7 
z. 
THE WASHINGTON POST: 
FREER COLLECTION 
VIEWED IN PRIVATE 
President and Mrs. Harding 
Among Guests at Preopening 
Inspection of Art Objects. 
VALUE GIVEN AS $7,000,000 
991 American and 3,820 Oriental 
Objects Displayed in Million- 
Dollar Art Gallery. 
By GERTRUDE RICHARDSON BRIG¬ 
HAM, PII. D. 
The mystery so long surrounding 
plies a goldflsh pool. Three pea¬ 
cocks lend a brilliant note of color, 
as they sun themselves. 
Air of CalmneKS Marked. 
Turning ,to the. right, one may now ; 
visit the galleries'of American artists, i 
while on the left are the oriental 
rooms. An ;ai t of peace and quiet 
broods everywhere. 
"My great desire has been to unite 
modern work ’with masterpieces of 
certain periods of high civilization 
harmonious in spiritual and physical 
suggestion having' the power to 
broaden esthetic culture and the grace 
to , elevate the human mind,” Mr. 
Freer wrote. He also stated at the 
same date "these several collections 
include speciniehs of very widely sep¬ 
arated periods of artistic development, 
beginning before the birth of Christ, 
and ending today. No attempt has 
been made to secure specimens from 
unsympathetic sources, my collecting 
having been confined to American and 
Asiatic Schools.” 
the beautiful Freer Gallery of Art and 
\ The collection, as conveyed by Mr. 
its priceless collections of American 
and oriental objects donated by the 
late Charles Lang - Freer, was dis¬ 
pelled yesterday morning,’when press 
representatives were admitted for a 
private view, and in the afternoon 
the big front doors were opened for 
distinguished private guests, includ¬ 
ing the President and Mrs. Harding, 
the Vice-President, Cabinet members, 
justices of the Supreme bench, and 
regents of the Smithsonian institu¬ 
tion. 
Entering the Florentine renais¬ 
sance structure, one finds the gray 
marble walls relieved on each side by 
two Chinese hangings of red velvet 
of the Ch’ing dynasty, and passing- 
up the stairs one sees the central 
court, now bright with green shrub¬ 
bery and white and red azaleas. A 
playing fountain in the center sup- 
Freer, numbered approximately 4,811 
examples, of which 991 are American 
and 3,820 Oriental. First among the 
interesting features is probably the 
remarkable series by James Abbott 
McNeill Whistler, more than 1,000 
pieces, besides the splendid Peacock 
room, the famous banquet hall deco¬ 
rated by Whistler for the London res¬ 
idence of the late F. R. Leyland. After 
having been set up in Mr. Freer’s 
Detroit residence, the decorations of 
this room were brought to Washing¬ 
ton and are now installed complete 
in an apartment mf the Freer gallery. 
A. single painting by Whistler on the 
wall is the lovely Oriental-looking 
princess, “Rose and Silver—La Prin¬ 
cess du Pays de la Porcelaine.” 
Whistler’s full-length standing por¬ 
trait of F. R. Leyland hangs in an¬ 
other room. 
AVorks Grouped In Galleries. 
Galleries devoted to Whistler in¬ 
clude a separate one for etchings, an¬ 
other for pastels, drawings, and wa¬ 
ter colors, and two rrtore for oil paint¬ 
ings, many of them exquisite noc¬ 
turnes in gray and blue like the 
"Chelsea Embankment.” 
Of other American painters repre¬ 
sented, Abbott Handerson Thayer may 
be named first, with one room and 
half another devoted to a dozen or 
more pictures, mostly ^arge ones of 
importance like "The Virgin,” “Winged 
Figure,” and three of Monadnock, the 
artist’s chosen New Hampshire haunt. 
Fantin-Latour’s “Portrait of Whist¬ 
ler” is hung, but the full-length, life- 
size "Theodore Roosevelt,” by Gari 
Melchers, picturing the Colonel in rid¬ 
ing costume, -whip in hand, is in the 
reserve section downstairs, where 
many pictures are ranged on wire 
racks, available for examination by 
students. 
