Art: Havemeyer Collection

For some time past, the bouquets hurled in the direction of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Manhattan) have been of the variety vulgarly known as Irish. Harsh words have been spoken, epithets employed. Among the multifarious ail ments reported has been the predominance of academic works, the paucity of moderns.

Last fortnight the Metropolitan found itself raised to unexpected glory when it inherited the famed H. O. Havemeyer collection which includes, besides masterpieces of the earlier schools, the very finest specimens of French impressionism. This single gift, valued at many millions, is the greatest contribution the Metropolitan ever received, with the possible exception of the Benjamin Altman donation.

When Louisine Waldron Elder was a young girl, she liked pictures. Particularly did she like pictures by Edgar Degas of be draggled and rhythmic danseuses stretching their weary tendons upon the ballet rack, pirouetting with a one, two, three and a pas-de-bas to the tattoo of the master’s baton. Louisine saved her pin money, watched it swell to $100, took her hoard to a friend, Mary Cassatt. Mary Cassatt took it to Degas, bought a pic ture, the first to enter an American collection. “I sadly needed that money,” said Degas.

In 1883, Louisine Waldron Elder mar ried Henry Osborne Havemeyer (Ameri can Sugar Refining Co.) and started to collect pictures in earnest. A few years later, she could walk into her private museum, gaze upon Veronese, del Sarto, Filippo Lippi, Rembrandt, de Hoogh, Hals, Rubens, Cranach, El Greco, Goya, Millet, Monet, Manet, Puvis de Chavannes, Re noir, Pissarro, Corot, Poussin, Ingres, Cezanne, Mary Cassatt and Degas. If the mood was not for pictures, there were sundry other objets d’art — marbles by Donatello, Cyprian glass, Italian faience, Japanese lacquers, Hispano-Moresque plaques, and a collection of weird Degas excursions into clay.

On Jan. 6, 1929, Mrs. Havemeyer died. To the Metropolitan Museum (which now lacks the space properly to exhibit the works) were bequeathed all objects in the collection except Persian potteries which were given to her son, Horace Have meyer. It was stipulated that the collection be kept otherwise intact, dedicated to the memory of her late husband. The gift was a final gesture, concluding a series of anonymous flourishes. Frequently in the past Mrs. Havemeyer gave or loaned pieces from her collections, always, how ever, with the stipulation that her name be not mentioned.