Mellon to U. S.

Two years ago, while Andrew William Mellon was seeking a rebate on overpaid back income taxes after the Treasury had dunned him for underpaid back taxes, his lawyers sought to underscore Mr. Mellon's patriotism by announcing that some day the Republic would fall heir to his $19,000,000 art treasures. Last week that day semi-ofncially arrived.

Three days before Christmas the "Greatest Secretary of the Treasury since Alexander Hamilton" sent a letter to President Roosevelt by way of his uncle, Chairman Frederic A. Delano of the National Capital Park and Planning Commission: "Over a period of many years," said 81-year-old Mr. Mellon, "I have been acquiring important and rare paintings and sculpture with the idea that ultimately they would become the property of the people of the United States." His paintings and sculpture, said Mr. Mellon, included valuable purchases from Leningrad's Hermitage Museum, a fact he had long denied. There was also most of the peerless collection of Renaissance statuary collected by the late Gustave Dreyfus, a Frenchman who profited from the Suez Canal only less spectacularly than Mr. Mellon has from his banks, railroads, oil wells and aluminum diggings. Last item listed by Mr. Mellon was the great collection of U. S. historical portraits assembled by the late porcelain dealer. Thomas B. Clarke, and long held by Manhattan's Knoedler & Co. for $1.250,000. Each portrait of the 175 is of and by a character of first national importance and Mr. Mellon's acquisition of them, a fact hitherto not widely known, was of itself a big item in the week's art news.

All this treasure Mr. Mellon six years ago started to put into an irrevocable trust, so that his heirs would not be responsible for inheritance taxes on it. He now proposed that the Government or the Smithsonian Institution take over the collection as a "nucleus" for an institution to be called "The National Art Gallery." He proposed the erection of a gallery on Washington's Mall, on plans for which he had set Architect John Russell Pope working a year ago. For constructing the gallery, Mr. Mellon offered the sum of $9,000,000, promised an endowment fund for maintaining a staff and providing for new acquisitions. Congress would have to appropriate funds for the building's upkeep, he said.

Gratefully Franklin Roosevelt replied to this handsome offer, most munificent ever made by a U. S. citizen to his country:

"... I was not only completely taken by surprise but was delighted by your very wonderful offer to the people of the United States.

"This was especially so because for many years I have felt the need for a national gallery of art in the capital. Your proposed gift does more than furnish what you call a 'nucleus' because I am confident that the collections you have been making are of the first importance and will place the nation well up in the first rank.

"Furthermore, your offer of an adequate building and an endowment fund means permanence in this changing world."

The President then invited his Republican predecessor's Secretary of the Treasury to call on him to discuss details of the transfer. Mr. Mellon did so, leaving behind a nine-point program for running the gallery, most emphatic of which was that "no acquisitions shall be made . . . except objects of a similar high standard of quality to the present collection."

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