New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1919-12-07
A Noble Landmark
In Our Art History

A Noble Landmark
In Our Art History
Comment upon Mr.. Tricks eift of
his collection to the public is naturally
enough concentrated just now upon the
mere magnitude Of his bequest. He
leaves to the city, or to the state. as
the exact terms of his will may de-
termine, q prodigious body Of artistic
treasure. 1t is said that it cost him
from $So,000,000 to $4,000, 900, and the
estimate seems reasonable. Yet it is
in the particular disposition of his
works Of art that he has done most to
place his countrymen in his debt, For
a number Of years, when our great
private collections have not gone to
the auction rooms. they have CRAWL
tated to public museums. Nothing
could be more commendable-save the
newer policy which has given a John
son Museum TO Philadelphia. q Freer
Museum to Washington, and now a
Frick Museum to New York. The in
dependent gathering of masterpieces,
isolated in . building Of their own, Is
boon for which we are always bound
to be grateful, and it takes on a De-
culiarly rare atmosphere when it re-
duces to q minimum the institutional
character inseparable from the public
museum. The Frick collection will in
evitably be compared with the Wallace
collection in London. But when the
reader is making comparisons Of this
sort let him think Of another, smaller
shrine Of art; instead Of Hartford
House, let him think Of the Poldi-
Pezzoli, at Milan. There is the ideal
precedent, which Mr.. Frick has fol-
lowed.
In giving his house along with his
pictures and other beautiful posses
sions he has done all that q collector
could do to send a Velasquez or n
Rembrandt or Gainsborough down to
posterity, not as museum specimen"
but as a human thing, work made
truly for the delight of mankind. We
would be lost without museums. But
we are trebly enriched when the
museum idea is camoufaged, so to say,
by the atmosphere of an individuals
home. 1t is an interesting coincidence
that, at time when the historic in
teriors Of Europe and Great Britain are
being broken up as never before, the
announcement Of the Frick bequest
should be made. The old order
changeth, giving place to the new. Il
the ancient tradition to be revived in
the United States, ancestral collec-
tons being scattered abroad only to
enter upon more permanent form Of
existenceon this side of the Atlantic d?
1t requires no great stretching of the
Imagination to recognize in Mr.. tricks
gift the establishment of something
like landmark in our art history.
His place as collector is the more
easily and the more accurately fixed
as it is considered with reference to
the conditions Of his time and those
which preceded him. Earlier In the
last fifty years, when the more i'm
portant American collections were be-
ing made, responsibility for them was
chargeable more often to the dealer
than to the connoisseur. And the
dealer was sometimes we'll qualified to
bear the burden. The late Samuel P.
Avery, whose advice counted heavily in
the formation Of the W. H. Vanderbilt
collection, and the late Daniel Cotter.
ton Of many homes, were both men of
advanced ideas and culture. They
were indispensable in the Introduction