New-York tribune., 1919-09-27
Charles L. Freer
BY Royal Cortissox

TIME American art collector who serves
4 tho public good is familiar figure
The enrichment Of the Metropolitan
Museum, which we have owed to men like
Henry G.. Marquand, J. Pierpont Morgan
George A. Hearn and Benjamin Altman, has
testified to a generosity characteristic Of
numbers Of our citizens throughout the
country. 1t has become something like q
national trait to turn the beautiful accumu-
lations Of private lifetime over to national
| uses. Such men, we are accustomed to say,
arc typical. But it is to be said of ono
man in tho goodly company, Charles L.
Freer. who died yesterday in New York,
that he was unique. We never have had
another collector quite like him. No city
has ever received q collection quite like the
one which he gave to the United States some
years ago and for which he provided the
museum now nearing completion in Wash
ington.
He was wont to admit with laugh that,
like every man with hobby, he had made
his carly mistakes. But to those who knew
his treasures it always seemed as if he had
started with the fair that is the best in
surance against error. He cared at the
outset for truly fine things-and knew them
when he saw them. Moreover, he had a
way OF fixing upon few choice paths and
following them in perfect contentment.
leaving it to others to cover g wide area
more or less at random. Thus in his deal
lngs with American art he specialized in a
group of painters having peculiarly dis
fivo 1Soho r.
from among the figure painters, the works
OF Abbott H. Thayer and Thomas W. Dew
ing. Those men of genius have been re-
markable for originality, for creative power
and, above all things, for their love of pure
beauty. Freer made friends with them. kept
pace with them across the years, acquired
their pictures to such an extent that each
will have in his museum a notable status.
lie did the same thing for Dwight w. Tryon,
the landscape painter He did it on even
more impressive scale for Whistler,
When the author of "The Gentle Art Of
Making Enemies" came to know Freer he
abandoned all the mischievous caprice from
which so many of his comrades suffered.
II Macenas is to be remembered as the
friend Of Horace and Vergil, l should think
Freer would in the same way bo honored
as the friend of the great American painter.
Years ago, when the Whistler memorial ex-
nloltlon was held in Boston, / watched the
hanging of some Of the pictures. I was
cold that this and that was being done in
obedience to the behests Of Freer. Whv?
Because Freer was standing guard, so to
say, over the interests of Whistler as thew
were represented in such pictures as he.
Freer, controlled. He was always like that.
He moved heaven and earth to make his
collection OF the etchings the completest
and best in the world, not from the unin-
spired amateurs cult for kind of reflected
glory, but because he wanted the student
who would ultimately make use of his prints
to have the finest illustrations of the sub
Ject procurable. When the famous "Pea-
cock Room" came into the market it was,
OF course, Freer who bought it. never
happened to ask him what he thought of it,
1t is conceivable that the room, thanks to
the epoch from which the cabinet work
dates, will not take the world with lowell
ness. But is is the record of character
istlc and very important episode in Whist
ler's life. Hence Freers acquisition Of it
and the promise Of its reconstruction in
the museum precisely it stood in the
Leyland house in London. In paintings
pastels, water colors, drawings, etchings and
autographs the museum will show Whistler's
art literally at full length Imagine what
this will mean to inquirers into the subject,
and imagine what it will mean as q monu-
ment to Whistler! He will have his shrine
at Washington, as Velasquez has his at
Madrid, as Halls has his at Haarlem. To
have made that shrine would alone have
been achievement to place US in Freers
debt. But he did something more for his
COMPLEMENTARY for the whole world of arf
HAVING done royal justice to his chosen
Americans, Freer gave himself up to the
passion which had always stirred him and
which IN his later years evoked all his en-
ergles. This was passion for Eastern art.
He was one of the first to comprehend the
charm Of the Japanese print and the brill
lance OF Japanese craftsmanship in general.
Then, he was one Of the first to be grad
uated, as it were, from Japan to China, to
explore the mysteries of Chinese painting.
sculpture and pottery, and to draw near to
the sources of what is greatest in Oriental
art. He drank from them as from SPRINGS
OF inspiration. They filled him with Joy
and An enthusiasm knowing no bounds.
Fortune had been kind to him and he was
enabled not only to make journeys in the
East from which he returned laden with !
masterpieces, but to keep competent agents
at work cleaning the field. All the time he
was student pursuing his subject with |
learning as we'll as with ardor. 1t was an !
unforgettable privilege to go with him
through batch of paintings just brought |
across the Pacific His love for them was
enkindling. SO was the knowledge through
which, in buoyant talk, ne would often