there is such a thing as American art. 

It would be tempting to follow this thesis, as it continues to be illumi- 
nated by the efforts of living men, some of whom are producing work of 
great beauty or of important intellectual promise. But our subject is the 
museum, and if I have commented on the tendency or quality of certain 
of our painters, it has been to indicate the problems of our galleries, and 
their achievement in dealing with the rich and varied material that the 
country offers them. Certainly, as to the work of living men, our insti- 
tutions have never before been as well aware of its importance. 

Without lack of appreciation for what other places are doing, it 
seems imperative to mention here a work as valuable as that of the Whit- 
ney Museum of American Art. Here an artist possessed of vast means 
showed the esteem she gave to her fellow professionals, first by a studio 
club and exhibitions, and then by endowing the project permanently and 
providing funds for steady purchasing. Another effort in the same field 
(and connected, very significantly, with a general scheme of education) 
is the Addison Gallery of American Art, at Andover. 

Two rather special museums that are contributing in a distinguished 
way to our study of American production are the Phillips Memorial Gal- 
lery, in Washington, and the Museum of Modern Art, in New York. 
The role of the latter is particularly important for its great exhibitions of 
contemporary material from abroad, while its research in the fields of the 
Indian and of the applied arts (with special reference to the machine), 
besides its work with architecture, offers unique opportunities for artist 
and public to see the relationship of native and foreign art. The fact that 



THE ACHIEVEMENT 139 

our workers stand this test in the admirable way they do gives the best of 
reasons for a statement made very early in this book: that the explanation 
of America's great effort with museums is that it wants museums. And 
now we have proof that it wants them because it breeds men who, quite 
like those of the long centuries we have just traversed, are themselves 
carrying on as artists. 



CHAPTER IV 

1. PROBLEMS AND THEORIES 

AFTER READING the pages immediately preceding, someone might well 
conclude that the millennium was just around the corner. At any place 
in our fair land a museum is apt to spring up overnight; after a given 
number of apprentice years, it will have a good director, and money will 
flow to support his plans for assembling the finest collections obtainable. 
With the further breakup of Europe (which we have done our best to 
prevent), many a new source of museum pieces may appear; (perhaps 
not, however: even in her impoverished State, Europe is apt to cling to 
her art treasure; France has already passed a law designed to prevent the 
exploiting of works of art as Greece, Italy, and other countries had done 
previously) . But we generally assume that our museums are to have 
many new accessions of fine things, giving the true idea of the course of 
art, its culminations, and its direction. 

This is a highly optimistic way of looking at the current health of our 
museums, but it will stand up under examination. However, at this point, 
an obvious question is: what does the public, the Americans for whom we 
have been building these museums get out of them when they go there? 
How many of them do go, and how often per year, or per lifetime? The 
magnificent achievement described in the preceding chapters boils down 
to the work of a few individuals, relatively as compared to the scores 
of millions who might have contributed, by their interest at least, and 
been benefited during our museum period. Whether we think of Mrs. 
Jack Gardner bringing over her Venetian palace and cramming it with 
her treasures, or J. Pierpont Morgan making his prodigious collection, or 
John Quinn doing his extraordinary work with modern art, our history 
has largely the character of a series of one-man shows. 

And that is not, in the long run, the way to solve our problem. We 
must work for the era of the common man. The museum will have a 
share in that task. If the technique of the institution is largely democratic, 
and if its purpose has increasingly been one of making the collections 
available to the largest number of people, we must face the fact that it 
does not touch the lives of a vast majority. Efforts are being made, in 
various cities, to widen the public reached by our collections. The prob- 



PROBLE\fS AND THEORIES 141 

lem is one of especial moment in America, and the means used in solving 
it (such as publicity unknown in Europe) are developing as we realize 
the extent of our task. 

But perhaps the biggest problem facing our museums is to be seen in 
the contrast between the individuals, rich or poor, who, through innate 
or acquired art appreciation, have built up the instruments of culture 
here, and the masses who have remained ignorant of the feast before 
them, even to the point of denying, by their indifference, that it is a feast. 

The older social philosophy was to consider the masses as an inferior 
human breed, acceptable as tillers of the soil, churchgoers, soldiers, and 
so on, but not to be given too much education. Our period rejects this 
concept, which still, however, has many belated adherents; and they 
could make out a pretty good case for themselves by pointing to the 
"popular" expressions of art. This ersatz is composed of many things, all 
of the same kind. The most conspicuous are the advertising pictures, 
along our country roads and in public conveyances. They are planned to 
catch the eye for a moment, and through their success in doing so, they 
have become a big factor in modern business. Even bigger is their failure 
to hold the mind for more than that moment they aim at, or it would be a 
failure if there were any intention on the part of their producers to have 
them taken seriously. 

Admitting that most large-scale advertising is bad, an "art director" 
said he thought the pictures in the magazines showed much improve- 
ment. It is true that the cruder illustrations of a generation or two ago 
have gone out of style, but instead, we have work more photographically 
dull than that which afflicted us in illustrations by the older men. Doubt- 
less, the newer type of schooling must be blamed. The flippant brush 
strokes which are supposed to "jazz things up" and to denote "technique" 
are a poor substitute for the skill and knowledge possessed by such old- 
timers as A. B. Frost, Charles Dana Gibson, and Frederic Remington. 

The illustrator may be a true artist or a mere commercialist. When 
we reach the work of Winslow Homer (not to mention the great men of 
the past ) , we see that telling a story or representing a scene, a person, or a 
mere object (which is illustration, after all) has been the point of depar- 
ture for much of the best art of all time. What has given illustration a 
bad name is that many of its practitioners have never gone beyond the 
point of departure. To disguise the fact, resort is often made to a coating 
of sugar or as in the case of cartooning of salt. But we do not reach 
the plane of art when sentimentality, comic ideas, political ideas, and the 
like are added to an imitation of something in nature. That was indeed 
the formula for success of most nineteenth-century work, and it still serves 



I4 2 PROBLEMS AND THEORIES 

many men today. It carried into our galleries no end of things that we 
have since thrown out, and so people are on their guard against "popular" 
painters, as they so wrongly style the producers of our advertisements and 
magazine covers. 

It is not men like these, however, who are favored by the more sophis- 
ticated Americans, those who have been to college and/or to Europe. 
They have sat at too many dinner tables where exhibitions were discussed 
not to know that certain artists are well thought of and that others are not. 
Even when the talk turns to those who draw forth admiration, the senti- 
ment does not convert itself into a desire to have a picture and live with 
it: the very words suggest certain highly improper feelings that men have 
for women. I vouch for the fact that, in one cultured home, I heard it 
stated: "The place for art is in the museum." But if the dinner-table 
speakers remain pure in this respect, they all appear convinced that noth- 
ing is better form than to have an opinion on painting: in many circles, it 
appears that to be articulate about art is a social talent ranking higher 
than an ability to discuss the theater, music, or books. These, after all, 
are apt to be the concern of nearly anyone, while pictures and sculpture 
are more mysterious; yes, the museum is the place for them. 

We do not yet encounter an intelligent perception of art values when 
we enter many houses where works by the great masters are to be seen. 
Lest I be thought to regard certain characteristics of buyers as peculiarly 
American, let me recall the question put to William M. Chase by 
Whistler, after the latter had lived abroad for some thirty years. 'Tell 
me," he said, "is it the same in the States as here in London? You go to 
some rich man's house, and everything is wonderful: paintings, porce- 
lains, tapestries, until there on the mantelpiece, or in a corner, you see 
some rotten little thing that gives the whole show away." The "rotten 
little thing" was just the one the owner had bought on the strength of his 
own taste; the other stuff had been sold to him by dealers who had the 
cleverness not to expose him to criticism as having anything second- 
rate. 

We must go a step further in recognizing how slightly most people's 
lives are affected by art. In collections which are not only devoid of the 
little telltales that Whistler laughed at, but which show actual scholarship 
on the part of those who assembled them, one can see evidence that no 
real feeling entered into the matter unless it was such a one as com- 
petitiveness, the desire to have the rare and important examples that out- 
shine all rivals. In such cases, Tennyson's old words, "faultily faultless," 
give us a" clue to our lack of enthusiasm: one has only to note the omission 
of material which would give a new vitality to the ensemble. But for 



144 PROBLEMS AND THEORIES 

connoisseurs of the type under discussion, it would disturb the "har- 
mony." 

How different was the case of old Henri Rouart, in Paris! One could 
well feel that he had his Cezannes as a result of living for many years with 
his Greco, the first one to influence the artists of Paris. "I don't see how 
you, a modernist, can get excited over old stuff like Delacroix or Gros," 
The answer would be that those men have never ceased to be modern 
alive: and then one would understand that the bewilderment of the ques- 
tioner arose from his seeing only the school to which the recent pictures 
belonged. 

Such a man is of that miseducated type which is further from art than 
the people who never bother about it at all. As the latter include so large 
a proportion of our citizens, and as the numbers of visitors who enter the 
museum are, to an extent, the measure of its success, and also an argument 
to be used when grants of money are sought, much thought has been 
devoted to the question of increasing attendance at the galleries. 

To achieve this result, tests of various kinds were applied, and the 
discovery was made of an unhappy phenomenon called "museum 
fatigue." There is really nothing strange about the thing: there might be 
"library fatigue" if people, through centuries of reading, had not learned 
that the way to enjoy books is to read them one at a time, for an hour 
perhaps, instead of trying to cram samples of sixty novelists, poets, and 
dramatists into the same number of minutes. That is quite the equivalent 
of what visitors do in rushing from a gallery of the Greeks to one of the 
Chinese, thence to paintings of the most varied type, with a look at the 
etchings (since a wedding present is to be bought) . 

Once more, also, we must remember that the vast public collections 
we now have are a modern development, one for which people have not 
been prepared, either by the reading habits mentioned just before, or by 
(what is still more important) the habit of seeing art in their accustomed 
surroundings. There again, books usually having a place and proper use, 
their essentially lovable character has come to be appreciated. How 
strange that Benjamin Ives Gilman, in that study of his, which contains 
so much that is admirable, should say that "the solution of the problem 
of overgrowth in museums is as simple as Columbus's egg. They must not 
be allowed to become so large." Public libraries are often very large also; 
but in cutting things out of either the library or the museum, you will 
destroy its balance and, for somebody, its greatest utility; perhaps it loses 
interest for the very persons we most desire to aid. William M. Ivins, Jr., 
writing for the Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum (September, 1934) 
has stated, "In a certain way it may be said that the great museum and 



PROBLEMS AND THEORIES 145 

the great library constitute the two halves of the community's memory of 
the past"; and he goes on to quote the words of the great Marquess of 
Halifax, "The best Qualification of a Prophet is to have a good Memory." 

Simplifications attempting to equal that of Columbus with the little 
egg problem are often mere self-deception. Some matters are essentially 
complicated, and they have to be recognized as such. How much nearer 
the truth Mr. Gilman was when he wrote, "We must rejoice in propor- 
tion as museums are unnecessary; and look upon the conservation of art 
therein as the Greeks looked upon existence in the underworld, all of 
whose years were not in their minds worth a single day of warm and 
breathing life." 

The life referred to is the one that the people and the objects lived at 
times when they dwelt harmoniously together, day after day, and in the 
quiet evening hours when friends dropped in, and a new feature of the 
home was enjoyed in common, or an old one was marveled at for the 
hundredth time. A vase to contain wine or oil would serve its material 
purpose quite as effectively if there were no red or black figures painted on 
its flank; so that if the Greek spent money for such decoration, it was 
because he liked to see it every day. Here was a popular art that shows up 
the poverty of what we call so today. Yet Keats, two thousand years later, 
rejoins the ancients in their love of that beautiful thing, and proves that 
England, not to speak of the modern world in general has not 
deviated from the character of mind coming down to us in that priceless 
heritage of Greece. 

Keats* famous ode is Mr. Gilman's own answer to the critics of 
museums. It may also comment on the length of time needed till we 
reach his hypothetical period when museums will be unnecessary. In one 
sense, that day will never come: certain things will always be too precious 
to be entrusted to the hazards of individual care, and great numbers of 
others are of such importance to all men that they must remain accessible 
to everybody, as only a museum can make them. But the basic idea behind 
the words of our critic is true gospel, even if it implies the idea that all 
men need the museum. There are some who do not. 

Reverting once more to the question of books, I give heed to the les- 
son I once had from a great librarian. Though his international success 
came from a deep love of the things in his keeping, he affirmed that there 
are broad classes of admirable people who have no need of reading. Simi- 
larly, in my thought about the museum, I cheerfully admit that very fine 
lives may be lived by men utterly untouched by its influence. Shake- 
speare's "man with no music in him" who would be fit for "treasons, 
strategems, and spoils" is indeed a type, but it would be the blackest of 



I4 6 PROBLEMS AND THEORIES 

pessimism almost misanthropy to say that all men unresponsive to 
art are of such a type. 

Yet, before anyone can say that art means nothing, either to himself 
or some other person, it is imperative that there be opportunity to try out 
the question. Conscientious and even regular visits to public collections 
are not enough, any more than Sunday churchgoing is enough, if the rest 
of the week is spent irreligiously. One of the good Paris art dealers, when 
showing his wares, would often warn a prospective client to be careful in 
his choice: "Getting a picture is like getting married you're going to 
live with that thing, you know/ 7 They do know that in Paris, more than 
anywhere else; which is why taste and knowledge are at their height there. 

And to add one more testimony on the subject, I cannot refrain from 
quoting again some words of Diego Rivera's that I have set down else- 
where, "I hate museums." On my exclaiming in surprise, he added, "Oh, 
of course IVe had some of the best moments of my life in them. But I 
hate them for their effect. In the past, men had works of art in their 
homes, to see at any hour; now they say that one should see them in the 
museum." 

One reason for the powerful development of art that modern Mexico 
has shown resides in the fact that a vast number of Rivera's compatriots 
have continued to have art in their homes, if it be no more than some 
specimens of good earthenware; and in an astonishing number of house- 
holds even in the cities there will be some example of the ancient 
sculpture that the soil still gives up in such abundance. 

And so the problem of the museum goes immeasurably beyond the 
confines of the building. We ask too much if we say it is the museum's 
business to change the public's attitude toward art. It can give invaluable 
aid, suggestion, or even inspiration in that matter, and it will give always 
more in proportion as its exhibits are kept to the highest standard. But 
the current between it and the people is clearly reciprocal: each affects the 
other, and we come back once more to Emerson's idea that we take from 
a place what we bring to it. The process of improvement must go on out- 
side of the building as well as inside. And what goes on within the 
museum will be nullified if the home life of art, its contacts with people, 
streets, and manners, is at variance with the patterns proposed by the 
masters. William Sloane Coffin, a very wise president of the Metropoli- 
tan, used to say that this great museum had less influence on the public 
than city shop-windows. John Cotton Dana had already made such an 
observation. 

All this has a direct bearing on that question of "museum fatigue" 
which we glanced at. I pointed out that the feeling would not occur if 



I4 8 PROBLEMS AND THEORIES 

people had any real understanding of the way to use the institution. It 
goes without saying that everything possible should be done by architects, 
lighting experts, and the persons concerned with the placing of benches, 
with ventilation, and with all other matters of creature comforts. The 
museum should have every material attraction it can, and should keep 
the visitor's mind free from any unfortunate memory that can be avoided; 
it should leave an impression of time happily as well as profitably spent. 
Such things seem almost too elementary to say here. But now that the 
obvious has been said, and assuming that these matters are disposed of, 
the director and his staff may feel free to devote themselves to their one 
pre-eminent study, the quality of their exhibits. If the public has no 
taste for such things, all the scientific presentation in the world will offer 
no help whatever. 

\\Tien it is agreed that compromise \\ith ideals, in order to get paint- 
ings and other art objects of easy attractiveness, is not the right way to 
make gains in attendance, and that, for such a purpose, we do not need to 
concern ourselves excessively about wearying the public, the museum is 
still not absolved from efforts to reach the largest possible number of 
people. I have said, above, that no problem is more urgent than getting 
the understanding and support of everyone capable of responding to art, 
and though the present book does not pretend to be a manual for museum 
personnel, a few ideas may be offered to advance the necessarily gradual 
work to be done. 

I take back no bit of my severity (if it was that) toward certain of our 
people when I say that they are, in the mass, magnificently worth striving 
for. In the first place, they are of identically the same stock as the men 
who have given us our great museum development. Everybody's experi- 
ence will furnish examples of families that remain commonplace even 
while one of their members rises to splendid heights of character or 
achievement. We see those two latter elements in the records of the 
exceptional persons who have made our museums what they are. We 
admire the qualities of these men too much to permit ourselves an illu- 
sion that any action of ours will produce more such people; but at least 
we may observe similar potentialities among their neighbors, today as 
well as yesterday. Everybody will recall, again, how often a single contact 
with a person, a book, or a picture has marked a turning point in 
the inner evolution of some man or woman. Only after many years, per- 
haps, will its effects be recognizable; but at times they may be traced 
directly and wholly to the occurrence. 

That was the philosophy once offered by an old professor to a young 
one, who had been resenting the lack of response from his classes. He was 



PROBLEMS AND THEORIES 149 

told that the result of his work extremely earnest and well-prepared 
work might appear at some completely unexpected time and place, 
even in a far future, when some mind, which had been slowly assimilating 
his words, would burst forth with ideas, and so act in a way to compensate, 
a hundred times over, for that part of the professor's effort which did 
indeed remain fruitless. 

The return of old graduates to a university, their testimony as to bene- 
fits received from him, or the very record of their lives doubtless permits a 
professor to appraise his influence on his students. He is in a much more 
advantageous position than the museum worker, who far less frequently 
know r s which ones, among the innumerable visitors to the gallery, profit 
from his exhibits. Yet, his conviction of the public's deep pleasure and 
benefit is none the less a sure one. He has only to observe how people 
react to the paintings, sculpture, ceramics, and other exhibits. Some will 
be listless, hostile, frivolous, or otherwise unresponsive. But (and the 
the reader can verify this for himself) no round of the galleries, at any 
hour on any day, will fail to discover many the majority of visitors, I 
believe whose manifest quality of attention and warmth of glance offer 
the best evidence that the collections are meeting at least a sufficient 
response. Of course, only by speaking with them can we estimate to what 
extent they are moved by the sight of masterpieces. 

Here we are dealing, most often, with residents of the city where the 
museum is located. But what does a visit mean to people from the small 
places where no art works are to be seen? One of the attractions of New 
York in the summer is observing the pilgrims from all over the country, 
who come in larger numbers during the vacation season than during the 
rest of the year. These people have an absolute hunger for something to 
bring a bit of color into their lives. 

I remember one such person from a Midwestern town that stays 
in my memory as the most unattractive I have ever seen anywhere. My 
host for the day, a worker in a lithography plant, showed me the few 
things which might have some slight interest. They were f ew indeed, and 
of a deadly commonplaceness. Finally, as if he had had an inspiration, he 
said, "Oh perhaps you'd like to see our art and book shop." Not quite 
believing he could make good on his offer, I gladly assented. He took me 
to a business building on a side street, up to the top floor, and along an 
ill-lit corridor. Sure enough, on a door at the far end of it, were the words 
Art and Boole Shop. We entered a cubbyhole of a place, where a school- 
girl sat at a table, doing her homework No one was there but this guar- 
dian of the treasure which I did not need very long to inspect: a dozen 
or two lithographs and woodcuts on the walls, a few modest shelves of 



150 PROBLEMS AND THEORIES 

books. I will say, though, that the various things shown were on a con- 
sistently good level of quality. 

I looked around to my host who was beaming. 

"Pretty nice, don't you think?" he asked me. 

"Yes, indeed, there are certainly things here that I like very much, and 
some of the books are ones that IVe been meaning to read for a long 
while. But how do you get customers to come here, so far from the center 
of things? I should think you'd need a place with a shopwindow on the 
street level." 

"It might be better, of course. But I just couldn't afford it. I make a 
hundred a month where I work, but when I've paid expenses at home, and 
for my wife, and for my daughter here, there isn't more than enough left 
for this room and the cost of bringing books and prints from New 
York/' 

**But," I pursued, not understanding, "how can you do any business 
here?" 

"Why, I don't do much, to tell the truth. But the only places in the 
whole city where you can buy books are the drugstores, and what they 
have doesn't amount to much. And what pictures you can see are not 
even as good. So I thought it would be such a nice thing if our town had 
a real art and book shop, and I just made up my mind we would, too. I'm 
so glad you like it." 

After twenty years, I still see that little man as a symbol. That art and 
book store in the bleak town to which I have never returned is a token of 
America's love for beautiful things, of its dream of owning them and 
making them. And if a person is ever tempted to despair over museum 
conditions, let him think what a fight is being put up, all over the country, 
to have the barest tithe of what our big cities offer in abundance. 

