From the Dwindling Supply

During a visit to Madrid one day around the turn of the century, Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer of Manhattan bustled into the hotel room of her millionaire husband and airily announced that she was going out to buy an El Greco. With her was Mary Cassatt, the noted American impressionist, who was helping the Have meyers build their great art collection. Said Sugar Tycoon Havemeyer: "You had better add a Goya while you are about it." Replied Painter Cassatt: "Perhaps we may. Who knows?" And with that, the two ladies swept out of the room and off to their mission.

This week Washington's National Gallery announced that the Goya that Mrs. Havemeyer bought was now in its possession, the gift of the Havemeyers' daughter, Mrs. Peter H. B. Frelinghuysen of Morristown, NJ. It is perhaps the most spectacular of the treasures that have recently been added to the collections of U.S. museums (see color). It is an icily majestic portrait of Arthur Wellesley, who was then in the process of driving Napoleon's troops out of Spain, and was to become the first Duke of Wellington, Duke of Ciudad Rodrigo, Grandee of Spain, and later Prime Minister of England.

The acquisition of a Goya would be a noteworthy event no matter what the subject, but a Goya Wellington attracts added interest these days. Goya painted three: the one in Washington, a less successful Wellington on horseback in London's Wellington Museum, and the bust-length portrait that was stolen last year from the National Gallery in London.

"Viva Velinton!" When the Spanish master met the then Lord Wellington in 1812, the 43-year-old Briton was the idol of Spain. The streets echoed with cries of "Y viva Velinton!," and beautiful women rushed forward to cover him with kisses. Had Goya been a less truthful artist, he might have tried to idealize the man into some sort of benign hero surrounded by the trappings of glory.

But the future duke, who had little respect for artists, quickly found that there are artists who have little respect for dukes. In this austere portrait, the trappings of glory are absent. Even the order of the Golden Fleece is hidden beneath the cloak, and the sharp-featured face is neither benign nor particularly heroic. Goya painted exactly what he saw: a cold and contemptuous Englishman who regarded the exuberance of the Spaniards as rather poor taste.

The antagonism between the soldier and the artist was duly reported by Mrs. Havemeyer in her privately printed' memoirs. At one point, she wrote, Wellington bluntly told Goya that the portrait would never do and would have to be changed. In a rage, Goya started to pick up a pistol lying on a table near by, and Wellington went for his sword. "Fortunately the two great men were separated before they could do greater harm than to express their opinions of each other," wrote Mrs. Havemeyer. "Goya would never change the portrait nor allow Wellington any longer to pose for him." The artist had finished Wellington's face, and he painted the rest of the picture from a hired model.

Canaletto to Cezanne. Other U.S. museums were also savoring their latest treasures, made all the more precious because the supply of old masters available is constantly dwindling. The Yale University Art Gallery has added Rubens' turbulent Hero and Leander, painted around 1606, when the artist was under 30. It is a painting of tragic fury with the kind of magnificent melodrama that was to appeal to the 16th century romantics.

Harvard's Fogg Museum, Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum have acquired Cezannes. The Philadelphia Museum of Art put up $28,000 for Walt Kuhn's Athlete in White Face. The Rhode Island School of Design got a 15th century panel, originally made for an altar in

Utrecht. The Minneapolis Institute of Art now has a rarity: one of the few Fra Angelicos ever to cross the Atlantic.

The Bayton Art Institute, which is now showing a large exhibition of the long-overlooked school of Genoa, has been given paintings by the two best artists in the group--Cambiaso and Magnasco. In Detroit, Mrs. Edsel Ford gave to the Institute of Art a 15th century Flemish sculpture called Lamentation over the Body of the Dead Christ that was carved after a design by Rogier van der Weyden and for centuries belonged to the Dukes of Arenberg. The Cleveland Art Museum's acquisitions in the old master class range from a landscape by Claude Lorrain through a newly discovered drawing by Rembrandt to a sweeping view by Canaletto of Venice's Piazza San Marco.

The three Rembrandts given to the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford (see overleaf) show a moody trio. The young artist is lost to everything but his own thoughts. The gentle Saskia shows two complementary aspects of Rembrandt: the artist who could look into his wife's mind and yet remain fascinated by the texture of her heavily embroidered gown. The brooding landscape displays Rembrandt's vision of landscape as a wide stage on which the drama of nature is acted--trees pitted against sky, light battling with shadow, serenity threatened by a gathering storm.

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