Taft Collection

A man in Cincinnati, married, had a son, married again, then had a son every other year for six years --four sons in all. The first two sons married Cincinnati young women. The third took a wife from Troy, N. Y. The youngest, with a touch of genius, married a young lady from Niagara Falls. Today the original son and his three half brothers are personages: 1) Publisher Charles Phelps Taft, 84, of the Cincinnati Times-Star; 2) U. S. Chief Justice and onetime U. S. President William Howard Taft, 70; 3) Potent Manhattan Lawyer Henry Waters Taft, 68; and 4) Headmaster Horace Button Taft, 66, of the Taft School, Watertown, Conn.

These four Tafts and their birthplace, Cincinnati, loomed paramount in the U. S. art world last week-- for Mr. &; Mrs. Charles Phelps Taft suddenly bequeathed $1,000,000, their house and their $3,000,000 private collection of paintings and art objects to the Cincinnati Institute of Fine Arts.

The bequest was made conditional upon the raising of an additional sum of $2,500,000 by citizens of Cincinnati--something which rich Cincinnatians hastened to pledge themselves to do last week. The Taft house, a fine old colonial mansion on Pike Street, will continue to house the newly bequeathed Taft collection, will be opened to the public after the death of Mr. & Mrs. Charles Phelps Taft. Their $1,000,000 bequest will be used to support the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

By whom were the chief paintings in the Taft collection painted? Names: Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Hals, Hobbema, Goya, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Turner, Millet, Inness, Chase, etc., etc.

Observers thought that future visitors to the Taft collection should not forget the father of the Taft brothers, onetime (1876-77) U. S. Attorney General Alphonso Taft, nor his first wife Fannie Phelps, nor his second Louisa Torrey.