Perhaps it is clearer now why I said that trying to help our public is so 
splendidly worth while. We are impatient about limitations and for- 
get how quickly they may change for the better. We are rancorous about 
the way a stupid trustee, representing a still more stupid group in the 
community, has blocked the road to progress that we had at heart. But in 
his small town, before that trustee had made his fortune in the big town, 
there was no one like that art and book man to set him on the right track, 
when his mind was still open. And come to think of it there's a lot 
of hope for the son of that trustee. There's a lot of hope for no end of 
people and things in America, if you stop to consider how much we've 
done thus far. 

There is also a lot of discouragement, so we've got to do more. The 
main obstacle in the way of progress is popular apathy, which is chiefly 




37. JeanGoujon: Diane de Poitiers. 
Courtesy of tlie Worcester Art Museum. 



152 PROBLEMS AND THEORIES 

due to ignorance. It expresses itself in remarks about the museum being 
highbrow, dull, un-American, and so on. A form of hamstringing its 
influence may cause a smile today, but it was a very* serious menace until 
quite recently: Sabbatarian prejudice. The Metropolitan Museum, until 
1891, was not allowed to open on Sundays, the only free time most people 

had. We need not worn- about hatred of modern art or indifference to 

*> 

ancient art (as a supposed form of conservatism, as "archaeology," as a 
bore, or even as the fraud that certain persons claim it to be) . Also to be 
discounted, in the long view of our problems, is the alleged need of the 
museum to avoid class antagonism, which, on the other hand, would 
make it an instrument of social snobbery, or, on the other, of propaganda 
for some proletarian Utopia. 

The foregoing hindrances to better understanding doubtless exist. 
But their negative character makes dealing with them directly an unprofit- 
able business. Let the museum survive and grow, and time will correct 
such errors; any one of them may, however, be bothersome enough until 
we have got past it. The only valid way of fighting all the stupidities 
which darken the sky for the museum director is positive achievement. 
His work is part of the fight for democracy, his institution sharing enor- 
mously in the effort to give to all the people what in the past was regarded 
as the privilege of the few. In such a course he must expect the discourage- 
ments, even the dangers, incident to popular control. Bad public taste 
(expressed by prominent men who have been put into positions of stra- 
tegic importance as regards the museum staff) has often compelled the 
acceptance of unworthy things or the rejection of extremely desirable 
things even very great ones. Both of these results furnish a bitter drink 
for the museum man w r ho loves his work, and they have, unhappily, been 
the lot of our officials on all too many occasions in the past. I shall offer 
what I think is a way to avoid them or at least to reduce them. 

In approaching it, let me sound a warning against one of the worst 
slogans ever invented. It is so bad, in fact, that it is perhaps never put into 
the words "Art Made Easy," which do, however, sum up the claims, in 
various advertisements by teachers, critics, publishers, and even museums, 
through the program of their gallery arrangement, instructors, and buy- 
ing. Schiller affirmed that art is joyous; only a charlatan ever claimed that 
it could be easy. And so my plan (which is that of many men who care 
for the museum) is no panacea promising to bring results overnight. As 
in all matters of art, a period of normal growth must be allowed for. 

With that much said, I go ahead to my conviction that the great lever 
for raising the museum to its proper place and its proper level of quality 
the highest level is a body of art lovers throughout the community. 



PROBLEMS A.VD THEORIES 153 

That is no very sensational discovery, someone will say, especially if he 
disregards what was said just a bit before about the things to be done by 
the museum itself, the positive achievement which offsets negative ele- 
ments. 

Returning once more to Renoir's pregnant words, that the place where 
the young painter learns his art is the museum, one can see that institu- 
tion, quite obviously, as the place where other persons susceptible of 
enjoying art catch fire from it, and go on to the acquisition of works of art 
to live with. When there are enough such persons, and their daily experi- 
ence with pictures, sculpture, and kindred objects in their homes has 
made them see, always more clearly, the difference between good and bad, 
and even, as the French say, that the good is the enemy of the best, then 
the museum will be kept automatically to that level of the best which will 
not tolerate the merely good as a substitute. 

Over twenty-five years ago, when I told a college class that my ideal of 
success with them would be realized only if each of them became an art 
collector, I added that, to many, it would seem as if the goal proposed 
were that each should become a millionaire. Few people need encourage- 
ment on that point, especially if the price they have to pay is not too 
high. But neither that price nor the prices paid by rich men for works 
of art were in my mind. Nor were such things in the mind of a certain 
museum worker when, lecturing in a very "art-conscious" city, he told his 
audience he would believe in their seriousness when he saw a really good 
dealer's gallery in the town, one that proved the people's desire to own 
fine works: merely a Platonic interest was expressed by occasionally going 
to a museum of Old Masters, to a modern exhibition, or to a lecture 
even his own. 

By a coincidence, it was in the same city that I had tried out my 
scheme for making the museum a creator of amateurs, as art buyers are 
called in France, and usually with accuracy (the word primarily means 
art lovers; it is true, of course, that many Frenchmen buy for investment, 
or even for speculation). My first move was to break down sales re- 
sistance. So deeply rooted is the idea of art collecting as a millionaire's 
game that you have to present concrete evidence of your claim that people 
of modest means can own fine, original works. But there are such; etch- 
ings and lithographs by the greatest masters, provided you take those 
which appeared in large editions, and there are Indian, Mexican, and 
simon-pure American things. Getting them may mean many a hunt, 
though that is no hardship: it even adds to the memories that the works 
evoke later. The auction houses frequently yield some fine piece from an 
old residence, while for people who have reached the stage of judging con- 



154 PROBLEMS AND THEORIES 

temporary production, there is the greatest privilege of all: that of becom- 
ing the virtual collaborator of a young artist of talent ( or of genius, who 
knows? ) , one still at a place where even five dollars for a picture is a god- 
send. 

Suppose our collector has not reached the stage of sure judgment; 
suppose the five-dollar, one-dollar, ten-dollar, or fifty-cent purchases do 
not turn out to be the masterpieces that have, indeed T been bought for 
such sums, or even less. An object of some interest has entered a house- 
hold. It has sent not only the purchaser but other people in the family 
to the museum (or perhaps just the library) to check up on the acqui- 
sition, to see whether it is really a treasure or just "junk." I repeat 
that I am not offering a short cut to art appreciation; time is needed, but 
it is time well spent, and enjoyably spent. And it takes us along the one 
road that experts have followed in arriving at their knowledge: the road 
of experience. Imagine what it would mean to a museum to know that 
its public includes a substantial group of people with the background 
such experience affords. Standards would be kept up, or rather lifted up, 
by visitors who demanded an always better showing at the place which 
had the resources of men and of money to get the best. 

Even-one who knows the museum field will testify that I am not 
building castles in the air, but am describing conditions as they exist. The 
man with one Greek vase will want the public gallery to show where his 
possession fits in at least chronologically; and in quality too (for that 
last point he will get insufficient help from the books, splendid as some 
of them are). The woman with a jug she bought for flowers will want to 
know about the Virginia or Carolina hill people of today who made it, 
and how it compares with the things produced in Colonial times. The 
same applies to the possessor of a chest painted with fine frankness of 
color and design by some old Pennsylvania German. Or if one of his 
descendants has painted a picture today, w r hy isn't it as good as something 
that sells for thousands of dollars? The latter work originally sold for 
less than what the recent one cost, because the artist needed the money 
in order to eat. That was the time to buy from him, and you can give 
either one of two good reasons for saying so: because you think he 
deserved to eat, or because it is always agreeable to pay a price that has 
not yet been jacked up by half a dozen speculators' profits. 

So that if a museum trains up a breed of buyers, it is helping itself, 
the artists, and, above all, the community. Some members of it, to be 
sure, are so overwhelmingly impressed by the reputation of famous 
painters or great ceramists or sculptors, that they will accept nothing that 
has not been sanctioned by the vast majority, above all nothing but what 



i 5 6 PROBLEMS AND THEORIES 

is vouched for in books. They lack understanding of good objects that 
are as yet unacclaimed and, not being able to pay the prices that the spot- 
lighted things command in the galleries of the big dealers (to which most 
fine works gravitate), these collectors give their imagination free play in 
the auction room or in the shops of the less scrupulous dealers and 
come home with fakes. These may be either the kind willfully produced 
as such, or the w T orks of genuine but minor artists that have been sold 
under great names. That is just too bad, if the buyer sincerely wanted fine 
things, and was not merely a bargain hunter. 

At times counterfeits are discovered in museum collections, and then 
someone is sure to say, "What difference does that make? If the painting 
or sculpture \vas so beautiful that it withstood detection for a long time, 
w T hy should it not continue to give people pleasure?" The answer to the 
two questions is that they both rest on a false premise: the object is not 
beautiful, any more than is the wax dummy which for a moment may 
have imposed on someone who thought it was a living woman. And, in 
the museum, that work did not give pleasure: it was accepted with the 
respect that the name attached to it had every right to command. Visitors 
w f ho could well appreciate the master's real work may have noticed that 
they rarely looked at the object in question, telling themselves that their 
lack of response came from the heavy varnish which they thought must 
conceal its quality; or had it not been dulled by "restoration/' or was it 
not just one of those inferior productions which even great men turn out 
occasionally? 

None of these explanations was correct. Even the last one, the "sub- 
jective" one, w r ould not satisfy a person really sensitive to the master's true 
note. It was probably this very person who finally plucked up courage to 
tell the museum that it had gone wrong. Then the bandages fell from 
the eyes of everyone else, and what seemed strange was that the mystifica- 
tion had endured as long as it did. But while it lasted, much harm was 
done. The public to be reached by art office workers, schoolteachers, 
housewives, doctors, and the rest were led to think that they had better 
not bother any more about things beyond their comprehension. To be 
sure, if the museum was a good one, there would be genuine works by 
great artists and it is always surprising how surely these things produce 
their effect, and on even quite simple people. As the latter gain in appre- 
ciation, and discern ten qualities where at first only one was recognized, 
they naturally get more from the masterpiece. Indeed, the great test of 
its claim to that splendid title is that it constantly grows on acquaintance. 
And the forgery, as Ouida tells of it so incomparably in The Nuremberg 
Stove, is dead. 



PROBLEMS AND THEORIES 157 

Though the book has enjoyed immense popularity, especially among 
children, my experience is that few people remember an exquisite bit of 
insight it affords. Even if you have read the story, let me briefly refer to it 
once more, for some one who has missed it. The scene is in an antique 
shop, where a little boy has fallen asleep among all the magical things he 
has seen for the first time. They come to life in his dream, and enchant 
him with their grace, their strength, their wit, their beauty. Only two of 
them take no part in the festivity which is in progress, and he asks his 
neighbor why that is. "But child, don't you see?" is the surprised reply; 
"the}- can't. Those are forgeries they have no life/ 7 Sometimes it 
seems as if the lady who wrote those words left nothing at all for art critics 
and the rest of us to do save apply her test. To be sure, there is some- 
times dissension as to whether a given work has life; but that state of 
affairs does not endure. Murder will out, and life will out. 

Since I have mentioned one of my favorite pieces of writing on art, I 
will go on to another which bears out the first one. For Cousin Pons, the 
hero of Balzac's great story of that name, is the man who responds to the 
life in paintings, in sculpture or in a fan, if it be like the one he bought, 
a fitting evocation of the lovely Eighteenth Century lady who wielded it. 
And of course Cousin Pons is the perfect example of the man who can 
himself have a happy life amid art works on an income of nothing a 
year. 

Those last words belong to Thackeray, another writer who loved 
painting and drawing. But I want to insist once more on that Balzac 
book. Suppose it were disseminated widely by our museums. They 
would gain the gratitude of countless persons, who would be stirred by 
that masterpiece of story telling (which is principally about other things 
than art). You can't tell we might have a larger number of people 
who would get the joy of existence that made up to Cousin Pons for the 
thousand slights he had to endure from his rich relatives. Certainly, 
collecting in Paris has increased many times over since the great novelist 
published that tale. I doubt our having there an example of cause and 
effect; more likely, Balzac had that sixth sense by which artists respond 
first to the direction of their time. 

Post hoc or propter hoc, let us imagine the book, or some other book, 
increasing the number of our collectors until an American city could 
sustain 35,000 art dealers, as does Paris (with about half the population 
of New York. Of course, the buyers come from everywhere; but then 
New York, also, draws on our whole continent.) Juggle the figures to 
suit yourself: all I ask is a multiplication of art lovers. Then, I say, you 



i 5 8 PROBLEMS AXD THEORIES 

have decreased the museum's problems in the same proportion, or even 
in a greater one. 

Take the question, for example, of the staggering confiscatory taxes 
on great fortunes. We are told that their possessors or former posses- 
sors can no longer pay for the museum as t very largely, they have done 
until now. But if we had, throughout the community, men with such an 
enjoyment of art as that of Cousin Pons, and in numbers such as we very 
easily could have, the support of the museum would be a light burden for 
them, indeed one that each of them would be delighted to share. He 
would thereby have a voice in the direction of the museum, which, in its 
turn, would benefit. 

If the ideal collector is a very rare bird, there are, even so, numbers of 
real amateurs throughout the country, and admirable ones. Compare 
their possessions with the old collections at the New- York Historical 
Society, for example, though, even there, most of the bad things are kept 
out of sight. The fullest proof is obtained when one can see intact groups 
of the things people used to buy before the rise of our museums. The 
advance in understanding is enormous. Even when we look again at the 
Jarves picture at Yale, the choice of the best American connoisseur of his 
day, we are once more brought to the conclusion that if indeed there is 
no such thing as progress in art, there is progress in art appreciation. 
James Jackson Jarves may have had a stronger, more original mind than 
any present-day collector. To have attained his level meant immensely 
more, in that far-off time than at the present day, with our facilities of 
travel, the increase of exact reproductions (our constant basis for com- 
parisons], and then the piling up of detailed analyses by scholars per- 
mitting immediate decisions on all but the most difficult questions of 
attribution. With such aids to knowledge, a very minor student may 
(and should) know more than a genius did, a century ago. 

To be sure, the opportunities for acquiring fine Old Masters were 
incomparably greater at that time. But what did it matter if a dozen 
Vermeers were then to be bought, when the very name of the artist was 
not yet discovered? No, our period has innumerable advantages for the 
connoisseur, and Americans have, on the whole, made excellent use of 
them. No one can estimate what the country contains in the way of small 
collections, or of households with just one or two good pictures. It is on 
such places that we must draw when the great assemblages of art works 
are no longer available. Perhaps there are yet to be more of them; it is 
not easy to be a prophet, about finance or anything else. But one can 
look to the past and say that, for not less than thousands of years, men 



i6o THE AMERICAN ARTIST 

have found fascination in collecting. We need to go further in linking 
up their instinct with the museum not that it may absorb all their pos- 
sessions, for that would be a catastrophe. On the contrary, we need a 
thousand homes with art in them for every one so constituted today. But 
if certain great things now in private hands ought to be in the museum, 
that institution should reciprocate by increasing the measure in w r hich it 
is the public's guide. 

2. THE PROBLEM OF THE AMERICAN ARTIST 

UNDOUBTEDLY, many persons will look on my last idea that the 
museum be our mentor as turning attention away from modem art 
and from American art. Such a notion can derive only from a wrong 
understanding of the whole matter. Every competently directed gallery 
in our country today refutes the superstition that museums exist for the 
sake of what is past and what is foreign. Even a collection of ancient art, 
if it is the true art which is always true, can be studied by a modern 
American with the utmost profit, for it is a means of knowing whether 
we are on the right track at a given moment. If there was any excuse in 
1810 for those Pennsylvania artists who spoke of the Academy as a 
museum "and consequently not likely to become of much importance, 
either in the improvement of artists or in correcting the public taste," 
there is no excuse for such ideas today. 

As to the things we call specifically modern, I shall speak a little later, 
separating the subject in general from that subdivision of it which comes 
under the heading of American art. All of the latter is modern, since all 
of it was produced in the modern period (save, of course, that great body 
of American art which we owe to our Indian predecessors on this conti- 
nent) . The place where it is fathered gives to an art its national charac- 
ter; and the time when it was produced leads it to be properly called 
modern when, as with our art, it dates from the modern time. The term 
is one which denotes a period and not a school: the "reactionary" is as 
much a part of the modern world as the "progressive/" Whether we 
prefer one direction to another is a separate issue. 

And so we get to the question of American art in the museum. Two 
overlapping theories about it are heard, one placing emphasis on the 
function of the museum as the judge and guardian of art, the other stress- 
ing the American artist's need of public support- 
To sustain the latter point of view, a hundred arguments come readily 
to mind. Historically, the artist has had a difficult time here. From the 
start, our people have been busy with practical affairs, as was natural in a 



THE AMERICAN ARTIST 161 

country where everything relating to daily life had to be built up from 
scratch; later on, the chances for material success being enormous, atten- 
tion tended to center on that rather than cultural matters. Even so, as 
we have seen, our record in art is, all things considered, amazingly good. 
The government, however, did not sponsor an art program; and rich 
tourists, who have often been important buyers in countries like Italy and 
France, simply did not visit our shores at least, not as connoisseurs. 
Since the invention of photography, portrait painting, the steady source 
of a livelihood for many artists of the past, has dwindled more and more, 
while most of the handicrafts, another way of earning a living in earlier 
centuries, have been killed off by the machine. That is true of Europe 
also; yet most European countries have managed somehow to make life 
more possible for the artist; he has too often found our country, for all 
its wealth, a particularly adverse environment. 

What more natural, then, than for the artist to see the museum as a 
patron, like the princes of the past? It lias not merely money to spend, 
but walls on which to display pictures: in fact, that is why those walls 
were built. Besides, it can provide a magnificent avenue for reaching and 
developing private buyers, who could support all the real artists we might 
bring forth. Then too, the public showing of their work, the opportunity 
to see it together, as well as in comparison with the classics and the 
modern schools of Europe, would do for our workers what no amount of 
effort by individual supporters could possibly accomplish. 

William Cullen Bryant, in his profoundly considered and eloquent 
plea for the founding of the Metropolitan Museum, emphasized the 
importance it could have in offering big exhibition spaces to our artists 
who, as he said, were usually held down to the production of small 
"cabinet pieces." That had been one of the disappointments of John 
Vanderlyn on his return to America. Trained in a school that admired 
and wished to emulate the sweep of David's vast records of the Napole- 
onic epic, Vanderlyn thought our young, heroic commonwealth should 
have the same inspiration. Out of his own pocket, as we have seen, he 
paid for a building in which to display such work. Its financial lot was 
disaster; and when S. F. B. Morse painted his large and splendid picture 
of the old House of Congress, he fared no better with the work, which 
is today one of the proud possessions of the Corcoran Gallery. To be 
sure, when, at a later time, the opportunity to deal with big walls arrived, 
most of our painters who were employed on them proved inadequate 
and the word is modest when applied to men like Kenyon Cox and E. H. 
Blashfield. A later muralist, Gardner Hale, is similarly reserved in his 



1 62 THE AMERICAN ARTIST 

book on fresco painting. In speaking of such men, he merely remarks, 
"The less said of them, the better." 

Even for men who painted things of moderate size, suited to private 
residences, the road was difficult enough. And nothing is more regret- 
table than the judgment forced on us when we note that the late work 
of many American artists is inferior to their early production. Some of 
them, in their youth, had quiet years of study in Europe and then, return- 
ing here, deteriorated chiefly because of excessively difficult material 
conditions. The same is true of others who never went abroad, but who, 
starting with clear minds and high ideals, met defeat also. The great (and 
generous) public could not effectively be reached. As one foreign 
observer stated the case, "In Europe, the artists live badly, but they live; 
here they starve" which is to say that they are forced to find a side line 
to make ends meet. Leaving aside the men who sacrifice all artistic 
principles, few people can keep up their best effort with the drain on their 
time and energy involved by a potboiler such as commercial decoration. 
That was what'john Quidor worked at, and it probably explains the fact 
that, in his eighty years in New York, he could paint so few pictures. One 
cannot guess what the country has lost through such conditions; one can- 
not estimate the number of unknown men who have striven for art and 
who could echo Victor Hugo's words, "The terrible thing is not to die; 
the terrible thing is not to live." 

\\Tien strong emotions color a question, it is difficult to consider it in 
the light of reason. Yet we must try to do so. The man most sympathetic 
toward artists must admit that not all of them have had talent enough 
to make their work valuable to the world; many an imaginative youth has 
confused a liking for art with the ability to produce it. In the recorded 
words of Ingres there is a passage in which he strongly urges a pupil to 
return to his native place and continue the honorable business career of 
his father. Such words, though hard for a youngster to swallow, might 
have beer, salutary for many a one here where, moreover, there was not 
such magnificent training as that to be had in Ingres's atelier. We have 
to recognize from the start that the professions of painting and sculpture 
are to be undertaken only by very exceptional men. 

