THE FREER COLLECTION OF ART 
MR. CHARLES L. FREER’S GIFT TO THE NATION, 
TO BE INSTALLED AT WASHINGTON 
(K'-' 
BY LEILA MECHLIN 
HEN, on the fifth of May, 
1906, Mr. Charles L. Freer 
of Detroit, Michigan, gave 
to the Regents of the Smith¬ 
sonian Institution at Wash¬ 
ington a deed to the collection of paint¬ 
ings and other works of art which for more 
than twenty years he had been getting 
together, the American people became 
heirs to a rich heritage. So truly, in¬ 
deed, was ownership at that time 
transferred that while Mr. Freer retains 
the custody of the collection during his 
life-time, and pledges himself to raise 
its value, now estimated at six hundred 
thousand dollars, to an even million, he 
cannot henceforth withdraw from it a 
single item. With this munificent gift, 
furthermore, went the promise of plans 
and five hundred thousand dollars for the 
erection of a gallery as a permanent 
home, with only three stipulations: that 
this building shall bear the donor’s 
name, that it shall be perpetually main¬ 
tained without expense to his estate, and 
that after his death the collection shall 
neither be increased nor diminished. 
These, briefly, were the terms of the of¬ 
fer made by Mr. Freer in December, 
1904, and accepted by the Regents at a 
meeting held, about twelve months later, 
on January 24, 1906. They’were mani¬ 
festly generous, and should have left 
little room for misconstruction or debate; 
but it is doubtful if even to-day their 
actual purport and the real value of the 
gift is fully comprehended. 
While the placing of this collection 
in Washington may be considered the 
first Step toward the establishment of a 
National Gallery of Art, nothing was 
further from Mr. Freer’s mind than the 
furnishing of a nucleus for such an in¬ 
stitution. His project is unique, and is 
the outgrowth of long and deliberate 
thought and an original theory. Great 
museums have, he believes, both their 
place and use. Art, he acknowledges, is 
unbounded; but small, related collec¬ 
tions, setting forth perfectly a single 
unit, will, he contends, prove more avail¬ 
able and influential in the end, and it is 
one of these which he purposes to estab¬ 
lish. Appreciating sincerely all mani¬ 
festations of art, he has devoted himself 
exclusively to the collection of those 
alone which showed continuity of thought 
and were, therefore, peculiarly harmo¬ 
nious. Gathering up the loose and broken 
threads of a great embroidery, he has 
woven, and is weaving, them into a beauti¬ 
ful pattern, which will eventually dis¬ 
cover its meaning even to the uninitiated, 
and point students to the fountain of all 
art—the simple, universal truths. 
Beginning with the works of Whistler, 
this collection, which is now the nation’s, 
runs back through the paintings of the 
greatest Chinese and Japanese artists 
to the earliest Christian era, and then re¬ 
turns to the recent and current produc¬ 
tions of our modern American artists, 
Dwight W. Tryon, Thomas W. Dewing, 
and Abbott FI. Thayer, including, by the 
way, a thousand specimens of Oriental 
pottery which through their fine techni¬ 
cal character proclaim an accordant gene¬ 
sis. Whistler was thought, and doubt¬ 
less with much truth, to have been 
strongly influenced by the art of the Jap¬ 
anese, and to have discovered in the 
prints which came to his notice the for- 
