Prairie Prados

Texans have a special relish for the Spanish flavor of their past. To their delight, this year the sentiment is being reciprocated by the loan to San Antonio's HemisFair of 13 masterpieces from Spain. The heavily guarded collection, estimated to be worth $10 million, includes outstanding works by Goya, Velasquez, Murillo, Zurbaran and El Greco (see color pages). It not only represents the pick of the Prado, but also includes paintings from other Spanish museums. The exhibit is designed to tie in with the fair's theme, "The Confluence of Civilizations," by demonstrating that Spanish culture is itself a confluence of influences: Latin, Visigoth and Moorish. Even more pertinent is a 1767 map showing the New World's Spanish dominions, with San Antonio de Bejar clearly marked.

Fairgoers who stand in awe before El Greco's gently swashbuckling Saint Bartholomew or his voluptuously spiritual Holy Family have double reason to be grateful. The government has announced that this is the last time such masterpieces will be sent out of the country. But when Spain's paintings return home next October after the closing of HemisFair, Texans will not be totally bereft. They can feast their eyes at the Virginia Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, where a group of Spanish paintings is being built up by Algur Hurtle Meadows, the Dallas oil millionaire. Badly burned when he bought a group of post-impressionists from two fly-by-night dealers only to find that they were largely fakes (TIME, May 19, 1967), Meadows has since purchased some $3,500,000 worth of paintings, most of them from Manhattan's Wildenstein Galleries in order to guarantee his prairie Prado some indisputable old masters.

"We don't envision a large collection," explains S.M.U. Director William Jordan, "but rather one of the best." S.M.U. has already acquired some fine Goya engravings, a distinguished Velasquez portrait; other works by artists ranging from Zurbaran to Miro. The loveliest of the lot is Murillo's landscape showing Jacob with Laban's flocks (see color overleaf). As the tale is related in Genesis, Laban, who owned the sheep, told Jacob he would be paid for tending them with any lambs born spotted or speckled, and Jacob's method of inducing speckled progeny was to lay peeled branches before their eyes. The Bible says it worked.

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