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Only discordant note was an editorial in the Philadelphia Record, which carefully expressed gratification at the purchase itself, but made a sociological point on behalf of the "non-bathers." "No less than 41,000 of the city's dwellings—one in every ten—are without bathtubs," said the Record. "One hundred and ten thousand dollars would buy bathtubs for nearly half of these bathtubless dwellings.''* Meanwhile, tubbed and untubbed Philadelphians flocked to see the Cézanne. Mellowing Mr. Widener extended an invitation to all members of the Museum to come out to Lynnewood Hall for a look at his renowned Van Dycks, his Raphael Room, his magnificent Rembrandts. Upon these scenes of public congratulation and goodwill there dropped last week a large and sputtering bomb. It was tossed from nearby Merion, Pa., by one of the master bomb-throwers of the art world, none other than the terrible-tem-pered Dr. Albert Coombs Barnes, millionaire inventor of Argyrol and owner of the finest private collection of modern French paintings in the U. S. Dr. Barnes was incensed by the Museum's statement that "a second version, and a slightly smaller picture" of Les Grandes Baigneuses was in the Barnes Foundation collection. In response he roared that the Barnes Bathers had been painted eight years before the Widener Bathers, that the latter was "monotonous, dry and lusterless" by comparison. Cracked "Argyrol" Barnes:
"The opinion of discriminating collectors and dealers generally, that the unfinished Museum Bathers is of about fifth-rate quality for a Cézanne—in contrast to the newspaper statement that it is his 'greatest masterpiece'—explains why this picture went begging for a buyer for more than five years. ... Its former owner, in the presence of witnesses, offered to sell the picture to me for $80,000. . . . The painting's presence in Philadelphia represents not the intelligence and cultural levels of the general population, but the evil of having an absentee dictator of the local official art situation, who functions principally at the racetracks of Miami, Saratoga and Deauville."
When this blast had passed over, Mr. Widener was reported by his butler to be "very busily engaged," but it was not difficult for others to find the dates given for the paintings in the definitive catalog of Cézanne's works published nearly two years ago by Venturi. For the Barnes Bathers: 1900-05; for the Widener Bathers, 1898-1905. Collector Sam A. Lewisohn, who happened to be in Philadelphia, was saddened by the dispute. "Art is too beautiful to argue about," said he. Critic Sheldon Cheney opined that Les Grandes Baigneuses was not Cézanne's "best" but could not be called "fifth-rate" either. Philadelphia newspapers solemnly baited Dr. Barnes with the discovery that whereas there were 16 nude figures in the Museum's painting, the Barnes Bathers numbered only eight.