But then, granting freely how natural it is for the artist to think of 
the museum as a patron, we must, I believe, firmly decide that that is not 
its role. Benjamin Ives Oilman, following a splendid tradition, has 
argued that the museum's work is to preserve and show the things which 
have been proved by humanity at large to have enduring value. Only 
institutions like the societies of "Independents," with their principle of 




Oiardin: Lady with a Bird Organ. 
CoiHfcsjr erf Tbe Fiicl Coflection, Nor Ymi, 



164 THE AMERICAN ARTIST 

"no jury," can offer a complete alternative. For if the collective judgment 
demanded by Mr. Gilman is not to prevail, then every claimant to a place 
on museum walls may possibly be right in his opinion of his work. Some 
would indeed be too well balanced for such pretensions; but seeing the 
bad things in galleries, many a man is willing to desert modesty 7 as he 
thinks (perhaps correctly), "My work is better than that." And so the 
thing extends itself quite literally ad infinitum, ad nauseam and both 
the muses and the public are done the worst disservice. 

No, there must be a firm check on access to museum space for the 
sake of the artists no less than for that of the public. This does not mean 
that the museum should fall back on the past; only a little latitude is 
needed to make Mr. Oilman's arbiter humanity at large mean the 
contemporary public, and the ideal state of affairs would be a public able 
to recognize important production at once. Meanwhile our curators and 
purchasing committees can look ahead and secure, besides what is already 
of value, what will be recognized with the passing of time. That is, of 
course, the hardest of jobs, but we must continue to build up competence 
for it. Perhaps, we are today ready to judge nothing nearer than the work 
of fifty years ago; that is no disgrace indeed, it is not doing badly at 
all, if our philosophy of making acquisitions for a permanent museum is 
really valid. But let us, in the next generation, cut down that fifty years 
by ten, or by twenty, if we can. 

Let us have the freedom of choice which comes with treating con- 
temporary works as nonpermanent acquisitions. If changes of judgment 
on the Old Masters are known to occur (not frequently, but still at 
times), how much more likely is it that modern work will turn out to 
have merely a "historical interest"! Yet that quality, which accounts for 
the influence of certain artists on great numbers of men in their profes- 
sion, as well as on amateurs, is a quite sufficient reason for including in a 
museum particular works which do, in fact, have a merely historical 
importance. 

To speak personally for a moment: I regard Picasso as an artist who 
will endure because of certain pictures that seem to me masterpieces. 
Not everything in his enormous production can merit that word, clearly; 
and some of his paintings look to me like failures, save as testimony to 
his researches. But precisely such tentative work may explain the purpose 
of another man who took up the idea that Picasso conveyed to those near 
him before passing on to something else. And so, to show the evolution 
of numerous modern artists in true perspective, the thing of genuinely 
historical importance should be accessible to students and the public. 

Though we are here dealing with modern art in the broader sense of 



THE AMERICAN ARTIST 165 

the word, the idea just developed applies particularly to our own painters 
and sculptors. Just because they are ours, because we have so very special 
a warmth of interest in them, we need also a special freedom both in 
accepting their works and in sending them to the attic if we find, in the 
long run, that time does not bear out our first hopeful opinion of them. 

A plea for generosity to our artists is not even the most distant cousin 
to the "America First" philosophy which would tolerate inferior things 
done here, simply because of their nationality. The so-called "friends of 
American art" who have made this mistake may yet come to be recog- 
nized as the enemies of American art. For when one visits certain gal- 
leries and sees room after room of bad stuff (almost always the work of 
men who did not know it was bad), one can hardly repress the idea that 
something is wrong with this country, or that artistic talent is feeble in 
this country. For our artists, it would be an unhappy day indeed when 
such a feeling became general. To make matters worse, the chances are 
that in such a museum there are no other rooms for the really fine Ameri- 
can things: they are more likely to be interspersed among poor things. 

Nobody doubts that love of one's country is a wholly admirable 
thing; and most of us can enjoy the enthusiasm of people who have a 
special flair for appreciating the excellence of local products. But they 
must not ride their hobbies too hard, though it is such as they who have 
created in Europe certain very instructive and sympathetic museums that 
bear frank witness to a belief in groups of regional artists. The latter, if 
taken singly, are perhaps of slender importance; yet taken together, they 
may combine to utter an eloquent statement about their nation, and 
testify to the most intimate feelings of its people. To recognize the appeal 
of this sort of museum is not, needless to say, to fall into the nationalist 
fallacy in art appreciation. 

Art appreciation demands the constant exercise of what P. G. Hamer- 
ton called "nonpartisanship." The very time we live in is already spread- 
ing snares for our freedom of judgment; when we visit outmoded collec- 
tions, and when every additional glance makes us more certain than the 
last about the poverty of the work, our one explanation as to why it was 
ever bought will doubtless be that the collector merely followed the dic- 
tates of his time. Now, let the far stronger element of love of country 
enter in, and you will see how it can mislead. If you don't see that in 
terms of our country, go to German, English, or Spanish museums of 
the nineteenth century, and try to find any reason but nationalism for 
the presence of most of the paintings they exhibit. 

It is in the newer museums of the United States that one particularly 
regrets the presence of bad works by Americans. Sometimes they are the 



1 66 THE AMERICAN ARTIST 

only things there; and then it is easy to understand why the cultivated 
people of the town keep away from the gallery, and decline to support it. 
Their attitude is only natural for they think of the museum as a commer- 
cial sample room, something that gives the artist a chance to make a sale. 
If visitors are, on the contrary, convinced that a picture is in the museum 
solely because of its artistic merits, they will see the whole place more 
favorably. 

In cities where collections of fine old pictures or those by the great 
French moderns accompany the showing of inferior things by our men, 
a no less unfortunate effect is produced. For the thoughtful observer may 
easily work out a piece of logic like this: "Americans, with their intelli- 
gence, their respect for the classics, their energy and power as organizers, 
have shown on any number of occasions that they can build up a fine 
museum of works by the masters. That is to say, we are a people of collec- 
tors, like our cousins the English, for the British Museum and the 
National Gallery contain perhaps the finest assemblage of art works in 
existence. But to the British school, in its own paintings and sculptures, 
such praise cannot be given. Down to the present, and noting some excep- 
tional cases, England will take rank in history as the greatest conserver 
of the art of the past, far more than as a great creator of art. Judging by 
what America shows in the gallery I am studying, and in others I have 
seen, our record is going to be a similar one." 

If our observer is, for example, a man about to make his will, he may 
decide (and perhaps, on such premises as we have just heard, should 
decide) to give his resources to activities in which his countrymen have 
proved their creative ability. If a soil is unfitted for one type of crop, 
wise farmers will plant the thing that does flourish there, even if they 
care far more for the product that would fail. The final indictment, then, 
of the museum-as-patron theory is that, in taking the welfare or the live- 
lihood of American artists as its great objective, it is almost sure to lead 
to a seeing of American art as the crop doomed to failure. This is any- 
thing but the truth, and the museum that contributes to the forming 
of such a wrong idea is doing a bad job. 

Our painting, as we have seen, has its roots in the healthy innocence 
of a people with a single-minded desire to register the truth about the 
world or more modestly that part of it which, in their Colonial 
isolation, they knew so well. With a few helpers from abroad, and a few 
models in the shape of imported pictures and casts of sculpture, they 
went on rapidly: it is already more than two hundred years since the 
birth of Copley. He grows in our esteem, not because of any matter of 
patriotic pride, but because his work has such astounding vitality, and so 




41. Hoofco: Dam the Huntress (tenacotta). 
Courtesy of UK Frick CoBectMn, New Yort. 



1 68 THE AMERICAN ARTIST 

much, specifically, of the painter's quality of form. That central problem 
of his art is met by Copley when he creates his broad planes by the use 
of firm outline. Sometimes naively, delightfully hard, his use of contour 
never gets away from a live reality, and is closely united with a feeling for 
character prodigiously distinctive character unequaled by any other 
artist of British blood, unless it be Hogarth. 

And so, through an early school which goes on to the high accomp- 
lishment of Gilbert Stuart, and very soon touches the great French tra- 
dition through Vanderlyn, we come to landscapists who, for all the thin- 
ness of their beginnings, fix our attention on the special character of our 
native scene. If romantic temperaments give a personal tone to the 
work of Allston, Whistler, and Ryder, of Inness and Homer Martin, we 
can balance that by the uncompromising realism of Winslow Homer 
and Thomas Eakins. Even the long later life in Europe that saw 
Whistler's personal development did not diminish in him that typically 
American sense of nocturnal beauty which made me mention him with 
Allston and Ryder. So also, the famous picture of his mother is, as 
George Moore observed, the portrayal of an old Puritan lady. That was 
the note which made it look so foreign as it hung at the Louvre, in the 
room with Ingres, Delacroix, and Courbet. One wanted it placed some- 
where else, and not simply because our painter was not the equal of 
those giants. The Louvre planned, just before World War II, to place 
it with the Homer and the newly acquired Eakins. That would have 
given its true setting to the work an American setting, as one can say 
without a trace of chauvinism. 

The same idea will hold good if a painting by Maurice Prendergast 
enters the Louvre. A picture by him would tell of his years abroad and 
of the closeness with which he studied the essential development of art 
in his time. But it would tell more than that. Despite the interest of 
his superb color, and with all his unpredictable charm of pattern, he 
never lost a jot of the characterization of people and places which 
appears in his earliest efforts. And what people were they, and what 
places? Why, those he knew from his boyhood in the woods and along 
the shores around Boston, even if his response to the beauty of Paris and 
Venice came, later on, with equal felicity. 

A dozen others among our artists, from Blackburn in Colonial days 
to John Sloan in our own day, might be mentioned as irrefutable proof 
of the statement we have seen made by our museums: that there is such 
a thing as American art. The future alone can say how high it is to be 
rated. But that is not the point which is that we need not concern 
ourselves to the slightest degree with any question as to whether we are 



THE PROBLEM OF MODERN ART 169 

creative in art or merely the conservers of it who build museums. The 
question has long since been answered by definitive and authentically 
American achievement. Our only questions are as to how it shall go on. 
They will be answered at least in part by the Museum of the New 
World, of which I shall have more to say later on. It is already helping 
to direct our artists, and they in turn will help to give to that museum 
its distinctive character a character no museum of the Old World 
can have. 

3- THE PROBLEM OF MODERN ART 

IN SPEAKING OF the role of the museum, we saw, just now, that it was 
giving to the artists a part of their direction, and there is, certainly, most 
ample authority for stating that, at all periods, artists have learned from 
the work of their predecessors, work such as museums now exhibit. On 
the other hand, what counts most in a masterwork is something that the 
influence of other works of art cannot account for. Our greatest thrill 
comes from contact with things never before done, even if we find, on 
knowing them better, that they continue the unbroken line of the clas- 
sics. 

The museum can give invaluable help to the artist; it can never lay 
claim to creating him. The men who do derive entirely from its posses- 
sions are the Epigonen, as the Germans call the poor race of imitators of 
the past. Compare them, even when they are honest, with a man like 
Ingres. Haunting the masters for eighty years from his very first draw- 
ing to his very last and helping himself to museum treasure with full 
hands, he yet remains an archetype of the creator. For if he gave pas- 
sionate study to the vases of the Greeks and to the madonnas of Raphael, 
the essential guidance of his hand came from life from the men and 
women he depicted or from the subtler essence we call the life of his time. 

Therefore, if Ingres, great lover of the past that he was, still ranks as 
the modern (or, to use his own word, the "revolutionary") of his day, 
how easy it is to see why a forward-looking period like ours should have 
an immense interest in its own image as projected by modern art. The 
term applies to all the products of the modern period, good and bad. 
(To be sure, when they are very bad, we simply do not classify them as 
art, just as we do not think of mentally or morally defective persons as 
"Americans/' although, by nationality, they are that.) The type of 
modern art which has chiefly engaged public attention in recent years 
is based very largely on a conscious, intentional departure from natural- 
ism. At first a mere puzzle to the majority of people, it has come to be 
recognized as including most of the expressions of genius in our time, 



1 70 THE PROBLEM OF MODERN" ART 

and so has also come to monopolize the term "modern." This explains 
the remark made in all seriousness that Picasso was modern in 1912 
(at the height of his first cubistic period), but was no longer modern in 
1922 (when he was producing his neoclassical pictures). In other 
words, Picasso's modernity his response to the need of his time 
could be measured, according to the speaker, by the extent of his depar- 
ture from natural appearances. But the question of what constitutes 
modernity is not as simple as that. The college instructor, in marking 
examination papers, is right in what he does, for the answers demanded 
of the boys and girls are fixed in advance by the contents of the text- 
books. But the problems set by modern art do not have answers in 
advance: new solutions are demanded. The neoclassical Picassos of 
1922 were new solutions to problems set for him by new experiences; 
and if the painter needed at that time to respond to the great statues he 
had just seen in Rome, he no more ceased to be modern than did Dela- 
croix when, at the end of his life, he took from Raphael figures of the 
angels in his Heliodorus; and it was of the essence of Cezanne's creatively 
modern art that he followed Signorelli and Greco in so much of his 
masterwork. 

Is all of Cezanne to be called masterwork? Yes, it is unless you 
deny him the title of master. If you recognize the essential quality of his 
mind, you see it not only in the color he was able to handle in his 
maturity, but also in the heavy, Conrbetesque troweling of his youth 
when, as he himself said in reviewing his work later on, he had not yet 
understood the difference between sculpture and painting. But the man's 
the man for all that. Or as the Spanish proverb has it: "Genio y figura 
hasta la sepultura" (we have but one "genius" that is, one essential 
character from the cradle to the grave ) . Therefore the young Cezanne, 
expressing his \ision through painting with a black-and-white basis for 
the form, or the older Cezanne ^modulating" the color, as he described 
the process, was always the same man. 

And Picasso, in his early naturalism, in the geometrical research of 
his cubism, and in all the uncanny logic and intensity 7 of his later develop- 
ments, is still the Malagueno he was at birth, the man haunted by the 
fateful spirit that we hear in Andalusian singing. No wonder that he 
separates from Braque, with whom he worked so closely for a long time! 
The Frenchman, after his years of bold experiment, settles down to the 
magnificent style by which he constantly deepens and enriches his art. 
It is the Spaniard who continues to invent and perfect new forms. Some 
pages back, I spoke of works by him that may be looked on as failures. 
But only Picasso could have made them. The failures of a man so extraor- 




42. Ingres: Matae d'Hauss^vile. 
Courtesy of Tie Frkrk OoOection, New York, 



1 7 2 THE PROBLEM OF MODERN ART 

dinary are still important things; those in question take away nothing 
from the quality of that unresting mind which, more than any other, 
doubtless, has dramatized for our period of rapid change its conception 
of modernity. 

If we use that word in its only reasonable definition, nothing could 
be more grotesque than remarks like the one I quoted about Picasso's 
varying phases. Although it was based on a fundamental and widespread 
error, we need not let that fact deprive us of a necessary part of our 
vocabulary'. "Modern" is by no means identical with "abstract" (another 
approximation of ideas, and likewise to be handled with some precau- 
tion ) . To clarify by an example: no collection formed to cover modern 
art completely, or even its essentials, could omit Derain. Yet a purely 
nonrealistic work by him probably does not exist. The artist who has 
influenced the central current of his time most frequently, he suggested 
necessary developments followed up by the Cubists; yet he cannot him- 
self be included in their school. 

Since we have seen that the problem of the modern masters is beset 
by complexity and even controversy, how can we propose to admit them 
to a place whose task is to set our standards of truth? Actually, however, 
we cannot ask the museum to give us truth: at best it offers only what 
most men have agreed upon. Modern art, simply because it is of today, 
does indeed stand at the farthest remove from what Mr. Oilman called 
for: work that has been lived with and by that surest of tests 
deemed worthy to preserve in public galleries. Nevertheless, we look 
forward to reducing the period of probation, at times to the vanishing 
point. The process has already begun, and we are nearer to an ability 
to judge contemporary work than we were, say, thirty years ago. Some- 
times we seem to go too fast in this matter: people who grew up with 
the point of view of the earlier time are not without disquietude when 
they see the work of youngsters in their twenties hanging on museum 
walls. But though mistakes are occurring, the mere age of these artists 
is no conclusive argument against them: Masaccio did his incomparable 
frescoes while still in his twenties he died, in fact, at twenty-seven. 
In attaining mastery while still so young, he was not different from most 
of his peers it is the exception among them who has not done impor- 
tant things in his twenties, or before that. But to appreciate such produc- 
tion at the time of its appearance calls for an almost prophetic eye, and 
few can claim that. 

Another difficulty about evaluating contemporary art: we need the 
authority of time in order to feel safe about the conflicting statements 
made about it. Sometimes both sides are right: remember the bitter 



THE PROBLEM OF MODERN ART 173 

words exchanged among the artists of Renaissance Italy with their 
partisans (quite as in our day) making things worse than the great men 
themselves. But even if we recall Michelangelo's terrible description of 
Raphael as showing more study than talent, and explain his severity by 
his resentment against attacks on himself, we must not overlook the 
fact that these fierce controversies were based on principles also. And 
Ingres, even when he so misunderstood Delacroix as to call him "the 
apostle of ugliness/' did so on what he regarded as the loftiest premises. 
The example of very great men is therefore a confirmation of our claim 
that time is our nearest approach to the touchstone which decides values. 
But are there no standards, no principles? Forty years ago, Matisse 
answered that when he said that there might well be laws for art and 
then challenged his opponent to show him the book in which they were 
written down. There is no such book, and since we cannot always wait 
for the judgment of time, our best guide is the man whose interest in 
modern art is combined with a rich knowledge of the art of the past. 
The chances are that he will succeed better than will a committee: the 
latter offers too many alibis. The success or the failure being collective, 
we do not know who is responsible for it. Let one man in the museum 
be the director and be given power; we can see, after a while, whether he 
uses it well or ill, and may then continue him in office or replace him. 

That may be rather cold comfort when a lot of money has been mis- 
spent, and the public has been rendered hostile. People may well ask 
whether museums should not rule out entirely the acquisition of modern 
art. That is not the true solution. Even if we can reach no decisions that 
cannot be appealed, we are not released from effort to reach such deci- 
sions. What is the "final" opinion on Rembrandt? A little research into 
the opinion of the past will suffice to show that he did not always hold 
the pre-eminent position accorded him today, and it is easy to find men 
of various admirations for the early Italians, for the Orientals, for many 
of the moderns who will strongly maintain that Rembrandt is to be 
rated lower than he was a hundred years ago. Do we therefore hesitate 
about giving space on museum walls to the master? 

The famous Dutchman has on his side, of course, three hundred 
years of admiring testimony, while the men of today are vouched for only 
by their contemporaries and rarely by more than a small minority 
among those. "Do you approve of modern art?" people constantly ask 
its adherents. It is tempting to reply, "Do you approve of modern life?" 
(for it is the only one we can live) . "Modern art is the only kind we can 
produce," is more to the point. We may happen to think that our art 
today is less great than that of some older school, just as we may recognize 



I74 THE PROBLEM OF MODERN ART 

that another man's children are bigger and better than our own. But it 
is our own that we are duty-bound to bring up; and certain!}" those of 
ancient Egypt and Greece are beyond any bringing up. It follows that the 
first requisite for dealing with modern art is to like it. In the days when 
I was troubled about most of Mallarme s writing, I asked a French poet 
if he could understand it. His answer was, "By dint of loving it, I have 
understood it." Many will say that this was wantonly reversing the logi- 
cal order of things that one must understand first and love afterward. 
But art has a logic of its own, as has been said in various ways by various 
men William Blake, for example. 

The very anger against the ''perversity" of modern art, still to be found 
today, sometimes affords a proof of its authenticity. For the very syllo- 
gisms intended to beat it to earth only demonstrate a quality it has in 
common with ever so many accepted schools. Intuitiveness, the charac- 
teristic most general throughout the art of our time, is to be distinguished 
unmistakably and pivotally in the greatest arts of the past. We 
spoke of Poussin, shortly before, as a type of the classic. His paintings 
give an impression of calm, unemotional reasonableness; and therefore 
some youngsters and some writers who were not youngsters have 
called him cold. You can convince them of the contrary in five minutes: 
by showing them the master's drawings. "But those are so modern!" (I 
am not inventing but quoting this example of what may seem to be a 
fantastic use of the word. ) What is here meant is fiery, spontaneous, 
intuitive. The qualities are there; and they are in the paintings, as you 
see when you come to like them. And when you come to like modern 
art r you will see again that the anger against it also arises from its building 
on intuition and its using logic only at a later time. 