A room is given.to Thomas Wilmer 
Dewing, and another to the works pf 
Dwight William Tryon. Winslow 
Homer is represented by several of 
his smaller pictures. Other artists 
are George de Forest Brush, Cbilde 
Hassam, Willard Metcalf, John Fran¬ 
cis Murphy, Charles A. Platt, Albert 
P. Ryder, John Singer Sargent, and 
John H. Twachtman, whose works 
will be on view at a later day. 
) 
>-» 
Oriental Rooms Fascinating. 
The Oriental rooms are of fascinat¬ 
ing interest, the Chinese stdne carv¬ 
ings being especially fine, as in 
"Scenes from the Life of Buddha, 
period of the Six Dynasties, Sixth 
Century, and “The Paradise of the 
Buddha Amitabha (O-mi-to)” of the 
same period. The Chinese jades, some 
of them knife blades several feet in 
length, are also alluring, while the 
rooms of Chinese screens, panels, 
kakemono or wall pictures, niaki- 
mono or scroll paintings, represent a 
treasure in art interest of the 
twelfth, fourteenth and) fifteenth cen¬ 
turies. In the Japanese room are 
twelve examples of screens of the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, 
ries. . 
Early Persian, Indo-Persian, and 
Tibetan paintings belong to the gal¬ 
lery, and the pottery embraces, be¬ 
sides the Chinese, Korean, and Japan¬ 
ese, more than 400 examples from the 
further western parts of Asia, in¬ 
cluding Persia and Rakka, and from 
Egypt. 
350 Bronze* in Collection. .. 
Of the 259. bronzes, there are 231 
Chinese, 10 Japanese, and 18 from 
other parts of Asia and from Egypt. 
Of stone sculptures and carvings, 133 
are Chinese and 20 Egyptian, with 
more than 600 specimens of ancient 
Egyptian glass, and a few from other 
countries. Japanese and Chinese lac¬ 
quer objects, wood carvings and dec¬ 
orations, with some Egyptian exam¬ 
ples of the latter; Japanese and 
Chinese iron and metal work; ivory 
statuettes from Cambodia, and 
Byzantine ornaments and medallions 
complete the Oriental collection. 
The booklet presented to each vis¬ 
itor informs us that “the most sig¬ 
nificant Byzantine objects appearing 
in the Freer collection are the 
Greek Biblical Manuscripts, which 
were found in Egypt. The more im¬ 
portant of these, now known as the 
Washington manuscripts, are Deu¬ 
teronomy and Joshua, the Psalms, 
and the four Gospels, all dating from 
the fifth century.” 
A fragmentary manuscript of the 
epistles of St. Paul Is dated from the 
sixth century. 
Charles A. Platt, of New York, the 
architect chosen 'by Mr. Freer, prob¬ 
ably will be in town this week to -wit¬ 
ness the opening of the gallery. Sev¬ 
eral thousand admission cards have 
been issued to a selected list for May 
2 to 8, after which the general public 
will be admitted. 
Application for permission to copy 
objects in the galleries or to see ob¬ 
jects not on exhibition may be made 
at the administration office, and we 
are assured that all will be available 
to students daily from 10 a. m. to 4 
p. m., except Sundays. 
Collection Valued at $7,000,000. 
A valuation of $7,000,000 has been 
placed on the collections and the cost 
of the building was approximately 
$ 1 , 000 , 000 . 
diaries L. Freer, who died in Sep¬ 
tember, 1920, was born in Kingston, 
N. Y., in 18.56, and began his busihess 
career as a timekeeper on the Eel 
River railroad. He made his fortune 
as a manufacturer of railway cars. 
In 1900 he retired from active busi¬ 
ness life and devoted most of his time 
to. the development of his collections 
and the ideals that lay behind them, 
