From CURRENT OPINION, July, 1923 
A New Art Gallery at Washington 37 
AMERICAN AND ASIATIC ART 
COMBINED IN THE FREER GALLERY 
T HE opening of the Freer Gallery 
in Washington is hailed not only 
as an artistic event of interna¬ 
tional importance, but also as a new 
illustration of American idealism and 
generosity. This Gallery houses a col¬ 
lection which was offered to the nation 
in 1904 and was accepted by President 
Roosevelt during his administration. It 
represents the life-dream of Charles L. 
Freer, a business man of the type that 
one likes to contemplate. Mr. Freer 
was born in Kingston, New York. He 
built up a fortune in Detroit, Michigan. 
He collected pictures and works of art, 
and, as he collected, conceived the de¬ 
sire to combine American and Asiatic 
schools—“to unite modern work with 
masterpieces of certain periods of high 
civilization, harmonious in physical and 
spiritual suggestion, having the power 
to broaden esthetic culture and the 
grace to elevate the human mind.” 
In pursuance of this aim Mr. Freer 
made no less than five journeys to 
China; visited England and came into 
intimate association with J. McNeill 
Whistler; and bought the paintings of 
contemporary artists. He concentrated 
on Whistler. He specialized in the 
gathering of Oriental paintings and 
jade, bronzes and sculptures, porcelains 
and potteries. 
The result is a unique collection ap¬ 
pealing to several different kinds of 
connoisseurs. We find, for instance, 
Louisine W. Havemeyer devoting an 
article in Scribner’s Magazine to the 
Oriental side of the collection, while 
Joseph • Pennell, in the New York 
Times, thinks mainly of what he de¬ 
scribes as “the most comprehensive 
gathering of Whistler’s works in ex¬ 
istence.” Mr. Pennell speaks with 
special enthusiasm of the Peacock 
Room, made by Whistler for the British 
ship-owner F. R. Leyland, and now re¬ 
assembled with its “Prineesse du Pays 
de la Porcelaine” hanging where it be¬ 
longs. 
There are more than 4,000 works in 
the collection, but only a few, compara¬ 
tively speaking, are on exhibition at any 
given time. Elisabeth Luther Cary, 
art-critic of the New York Times, who 
visited the Gallery soon after its open¬ 
ing, tells of the impressions left by 
rooms dedicated to Oriental sculptures. 
“In one gallery is a Bodhisattva of the 
sixth century, quite alone, slim-waisted, 
heavy-headed, bending backward, like a 
Madonna of the French Gothic type, 
but with a stronger body and more 
powerful limbs.” In a room of Japanese 
screens, “the remoteness of Chinese 
paintings changes to a more vivid sense 
of attraction of color and the decorated 
uses of composition. Here are two 
screens by Sabatsu, paintings of waves 
leaping and clutching at drooping pine 
branches, clambering and mounting 
among rocks. And here in contrast to 
these majestic designs are Koetsu 
screens on which mischievous cats play 
and pounce among household objects.” 
The description continues: 
“Then we come to the American section, 
by which the collector supported his theory 
of the unity of East and West in art. 
The theory will be questioned. There will 
be a preponderance of sightseers among 
the visitors to the gallery for a few years 
certainly, and to these casual visitors— 
to most of them—the collections will seem 
strangely assorted. The public is richly 
prepared for any collector’s interest in the 
early paintings and potteries of the East. 
The museums have seen to that, and also 
some of the modern artists. That will 
offer no stumbling block. Nor will the 
Whistlers offer any. We all have been 
prepared even for the splendor of this vast 
representation of his art, and Whistler 
bears comparison with the treasures of 
Eastern art not only by his easy grasp 
of the principles of Eastern decoration, 
but by his deeper aesthetic instinct reach¬ 
ing far below the surface to the source 
at which both East and West have drunk. 
“It is not, however, quite so easy to find 
the special appropriateness of the other 
artists to the very special companionship 
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