Modern art, then, is of immense value as a means of understanding 
better a thousand things we thought we knew before. Naturally, no real 
admirer of great modern works would consent to having them used 
merely as instruments, no matter what the gains so obtained. Among 
these are certain very significant ones, and everybody remembers that our 
better understanding, today, of arts like those of the South Seas, of Negro 
Africa, and of ancient America is a direct result of preoccupation with 
such things on the part of Gauguin, Matisse, Picasso, and others of their 
type. Knowing but few references to these "exotic" arts in the writings 
of travelers and others, I cannot affirm that no one beside Diirer spoke 
of these things as real art. But certainly they were generally regarded as 
curiosities, to be described as "barbarous" or "savage," in short, as belong- 
ing to the infancy of the race. But in the light afforded by an under* 
standing of modern art, we can see that the nature peoples (one of our 



176 THE PROBLEM OF MODERN ART 

friendliest terms for them ) are no infants at all. Some of mankind's wis- 
dom, religious sense, and sense of beauty must be sought among them. 

They do not have systems of writing comparable to ours, and of 
course no method, like the printing press, of multiplying copies of writ- 
ing. What do they have instead? Tradition: the handing down from 
father to son of laws, science, moral precepts, and the principles of art; 
and memory: the retaining of past lessons by living minds instead of by 
written pages. But then since tradition and memory will sometimes be 
at fault another faculty will have to be used to get at a hidden truth 
and a living beauty. This faculty is intuitiveness. One sees it in the cos- 
mic grandeur of ancient Mexican art, as the movements of the sun, the 
stars, the waters, the animals, and man himself are accounted for at 
times with an accuracy surpassing any that Europeans have attained. 

I hope it is agreed that intuitiveness is one of the elements of art that 
recent painters and sculptors have revealed to us particularly; therefore, 
if some of us have failed to discover logic in modern art, perhaps they may 
yet recognize it there by means of more acquaintance with the "primi- 
tives/' Ingres smarted under that last word as it was applied to him in 
his early days, when the primitives of Europe were unappreciated. Those 
of the other races (beside some of the more ancient ones of Europe) 
should help to clarify our minds when we see the successors of Ingres, the 
"revolutionaries" of our own day. 

But once more, we must avoid "using" art, even to prove a quite 
valuable point. The great figures of Easter Island do not need the 
sculpture of modern Paris to bolster the idea that they are impressive. 
And the great moderns do not need the things of Crete or Byzantium or 
Palenque as buttresses for their support. And if we leave open a decision 
as to which of its phases represents modern art at its best, perhaps there 
yet may be agreement that it does have a rightful place in the museum. 

And it pays for that place in terms of the attendance record. We 
have observed previously the effort of museums to reach the largest group 
of people they can and, considering the way that modern art has gripped 
the imagination of America, exhibiting the work of today is one of the 
best means of arousing public interest and support. We have more to 
consider on this matter and from other points of view. 

At present, let us gknce at a segment of the public not always thought 
of as such: the artists. Numerically unimportant, they have a strong 
influence on opinion; they are known by the critics and collectors, so 
that their words, reported even at second or third hand, may have much 
to do with the success or failure of museum showings and acquisitions. 
If their attitude toward the public gallery has at times been marred by 



CASTS AND OTHER REPRODUCTIONS 177 

selfishness, only a moderate appeal to their disinterested judgment need 
be made for them to respond in a way that confirms one's confidence in 
their fundamental love of their work. More than any other class, they are 
the beneficiaries of the museum and, from the time of its founders, this 
fact has been well understood in America. 

4. CASTS AND OTHER REPRODUCTIONS 

IN READING, just now, of the place of modern art in the museum, 
many a person may have been tempted to say, "Old stuff. What he says 
applies to the conditions twenty years ago. But New York's Museum of 
Modern Art has had more than fifteen years of existence, and it's an 
enormous success. The rest of the big places in the country are headed 
just the same way, and perhaps some places in California, for instance 
are a lot more modern than New York." 

Perhaps they are, in one sense of the word. And perhaps it is not the 
best one. Very strong suspicion attaches to men or places that go all out 
for modern art without balancing their enthusiasm with an understand- 
ing of the older things. The artists who have produced the best art of the 
modern age from the French Revolution on were profoundly pre- 
pared for their work by their knowledge of the classics. No more addicted 
to self-analysis than artists usually are, they could, nevertheless, give 
chapter and verse for every principle they used in their work. It had no 
ambition to be an encyclopedia of bygone schools and traditions; but 
neither was it rootless. Nor did it build only on the school just before it. 
Now, rootlessness or at least the failure to get more than a superficial 
toehold on immediately preceding modern work has today become 
the vice of a lot of people. 

Their world began in the twentieth century; and as the great men of 
that period draw their strength from all manner of early sources, the pro- 
fessional modernists cannot understand the veiy painters and sculptors 
they imagine themselves to be following. The man who has no insight 
into the history of art will fail to distinguish between an open road and a 
blind alley, unless he has a pretty strong instinct. That is about the best 
thing an artist can have, but in that case he will assert his own ideas from 
the start, as was done by profoundly original men, such as Gericault, 
Courbet, Cezanne, Redon, and Seurat, all of whom, be it observed, built 
on knowledge of the classics. Merely going along with whatever school is 
modern at a given time does not prove that a young man will himself do 
anything worth while. 

For Renoir in his youth, Impressionist theories and techniques offered 



i 7 8 CASTS AND OTHER REPRODUCTIONS 

what I have called "the open road/' When his generation had exhausted 
its possibilities, it became a blind alley for the great numbers of men who 
went on with the formula, and thought themselves modern because they 
did so. How different was the course of a master like Cezanne! Exactly 
contemporary with Renoir, he was, like the latter, for years a contributor 
to the development of Impressionism. We have already noticed the 
tenacious individuality that was to make of his art, from first to last, a 
single thing. Taste, which he called the best judge, made him ally him- 
self with the other true artists of his generation. But far from giving 
exclusive control to the brilliant ideas, of Monet, for example, he con- 
stantly returned to the Louvre, drawing from the antique and from 
Michelangelo, and above all studying that great transmitter of classical 
values, Poussin. And so, because he reoriented art in the classical direc- 
tion it was losing, his true place is at the opening of a new r period, instead 
of at the close of an old one. Therein, with all his external unlikeness to 
David, he still resembles him. Both men refused to be the decadent 
followers of even such splendid schools as those which preceded them. 

In the case of David, everyone knows the means employed to free 
himself from the too graceful and facile painting in which his teachers 
instructed him in his youth. The clarity and force of the Greco-Roman art 
in which he saw salvation bursts the delicate network of line, and the 
mother-of-pearl shimmer still put to charming use by certain mas- 
ters really spelled the decay of the type of genius which reached its 
apogee in Watteau. A firm sense of form, based upon David's study of 
ancient marbles, takes the place of the exquisite fragilities of the declin- 
ing eighteenth century; and a whole torrent of new energy that of the 
Revolutionist himself and that of the men he sired was set free on the 
course it would take for a hundred years. Far longer had classical sculp- 
ture exerted its influence on the artists of the Renaissance, who made it 
their special study. 

With all the misuse that weaklings have made of the classics, Greece 
and Rome still have the fecundating power they evidenced when a 
Michelangelo, a David^ or a Cezanne addressed himself to them. And 
the best reason, after all, why modern art should not be separated from 
the older schools is the need of public and artists alike to compare the 
different periods with one another. Dull people will use a Greek figure 
in order to ridicule a modern one, just as their artistic forebears did, cen- 
turies before, when they used classical art to show up the "barbarity" of 
the Gothic. That very word Gothic, as is well known, was invented to 
express condemnation of the men who were supposed not alone to have 
departed from classical perfection/ but to have acted as its destroyers. 



i8o CASTS AND OTHER REPRODUCTIONS 

Today we see the harmony between even the two periods, and we are 
coming to recognize those moderns who are able once more to utilize the 
high qualities of the ancients and of the Gothic artists. 

Cezanne's gift to art a renewed sense of structure and organization 
is in some ways comparable to the quality that gave David his power 
to reform the school of his period. Yet, the opalescent haze of the later 
nineteenth century makes it seem a very different time from the cul- 
tured and witty dix-huitieme, while the last of medieval art, against which 
Michelangelo reacted, was of course still more different in outward 
appearance. Inwardly, however, the three periods have in common their 
fin-de-siecle character, something that menaces art with exhaustion if 
new strength is not forthcoming. The contribution of the men who in 
each crisis gave a fresh breath of life to their periods is essentially the 
same: all three appealed to the basic authority of the classics. 

Perhaps we are today ready to understand more fully Cezanne's 
phrase, which was a bit puzzling to the men who first heard it, "I remain 
the primitive of the way I have discovered." Like other primitives, his 
scope had to be extended in many directions. The same was true of 
David. Unfortunately, we see immediate followers of both who carry- 
ing to perfection what the founder of the school had brought forth yet 
lead to sterility if other forces are not added to their own. Ingres, the 
great pupil of David, can show no vital artist among the many men in his 
studio; indeed, it is the weaklings of academic art who seize upon his 
authority. Picasso, who follows a part of Cezanne's teaching, is also a 
source of error for those who do no more than attempt to repeat his per- 
formance. It is all too easy to see the outer aspect of pictures: today 
there are men who imitate the appearance of Picasso's painting with such 
skill that they deceive both themselves and the public, quite as the 
academics, a hundred years ago, did as echoers of Ingres. The true value 
of that master reappears, for example, in Renoir. He stems, originally, 
from the school against which the classicist made his bitter fight; yet, it 
is men like Renoir (Degas, Seurat, and Matisse come also to mind) who 
reach, in their so different painting, a mastery of line that affords a new 
reason for loving the linear quality, even though Ingres himself had 
seemed to have said the last word about it. 

The men who pay the best homage to the masters are often the very 
ones who are outwardly most different. Miro, who renews the contribu- 
tion to modern art of Picasso's native Spain, might seem to have little 
in common with his older compatriot. Yet, without that great liberator, 
Miro would surely be very different from what he is today. And it is 
practically certain that other men, recognizing perfectly the immense 



CASTS AND OTHER REPRODUCTIONS 181 

value of Picasso's art, will turn even more from its formulas. No one, for 
a long time, will be able to affirm that antinaturalistic painting has said 
its last word with the generation that originated it: there may yet arise 
some great talent to advance antinaturalism along its own lines. But the 
chances seem to point quite the other way, and whatever estimate the 
future will put on the Surrealists, there is no question but that they base 
themselves on a resumed acceptance of visible things, and are therefore a 
part of the reaction against the "abstract" art which preceded their own. 

Even if we abstain from judging this or that individual in the Sur- 
realist group, it is clear that the post-Cubist period has approaches to art 
different from theirs. Among these is the strong work of Rivera and 
Orozco, and it has had its great success because it offers one of the new 
solutions possible. But, as I shall attempt to show later, these two Mexi- 
cans derive very largely from elements in their native soil which are, for 
the present, inaccessible to North Americans (as we are called by the 
Mexicans) and even more to Europeans. So that, since the tradi- 
tions of ancient America (those drawn upon by Rivera and Orozco) are 
unfamiliar to most artists outside of their country, other sources of 
inspiration are needed. 

And there remain in the museums certain great wellsprings always to 
be tapped, the ones which have given strength perennially to the revi- 
talizers of art. When mere virtuosity threatened in Italy, after the time 
of the baroque masters (still not the men prophesied by Michelangelo 
in his terrible warning, "My style is destined to make great fools") , what 
do we see? A new land, first with Jean Goujon and then with Poussin, 
resorting once more to the inspiration that the Italian Renaissance had 
caused to gush forth like a fountain in old soil. And its waters have not 
dried up in the centuries since then. When they nourish a new growth, 
its leaves and flowers will have a very different look from those of other 
periods. 

To make available today the source of strength which has so often 
served in the past is the museum's very special duty. To speak practically, 
however, how can American museums offer their public an adequate idea 
of classical art? The supreme originals of Aegina, Olympia, and Athens 
can never enter our galleries. Such possessions as we have, almost exclu- 
sively in New York and Boston, represent the effort of collectors and 
curators whose work will be expanded unquestionably (and the effort 
does go on, as witness the lovely Greek head at Toledo and the superb 
Roman statue at Minneapolis). But adding to our treasures is limited 
by Europe's having already gathered up most of humanity's heritage of 
the surviving sculpture of antiquity. 



1 82 CASTS AND OTHER REPRODUCTIONS 

Robert Henri used to argue against excessive zeal on the part of our 
museums in making collections to compete with those of Europe. Let us 
agree that there may be excess and that, along many lines, we shall never 
be able to compete successfully. But, fine as Henri's teaching was when 
he called upon our artists to seek a living and even local inspiration, he 
was quite wrong when he said that Americans could always see the art of 
the past abroad, and that the airplane would make visits to Europe as 
easy as the railroad today makes a midwesterner's trip to New York. 
Shorten the distances as much as you like: only a small minority will be 
able to benefit fully by the galleries of the Old World. Before World 
War II they were visited by countless Americans who sailed across the 
Atlantic and were always mere visitors abroad. When they came 
home, it was to occupy themselves with American matters, however fine 
a glow of memory may have surrounded the treasures of art they had seen 
in London, Paris or Rome. Airplane travel, however widely available, 
cannot change this situation. 

For one essential fact remains: we live over here, and the place to see 
art is the place where we live. What gives to music, and even more to 
literature, their intimate place in our lives is that we can have them at 
any moment we are in the mood for them. And the recurrence of that 
mood depends partly on our being able to satisfy it. The attitude to 
painting and, even more, to sculpture, is too often that these arts are not 
natively American, and that liking them is an acquired taste. We are 
told that they should be seen where they naturally grow: in foreign 
countries. This point of view must be fought by the museums, which, 
in fact, were founded to wage just this battle. Its successful outcome 
should prove amply that the classics belong to Americans as much as to 
the other peoples. 

How can our museums prove this fact when Greek sculpture, as we 
have noted, is so hard to get that only our biggest and richest galleries 
have any appreciable amount of it, and then nothing like the collections 
abroad? The answer is by the use of casts. "What those dreary 
things?" you exclaim. And just your choice of words is proof that you 
have never looked at them aright: they are marvelous things. 

In many a glimpse into the studios of the past that the old painters 
afford us, we see casts doing their work as models for artists and students. 
You will be well repaid for consulting a book on Jan Steen if you look at 
no more than the scene where a painter turns from his easel to criticize 
the w T ork of two pupils, a girl and a boy, who are drawing from casts. The 
picture is so wonderful, with its deep interior and those two healthy 




45. ROT: LeBaUBougcvaL 
Coarte^ of &e Masenm of Fine Arts, Boston. 



184 CASTS AND OTHER REPRODUCTIONS 

youngsters, that you catch your breath at its beauty. And Jan Steen is the 
last person in the world for anyone to think of as academic. 

You object that I am transferring the discussion from the museum 
to the school, or perhaps to the artist's studio, which is not a place for the 
general public. It is not, to be sure, and yet the man in the street, if he is 
to enjoy art as part of his birthright, will be well advised to follow the 
man in the studio in his approach to painting and sculpture, for he is the 
greatest expert in those fields. 

There is doubtless a tendency, even a fast-growing tendency, to think 
that museums have outgrown the need for collections of casts. This is 
not because people now own what they formerly went to see at public 
galleries, though excellent casts are being sold at the museums them- 
selves, and to an increasing number of art lovers. No, one accusation 
against the plaster works is that they accumulate grime; another is that 
they take up large amounts of valuable space. The first charge is repeated 
here only because it has been quite seriously made, despite the ease of 
answering it. Properly treated, the surface of a cast can be kept as clean 
as can marble. Before answering the other accusation, let us glance at the 
matter of casts in general. 

In tracing the antecedents of the National Gallery, one of its officials, 
Mr. John Walker, has dug up some very choice bits of Americana. Promi- 
nent among them is a scheme originated by F. W. Smith around 1891; to 
large numbers of our people, including members of Congress, it was so 
dazzling that only by great luck were we saved from a monstrosity which 
was to have covered sixty-two acres near the Washington Monument. 
A whole city built of Portland cement, and representing the various 
countries of the world, was to have been filled with "casts and copies of 
historic art objects. The United States was to be represented by an elabo- 
rate Acropolis in true Greek style, with a model of the Parthenon, which, 
in characteristic American fashion, was to be much larger than the origi- 
nal." 

Another passage in Mr. Walker's article (published in Art in America 
for October 1944) also deserves to be quoted: "One of the principal 
arguments for Smith's scheme, and an argument greatly encouraged by 
foreign museum authorities, was that America should be satisfied with 
reproductions and casts, since it would be impossible to acquire important 
originals. An eminent professor of architecture was quoted by Smith's 
supporters as saying that 'he would restrict a National Institution to casts 
of antiquarian remains, considering the fictitious value of originals in 
comparison/ " It is highly unlikely that those "foreign museum authori- 
ties" encouraged the scheme with the deliberate purpose of forestalling 



CASTS AND OTHER REPRODUCTIONS 185 

the spoliation of Europe through American purchases of originals. We 
had not gone far enough at the time to be a menace, and the lack of 
understanding displayed by that "eminent professor of architecture" was, 
we must regretfully admit, pretty nearly typical of the country. 

The one extreme represented by those sixty-two acres of casts does 
not justify our going to the other extreme, and abolishing casts altogether. 
No one who knows originals can doubt that the difference between them 
and reproductions is a matter of two thoroughly separate orders of 
existence. For a profound and conclusive discussion of the question, the 
reader will do well to consult Henri Focillon's book, The Life of Forms. 
To people who have not experienced the different effects on the eye of, 
say, the etched line due to acid biting into metal and the soft line of 
lithography, it will at first seem strange that the contrasting characteris- 
tics of these graphic techniques are given so much importance by the 
great French critic. Yet, they are as distinct as the effects on the palate 
of a raw apple and a baked potato. With the two forms of the graphic 
arts, however, we are still dealing with originals. When we come to trans- 
lations from carved and crystalline marble to dull and molded plaster, 
for example the disparity becomes far more marked, especially when 
the reproduction is made by men unacquainted with the artist who pro- 
duced the original work, at a different period and in a distant land, very 
probably. Speaking of this matter, that distinguished sculptor of today, 
Jacques Lipchitz, said, "There are casts and casts. Plaster may be used 
with a sense of its beauty: when an artisan like Gonon made plaster casts 
of Barye's work under the eyes of the great man, I prefer the result, a 
thousand times over, to the bronzes of kter date, for they lose so much of 
the beauty of those glorious figures." 

There are, of course, no casts of the Parthenon marbles made under 
the eyes of Phidias. And very early in our experience with antique sculp- 
ture, we come to feel the difference between Greek work and that of 
Roman copyists, near as they were in time and place to the masters they 
followed. A hundred years ago there was far less knowledge of this fact; 
and it was with intense emotion that David, in his old age, wrote to his 
pupil Gros, to say that, having seen the Elgin marbles, he was forced to 
the idea that all work from Roman sculpture, such as he and his school 
had done, was based on a false foundation. 

Therefore, we are making no admission at all if we say that our casts 
of Greek marbles are not to be mentioned with the originals. Rather, it 
is underlining further the incompetence of that previously quoted "emi- 
nent professor of architecture" who spoke of the value of originals as 



1 86 CASTS AND OTHER REPRODUCTIONS 

"fictitious." Not merely admitting but claiming, as we do, that the full 
quality of the classics cannot be appreciated from casts, we still affirm 
that place must be made for them in the museum. Without them, we 
have as regards the Parthenon sculptures, for example nothing; with 
them, we have something evocative enough to let us see, in the mind's 
eye, much of the splendor of the marbles themselves. 

To arrive at this result, our galleries must obtain as much as they can 
of work that was shaped by the hands of the masters. To exhibit these 
original pieces along with the plaster casts would be a mistake, for the 
unlikeness of their effects would lead to confusion in the mind of the 
beholder. But it would be a mistake, also, to create a museum of casts 
entirely divorced from a great collection, especially if , as is sometimes pro- 
posed, they be separated by a considerable distance. There could, of 
course, be such a gallery for the education of students taking specialized 
courses in art history, and for people who have reached a sufficiently 
advanced point in their enjoyment of classical art. It would also serve as 
an invaluable reference collection for curators, who may, at any moment, 
need data on a piece whose purchase is being considered. Their decision 
to acquire it may well mean the outlay of a vast sum of money, which 
perhaps cannot be recovered if the acquisition turns out to be a bad one. 
In thinking of the general public (our chief interest) 7 we must not forget 
the people who want to go more deeply into things; they have every right 
to expect the museum to furnish the material for their study. Without 
such workers, scattered throughout the community, the museum is 
deprived of the very group that best shows its influence. Moreover, col- 
lectors and scholars constantly influence the lay public, which is thus 
genuinely benefited. 

