COLLECTOR'S REWARD

Hollywood Tough Guy Edward G. Robinson is a dedicated amateur in the world of art, and filmdom's most ardent art collector. The passion for paintings, he says, is "a rewarding love affair, even if it takes over your house, your family, your income and your life." This week 40 of Robinson's prize oils take over part of Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art, and in May the collection will move on to the National Gallery in Washington.

Nearly all of Robinson's choices are products of the Paris-bred revolution which began with Delacroix and survives today in Matisse. It overthrew the power of tobacco-juice brown and gradually raised pure color to the position of first importance in Western art. At the center of that revolution stands the creator of one of Collector Robinson's prize acquisitions: the one-eared, fox-bearded Dutchman who painted the portrait opposite, and whose 100th birthday will be celebrated this month.

Van Gogh's sitter in this portrait is a kindly Breton named Pere Tanguy, who kept a small art-supply shop in Paris where the avant-garde foregathered. Van Gogh posed him with the head-on simplicity of a snapshot and surrounded him with the airy colors of Japanese prints. The background makes a sprightly contrast with the solid little sitter and the potato tones of his folded hands. Says British Art Expert Helmut Ruhemann: Van Gogh is one of the two or three artists of all time who has taken the trouble of inventing a new color scheme for every picture." In his portrait of Pere Tanguy he has also happened to create an odd resemblance to Actor Robinson himself.

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