Grand Central

Grand Central

The lay members of the Painters' and Sculptors' Gallery Association, which runs the unique new galleries at the Grand Central Terminal, New York (TIME, March 24), drew lots in June for the order in which they should choose the works of art to which they are entitled. Thirty of them have now made their selections. Richard T. Crane, Jr., Chicago millionaire, led the field, and, with his pick of 114 intriguing oils and bronzes, carried off John Singer Sargent's contribution, Artist Sketching, a small self-portrait in a milieu of forest, valued at $5,000. The Sargent is inconspicuous, but the old masterful brushwork, heritage from Hals and Velasquez, is unmistakably there. George Eastman, the Rochester Kodak man and greatest musical bene- factor of his time, selected Gardner Symons' Winter Twilight. Edsel Ford, heir apparent of Detroit, took Elliott Daingerfield's Autumn Tints. Irving T. Bush, import-export magnate, chose Bill, a bronze by Malvina Hoffman. Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney, herself a sculptor of first rank, preferred Edward McCartan's bronze Fountain. Dr. Richard C. Cabot, the good Boston doctor-philosopher, decided on The Grand Pitch, by George C. Hallowell. Other paintings and sculptures in the first 30 were by such standard artists as Daniel Chester French, Frederick Frieseke, Janet Scudder, Harry Watrous, Leopold Seyffert, Chauncey Ryder, R. Tait McKenzie, Charles Hawthorne, Frank Benson, Eugene Savage, Cecilia Beaux, Frederick Waugh, Lillian Genth, Charles H. Davis, Ben Foster, Ernest Ipsen, Charles Woodbury.

Some of the contributing artists, including Sargent, are paying members of the Association as well. The landscape painters contribute two or three paintings outright as their share. The portraitists offer to paint portraits of members gratis. Miss Beaux, probably the most distinguished woman painter in America, stipulated that her sitter must be a man, and the lot fell upon Richard H. Webber, of Detroit.

The scheme of the Association is briefly this: The artist members and the lay members are equally divided. Each lay member pays $600 annually, for which he is entitled to one work of art, chosen by him in the order of his rank by lot. The artists donate one work annually for a period of three years. Some of the world's greatest artists are numbered in the group, whose works would command anywhere several times $600. On the other hand, there are many comparatively young and unknown, to whom this excellent plan comes as a godsend in marketing their wares. And everybody is happy. Outside buyers are not excluded, and already six works have been sold. As fast as gaps appear, other works will take their places. The attendance at the spacious and admirably arranged galleries on the sixth floor of the Terminal has been excellent. The permanency of the organization is assured. Among artists now represented in the exhibit whose works have not yet been chosen are Horatio Walker, Anna Vaughn Hyatt, with her sympathetic animal pieces, Mac Monnies, with a bronze of the original Bacchante, Manship, Couse, Jean MacLane Johansen, Pennell, Jerome Myers.