The Jacqueline Touch

There was never much doubt that Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, a onetime Sorbonne art student, would turn out to be the most art-conscious of all First Ladies, but her ideas about what belonged in a "period house" have proved intriguing. Last week, with the announcement that she had borrowed eleven paintings by five U.S. artists from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, her collection numbered 63 items, mostly hung in the President's office or in the family quarters. Lest she be accused of depriving the public of its treasures, she had accepted only canvases in museum storerooms or paintings that the museum could easily spare. The result: a White House gallery that was both a delight and a puzzler.

The accent was American; only a handful of artists--notably Delacroix, Courbet and Renoir--were foreigners, and almost all came from Bouvier-land. For the rest, along with Mary Cassatt, John Audubon and Childe Hassam, there were some art ists who had scarcely been heard of for years. A former naval person like the President would understandably favor a seascape by James Bard. But a Mount Monomonac by the sentimentalist Abbott Thayer, who died in 1921, or a portrait of Queen Victoria by the stodgy Franz Winterhalter, whom Ruskin dubbed a "dim blockhead," were plainly special tastes.

The five artists imported last week raised no questions at all. Four of them had painted New Englanders or New England scenes, ranging from George P. A. Healy's glowering portrait of Daniel Webster to a lighthearted Bathing, Marblehead by Maurice Prendergast. There was a Maine scene by Winslow Homer, and the brooding Houses of 'Squam Light, Cape Ann by Realist Edward Hopper. Finally, with the President's home ground taken care of, came a typical Jacqueline touch. In choosing two rare Italian scenes in watercolor by John Singer Sargent--Venice's La Dogana (Customs House) and Villa di Marlia--the First Lady explained that she had been to both places and that the villa was now owned by a friend of hers, the Countess Pecci-Blunt.

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