As an instance of the layman's need for casts, let us recall that torso 
of a man in the Metropolitan Museum which one authority does not 
hesitate to attribute to Phidias. I said that a competent student, looking 
at this relatively small piece of fifth-century marble, can mentally recon- 
struct the figure as a whole. How? Not by studying fragments exclusively 
but by seeing, as well, the completely preserved pieces of sculpture in the 
galleries of the great European centers. Shall we add a little note to the 
label under the Metropolitan torso, directing students to the British 
Museum, in order that comparisons there may convince them that our 
object is important? Or shall we try to attain the same result by a series 
of photographs hung nearby? With a skillfully lighted statue before it, 
the camera can perform invaluable service in telling about details of 
carving, the grain of the marble, and related matters. But these are, 



1 88 CASTS AND OTHER REPRODUCTIONS 

again, for the practiced eye of the expert; and museum men know how 
slightly photographs appeal to the layman, though, to the professional, 
they may offer quite decisive evidence. 

The average man needs to see the sculpture in full size and in the 
round, so that, walking around it, he can get an impression of the work 
as a whole. The best photograph is still two-dimensional, whereas it is 
of the essence, with sculpture, to think of it as three-dimensional; no col- 
lection of photographs can add the extra dimension. Precisely that idea of 
the nature of the art is what we want to build up regarding the "Phidian" 
marble we possess, as well as our other works. Directing even an earnest 
student to London, to supplement impressions gained in our museum is, 
of course, out of the question; and, for practical purposes, directing him 
to a gallery of casts in another part of the city is not much better. He 
won't go; or, if he does make the effort on his next free day, his memory 
of the piece he has seen at the other pkce is dimmed, and the cast collec- 
tion seems a mere wilderness of lifeless things. In discreet proximity to 
the living marble, the plaster casts easily kindle into warmth and light; 
reciprocally also, their greater completeness permits a seeming miracle: 
the restoration to its original entirety and appearance of what had 
seemed, five minutes before, a hopelessly mutilated piece of stone, one 
which retained so little of human semblance, and suggested so little of 
art that it did not hold the eye for more than a moment. 

Thinking over his golden hours at concerts by quartet players and 
large orchestras, a French poet suddenly exclaimed, "I have just heard the 
Tenth Symphony of Beethoven!" The composer wrote but nine, as we 
know; but so powerfully do they stimulate the imagination that by a 
happy poetic license the enthusiast evoked for himself a new creation of 
Beethoven's genius. Perhaps such a concession to fantasy is not without 
an element of danger, for our task is not to write postscripts for the mas- 
ters, but to appreciate what they have left us; they alone could add to 
their works. Yet many an intelligent person has tried to form an idea of 
the great battle pictures by Leonardo and Michelangelo which have 
been lost to us through the ravages of time. To attempt a reconstruction 
of those vanished glories is no mere waste of effort, though the docu- 
mentation for such a task is woefullv insufficient. 

* 

That is not the case with thousands of fragments of Greek marble. 
The close relationship between them and larger pieces which have been 
preserved or more probably yet the relationship between them and 
Roman copies really does permit a valid image, burningly actual before 
the mind, to be derived from the casts that our galleries are banishing 
today. Tomorrow, space for casts may well be found by museum directors 



CASTS AND OTHER REPRODUCTIONS 189 

who lack it now. The reason? It hinges on a rule I once evolved con- 
cerning art collectors: there are ten thousand reasons for not buying a 
picture, there is really only one to make a man buy a picture. He buys it 
because he likes it, which means that the ten thousand reasons for not 
buying it are dissipated like smoke in a breeze. When we like the classics 
well enough, we shall find room for a full showing of them not in the 
gruesome terms of those sixty-two acres near the Washington Monu- 
ment, but amply enough to throw open great vistas of enjoyment. 

We have already seen the importance that New England scholarship 
attached to classical studies, and so we need not be surprised to find a 
rather modest Connecticut city setting a fine example to the country, 
over half a century ago. To honor the memory of his father, a generous 
benefactor of the men set free by the Civil War, William A. Slater con- 
ceived the idea of a museum which should show the possibilities of classi- 
cal study in America by bringing together the best reproductions of art 
works then available. Edward Robinson, who had returned from Greece 
a few years before, was asked to assemble a group of casts for the new 
Slater Memorial Museum at Norwich, Connecticut, and the result was 
"the finest collection of casts in the country, in the most effective installa- 
tion ever made." The example followed in the work was that of the 
great museums in Berlin and Bonn. 

At the time, neither Boston nor New York had an original Greek 
marble (the Cesnola Collection was chiefly of Cypriote material), and 
the museum at Norwich, not content with representing only the ancient 
schools, went on to give this country its first casts of Renaissance sculp 
hires. For the inauguration, Mr. Slater sent private cars for his guests 
from Boston. Daniel Coit Gilman, the president of Johns Hopkins, 
Robert Porter Keep, the principal of the Norwich Academy, and Charles 
Eliot Norton of Harvard made the addresses at the opening of the insti- 
tution. Its influence was soon felt, even New York sending a representa- 
tive to study the work done by Norwich; and Providence, Springfield, 
Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and other cities owed their early collections of teach- 
ing material to the Slater Memorial Museum. When originals began to 
enter our galleries and their superiority (reinforced by the prestige of 
their high cost) became a matter of general knowledge, people went to 
excess in underestimating the value of casts. We need to restore them 
to their proper place as invaluable aids to appreciation. 

Painting presents a different problem. Its greatest centuries are 
nearer to our own than are sculpture's, and the multitude of works that 
have come down to us make the use of reproductions incomparably less 



i 9 o CASTS AND OTHER REPRODUCTIONS 

necessary. This statement applies, however, only to the larger and 
wealthier places that can pay the high prices demanded by original can- 
vases of the masters. Where such things are available, photographs or 
color prints would obviously be absurd on the walls. Every museum 
has a stock of them in its reference rooms, where they may be freely con- 
sulted. And qualified persons may have access to forgeries, which are 
sometimes bought as aids in judging works offered for sale, and of doubt- 
ful authenticity. Sometimes they turn out to be genuine, in which case 
the museum acquires a treasure, perhaps, and often at small cost. If they 
are shown to be false, however, the museum not only saves its money but 
is spared the mortification of having misled the public during the time 
the work remained on the walls. 

We can be positive that that time would have a limit. For one thing, 
as we have said before, there is a dead quality to a bogus object. The fact 
that we cannot precisely define the mysterious element does not make an 
experienced person doubt that it exists. The forgery, whatever its initial 
success in deception, still contains some telltale sign of its origin; it is 
derived not from any experience of life or of nature, but from the sight 
of other works of art. It might seem that the reproductions currently on 
sale today, things deriving from a scientific instrument, like the camera, 
would leap over the element of personal experience that we have noted 
as the basis of a painting or a drawing. But even when photographic 
accuracy exists, the original drawing or etching and the reproduction of 
it are not the same thing. Paper like that of the original may perhaps 
be obtained, or it may be doctored to have a look of greater or less age; 
printer's ink may be so treated as to avoid its usual fatty sheen; and there 
are other subterfuges of the counterfeiter which may render expertizing, 
even by very competent men, a hazardous business. If they fail, on 
occasion (as a rule through hastiness, fatigue, or overconfidence), the 
experience of people who know best is still that the genuine thing has a 
vitality, a timbre or quality of tone, that gives a sensation radically dif- 
ferent from that of forgeries or of honest reproductions. 

Evidently we have now reached a category of things where the aver- 
age person throws up his hands and withdraws. Even so 7 he is not quite 
right if he expects the commercial prints on his wall, though they do 
possess elements of beauty, to do for him what originals would do. One 
day or another, he is going to see something in a museum, or at a dealer's 
place, that will destroy his pleasure in the reproductions he has. Their 
shortcomings are doubtless very subtle, like that of music over the radio 
as compared with what we hear when in the presence of the performers. 
Speaking of the quality of radio and phonograph music, a composer 



1 92 CASTS AND OTHER REPRODUCTIONS 

remarked, "Of course it's a wonderful achievement to give us such 
things at all; but just the same, they are music with the vitamins left out." 

The difficulty in following such affirmations, unless one has already 
become aware of the total inferiority of reproductions, may cause some 
reader to think that I am talking metaphysics. I am not; and shall now 
offer a concrete example of the matter in a field where absolutely irre- 
proachable reproductions might seem possible. The field is that of etch- 
ing, and I am taking the extreme case of an original plate; the trouble 
was caused solely by the printing, which was done by a later hand. There 
is a dealer in Paris to whom I shall always be grateful. Seeing my enthu- 
siasm for Claude's etching of The Dance by the Waterside, he said, 
"Wait a moment, I am from Lorraine myself and, for the sake of our 
great man, I want you to see a really fine proof from that plate. It is 
expensive; I doubt that you will buy it. But I should be sorry if you had 
reason to regret buying that print from the late state of the etching." It 
is still one of the works that I prefer; but I simply could not take home 
that proof, even though it cost but a small sum, after seeing the picture 
in its full beauty. (I could not pay the price of the fine print, but I 
bought something else, and my conscientious friend lost nothing through 
his frankness.) 

So far, we have been discussing the great museums, or at least those 
which own a few choice things. But there are thousands upon thousands 
of American institutions which simply cannot have originals. This means 
not only those of small towns or such as will never have the money for 
masterworks, but also colleges and schools. There is a joke among 
French art dealers about a certain painter whom they call "the Corot of 
the poor." This may cause a healthy laugh, the first time it is heard, but 
the words are not without a trace of cynicism. Renoir to cite another 
relevant tale once inquired gently about the genuineness of a painting 
in a country house. "What!" replied his host, "for a country place?" 
Equate this with the curious idea that inferior books and prints are good 
enough for poor people, country folk, and children. 

But these are not inferior beings. They should not be offered inferior 
or imitation art products. Nobody should; and it is not of such matters 
that we are talking when we discuss reproductions. A fine print after a 
Diirer drawing, seen on the wall of a schoolroom, may have a lifelong 
effect on any number of children. And wise teachers, using the really 
marvelous colorplates of ancient and modern paintings, can start their 
classes on the road to really solid art appreciation. The very things which 
one rebels at when the claim is made that they possess all the qualities of 
their originals may be valuable study aids. We must not forget that in 



. CASTS AND OTHER REPRODUCTIONS 193 

the time of the Old Masters, engravings, chiaroscuro prints, and other 
means of spreading the ideas of the great men were sources of inspiration 
and real understanding for thousands of artists. And, if these prints were 
in themselves works of art and therefore had the power to kindle enthu- 
siasm that comes of their contact with human hands, they were incom- 
parably less accurate than are reproductions made by modern processes. 
The relatively few people who can own masterworks may feel that 
the resonance of oil painting, with its various depths of pigment, its 
transparent glazes, and its sudden gleams of thick impasto cannot be 
equaled by the thin film of printer's ink on paper, however wonderfully 
it follows the effects of the richer medium, or tells of the dry elegance of 
pastel, or the limpidity of water color. But sometimes their connoisseur- 
ship stops right there, especially if they are intent on proving to them- 
selves the wisdom of their investment, having paid a thousand or ten 
thousand times the price of a reproduction. Sometimes they travesty the 
legitimate satisfaction of the owner of a thing still offering some subtle 
memory of the master's hand, by refusing to share their possession with 
the world, on the pretext that it would be "vulgarized." 

Such persons are probably the very ones who see no more in a work 
of art than its uniqueness a quality that the poorest handmade things 
have in common with the Mona Lisa. Contrast such snobbery with the 
insight of innumerable men and women who know only reproductions, 
the sole approach to art possible in towns distant from museum centers. 
In some places (for example, in California), really important work is 
being done by organizations which, either through voting by members 
or through the decisions of a director, are assembling systematic collec- 
tions of reproductions for study that is both serious and enjoyable. The 
visitor to such places may well be amazed at the knowledge of art he finds 
there. Perhaps the students have attempted a general survey of the past, 
or have concentrated upon one attractive phase Raphael and his fol- 
lowers for example; or they may have set themselves the fruitful problem 
of understanding modern art in its relation to what local painters are 
doing. Whatever the type of study, its results are often so fine that 
people with far greater resources can be properly humble in the presence 
of those who have so intelligently used "commercial reproductions." 

Often there is a central bureau that arranges for a sort of renting sys- 
tem, by which members can take things home and live with them for a 
while, until exactly the right work is found for permanent acquisition. 
This system has had such excellent results that many a museum director 
with masterworks on his walls might envy the functions of these unsung 
institutions; for if costly originals, always in danger of damage, cannot 



194 CASTS AND OTHER REPRODUCTIONS 

be circulated freely in people's homes, those are, after all, the places the} 
are supposed to reach and that reproductions do reach. 

Governor Ellis Arnall of Georgia has written of the South as the "neM 
frontier/' showing that the ravages of the Civil War and of Reconstruc- 
tion really set back this section almost to a pioneering stage. Perhaps, in 
large parts of the South and West, the remaining frontier conditions 
mean a permanent lack of the great fortunes which today are needed to 
create museums like those of Boston, New York, and Washington. It 
does not follow that these regions lack people of ability and judgment 
a crucial factor in the art life of a nation. They form the membership of 
those institutes, clubs, and study groups just cited for developing intelli- 
gent appreciation in their communities. The significance of their role is 
clear. 

To render it even more so, let us think back to the old days when the 
most intellectually advanced parts of our country were without the 
treasuries of art which exist there today. It was not museums but the 
native genius of Americans that gave us masterpieces like the portraits of 
John Copley and the architecture of Thomas Jefferson. It is true that the 
latter, before producing the designs for his admirable buildings, had the 
benefit of a sojourn in Europe and of acquaintance with great French 
artists. Nevertheless, though Monticello, the Lawn (that nobly porticoed 
court at the University of Virginia ) , and other delightful works are based 
upon a study of older things, indeed classical things, they are so creative 
that they may well serve to demonstrate the presence among our people 
of that type of genius we call "primitive"; we might better call it "funda- 
mental." 

Turning to another artist who possessed that quality, Pieter Bruegel, 
we see a man who departs so markedly from the Italianate line of painters 
around him that (despite his descent from splendid artistic forebears, 
like Bosch) he is rightly considered a primitive, the founder of a new line. 
He looked at his world with a new intensity, as did Copley and Jefferson. 
In the case of the latter, the really extraordinary feature is that his mind 
could apply itself so felicitously to problems of art, and not merely to 
those of statecraft in which field not everybody has caught up with 
him, even yet. 

Jefferson is one of the builders of the Museum of the New World, 
because of the directions he gave both to our intellectual and our artistic 
achievement. It is not beyond hope that the intensity of interest in 
America that we noted as characterizing Thomas Jefferson will again lead 
to creative works such as he gave us. To cultivate the mind by means of 
the riches that museums of the past reveal is not enough. What counts 




48. Matisse: Stnlio, Qw SL MkfaeL 
GoiHteay of t^e F&i%s Memorial Oafey, Wasfes^oo, D. C. 



i 9 6 THE MUSEUM AND EDUCATION 

is the use we make of the mind so prepared. The test of that is offered by 
the museum that keeps pace with the living world, and in turn suggests 
ways of moving ahead. A people as eager as ours for constantly better 
conditions will not rest content until its museum goes beyond our long 
memories: we want it to show us the elements which make the future. 
Such a result must come from the sum of efforts made throughout the 
country to give us the collections which will tell the meaning of things as 
we see them here and now. 

5. THE MUSEUM AND EDUCATION 

BEFORE COMING to that collective institution, the goal of all the effort 
witnessed in these pages, and therefore dictating the title of this book, 
we have still certain problems and theories to consider. We may approach 
them by way of a glance at the message to museum workers that flowed 
from the active mind of John Cotton Dana, head of the Newark Public 
Library. The enfant terrible of his profession, he published such state- 
ments as this, "No other public educational institutions give so little 
return for the money spent on them as do museums." Yet his was far 
from being the negative type of mind, for he bristled with constructive 
ideas. Many a museum man who, at the beginning, had his teeth set on 
edge by Mr. Dana, found himself, later on, to be following in a course 
strongly affected by the innovator. It is a pity that his books, which he 
had to publish at his own expense on the presses of a small New England 
town, are not in general circulation. At the New York Public Library, 
for example, they have to be consulted in the carefully guarded cabinet 
devoted to works too rare for the public reading room. 

Developing his museum activities in connection with the work of the 
Newark Public Library he planned, in the most detailed way, for the 
institutions he wanted to see throughout the country. Thus, he said that 
their location should be at the "center of daily movement," and not just 
at the center of population. He laid down specifications for a building 
sixteen stories high, with 10,000 square feet to each floor. The entrance 
and the spaces near it were to contain a "hall of wonders," habitat groups 
of animals, and "expensive and historical art." (This was, of course, for a 
town of moderate size where all museum possessions were to be shown 
in one building.) It should keep everybody "interested and feeling good 
about the whole thing; in that way they would vote money for upkeep 
and development because they would be getting something for their 
money/' Most museums were to him examples of conspicuous waste 
(no quotation marks surround those last two words, my notes tell me. 



THE MUSEUM AND EDUCATION 197 

He may perhaps have retained them from a reading of Thorstein Veblen, 
but he was quite capable of originating them and many others him- 
self ). His training, moreover, was along lines which fitted him for philo- 
sophic rather than aesthetic reasoning. 

Mr. Dana's own type of museum was to reach out to the life of the 
community in every way possible: its paintings were to be displayed in 
the windows of vacant stores, in small halls, and even in private houses 
for a week or a month. Explanatory leaflets for the widest free distri- 
bution were to accompany them. He remarks, "This is not done because 
paintings have a very high value as promoters of happiness, etc., but 
because this is the period of the oil painting/' The same policy was to 
govern the use of bronzes, among which there would be originals and 
copies; and he proposed to use reproductions of paintings in color "both 
the expensive and the cheap"; the same would apply again to wood 
carving, brocades, and so on. Here Mr. Dana had quite drastic things to 
say about the persons who make a fetish of what is merely antique: "The 
fashion is very injurious; for being set and followed by the elect of the 
art world, it is very soon followed by the 'commonalty/ whose powers of 
observation are thus inhibited/ 1 Or again, speaking of old furniture, he 
says, "The thing that makes the chest worth while is the use of it; and 
nearly all of this museum use can come as well from a good pictorial 
presentment of the chest as from the chest itself/' 

The definition of his words "museum use*' was inspiration for 
designers. He was a pioneer in the movement to bring artists and manu- 
facturers together evidently a most desirable thing for both. He advo- 
cated annual exhibits, to make a city known to itself and outsiders. For 
example, he tells us that the exhibition of New Jersey textiles at the 
Newark Museum cost, for all expenses, including materials, labels, 
arrangement, and labor, less than 800; it brought to the museum many 
gifts, and was visited by 50,000 people. 

The temptation is to transcribe one detail after another, and in a few 
more cases I shall yield. Thus, in The American Museum, How It Can 
Be Made To Flourish, he wrote in 1929 of Renaissance Italy and of how 
its nobles wanted to produce effects by art. Ancient and foreign works 
were insufficient in quantity, and often unsuited in quality. So they 
ordered Italians to produce with magnificent results. Now America, 
as the writer continues, not only does not pay its artists as Italy did, it 
does not even courteously invite them to produce, and the result is that 
"there is very little American art/' "Art has always flourished where it 
was asked to flourish, and never elsewhere/' 

Ag^in we read: "Good taste and keen interest in the pots and pans of 



i 9 8 THE MUSEl'Af AND EDUCATION 

daily life do not emerge from the awed contemplation of unfamiliar 
objects enshrined in the cases of a public institution, as has just been 
illustrated by the case of the ancient chest"; and in another passage he 
says ? A *It is to the products of living men and women, not to those of 
men and women long since dead, that we must look for the art of our 
day." His words have all the "kick" that people got out of them when I 
reviewed his books, years ago, for that finest of our weekly papers, The 
Freeman. 

My article was entitled "The Temple of the Muses/' the intention 
being to suggest the rather novel form of worship being offered to the 
Sacred Nine. And now, with all cordiality to that courageous defender 
of living artists, we must look a bit more closely into his ideas. To his 
statement that a "good pictorial presentment'* of the old chest was of 
nearly as much use as the chest itself, I immediately added his explana- 
tion of what this use was; for I did not want our previous strictures about 
reproductions to prejudice the reader against Mr. Dana in his campaign 
for setting museum possessions to work in the modern world. Even so, 
one feels that he is skating on thin ice when he refuses to draw 7 a line 
between originals and imitations. In another passage, on the contents of 
his ideal museum, he is even more outspoken on this point, saying, "Of 
paintings there are many, chiefly recent American, but with an abundance 
of copies of old masterpieces." 

