Spaniards in Brooklyn

Almost finished last week was one of the most worthy Work Relief jobs undertaken in New York City, the remodeling and landscaping of the Brooklyn Museum. Because the Department of Buildings demanded bigger & better exits for a building through which pass 1,000,000 visitors a year, Relief labor was set to work last spring tearing down a useless monumental stairway, turning a badly designed auditorium into a new entrance hall and special exhibition rooms. Both were sufficiently advanced last week for museum authorities to mail out 5,000 invitations to a private view this week of the new rooms and the inauguration of a loan exhibition of Spanish Renaissance paintings that should be one of the high spots of the 1935-36 art season.

Primitives of the Catalonian and Aragonese Schools were there, along with excellent examples of 15th and 16th Century anonymous religious paintings. But the reputation of Spain as an art centre rests entirely on the work of three great painters: Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez, Domenico Theotocopuli (El Greco), Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes. Of the three, Velazquez was of Portuguese descent and Theotocopuli a Greek, which leaves the glory of Spanish art to just one thoroughgoing Spaniard, Goya.

Calling on other museums, public-spirited dealers and generous owners, the Brooklyn Museum was able to assemble 16 El Grecos, including the Worcester Art Museum's Magdalen, and the Metropolitan's View of Toledo. Three Velazquez' were borrowed: a self-portrait belonging to Jules S. Bache, a St. Peter from the Nelson Gallery of Kansas City and Don Balthazar Carlos and his Dwarf from Boston's Museum of Fine Arts.

All these were thoroughly familiar to the art world and so were four of the five Goyas that were sent to Brooklyn. But the fifth seemed definite news: a Portrait of a Lady, in an elaborate feathered headdress, blue & white striped dress, holding a painted fan, and with a parrot perched beside her. It was a fine example of lusty Goya's most typical manner. The canvas had not been shown in either the Goya centennial exhibition in Spain, or in the great Goya loan show in Manhattan last year (TIME, April 23, 1934). It was not reproduced in any of the standard works on Spanish painters. To whom did it belong? Where did it come from?

Critics whose memories went back to 1927 knew. Then, for the first time, the Reinhardt Galleries of Manhattan exhibited the portrait which they discovered in a private collection in Germany where it had languished for many years. Dr. August L. Mayer, Goya authority, had never heard of it but, instantly recognizing it as a Goya of about 1787. asked permission to include it in all future editions of his book, Francisco de Goya. Within a month it was sold to Mrs. William R. Timken, sister-in-law of Henry Holiday Timken, maker of Timken Roller Bearings (TIME, Aug. 19). Well known only to dealers is Mrs. Timken's collection which includes a Boucher, a Fragonard, a Gainsborough and a brace each of Greuzes. Rembrandts and Van Dycks. The lady with the parrot is Mrs. Timken's only Goya.

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