Dale's Children

The private secretary of the noted Wall Street broker was so shocked at her boss's extracurricular extravagance that one day she decided to speak to him about it.

"Mr. Dale," she said, "do you realize that you have spent over $1,000,000 on your hobby?" Chester Dale may or may not have realized it. but that first million was eventually to mount to at least $9.000.000 more. He was to accumulate one of the world's best private collections of French painting from David to Cezanne along with such "ancestors" as Rubens, in whom he saw a kinship to Renoir, and such later masters as Picasso.

The son of a Manhattan department store salesman. Dale was a blunt redhead with a lifelong fascination for fire engines. He began playing the horses when he was 14, later joined a Wall Street firm that specialized in railroad bonds, was one of the first to make a fortune out of the sale of public utility securities. His wife Maud had a passion for art that proved contagious. "She had the knowledge.'' Dale said. "I had the acquisitiveness.'' And that was how the great collection began.

He developed an almost unerring eye for what was good, and he could justly boast that he did not have to rely on the advice of dealers. He never bothered to talk esthetics: he would say that a picture was "hot" or "terrific"' or that it "hits me hard." In gentler moments, the childless Dale referred to his paintings as "my children," and he once reported that "I look at my pictures every night before I go to bed." He was generous to Washington's National Gallery of Art, of which he became president in 1955, but he would watch carefully to see how a painting that he had lent was hung before he would make it a permanent gift. As the years advanced, one of the big questions for all major U.S. museums was: Where would the Chester Dale Collection finally go?

Last week, when Dale died of a heart attack at the age of 79, at least part of the question was answered. Of the 1,000 items in his collection, Dale had already given the National Gallery 193. Now he bequeathed to it most of the rest (the complete list of painters and titles is a part of the as yet unprobated will), including So that hung in his own Manhattan apartment and must therefore have been Dale's favorite children.

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