If we drop this question as one on which we simply cannot agree, 
what is to be thought of those \vords quoted just before, about the 
products of li\ing men and women? Isn't our author falling into the 
bombast of the election-time spellbinder when he says that we must look 
to the people of our day for the art of our day? Of course we can't get it 
from the "men and women long since dead/ 7 His emphatic style and his 
high aims cause one to overlook the absurdity of what he sometimes 
says, and one is reminded of a parody of Theodore Roosevelt's address in 
Paris, some thirty years since. He had admonished his listeners as to cer- 
tain tendencies among them that he disapproved of, and a French 
journalist replied with a "free rendering" of the Colonel's speech, in 
w r hich he was made to say, "I tell you that that nation is the most popu- 
lous which has the largest number of families containing the largest 
number of children. I affirm, and I can prove what I say, that if certain 

men and certain nations are wealthy, the reason is that they have more 

* * * 

money than the poor ones." 

Quite obviously, it is to living artists that we must look for the art of 
our day. But is all of it good? We remember the words of Ingres when 
he asks, "What if my period is bad?" And at a later date, we have the 




Hoaaalt; Ptetoft rf Vokue. 

Cotntesy of the Pfuffips Memorial Galkr>' 7 WasfiingtOD, D. C. 



200 THE MUSEUM AND EDUCATION 

testimony of Maurice Denis: "Van Gogh never fell into the silly trap 
of spealdng of art as good because it is modern." Do you like French art 
today? Certainly, when it is good, but considering the immense output 
in France, we have to admit that most of it is bad. In modern times 
and in every country it is the direction that counts; for the farther a 
man like Bouguereau goes on his course, the worse he is. 

Consider this fine sentence of Andre Gide's: "It suddenly seemed 
clear to me that if there were no names in the history of art except those 
belonging to the creators of new forms, there would be no culture; the 
very word implied a continuity, and therefore it called for disciples, imi- 
tators, and followers to make a living chain: in other words, a tradition." 
The "art of our day," "modern art," 'Trench art," "recent paintings, 
chiefly American": those words are all very attractive, but it is Andre 
Gide's "living chain," with its provision for the minor talents, that gives 
us art without adjectives, the thing itself, which is always good. 

Tied up with this matter of creators and followers, is Mr. Dana's 
great interest in the applied arts. Like the rest of us, he was new to the 
question of their place in the machine age, and he, by himself, could not 
solve the problem; it is still an open one. Yet, we are coming to see what 
is needed; it is that instinctive reaction which causes us to decide what 
we want among countless commercial objects. Andre Gide's sentence 
throws light on the question because his culminating word, "tradition," 
explains why men at certain times and certain places do not require 
elaborate proof by experts to know that their objects of daily use are well 
shaped and well decorated: their decision comes spontaneously from 
within themselves because of that "continuity" of good taste, implied in 
the word culture, as the French writer observes. 

When the continuity is disturbed in a period as revolutionary as our 
own, a good bit of time may well be needed to restore it. Toward such a 
result, Mr. Dana asked for a "museum-city," something which he said 
would be "far richer in every respect than any city museum can ever be." 
Agreed; but did he ask himself how the "museum-city" comes to exist? 
There are such, Florence, for example, and we know its history. With 
its environs, it dates from very ancient times, and the Etruscans, who first 
built there, learned from the Greeks, who, in turn, were heirs to the 
tradition of the great peoples before them. It is to the "city museum" 
that today's builders of the "museum-city" must look for their knowledge 
of tradition. 

And again, in a place like Florence, even after the wanton destruction 
World War II has wrought there, we can still read much of its secret in 
the stones that remain. First, there are the great structural masses decreed 



THE MUSEUM AND EDUCATION aoi 

by the architects, and in those masses appear the subdivisions that vary 
the units of which each building is made up, while retaining the mathe- 
matical proportion underlying the whole. Next, we may note the statues 
in the niches, inside and outside of the edifice. Here the forms are freer, 
as they respond to the intense individualism of the Florentine. But as the 
kings and prophets created in stone by the masters diminish in size 
under the hands of lesser sculptors, who also produce decorative groups 
or bands of figures tapering off into mere abstract design, we are made 
to feel again the harmony of even these works with the architectural 
ensemble. And when ceramists, textile workers, and a hundred other 
artisans draw their patterns, it is clear that they have consulted those 
more creative men who, still feeling the genius of ancient Etruria, went 
on to match themselves with problems that their ancestors had left 
unsolved. 

Of these problems, the chief one was the finding of a true relationship 
between elemental forms the sphere, the cylinder, the cone, and 
others and naturalistic forms, especially those of human beings. Their 
anatomical structure u-as studied with passionate interest by Renaissance 
artists. With the earlier men, still following the Gothic line, there are 
wonderful expressive and aesthetic elements, but not the articulations of 
the figure that the scientific mind of Florence demanded. Then, when 
research into the play of muscles and bones had solved their problems, 
much of the "abstract" quality was lost. Finally, for one great lifetime, 
the two things work together. Matisse used to say that if a head by 
Donatello were rolled down a stony hillside, and all the features were 
knocked off, it would be reduced to a meaningless mass, whereas if the 
same accident befell a head by Michelangelo, a grand form would still 
remain. 

Italy did her great work by understanding the difference, noted by 
Andre Gide, between the creative mind and that of the followers, to 
whom he assigns the important role of carrying on culture. Even the 
coming of the machine does not abolish that relationship. What stands 
behind Mr. Dana's remark that "this is the period of the oil painting" is 
the fact that, with the applied arts so confused by new conditions, it is 
painters and sculptors who have continued the tradition of creative art. 
A former mayor of New York is said to have invented for such men the 
epithet of "art-artists." If he did, he would class himself, at the other 
end of the educational ladder, with Nicholas Murray Butler. The famous 
Columbia University president, asked about the changes in art during his 
long tenure of office, replied, "I know nothing of art." As a private indi- 
vidual, he had a right to be content with that state of mind; but men 



zo2 THE MUSEUM AND EDUCATION 

heedful of the prestige of Columbia felt a certain regret over his disre- 
garding the words we have heard from William Morris Hunt when he 
said that one is not obliged to advertise his ignorance. 

If Mr. Dana saw no very high value in oil paintings as "promoters of 
happiness/' and if our Tammany man really spoke of "art-artists" in the 
scornful sense usually understood from his words, the world in general 
has little doubt that, in the modern period, the great tradition guarded 
by museums has been preserved chiefly by painters and sculptors. 

That does not mean that the museum is to be used as an art school. 
In the earlier times, some of the institutions were indeed given that job, 
and today an art school is often connected with them. A conspicuous 
example is the very large and complete school of the Chicago Art Insti- 
tute: but that is a different matter. To define "museum use" as Mr. Dana 
did, in terms of inspiration to industrial designers, is again to narrow 
down the function of the galleries to that of the trade school. We are 
not retreating into the ivory tower but seeing the museum in relation to 
a wider public, if we assert that neither the art school nor the trade 
school is the goal of effort, though it is imperative for them both to base 
their teachings on the masters. Colleges and universities must also look 
to the museum as a chief authority on the subjects they deal with, but it 
is not to be thought of as a department of those great treasuries of 
knowledge. A sentence of Benjamin Ives Oilman's may well be recalled. 
Speaking of the book we have mentioned before, he says, "It is here 
argued that a museum of art is primarily an institution of culture and 
only secondarily a seat of learning." 

The key word he uses there has often been understood in too narrow 
a way, and so, "culture" may bring up visions of blue-stockinged pedants 
of both sexes, the overprecious, highbrow coteries, and other sterilities 
which, for the plain man, seem to have monopolized the term. But see 
it in its combinations physical culture, ethical culture, musical culture, 
and political culture. All of these were ideals that the Greeks had, not for 
any separate group of persons but for the community as a whole. Thus 
you will see that Mr. Oilman is right in his argument that culture his 
objective for the museum is a term more inclusive and important even 
than learning. 

Glancing back at those subdivisions of the subject mentioned just 
before, we should object if, for example, the enthusiast for physical cul- 
ture or for ethical culture tried to dominate in the museum. He is mis- 
taking a part for the whole. The testimony of art through the centuries 
includes more ideas about life and the world than does even his study, 
necessary as it is for health or conduct. No specialist may use the museum 



204 THE MUSEUM AND EDUCATION 

for his own ends; religion itself, a wider field than ethics, does not spread 
a circle inclusive enough to contain the manifold collections of a great 
museum. 

This dictum may seem akin to the arrogance which sometimes mars 
the claims for a subject. But consider the facts: a disinterested search 
into the past and present of all races brings together a mass of material 
and, afterwards, the best available judgment decides what represents 
mankind as expressed through art. How all this is to be used will depend 
on the appeal it makes to each individual among the endlessly varied 
multitudes who visit the collections. The job of the museum worker is 
not to impose upon these people any particular theory about what they 
see. Information, whether in lectures or publications, may and should 
help them to understand relationships, ideals, history, techniques, and 
the other details that assist in making clear the enigma which art objects 
often present at the beginning. 

Too often the approach of lecturers, docents (museum instructors), 
and writers is along lines that completely fail to lead to the essentials of 
the matter. These are not to be sought in the history of a school or an 
artist; even less can they be understood from anecdotes about the subject 
of the work or the nation which produced it. While such little stories 
offer an easy stock in trade for causeries about museum possessions, they 
are aside from the point. Yet, if they carry with them a bit of humor or 
sentiment, they may have a momentary success with the reader or lis- 
tener. All sorts of other information about prices, names of owners, 
vicissitudes of loss and rediscovery, religious associations, and curious 
customs in w r hich the objects were used appear very instructive, and 
so the person receiving guidance imagines he has learned something of 
value. But a hundred times as much, if of the same nature, would leave 
him as far from understanding as he was at the start. With such informa- 
tion, he can make a certain effect at a dinner table and still be without 
the faintest notion of the significance of the works to be seen in the 
museum. 

That significance is in every case a question of the beauty created by 
art. Confused by many people with nature, art occupies a totally dif- 
ferent sphere. A man eats, fights, and dies; his portrait does none of these 
things. If it is a work of art, it is, like a landscape, a vase, a building, or a 
rug (when these are works of art) to be considered under the heading of 
aesthetics; and as the derivation of the word shows, that is a matter of 
feeling. Intellectual elements enter in, both for the production and the 
appreciation of art: there are mysterious correspondences between certain 
mathematical quantities and our physiology and nerves, and the rightness 



THE MUSEUM AND EDUCATION 205 

or wrongness of these quantities will produce sensations of harmony or 
discord. In music, these proportions are measured by the number of 
vibrations per second of a violin string, for example; in the visual arts, they 
are matters of wave lengths, for color, and of relationships of line and 
space, for form. We have never been able to reduce them to a science, 
though from the time of the Egyptians and Pythagoras, many men have 
tried to discover the laws of proportion. In ancient Mexico, they had to 
do with astronomy, the guiding principle of the country's religion. In 
medieval and Renaissance Europe, the golden section, derived from 
antiquity, was often used as the true canon, and it has been useful, in 
certain cases, to artists and those who study their work. 

But we fall into danger if we try to impose as universal any measure- 
ments ever discovered or, doubtless, still to be revealed by analysis. They 
may be right for a supreme work like the Parthenon. But try to build 
another such edifice. You will soon realize that subtle deviations from 
your carefully measured lengths and widths gave the whole life to the 
original, and that your "repetition" of it is a dead thing. The Acropolis, 
which serves as the pedestal for the temple, affected even- line of the 
building, as did the sunlight of Greece and, above all, the mind of 
Greece. Sooner or later, that mind would have varied the proportions, 
the decoration, and even- quiet space or emphasis. We have the earlier 
and later works to prove this. And so it becomes clear that the classical, 
impersonal qualities of a work of art have to be vivified by something 
connected with the experience of a people or an individual, in a world 
that does not stand still, but that offers us constantly new horizons. 

That something, which we define as the romantic element, does not 
mean anarchy in the matter of art interpretation. What it does mean is 
the need of a special competence on the part of instructors a special 
and freely adaptable understanding of the varying periods, schools, and 
temperaments. Without that, the earnest or even casual museum visitor 
will be offered the sterilities of meaningless fact or those of self-styled 
"law," instead of insight; and he is quite right when he asks assistance in 
attaining it. 

In many cases, to be sure, it is more than help that museum visitors 
ask: they want a sort of information capsule which will relieve them of the 
need to study the works before them. They can then go through gallery 
after gallery without seeing a picture, their whole attention being given 
to the decent, who tells his little stories, and otherwise dispenses "educa- 
tion through the ear." The listeners might as well be blind; as far as 
seeing the qualities of the pictures around them, they are blind. 

The fallacy of such teaching is exhibited by the great philosopher, 



206 THE MUSEUM AND EDUCATION 

Alfred North Whitehead, in The Aims of Education. Speaking of a 
subject closely parallel with the one we have been following, he says, 
"The literary side of a technical education should consist in an effort to 
make the pupils enjoy literature. It does not matter what they know*, but 
the enjoyment is vital. The great English universities, under whose direct 
authority schoolchildren are examined in plays of Shakespeare, to the 
certain destruction of their enjoyment, should be prosecuted for soul 
murder." 

Observers of people in museum galleries are forced to testify that the 
victims of the "soul murder" are, all too often, eager accessories to the 
crime. Let anyone begin holding forth on the art works, and he will soon 
have a flock of listeners. This is, of course, an indication of the public's 
unfamiliarity with art; it is likewise a proof that the work of the museum 
in America is not finished when it has made even such collections as are 
to be seen in our largest cities. Not only do they require increase and 
broadening, however; not only does the country need and urgently 
need more museums for the wide regions where none exist, but we 
must go immensely farther in our study of the use of museums. 

We make a big step when we render them so attractive that they are 
frequented by large numbers of people. But the fact that quantity is less 
important than quality is very specially proved again when we consider 
the understanding as well as the number of museum visitors. By attrac- 
tions of a sensational character, it might be possible to bring a million 
persons through the turnstiles for every thousand or even every hundred 
who now enter there. But, barring the accidental spark which would fire 
the imagination of this man or that, we should have accomplished little 
by the increase in attendance. With all due appreciation of what it 
means to inspire people unprepared for art experience, we need to learn 
more as to what we can do for those who are already interested, but 
puzzled and seeking for enlightenment. If they are susceptible to art and 
able to fight out its problems themselves, the one thing needed is logical 
and sympathetic arrangement of the exhibits. By such means, the visitor 
may be led from the known to the unknown. But not every one is ready 
for independent study. And here appears the opportunity for the infinite 
tact, understanding, and leadership of the museum as an educator. We 
are only at the threshold of such work, and must yet discover the best 
uses and proportion for the spoken word (in the gallery or the lecture 
room) 7 the written word, and demonstration by reproductions, charts, 
and other means yet to be developed. 

Acting on the good axiom that the education of a child begins with 
the education of its grandmother, and having been unable to educate the 




51. China: Wei Alfcarpiece. 
Coirrtesyof TbeMefaopoiftaiiMasetJjncrfArt. 



208 THE MUSEUM AND EDUCATION 

grandmothers of most present-day people, museums are making a great 
effort for future Americans by educating their ancestors, male as well as 
female. To visit the Saturday classes for children at museums like Toledo 
and Cleveland, which have done most important work in this field, is 
inspiring. For the imaginative mind of the child responds with enthu- 
siasm to the collections and to the opportunity for creating its own 
art works. Great numbers of the youngsters come spontaneously, often 
from considerable distances, and of course by sacrificing playtime. But 
the "play impulse," which enters into much of adult art activity, here 
expresses itself so naturally that the problem of the museum is largely 
one of finding room for all who want to come. 

That need of the child, recognized intuitively by one of the great 
practical dreamers to whom we owe our public collections, was a chief 
part of the foundation on which the Toledo Museum was built. George 
W. Stevens, a man who delighted in entertaining with music, stories, 
and pictures saw that to get his community to support a museum 
when he started it, back in 1901, he must appeal to wider interests than 
those which artists or art collectors could offer. So that w r hen he raised 
his first $1200 for the work which is so imposing today, he went to a 
hundred and twenty men for S10 apiece, and he argued largely on the 
basis of what his scheme would do for the children. Later on, when cer- 
tain businessmen did not pay their contributions, Mr. Stevens would go 
on a house-to-house collecting tour, and again and again he carried his 
point home by saying, "If you don't see this as your museum, see it as 
your city's." It has been that to Toledo ever since, to a degree that one 
can find in few other places. 

The question of service to our institutions by men of public spirit 
must wait for a later page. Our concern here is with a phase of educa- 
tional work not undertaken by the schools. Certain students of children's 
work see in it very valuable qualities, and no one can deny its freshness of 
vision. Often in the presence of work of mature, even professional artists, 
it is possible to wish that more of the child's need of expression, and his 
instinctive response to form and color could endure. To make the most 
of the art instinct that we normally have in early years, the Metropolitan 
has set aside space for one of its charming features, the Children's 
Museum. 

But life teaches that, with most people, such resiliency as we have 
been observing is a privilege of childhood, and that it disappears when 
we encounter the hard tasks of later years. So that since the natural course 
of events is going to take almost all people away from artistic pursuits, the 
next problem in this field is with older students. Here the Cleveland 



THE MUSEUM AND EDUCATION 209 

Museum has done very distinguished work, and its findings, together 
with those of a number of our other institutions, have been published in 
quantity. Finally, there is the vast question of art instruction for adults. 
With New England's centuries-old belief in education, we would expect 
important activities from the numerous museums of the region, and they 
do not disappoint us. Far to the northeast, the fine museum of Bowdoin 
College has been mentioned in earlier pages; its art courses have been on 
a very high level. Harvard, with the Fogg Art Museum's unequaled 
equipment for the teaching of teachers, has dealt originally with the 
problem of adults, while at the Boston Museum, a particularly intensive 
inquiry is being made into the big question of bringing about a har- 
monious relationship between the work of our artists and that of 
museums, art experts, and educators. 

New York's long-continued effort has placed upon the Metropolitan 
Museum's record an imposing list of authorities in every department of 
art, and they have contributed to the lecture courses. Among these, a 
special endowment has made it possible to aid workers in the applied 
arts. In this field, again, great services have been rendered by drawing on 
various commercial sources and giving exhibitions designed to promote 
the fullest co-operation between artists and manufacturers. As an 
example of the statistics encountered in art education, we note that the 
Metropolitan's lending collection of photographs and color prints runs to 
43,000 examples; the lantern slides number 135,000, and the specimens 
of the applied arts, 181,000. They are in constant use; indeed it is often 
necessary to make reservations in advance, because of the demand for 
those materials for study and teaching. 

With such figures before us, and with a reminder that this, the most 
important educational work of our museums, extends to almost all of 
the twenty-five hundred institutions in every part of the country, it will 
be evident that not even the barest summary of their work can be 
attempted here. The very bibliography of the subject is too extensive and 
specialized for a book like the present one. 

Even the vital issues raised by the World War must not tempt us 
into discussions that are being held in hospitals, in centers for psychiatric 
research, and for those who are studying new careers of veterans. Take 
the single fact that of the enormous attendance at the Art Institute of 
Chicago, in the fiscal year 1944-45, ten per cent were service people, and 
it will be evident what effect our museums had at this period. Efforts 
that everyone will applaud have been made to give maximum benefits to 
the men and women of the armed forces. The docent service, which 
reaches millions in our galleries, has opened up great new vistas to many 



210 THE MUSEUM AND THE PUBLIC 

a boy or girl who had never been in a museum before. Special exhibitions 
have dealt with our war effort in terms of history and geography, and of 
the relation of art to technical developments, engineering, invention, 
aviation, and so on. The course of the fighting was mapped by photo- 
graphs of cities and buildings of artistic consequence. This was, of course, 
entirely separate from the invaluable work of our institutions in drawing 
up lists of places which were not to be bombed or otherwise damaged; 
these data helped our officers in the field not only to spare the great 
things of the past, but also to set promptly to work at restoring those 
which suffered unavoidable injury. 

The work of museums in their role as educators reaches out, evi- 
dently, to innumerable phases of human activity, and so art teachers 
have been given constantly more scope in directing our institutions. One 
city was so enterprising that it persuaded the head of the pedagogical 
department in an important college to give up her work there, and assume 
charge of instruction at the museum, where she has full rank as a curator. 
In fact, with so strong a tendency to stress the interpretation of art, we 
may need a reminder, in certain places, that as the Sabbath was made for 
man and not man for the Sabbath, art education must not be allowed to 
overshadow the original purpose of the museum. The individual teacher, 
lecturer, or writer has his own understanding of the significance of the 
collections; and when we add up such opinions, they command respect 
as representing an important part of the art ideas of our period. But the 
past saw art through the glasses of religion, poetry, industry, and what- 
ever in different ways from ours, and the future is bound to view it 
differently again. 

Indeed, today we must leave every person free to form his own con- 
victions, and the way to do that is to concentrate on the collections 
themselves, allowing the masters and the schools to say their say, inde- 
pendent of interpretations by educators. As no one can have a love affair 
for another, so in the matter of the feelings aroused by art, no one can 
have or even transmit another's experience. What we need to do in the 
museums is to make people feel like coming frequently. Only by so doing 
will they have a full measure of the experiences open to them. 

