By P . W. WILSON 
W HAT so charms the Philis¬ 
tine when he drops into 
the Freer Art Gallery, 
just opened at Washing¬ 
ton, is that we have here not a 
picture palace like the Louvre, 
where, as in the circus, you are 
supposed to look at everything at 
once, but merely a bungalow, built 
of granite, with wide walls for wee 
Whistlers arid big' iron gates to keep 
out robbers and Ruskin. In these 
miniature museums, where etchings 
are exhibited, you are sometimes 
fortunate if you can see anything at 
all; and the eye is thus rested. Often 
one has pitied, Americans, so sadly 
misled by guidebooks and a sense of 
duty, who plunge desperately into 
the jaws of the British Museum, 
most of which immensity was out of 
date even on Anno Domini One, 
while in any case it can be mailed 
home on a picture postcard. Yet 
hard by at Hertford House there 
lurks comparatively unknown the 
cozy little Wallace Collection, so 
French, so chic, so Dubarry, where 
one's mind need not mingle Meis- 
soniers with mummies nor Sfevres 
with assegais. At Paris, too, that 
delightful little doll's house called 
Malmaison, where Josephine played 
the harp, is much more fun than 
the pretentious wilderness of Ver¬ 
sailles, where King Louis XV, knew 
only how to play the fool. What 
one remembers of Antwerp is not, 
after all, the cathedral, or even the 
canvases on which Rubens allowed 
his pupils and partners to paint, but 
the house of Plantin, the printer, 
where you may study the actual 
home of a medieval craftsman. In 
every old city there are thus the 
things to see which are great, and 
the things not to miss which are 
small, which latter are by far the 
more important. At Washington, 
“ the Freer,” like “the Corcoran,” 
is an excuse, for escaping the Cap- 
For there is this further advan¬ 
tage in “ the Freeh ” that at least 
nobody can mistalrenT for a Museum 
of Natural History. Not that one 
would wholly condemn even a Nat¬ 
ural History Museum, for In New 
York one can take this once a week 
. as a round of golf. But with all re¬ 
spect to camels kept in camphor, for 
pleasure I prefer my curiosities civil¬ 
ized. That jeweled snuffbox may be 
empty and that painted fan may be 
frayed and faded, and that ormolu 
clock may not go, but somehow they 
are more satisfying than a flint 
which, though alleged to have been 
a safety razor, cannot, even in the 
stone age, possibly have shaved a 
beard. Anthropology is not a de¬ 
light, but a discipline, and usually 
anthropology needs dusting. 
There is, too, this further thing to 
be said. While “ the Freer ” is 
rendered luxurious by delicate vis¬ 
tas, and a truly regimental provision } 
for impending parasols, the question 
does arise whether even such a great 
country as the United States will be 
able always to afford such very 
thick walls' for such very thin art. ■ 
What precisely is going to happen * 
when the Freer of the future ac- ! 
quires a picture of normal dimen¬ 
sions like the “ Last Judgment "of 
Michael Angelo? Will the Grand 
Central be enlarged into a kind of 
diluted Sistine Chapel? And if' not, 
why should this one man Whistler 
want more room per square inch 
than we allow to Raphael per square 
mile? There, in the National Mu¬ 
seum at Washington, you see merely 
English artists, like Romney, Rae¬ 
burn and Reynolds, huddled to¬ 
gether among the Red Indians, thus 
showing that even if the Georgians 
were not so godly, they were at 
least gregarious. They displayed a 
genius not incompatible with good 
humor and their portraits jostle one 
another, cheek by jowl, in a room 
where the -place of honor is given 
_ not to them, but to the first trans¬ 
atlantic cable, dispatched by Queen 
Victoria to President, Buchanan, 
yet there comes along this Ameri¬ 
can artist who declares that for his 
lightest scratch and airiest dab he 
must have a whole gallery to him¬ 
self ! 
Whistler has, of course, gone 
hence and cannot therefore sue me 
for slander, but if he were here I 
suppose he. would say that Romney, 
Raeburn and Reynolds have yet to 
melt like Japan into an abstraction 
a statue every we§Jr, it looks as it 
the building of dsX galleries would 
be the most urgent of all housing 
problems. It became so in Athens, 
where, with culture, the gods and 
goddesses in the end far outnum¬ 
bered the men and women. Hence 
we may fairly ask wrhether all pic¬ 
tures to be preserved in permanent 
collections are likely to be a joy for¬ 
ever, Even in Westminster Abbey 
] there are some tombs that might 
perhaps be cleared away. With the 
zest of war, artists have covered 
acres of canvas with the doings and 
sufferings of doughboys, poilus and 
tommies whose only desire is, as a 
matter of fact, to forget it. Such 
battle pictures, like Victory bonds, 
will one day be canceled. And there 
may be others. 
At " the Freer " Abbott Hander- 
, son Thayer, like Whistler, has a 
1 room to himself, and of course de- 
: serves it. But even in his case 
; space could be saved, as editors 
sometimes express it, if he would 
paint the American girl no more 
! than life size, also omitting wings 
> from the shoulders and halos from 
, the heads. It is not for a halo that 
. American girls are adored, nor do 
they ‘need wrings with whieh to fly. 
The salvation of American art will 
be found, however, not in cutting 
pictures to space, but in the syndi¬ 
cation of art galleries, As there are 
chain stores, Chautauqua cireui ts 
and wheels for vaudeville, so there 
should be a constant exchange of 
statues and paintings between the 
various cities. The Rodins, which 
i have had an excellent run at the 
Metropolitan, should now' be lent to 
Shubert and sent on tour. So with 
the Pintoricchio Room, If Paderew¬ 
ski travels, why not Pintoricchio? 
In due course it might be possible 
for Exiropean cities themselves to ob¬ 
tain loans of European pictures. 
And Venice will experience the 
novelty of discovering Titian. 
Art galleries are simply the draw¬ 
ing rooms of democracy where the 
people look at the pictures painted 
for Princes and plutocrats. That 
they should be open in the evening', 
like any other drawing room,.is ob¬ 
vious. The workers who can only 
see pictures in the evening are the 
workers who have best earned the 
right to see them. Having a Freer 
Gallery at Washington,, why should 
there not be freer galleries every- J 
-where else? >: 
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