Dynamic Dutchmen

Throughout the Midwest there are carloads of viands, thousands of dirty dishes swiftly and mechanically cleaned, which testify to the energy and foresight of a single man.* In various parts of the U. S. are flaring furnaces, silent turbines, which symbolize the driving force of several famed & rich U. S. citizens./- There are concert halls all over the country in which people mass whenever a certain Gaelic songster appears.** There is a Manhattan banker whose crown of fortune is studded with many a jewel of enterprise (railroads, insurance, real estate, distilleries, collieries, industrial alcohol, copper, automobiles, oil, perfumes, mines, silk)./-/-

The common quality which animated the restaurateur, which infuses the steelman, the tenor, the banker, is power. Living from apparently inexhaustible power, these men surround themselves with tokens of force.

As art collectors they take pride in owning deep-shadowed Rembrandts, dashing, vital characters from the brush of Franz Hals. They relish the dynamic Dutchmen.

Thus, in the Anglo-Batavian Society's exhibition of Dutch Art at the Royal Academy in London (Jan. 4-March 9), the U. S. section consists of 16 paintings, mostly Rembrandts and Halses, loaned by the men mentioned above. It was a show of strong painting. U. S. strongmen contributed; British strongmen admired. As Rudyard Kipling, Chemical Tycoon Alfred Lord Melchett and their like roamed around the gallery they found enough pigmental pabulum to absorb their busy minds for hours.

There were no ephemeral moods in fleeting colors. Whether the subject was Vermeer's*** famed Woman Reading with its tremulous sifting of sunshine through a casement, or the seamed faces of Rembrandt in austere gloom, it was character that was presented--strong character in strong color.

The exhibit was guarded by alert hawk-shaws as if it were loose bullion. A partial estimation of the intrinsic value of the 920 canvases was $15,000,000. Most of them came from famed continental museums--from which U. S. strongmen will experience great difficulty in prying them.

*The late John R. Thompson, restaurant tycoon of Lake Forest, Ill.

/- Andrew William Mellon; Charles M. Schwab; Edward William Edwards of Cincinnati.

**Tenor John McCormack of Noroton, Conn, (lately dubbed Count by Pope Pius XI.).

/-/- Jules Semon Bache.

***Secretary Andrew William Mellon loaned one of his three Vermeers. Since there are only 41 authenticated Vermeers in the world (15 in the U. S., three in the Metropolitan Museum) Secretary Mellon's trio may be considered an "extensive" collection.