6. THE MUSEUM AND THE PUBLIC 

A MOMENT AGO, we referred to the original purpose of the museum. In 
our desire to keep to fundamental ideas, we may make two further steps; 
one is to recall the private collections of the time before there were public 
ones (and, with them, churches, public buildings, and the homes where 



212 THE MUSEUM AXD THE PUBLIC 

there was no "collection" but where there were decorations, portraits 
and beautiful objects for daily use); the other is again to seek guidance 
from the artist's principle in creating his work, which is love for that 
work. 

Fortunately, we have a document which includes both of these aspects 
of the matter, and it is basic in dealing with the last of the "problems 
and theories" to be treated here. As the document bears on questions 
that are vividly contemporary, I shall quote it at some length. When 
Delacroix was finally elected to the Academy, in 1857, the opinions on 
art which he had been writing down and sometimes publishing for over 
thirty years were given an official sanction, which was new to them. Col- 
lected in his Journal and in two volumes of his Oeuvres Jitteraires, they 
include a long letter to the Academic des Beaux-Arts, in which we read 
the following thoughts on a proposed dispersal of the Musee Napoleon 
III, a very great collection formed by Marquis Campana, and then 
acquired and developed by the Emperor. 

"The particular impression I had was that a great part of the interest 
presented by that assembling of admirable objects resulted from the very 
fact of their assembling, and that the idea of reducing them, on the pre- 
text of taking away secondary pieces, was quite contrary to the evident 
intention of the founder, and to the purpose of a true museum. Such a 
collection differs from that of an amateur who, passionate and exclusive, 
has his pleasure in admitting only the most select objects, among which 
rarity is often the only merit.* A collection offered for study should be 
composed not alone of beautiful objects, but also of those less exalted 
things which still permit one to follow and judge the gropings of art in 
its rise to perfection. 

"Nothing could be more instructive. The stimulating collection of 
Italian pictures in the Musee Campana has, in my opinion, been judged 
superficially and, in the main, condemned by persons who have not taken 
into sufficient account its importance in throwing light on the origin 
and progress of the Italian schools. Such instruction which, until today, 
could not be found anywhere in Paris, results from the juxtaposition of 
the pictures, and from the comparisons which thus naturally strike the 
beholder. Breaking up such an ensemble, and sending the works to 
divers collections, will destroy a reunion precious for the purposes men- 
tioned; and such a course will not afford any notable enrichment of the 
collections to which the pictures will so unhappily have been dispersed. 

"I venture to say the same about the magnificent gallery of terra- 
cottas, where one cannot weary of admiring the grace and variety of the 
antique genius. That variety derives, to my mind, from the frequency of 



THE MUSEUM AND THE PUBLIC 213 

the same motifs, repeated with almost insensible nuances, but yielding, 
upon study, the most interesting idea of the predilection of the ancients 
for certain subjects; at the same time one is made to realize how far the 
Greeks were from that reproduction of types which we see in the work of 
the machine; as opposed to it, the artist introduces into every piece he 
touches certain differences which, slight as they may appear to be, yet 
render in full the character he is expressing. 

"I am quite aware of the incredible objection which has been urged: 
that the accumulation of so many examples would require too much 
space for their exhibiting. A strange objection, indeed, that of asking us 
to regret, in a way, that the collection is too rich. It is easier to find room 
for a classified group of paintings and statues than to discover and acquire 
so great a number of them, and such interesting ones. That is what 
Marquis Campana, with his care and taste, was able to do in that vast 
museum which bore his name; and imprudent mutilations, by dispersing 
the collection, will efface from it the name of its recent and august pro- 
tector. 

"The vases so delightfully painted, the majolicas, and the reliefs in 
faience seem to me to give point to the same observations, and if I were 
permitted to add a wish to those which I form for the preservation and 
harmony of so rare an ensemble, it would be that we should see, included 
in it, the admirable works in plaster which M. Ravaison, with his intelli- 
gent zeal, had brought together for the same group of exhibits. I do not 
doubt but that soon, in case the museum is continued as it is, it will be 
enriched by gifts from a great number of amateurs jealous of the privilege 
of adding to its wealth and filling out gpps in it. To my knowledge, inten- 
tions of this type have been repressed and held in suspense since the time 
when fears of an approaching dismemberment have been inspired/' 

We have been seeing, in the present book, how American museums 
were built up. Now we see how France built up her wealth and culture. 
The voice of Delacroix is the voice of his nation. Scorning the idea that 
the public collections are too large, he tells how they can be made larger. 
(One would like to know what works in plaster the "intelligent zeal" of 
M. Ravaison had brought together. ) At a later point in Delacroix's letter 
(he was away from Paris and took this means of speaking out in an 
emergency), he says that he is following the example of his "illustrious" 
colleague, M. Ingres. I have read the latter's words on this museum 
problem, and though they still ring with the warmth of his southern 
genius, their emotional quality deprives them of the logic through which 
Delacroix follows the tradition of the statesmen and great lawyers of his 
family. 



2i 4 THE MUSEUM AND THE PUBLIC 

People who speak of Delacroix as "the romantic" must mean that 
there is in him a certain preponderance of feeling over reason; they would 
do well to ponder his sharp distinction between the museum and the 
private collection. (Incidentally, those who see romanticism as indif- 
ferent to classical values must find food for thought in the painter's 
loving defense and analysis of the gallery of Greek terra-cottas.) But 
it is not to emphasize anew the greatness of Delacroix that I dwell 
on these points, nor even to show that he and his great rival fought 
as one man for museum collections. It is to point out that the supreme 
art center of modern times attained its position through building up her 
institutions on the sole basis of aesthetic merit. Let that dominate 
say the French, with their centuries of experience and the world will 
come to your museums; let your artists form themselves on such prin- 
ciples, and the world will eagerly acquire their work. 

There have been persons who have tried otherwise to explain French 
success in the arts: France gives governmental support to its art, they 
argue; or France benefits from the immense propaganda due to her wine, 
women, and song; France has the organized power of rich and crafty 
dealers. But the most astute among the latter, Ambroise Vollard, told 
the secret of his success when he said ? "You cannot sell pictures, they 
have to sell themselves." And I, for one, accept his statement at face 
value. When the public was not ready to buy the work of Cezanne, Vol- 
lard bought it. And when the public, convinced by the artists, from 
Pissarro and Monet to Prendergast and Arthur Davies, was ready for the 
great modern, the millions that Vollard made from cornering the market 
were not due to his salesmanship but to what one is forced to call his 
buymanship. (The word I have coined is a ghastly one, but it is needed 
for the idea it is meant to express.) 

For people who think art is something really very nice, but who do 
not have too much confidence in it, especially for "the masses," museum 
policy is partly a matter of having good works, partly a matter of having 
safe, acceptable, popular works, and largely a matter of putting the thing 
across by means of publicity and educational features, and by support 
from the "better element" in society. That does not square with the 
record of America in our really great galleries. Read again the passages 
in Miss Howe's book on the early days of the Metropolitan and on its 
remarkable purchase in 1871; read again the story of Boston's carrying on 
of the old tradition of the Athenaeum, or of Chicago's buying its mar- 
velous Rembrandt and those other treasures of the Demidoff collection, 
at a time when the city was completely new to such things: the record 




53, Hoixitira(Copan, Maya art): Limestone Figure. 
Comtesp ut &e American Museum of Nateal History, New York. 



2,16 THE MUSEUM AND THE PUBLIC 

important qualities and that we must have works of art. That is what I 
referred to before as the original purpose of our museums. 

The fidelity with which that purpose has been respected is written in 
the history of the men w r ho have supported the institutions. Statesmen, 
lawyers, financiers, merchants, and other men of prestige and w T ealth have 
furnished the money to build and buy, have given time from the busiest 
of lives to the details of management, and have stood as guarantors of 
value for the museum's work in days when, as we have seen, the public 
in general was not yet ready to support the institution. It still is not 
ready, and to turn our galleries over to governmental bodies (to poli- 
ticians, that is) would at present spell disaster. The time for completely 
democratic control will come, and we must work for it. Meanwhile, the 
best preparation for this end is to orient our people so firmly to the best 
art ideals that no politician of a later day will be able to assail them, 1 

No one can foresee what government institutions will be in the 
future of this changing world. There may be a federal Ministry of Fine 
Arts, as in European countries. The idea is defensible for collective things 
like architecture, where intelligible standards, giving a basis of judgment 
to the whole country, might be an advantage. But for arts like poetry 
and painting, w r here the individual element is paramount, the influence 
of a cabinet officer or other authority could scarcely do anything but 
harm. 

If Hitler succeeded in robbing the German people of one of its 
greatest treasures of Gothic art (the fourteenth-century Virgin and Child 
formerly in Berlin and now at the Cloisters, New York), and could do 
so under the pretext that it w r as French, if he could effect the selling to 
America, from the Frankfurt museum, of van Gogh's masterpiece, Dr. 
Cachet, by denouncing it as decadent, and could drive Max Liebermann 
from his position, because that admirable painter was a Jew, the fault 
lies partly with the German public. It had given at least partial, and cer- 
tainly passive support to the rabble-rouser and his criminal ideas; but 
even before that, it had accepted the theory of governmental control of 
art. France had it also, and paid bitterly for it through the acts of officials 
who used art as a pawn in the game of politics, buying bad things because 
they were popular, and opposing the great artists until they were a suc- 
cess. Yet the feeling of the people for their heritage would never have 



x An example of the present-day thinking of our legislators is furnished by the State 
Department's recall of an exhibition of American painting which had been sent abroad as 
part of the Good Will programme of cultural relations. The recall was caused by outcry in 
sections of the press which objected to the "modernism" of the work. It had been selected 
on a basis of art which the political censors were, as usual, incompetent to judge. 



THE MUSEUM AVD THE PUBLIC 217 

permitted the sale of museum works. It is true that only for the limited 
time of the madness created by the Nazis could those fanatics attack 
Germany's artistic patrimony. Since the Germans never knew anything 
but acquiescence in the will of their rulers, we may not blame them in 
the present case. But we may learn to avoid their system for ourselves. 

Often as we in America are tempted by the idea of an art supported 
by legislative bodies, national or local, we must reject it, at least till the 
time when private control has built up such general understanding that 
the ignorant officeholder would be powerless against it. To be sure, there 
have also been inferior men on our museum boards. Sometimes they 
have been merely egotistical, and desirous of using the institution for a 
private monument, as at the place where one reads, ''Organized and incor- 
porated to convert into a public museum and art gallery the former 
residence of Mr. X., and to preserve and exhibit his collection. 7 ' Even 
this bid for immortality may become an asset to the community: "his 
former residence'" may T in time, be rebuilt beyond recognition, and the 
same happy fate may befall "his collection." Balancing such an example 
is the record of a truly great benefaction; it is suggested by the unob- 
trusive label displayed in a gallery of Greek art: "All vases were purchased 
with income from the Rogers Fund unless otherwise stated." And those 
marvelous vases are but a small part of the acquisitions due to the old 
railroad man thus recalled. 

With whole-hearted gratitude to the art lovers who have built up our 
galleries through their gifts of collections, money and administrative 
effort, with full admiration for the public spirit which has been their 
constant guide, one must still consider trustees and collectors as part of 
the museum's problem. The act of the Metropolitan in rejecting outright 
the assemblage of art works on which Senator Clark had lavished vast 
sums was hailed as a courageous gesture at the time; one of the daily 
papers commented on it in an editorial headed by the terse words "No 
Necropolis." For the magnate's will demanded that the paintings and 
other objects be kept together for all time. Had he, in planning his 
"monument more enduring than bronze," consulted the museum and 
made provision for showing his possessions, or parts of them, in a way to 
benefit the community, the drastic step of rejection need not have been 
taken. It was well worth while, however, as a warning to other men of 
wealth that our galleries had reached the stage of deciding their best 
policy, free from dictation by outsiders. 

But we still have to think of the insiders, and here there exist compli- 
cations resulting from great services to the museum and great knowledge 
of its needs, combined, at times, with arrogant refusal to accept the judg- 



218 THE MUSEUM AND THE PUBLIC 

ment of the professional staff, men whose study of special fields is not a 
matter of occasional thinking that of the trustees but of a lifelong 
devotion. 

Most often the trustee, who may be a collector, and a good one, has 
professional advisers of his own. I do not speak of dealers, whose very 
real competence is offset by their interest in selling particular works or in 
defending things of the type they own against the allurements of other 
schools. The most dangerous enemy in the household is the bad artist. 
To give a single example, from the history of French museums: the work 
of one of the greatest painters of his time, Seurat, is contained in the six 
large works which chiefly represent his short career, and a certain number 
of smaller pictures. The masterpieces were in the hands of collectors who 
asked nothing better than to see them enter the nation's museum. One 
of these art lovers offered to France a whole group of Seurats, including 
one of his chief productions. The gift was rejected with contempt; and I 
am able to say from personal acquaintance with the official responsible 
for the act that he was merely continuing his policy in regard to the 
Cezannes, Renoirs, and other notable modern canvases with which he 
had previously dealt. Not an independent authority in his field, he \vas 
but earning out the decisions of a council of museum men dominated by 
artists, but such artists as had made the phrase "official art" a synonym 
for about the worst things that the whole history of painting and sculp- 
ture can show. 

Not many years later, every one of Seurat's masterpieces had been sold 
to collectors outside of France, and that country would, for all time, have 
been unable to represent the great man in his true quality had not an 
American, John Quinn, bequeathed the painter's last work, Le Cirque, to 
the Louvre. In doing so, Mr. Quinn was acting on his principle that a 
work of art is essentially owned by the country which produced it and 
where it can best be appreciated. He felt that we have no right to sepa- 
rate it permanently from the surroundings which saw its birth. In the 
case of the great Seurat picture, the whole atmosphere of the circus in a 
modest neighborhood, and the character of the audience and the per- 
formers are all intimately Parisian. 

But Mr. Quinn was influenced by other ideas as well. Among his 
Seurat paintings was one a marvel that he had bought at public 
auction in New York, after its exhibition at the Metropolitan which 
would have none of it. Indeed, he stated publicly that he disagreed with 
the museum for its apologetic attitude about the show in which the 
splendid work was included. It is now in the Tate Gallery of London, as 
part of the national collections, together with Seurat's earlier masterpiece, 




54. Mexico (Aztec art): Basalt F^ure of Com Goddess. 
Courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History, New Yorfc. 



220 THE MUSEUM AND THE PUBLIC 

La Baignade, also rejected by New York on the advice of such artists as I 
have described in a book called Ananias. The spirit of that personage, so 
accurately analyzed in the Bible, is the chief cause of the loss by France 
of Seurat's work. And how much more has that spirit cost the world? 
Men like Corot, Cezanne, and Redon could go on through their years of 
neglect simply because their fathers had left them the money to live on. 
But what of van Gogh and Juan Gris, as two random examples of men 
dying before their time with superb work behind them and every 
promise of greater things in the future so stupidly broken? 

In our country, with all the good will of the museums, lack of judg- 
ment about the American masters prevented our record from showing 
anything near to proper support of Thomas Eakins and Albert P. Ryder. 
We have already noticed the obtuseness of our public galleries as regards 
Maurice Prendergast during his lifetime. The strongest painter among 
those who were my schoolmates, George McKay, was found dead of 
starvation in his room; it is true that the pictures he had produced were, 
according to museum criteria in that day, immature. But they were 
vigorous and fine. Had our galleries, for twenty years or so, consistently 
thrown their influence on the side of such ideals, instead of supporting 
the academic men alone, McKay's very able work would have found 
numerous buyers. His obscurity made that impossible. No individual 
can be blamed: the real culprit was the general state of knowledge at the 
time. With a thousand other matters to attend to, our institutions were 
not yet ready to cope with the problem of contemporary art. 

If they now accept the challenge, it is because there is no middle 
ground between meeting it and restricting the museum field to scholar- 
ship and the past. Magnificent things are to be done there; yet, how we 
admire a Baudelaire when he speaks out for the talent of the men around 
him, especially one as fine as Constantin Guys I The fact that, for a long 
time, the poet alone saw the beauty of that artist's drawing tells us how 
difficult the question is. Since the case stood thus in a city as advanced 
as Paris, it is no wonder that an American, exactly contemporary with 
Guys, remained unnoticed. Yet the neglect of John Quidor most cer- 
tainly resulted in loss, not so much for the artist as for the public. It can- 
not play Diogenes with his lantern: it looks to the museum to reveal to it 
the honest man. Many people are eager to know his work at the time it 
has its greatest value, and are only too happy to give him the means of 
continuing it. 

It seems logical, at this point, to add to this record a statement about 
certain acquisitions which have come to our museums, not through their 
own initiative, but as gifts from a small foundation established to promote 



THE MUSEUM AND THE PUBLIC 221 

the welfare of American artists. It derives from the bequest of an old 
painter, Alexander Shilling, and is administered by men of his calling. 
Among the artists whose work it has bought and given to public galleries 
are A. S. Baylinson, George Constant, John B. Flannagan, M. A. Tricca, 
and others. They are all highly regarded in their profession and will, as 
time passes, unquestionably be better known and liked by the public at 
large. (Prophecies of this type are very dangerous, but in the present 
instance there would be the amplest confirmation for the foregoing state- 
ment. ) 

With every one of the artists just cited, the museum receiving his 
work was getting its first example of it; and in a number of cases, the 
painting or sculpture was the first by the man to enter any museum at all. 
Now, the significant point is that in every single one of these instances, 
the work of art was acceptable to the curator in charge of such produc- 
tions, but again and again the question was raised as to the judgment to 
be pronounced by the trustees forming the committee on accessions. 
Here is one case and it is one among many where laymen and pro- 
fessionals held opposing ideas. 

Although there has been marked progress in recent times, and boards 
of trustees allow their experts more freedom than formerly, the men who 
give the money or raise the money for our institutions still have so much 
the sense of authority that a curator in one of our chief galleries declared, 
only a few years back, "The museum belongs to the board." We are still 
far from the record set by one of our early trustees, Joseph H. Choate. 
That great lawyer, diplomat, and citizen was said never to have missed a 
board meeting when he was in New York, and never, in his many years of 
service, to have cast a vote on questions demanding artistic scholarship: 
those problems were, in his opinion, for the staff to handle. The reverse 
of his principle, the overriding of the convictions of experts, is what 
accounts for their "time serving/* the word applied by one of them to the 
work which, on another occasion, he spoke of as giving him his daily 
bread. In the medical profession, we know that life-or-death decisions 
should never be affected by thought as to the specialist's tenure of 
office in his hospital; and in no case should his decisions be influenced 
by the financial or other power of trustees. Yet, that is the pressure 
constantly felt by museum men; and so they are apt to adopt a routine 
that avoids most risks and most chances of brilliant success. 

A stupendous Italian masterpiece went to a European gallery, where 
there were already many of its kind. To this day, in America, we have 
nothing like it, and there may never be one here. "Why couldn't we have 
had that picture?" was the question put to a prominent museum official. 



222 THE MUSEUM AND THE PUBLIC 

"Well, you see, the family who owned that work really didn't need even 
the modest sum they got for it. I don't think they would have been 
tempted by a bigger offer, so we just did nothing about it." That is not 
the way, for example, that our oil men talk of a concession, even if its 
owners are not very keen on the money to be had from their property: 
far from doing nothing about a thing needed by the world, our people 
take vigorous steps to turn that idle resource into something real and 
creative. Our museum men need the energy that goes into "practical" 
activities, where the rewards of knowledge, originality, and enterprise are 
clear to all. Too often, such qualities are deadened, if a series of rebuffs 
by superiors has lowered the sense of initiative among the members of 
the staff. 

This does not mean that museum staffs, given freedom and courage, 
would act infallibly. Curators, too, can get beyond their depth. And in 
cases involving more than the specialist's knowledge, the help of trustees 
may make all the difference between failure and success. A great collector 
may have come to distrust an institution, and decided to cut it off in his 
will. The irreplaceable paintings on his walls might still be saved for 
the community if men of wealth and standing, those who could meet 
that collector on equal terms and speak his own language, intervene and 
assure him that his possessions will be properly cared for. A curator 
might bungle this ticldish diplomatic job. 

Or when the trustee has access to private galleries from which, in 
time, certain masterpieces are sure to reach the museum by gift or 
bequest, he may stand firm against the temptation to spend from a trust 
fund, even if the work offered for purchase is indubitably important and 
attractive. He may not be free to make public his reason for refusing the 
fine thing available, and impatient artists or art lovers may criticize the 
gallery for neglect of a brilliant opportunity. But the museum has time 
on its side: a few years more or less weigh but lightly in its calculations, 
whereas space on its walls is a limited commodity, and the money which 
would have gone for the "wonderful buy" may be used for some other 
fine work. 

