Cézanne, Cézanne
In Elkins Park, an otherwise undistinguished suburb of Philadelphia, Millionaire Joseph Early Widener occupies a stiff Georgian mansion known as Lynnewood Hall. Leathery, spick & span Mr. Widener owns one of the crack racing stables of the world, has Godfathered two swank racetracks—Long Island's Belmont Park and Miami's Hialeah. Less familiar facts about Sportsman Widener are that his Lynnewood Hall contains the choicest private collection of Old Masters in the U. S., that he himself is a cultural servant of Philadelphia. In that capacity last week 64-year-old "Joe" Widener became the centre of one of the best comedies of art controversy in years.
For about 15 years Mr. Widener has been administrator of Philadelphia's Wil-stach Fund, income from which must be used to buy paintings for the city's Pennsylvania Museum of Art. With the seven-year accrual of $160,000 in his drawing account and his usual pearl-grey fedora on his head, Turfman Widener set out for Europe last year to scout for bargains. "I am not sympathetic with modern art," said Mr. Widener blandly. "What I think we should do is acquire the classics—those paintings which have lived through the centuries." Uppermost in Mr. Widener's mind, he said, was his favorite period— the French 18th Century — and particularly two paintings by François Boucher, who, had he lived two centuries later, would have made a fortune painting dimpled ladies for the covers of sentimental magazines. The Philadelphia Artists' Union hotly demanded that someone fire the Wilstach administrator. Even moderate Philadelphians took alarm.
Fortnight ago Joseph Widener had his little joke. He announced that the large canvas which he had conveyed in great secrecy from Paris last spring was no Boucher but a painting by Paul Cézanne which has been regarded as one of the great masterpieces of modern art, Les Grandes Baigneuses, the longest-meditated of Cézanne's numerous studies of nude figures against landscape. Its title, The Big Bathers, distinguishing it from others in the Bathers series, refers to the size of the canvas: 6 ft. 10 in. by 8 ft. 3 in. It was acquired by Mr. Widener from the private collection of the Pellerin family in Paris. Price: $110,000. After Mr. Widener's formal presentation, the Pennsylvania Museum put the painting on display, predicted proudly that "no person informed in the field of modern art will be able to miss the opportunity of seeing and studying a picture which has been described [by Critic Lionello Venturi] as 'the master invention of Cézanne's architectural imagination.' "