Arts: Fifty Sargents

To the Manhattan public will be given the privilege of seeing 50 paintings by John Singer Sargent. He will exhibit his art, in person, for the first time in America.

The pictures will hang in the Grand Central Art Galleries from Feb. 23 to March 22.

Among those immortalized by Sargent are: Duke and Duchess of Marlborough, Duchess of Warwick, Theodore Roosevelt, John Davison Rockefeller, Joseph Jefferson, Joseph Pulitzer, John Hay. Just finished is a portrait of A. Lawrence Lowell, Harvard President.

William Lyon Phelps’ foreword to the catalogue: “An exhibition of the works of Mr. John Sargent is the most important event of this kind that could at this moment happen anywhere, as he is the foremost living painter in the world. He has no successful living rival, but is in a class by himself.”

Aged 68, Sargent is the only artist to be a member both of the National Academy of Design of New York and the Royal Academy of London.

“Bad Faith”

Joseph Pennell charged that France, by not hanging Whistler’s Mother in the Louvre (TIME, Jan. 21), has broken her promise to the dead artist.

According to Pennell, the picture, known as Arrangement in Gray and Black, was offered in America for $1,000 but found no buyer. Finally Whistler accepted the Legion of Honor, $620 in cash, and a promise that the picture would hang in the Louvre ten years after his death.

“I have seen letters,” said Pennell, “which mentioned the agreement made by Clemenceau. There was no doubt in Whistler’s mind at the time he died that the picture would go to the Louvre.”

To Lake Forest

John R. Thompson, of Chicago, has, like others, a home in Lake Forest, is, like others, member of the Chicago Athletic Club, Hamilton Club, South Shore Country Club. But none but he has in Chicago, 47 restaurants.

The Thompson restaurants “attract by sheer pull of good food, cleanliness, purity, service, prices ailways kept down, even in the War.” Based on these principles, the Thompson Restaurants, now 103, have spread into all principal cities from Milwaukee to New Orleans, from Providence to Kansas City. In 1921, the volume of business exceeded $15,000,000. Mr. Thompson, also in the grocery business, has netted a fortune. Thirty years ago he was a downstate Illinois farmer.

Last week he offered Sir Joseph Duveen $250,000 for a picture, The Laughing Mandolin Player, by Franz Hals, 17th Century Dutch painter. The deal was closed. It was generally considered the most important art transaction since Henry E. Huntington of California bought from the same dealer Gainsborough’s Blue Boy, or since John D. Rockefeller, Jr., bought for $1,100,000 the Verteuil tapestries (TIME, March 3).

A smile made Da Vinci famous: laughter on canvas has contributed to the artistic immortality of Franz Hals. The picture just added to Mr. Thompson’s collection of old masters was formerly owned by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild of Waddesdon Manor. On a canvas, 4×5 feet, it shows a fair tousle-headed boy. He wears a cap; his dark coat is lined with blue; in his upraised right hand he holds a wine glass, and laughs.

“F. H.” in monogram is on the canvas which goes to Mr. Thompson’s Lake Forest home to join five early Italian paintings bought from the Salomon collection for, it is said, $500,000.

Glass

In the hands of Marinot, Frenchman, glass becomes a new kind of art, another medium for expression. Incalculable varieties of grays, blues, pinks, reds, greens in glass have amazed Parisians at the Salon d’Automne. So popular are his works that Marinot has opened a private glass salon.