In Elihu's Steps

For sheer accumulation of art treasures, few college alumni groups can match the record of Old Yale Blues. Such acquisitiveness was perhaps inspired by Elihu Yale himself, who used his considerable merchant fortune to amass more than 9,000 paintings before he died in 1721. Four years ago a special university committee canvassed Yale collectors, persuaded them to exhibit 250 oils, watercolors and drawings at an alumni showing at the Yale University Art Gallery. Last week in New Haven, the second Yale alumni loan show was drawing record throngs. They were inspecting 265 new selections of Yale art--from a 15th century wood panel, The Betrothal of St. Catherine of Siena, by Hans Holbein the Elder, to a contemporary Willem de Kooning oil, Souvenir to Toulouse.

The current show was hand-picked from the collections of 75 Yalemen (class of 1895 to the class of 1959) by the director of the Yale Art Gallery, Andrew Carnduff Ritchie. Refusing to select the works from photographs, Ritchie criss-crossed the U.S. to study each suggested entry, had no assistance in making his final choices. Says he: "One eye had to give unity to the show." Ritchie's eye was catholic: among the 150 oils, 68 water-colors and drawings, and 47 pieces of sculpture are works from 17 countries, ranging from the nightmarish quality of Francis Bacon's Study for Head of a Pope, lent by Beekman Cannon, '34, to Paul Gauguin's sunlit Landscape at Le Pouldu, lent by Paul Mellon, '29. France leads the list with 99 entries; next is the U.S. with 42. Most represented artist in the show is Picasso, with eleven pieces, followed by Degas with ten, Rodin with six, and Matisse. Cezanne, Monet and Vuillard with five each. The most represented U.S. artist is Winslow Homer, with three. Only Yale alumnus shown: Reginald Marsh, '20, with East Tenth Street Jungle.

Many Yalemen attribute their collections more to a healthy inheritance than to a love of art fostered by their alma mater. Says Averell Harriman, '13: "My interest in painting was not born at Yale. I was exposed to good art all my life." Harriman acquired Henri Rousseau's Rendezvous dans la Foret from a dealer in Paris in 1935; the dealer had bought it from a washerwoman to whom Rousseau had given the painting in payment for her services. Several alumni have lent a number of works to the show; Industrialist Stephen C. Clark, '03, donated 24 pieces to the exhibit, among them Degas' Self Portrait. Another top contributor is Henry J. (57 Varieties) Heinz, '31, who lent Rufino Tamayo's somber Woman with a Shawl, along with 15 other paintings and sculpture. Estimated value of all the art treasures shown: more than $20 million.

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