BEASTS S: BEAUTY IN BRONZE

CHARLES LANG FREER was a 19th century railroad-car building magnate (Peninsular Car Works) who made a fortune by the time he was 44 and then retired to collect art. The most important result of his efforts is the world's best collection of Chinese bronzes (outside China) at the Freer Gallery on Jefferson Drive in Washington, D.C.

In his collection, Freer was inspired, in part, by Painter James McNeill Whistler, who was his fast friend. Aroused by Whistler's love for Oriental art, Freer began to decorate his home with Japanese scrolls, Korean metalworks, Chinese bronzes. He made frequent trips to the Orient, bought only the best. In 1904 he offered his whole collection to the Government with two conditions: that the Smithsonian Institution would manage it and that he could keep it until his death. He set up a trust fund to expand the Oriental collections (he prohibited expanding his American art), then gave another $1,000,000 for a Freer Gallery building. He died 18 months before the building was completed in 1921.

Viewed by more than 100,000 gallerygoers yearly, the Freer Chinese bronze collection includes axes, swords and daggers, basins, wine cups and pitchers, clapperless bells, mirrors and food vessels. Freer had accumulated 725 pieces; John Ellerton Lodge, the first director, and his successor Archibald Wenley, added some 140 more, stuck rigidly to Freer's high standards. Experts estimate that some of the bronzes go back to the Shang Dynasty (1766-1122 B.C.). While their quality and style vary, Alan Priest, Far East curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, puts all in a single category: "Magnificent."

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