There may be legal difficulties to acquiring the object, and its price 
may not be recoverable if these matters cause the subsequent relinquish- 
ment of the painting or sculpture. Here again the curator, even when 
sure of himself on aesthetic grounds, needs the saving hands of the men 
of affairs who give to the museum experience and time that are simply 
beyond our power to reward. 

And representing, as they do, a high average of general artistic intelli- 
gence (indeed, many are real connoisseurs), the trustees furnish a stand- 



224 THE MUSEUM AND THE PUBLIC 

ard for the museum in its appeal to the public. Far to outstrip the 
understanding of the community is impolitic: even if people are going, 
in the future, to catch up with expert judgment, it is a mistake to 
antagonize them and thus sacrifice their interest and support. That will 
not happen, however, if a wise course is pursued over the years. First, the 
trustees must secure the right members of the staff and we may as well 
face the fact that there are plentiful instances of failure in this difficult 
task. Too many of our curators are even today, men of weak judgment 
on art, or are so out of touch with their public as to be ignorant of the 
kind of acquisitions that will really advance the interests of their muse- 
ums. But supposing the choice of a staff member to have been a good 
one at the start, he can build up understanding in the community only 
if he can dispense with compromise, and refuse that easy success which 
so often turns sour with the passing of time. 

Fashion sways the ideas of a great many persons, and it is the only 
possible explanation for monstrous fluctuations in the price of art works. 
One remembers the words of Oscar Wilde, "Today people know the 
price of everything, and the value of nothing." In I860, a man buying a 
Murillo which was to go, somewhat later, to the National Gallery of 
London, paid nearly $50,000 for the picture, which today could not be 
sold for a tenth of the price it cost (though the Spaniard is coming out 
of the worst contempt he suffered, say, twenty years ago). At about the 
time when the great British gallery was acquiring the Murillo, Theodore 
Duret paid $8 for a Cezanne, and in the open market. The price of the 
Cezanne would today be some two or three thousand times what M. 
Duret paid for it; its value remains the same, and has no relation to the 
high price or the low one. The same is of course true in the case of the 
Murillo. 

The question of the dealers has to be considered and they are very 
influential men with the press, with collectors, and with the public which 
frequents their sumptuous galleries. As to numbers of people, one may 
say that they belong not to the school of this or that artist but of this or 
that dealer. I have already testified to the debt this country owes to the 
enterprising men who have brought us so many of our masterpieces; yet 
with the complicated exigencies of the art dealer's business and politics, 
the curator faces danger, also, from the masters of the trade. His absorp- 
tion in art sometimes makes him an easy victim for persons who concen- 
trate solely on securing maximum profits. Here is another case where 
men accustomed to see through financial strategy may offer to our insti- 
tutions the best of counsel. Success in business often depends on the 
sense which distinguishes between temporary and permanent values; and 



THE MUSEUM AND THE PUBLIC 225 

it is, of course, necessary for our board members to have this sense in 
matters of art, to distinguish between fashion and enduring worth. 

The trustee, finally, gives the community a sense of being represented 
in the governing of the museum. When J. Pierpont Morgan accepted 
the presidency of the Metropolitan, it was given an importance in the 
eyes of the country which only that leader of affairs could have conferred 
upon it. The whole world of art was strengthened by the prestige of 
the man whose concern for the collections immediately gave them a new 
meaning for people who had previously regarded them as outside the 
possible interests of a financier whose operations made him an inter- 
national power. 

It will be clear that, in a country where art needs every bit of support 
it can rally, to counterbalance the indifference or even hostility it still 
meets, the presence of distinguished and successful men on the board is 
in itself an immense asset for an institution. And a further result of this 
is a feeling among visitors that what the} 7 see on museum walls is right, 
even if it is difficult to understand. Suppose, instead of our present sys- 
tem, we gave to a director the authority that the Kaiser granted to Wil- 
helm von Bode. And suppose that the autocrat, in addition to the vast 
knowledge of ancient art possessed by Dr. von Bode, this time was able 
to judge modern art with the same success. His choices, backed by the 
great funds in museum treasuries, would be far superior to what our gal- 
leries have had, or are getting today. 

And yet paradoxical as this may seem we should still maintain 
that the museum was not properly directed. For the acquisitions would 
be imposed from above, and would not call forth from their public the 
confidence now enjoyed by the gallery, as it develops under the guidance 
of men known to their communities as outstanding in their professions 
or businesses. Earlier in this book, I spoke of the weakness in our collect- 
ing which will persist as long as it gives the impression of being a series of 
one-man shows. We need to do things communally, and the road to 
such a result can be reached by way of public belief that our museums 
are wisely guided. 

To inspire such belief, trustees must realize that their best policy 
the one they are now following more and more can be charted only by 
men chosen for their competence and encouraged to act without that 
pressure on their minds which comes of mistaking authority of office for 
authority of understanding. 

An earlier period evolved the formula that "The King can do no 
wrong" and, down to World War II, certain pictures in the Louvre could 
not be moved to more appropriate galleries because Louis XIV had 



226 THE MUSEUM AND THE PUBLIC 

ordered them to be placed as they still hung in 1939. Our democratic 
period, if it is to equal the wisdom of Louis XIV and the other great 
patrons of the past, must do so by drawing on the resources of men who 
devote their lives to study of the museum and its contents, thus giving 
the fullest supplement and direction to popular taste as expressed by the 
trustees. 

A strongly contrasting opinion on the matter is given by one of the 
men best qualified to speak, Francis Henry Taylor, the director of the 
Metropolitan Museum. In his recent book, Babel's Tower, he says that 
"on the whole, persecution by trustees is isolated, if spectacular, and 
sooner or later is solved by the mortality tables." As to the rarity of 
"persecution/' I can agree: it is indeed so isolated as to be negligible. 
But a policy among trustees that leads to bad buying, or obstructs good 
buying is to be seen in cases far from isolated. 

Returning to Mr. Taylor's book, we read, in the paragraph previously 
quoted, "If they [the trustees] ever really got the upper hand, the public, 
whose cross section they represent, might question the omniscience of 
the expert." But the expert, if he is at all worthy of the title, will be the 
first to reject any thought of his "omniscience." In his dealings with 
superficial critics, the curator may be top-lofty enough, but as regards the 
great questions of art, he is apt to be decidedly humble. 

The essential issue in Mr. Taylor's last-quoted words is that of the 
public. It is of particular interest to us in the present chapter, since we 
are here attempting to clarify the respective positions of the museum 
and the people it serves. A more specific statement by Mr. Taylor 
appeared, a few years ago, in an article published in The Atlantic Monthly 
and reprinted in The Museums Journal. Its concluding words, addressed 
to museum men, were these: "Had our colleagues in Germany and Italy 
been willing to meet the man in the street half way, they might not now 
be reduced to pimping for ideologies that destroy the very civilization 
whose finest flowerings we are dedicated to preserve." 

With our present knowledge of the mentality of dictators, we may be 
quite certain that neither the policy recommended by Mr. Taylor nor any 
other policy could save one of his colleagues who refused to obey com- 
mands in totalitarian Germany, Italy, or Russia. Moreover, the fortunes 
of Prokoviev and Shostakovich among the Soviets furnish a new example 
of how a dictator promotes art merely as a means toward his own ends. 
But to restrict the question to America, where is it that we are to "meet 
the man in the street"? Must we go into the street and, for example, take 
part in its battle of the Colas Pepsi versus Coca as they scream at us 
from the billboards or from magazine covers? Latterly, an art exhibition 




56. Florida: Deer's Head (Calusa wood^arving). 
Goeitesy of the University Museum, 



228 THE MUSEUM AND THE PUBLIC 

has contributed ammunition for their sniping, Pepsi having shrewdly 
enlisted museum aid. 

The advertising field has recently been studied by that acute investi- 
gator of the effect of words, S. I. Hayakawa, of the English department 
at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He finds a common denominator 
between the poet and the ad-writer, for the task of both is to use language 
so as to put new thoughts into the mind of the people. But the two 
types differ in their purpose: the poet's is generous and disinterested; the 
ad-writer's, to quote exactly the professor's word, is venal. Schiller's 
Pegasus im Joche is as apt as in his own day: the poet who puts the yoke 
of commerce on the neck of his winged steed does a stupider thing than 
giving to that free creature a load it cannot bear if its flight is ham- 
pered, its very nature is violated, and it soon becomes like any cart-horse 

that humble servitor of the man in the street. The advertising agency 
can be a very alluring refuge for writers and artists after treading the hard 
pavement of the modern city; but they will forget at their peril that they 
enter there on terms laid down by its proprietors. At first, the concessions 
asked of the artist will seem small enough, especially in comparison with 
such payment for his work as he had never dreamt of obtaining. In the 
end (which usually comes pretty swiftly) , his Pegasus not only has lost all 
desire for flight, but has lost the very power to lift its wings. 

The intermediary between the advertising concern and the artist is 
usually a man who understands something of both sides of the question 

the artistic and the commercial. This "art director" may have a quite 
genuine pride in the works he commissions; he often desires that they be 
worthy to rank with the fine things he knows at the museum. And so 
we find a popular cigarette being advertised by reproductions of paint- 
ings; very generous sums were paid to the artists who produced them. 
Some of the best-known American artists were invited to contribute to 
the series, with the understanding that the company desired them to 
work with complete freedom, and to paint only such pictures as would 
satisfy their artistic conscience. Naturally, a scene from the world of 
tobacco growing or selling was the most appropriate subject for their 
pictures, but that would allow latitude for any type of imagination. The 
sole stipulation and it probably did not hamper the effort of any con- 
tributing artist was that a tobacco leaf, itself a beautiful product of 
our fields, was to be shown, and to occupy a certain amount of space. 

The motive behind the scheme may have been less a matter of adver- 
tising a product than of enlarging the contact between art and commerce, 
or even of creating for painters a dignified means of living by their work. 
But the results were lamentable. Some of the pictures were clear evidence 



THE MUSEUM AXD THE PUBLIC 229 

that their producers never had been anything but commercial artists; 
others among the painters were like moths that shrivel at a touch of the 
flame which fascinates them but which is evidently not their element; still 
others were defeated by the difficulty or the impossibility of adjust- 
ing their work to the needs of the reproductive lithograph. This process 
always falsifies a painting, and the best things of the kind (like some of 
the old Currier and Ives prints, and others of their period ) were done by 
lithographers working freely according to the beauty of their medium, 
and using the "original" if, indeed, the)- had one as merely a general 
guide or point of departure. Of course, the real masters of the art like 
Toulouse-Lautrec, since he made posters of a commercial order were 
men who handled the lithographic crayon as a means for new creation, 
and not to imitate the look of an oil painting or a water color. 

"How could I ever know things like that?" asks one of the millions of 
plain Americans who would be willing to enjoy art, but who has given it 
up as a bad job after finding that the cigarette-advertising pictures, signed 
by nationally celebrated men, afford him no more pleasure than any 
other chromos. "How am I supposed to know about your masters of 
lithography? Where am I to see them?" The answer is, once more, that 
same one which we have already heard Renoir give in his tone of surprise, 
"Au musee, parbleuJ" The museum will show you sheet after sheet of 
magnificent prints, some done merely for purposes of expression, some 
as political broadsides, some as advertisements with' names and 
addresses of firms, prices of commodities, and every other requirement of 
commerce. But the essential matter that makes these three types one is 
that they belong in the museum, and allow it to meet the man in the 
street where it should meet him: within the limits of its necessary* prin- 
ciples. Instead of going into the street to meet him, it invites him into a 
building planned to the last detail for his pleasure and profit. In the 
long run, he will thank the institution for holding to the values that its 
long experience has proved to be the best 

Flattering the masses with promises of "strength through joy" and 
the other catchwords of the crooked ideologies was the characteristic 
means by which Germans and Italians were snared for the work described 
by Mr. Taylor as destroying "the very civilization whose finest flowerings 
we are dedicated to preserve." The man in the street may have a deep 
and sure instinct which will respond to those "flowerings"; the man in 
the museum, however, has given his life to studying and fostering such 
matters. In the confusion of values amid which the world is struggling, 
the man in the street may be so misled by the blare of loud-speakers and 
the dazzle of fierce lights that his chances of achieving good judgment 



23 THE MUSEUM AND THE PUBLIC 

and good taste are progressively endangered. Much of what he gets over 
the radio, at the movie house, and from posters, magazine covers, and the 
like is making his "street" always more unhealthy. In that case, the 
museum cannot go halfway in meeting him, as Mr. Taylor asks; it cannot 
deviate even one step from the course that concentrating on its problem 
has made it see as the right one. 

Those necessary limits of museum principles mentioned before are 
not fixed by the walls of the building. John Cotton Dana, as we recall, 
proposed that our art works be displayed in the windows of vacant shops 
and even in the homes of people who would borrow them for a given 
time. Such schemes are often difficult to put into effect. The vacant 
shop and the art lover's home may call for a staggering amount of work 
on the part of museum employees; and the expenses for packing, trans- 
portation, insurance, surveillance, bookkeeping, and the rest may greatly 
exceed the benefits. Will the object shown under more or less imperfect 
conditions produce any good share of its proper effect? It was created 
for a certain setting, and we are thus always aware of its relation to the 
space around it, and to objects that strengthen or contradict its appeal. 
The phonograph record of even a fine song loses its value if heard in a 
noisy place, amid a babel of distracting words, or merely at a time when 
people's thoughts are on a wrong sort of things. 

Following Mr. Dana in a general way, however, we are working out a 
better means of putting his idea into execution. It is a means that avoids 
the reproach of the "musee ambulant." That derisive phrase for light- 
minded loans from public collections was coined by Degas, who as a 
defender of his beloved Louvre was never a friend to the easy way in 
art appreciation. If he could wait and watch for years, as he said, in order 
to get a perfect proof of one of Delacroix's beautiful etchings, why should 
he send it around the country for careless people to pass it by after half a 
glance? Let them get their own prints. And let the national treasures of 
France be kept in safe places, where they could be seen by those who 
cared enough to go and study them. On the other hand, he would doubt- 
less have approved of the branch museum. 

This new intermediary between art and the public is particularly 
suited to big cities, where going long distances to the main gallery involves 
much loss of time. The parent museum will probably have ample 
material in reserve, and can fit out a neighborhood museum without loss 
to itself or placing inferior things at the branch. Sometimes, as with the 
Cloisters, in New York, or Alger House, in Detroit, the new gallery will 
have a character all its own, and the visitor to the parent institution will 
want to make a special excursion to the other one. Chicago is planning 



57. Copfej: Mis. Sefiaooi i*oit 




232 THE MUSEUM AA 7 D THE PUBLIC 

to reach racial or national communities within the city, and is planning 
exhibits most attractive to Negro or Polish citizens. The George Wash- 
ington Carver School in Harlem, New York's immense Negro section, 
has done fine things with art classes (only one of the many attractions 
of its curriculum) and has made a start with a permanent collection. 
The idea, in each case, is to carry on the work of the big museums among 
people who, ordinarily, cannot get away from their work for more than 
an hour or so. But if they can drop in at the end of their day, or even at 
lunchtime, they get a new lift for their spirits, and their frequent seeing 
of art works provides the remedy that every experienced observer knows 
to be the only real remedy for the sense of strangeness almost of hos- 
tility that people often feel when first seeing master works. As that 
feeling rnelts away, our branch-museum public will furnish more visitors, 
and better-prepared visitors, to the central galleries. 

If a city has the resources for more than one fine collection (as Bos- 
ton, with Mrs. Gardner's house, New York, with the Frick mansion, and 
Washington, with the Phillips Memorial Gallery), it may enjoy the 
special quality of the small museum, which leaves brilliant memories of a 
limited number of particularly choice things. These smaller galleries can 
give the big museum a pointer in creating its maximum effect by care- 
fully selecting and placing its resources. Of course, it must not be forgot- 
ten that the big museum, unwieldy as it sometimes seems, functions as a 
place of reference, somewhat along the lines of the great library. 

To glance again at the important question of preparedness for enjoy- 
ing art, let me quote Edith A. Abbot, one of our museum workers whose 
years of observation have given her a deep insight into people's needs. 
She places the branch museum high among the means for improving our 
service to the public. Her reason is that such an institution helps to 
overcome a very special enemy to pleasure in works of art and to benefit 
from them: that enemy is superficial observation, a result of haste in 
going through the galleries. Her analysis of the museum instructor's 
work derives from the same thought, and seems to me to go to the very 
heart of the matter. Herself an artist, Miss Abbot has found that even a 
fine talent needs time to achieve its effect, and that discovery, in turn, 
has also given her the secret of getting the best effect from a picture 
already done. Her description of the docent's task is convincing in its 
very simplicity: it calls for no more than holding the museum visitor 
before a given work of art until the master himself has had a chance to 
speak from his canvas or other medium. There is every likelihood that 
some of his words will hit home. None of us gets all of his message, but 
if the newcomer to the gallery lets himself rush on from one painting or 



THE MUSEUM AND THE PUBLIC 233 

sculpture to the next, he gets not a hint of what might have been his if he 
had given himself the joy of making one new friendship or perhaps two. 

To be sure, there is a bit of a catch connected with Miss Abbot's idea 
of the museum instructor: he or she must really know which are the 
masterworks. Nothing is easier than to know names; they run on in a 
beautiful litany Cimabue, Giotto, van Eyck, Antonello da Messina, 
Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt, Daumier, Ryder, and so on, "in centuries of 
centuries." 

But too often, the decent, instead of appreciating the merit of the 
works, merely repeats what he has read up in the library (he spends 
more time there than in the galleries). In such cases, he will speculate 
on whether or not Cimabue ever existed, and the Giotto will furnish a 
pretext for one more retelling of the Vasari stories. Without any real con- 
victions as to the genius of van Eyck, the docent may have made a "safe" 
remark about the technical brilliance of early Flemish painting a few 
years before, when the beautiful work by the founder of the school was 
still attributed to a minor artist; on the other hand, the "Antonello," in 
which a famous critic says he saw all the geometry of modern art, has to 
be rechristened by experts as the work of an insignificant provincial. It 
would be grotesquely unfair to ask a young museum instructor to have an 
opinion on questions of such extreme difficulty; but should he not know 
that the "Titian," an absolute ruin when it turned up, was given all of 
its "tone" and "modeling" by a restorer? If the docent has had any 
real experience with Rubens, should he not be able to tell his hearers that 
the work before them, while from the master's design, is merely one of 
those endless repetitions by his assistants? (Such pictures have been the 
small change of dealers for a good part of those centuries of art collect- 
ing.) Even his hours in the library should have taught our docent that 
the "Rembrandt" is simply a school work. And so ? continuing the 
monotonous chant of praise to the masters listed above, our lecturer 
reaches Daumier; (the present canvas is of course not by that artist, but 
by one whose only merit was that he could simulate the painting of 
Daumier); and the Ryder is an outright fake. Since it is related to a good 
picture, it is still preferable to certain things one hears praised, even in 
museums. Let us note, however, that the other inferior works just men- 
tioned, the near-Daumier, the near-Antonello and the rest, might be 
duplicated in European galleries; and they are growing rarer in our collec- 
tions, where more real expertise is constantly being used. 

Quite evidently, I am here entering into details which will be familiar 
only to persons well versed in art. But the general point which all these 
details illustrate is that even for docent service, real knowledge and 



234 THE MUSEUM AND THE PUBLIC 

insight are needed. Museum instructors have the easiest of tasks if they 
attempt no more than giving their public a pleasant hour with the mas- 
ters. But the vital work of advancing America's realization of the pro- 
found value of our museums demands more than an application of the 
bed-time story technique to a knowledge of art history. An experience of 
which I cannot rid my mind will make clear the notion, too often found 
in Europe, of the superficiality of our country's acquaintance with pic- 
tures. To be sure, it affords a true idea as to a part of our public and 
even as to some of our docents. But it does not hold good for all of us. 

Once when I was testifying in court, the preceding witness was inter- 
rogated by the judge. He had grown impatient with the muddling of 
the district attorney's man, and suddenly cut in with the question, 
"Hasn't this portrait been repainted?" 

Caught off his guard by the judge's sharp tone, the witness, an Eng- 
lishman, in the pay of a picture dealer, stammered, "Oh no, Y'r Lord- 
ship, absolutely not, it was merely Americanized." 

Hearing that little New York politician called "Your Lordship" was 
too much for the dignity of the courtroom. Lawyers, hangers-on T police- 
men, and the judge himself relieved the proceedings by various degrees 
of hilarity. But the joke was largely spoiled for me by that word "Ameri- 
canized," It told too much about the practice of making pictures pretty 
and salable for our market, a practice evidently so general in London as 
to have given rise to that miserable expression among men of the trade. 

To balance the account, I will simply reproduce the wording on the 
label of a sculpture in the m