America, N.J.

In the winter of 1783, an ailing retired American general named Joseph Reed, a former aide to General Washington, set sail for England to pay a visit to the family of his late wife. In his luggage he carried two fine portraits done by his old friend Charles Willson Peale. Both had renown at home and might well have drawn favorable notice in Britain. Instead, they disappeared from art history.

Last week Peale's portraits of Washington and General Nathanael Greene (see color) were safely housed in the collection of the Montclair, N.J., Museum of Art--and it was a fitting place for them. The museum is a small and unpretentious institution, but it has taste and a purpose: to be a discerning gatherer of American representational art. In November it will exhibit 40-odd of its 292 paintings at Manhattan's Hirschl and Adler Galleries. The show, to be called "Montclair in Manhattan," should be as good a survey of nonabstract American art as New Yorkers will see all season.

Silver & Snuff. Montclair got its museum almost in spite of itself. Around 1910 an elderly collector named William Evans offered to leave 40 American paintings, including a Ralph Albert Blakelock and a Childe Hassam, to Montclair, provided that the town put up a suitable building. When the town hesitated, Mrs. Henry Lang, an heir to the Rand mining machinery millions, briskly decided to get things moving by putting up $50,000 herself. In 1914 the neoclassic building opened its doors.

Since then, it has acquired some gifts that have little to do with its chosen field. Mrs. Lang gave it a collection of American Indian art that is one of the best in the East. It has a collection of Scotch, Irish and French silverware--and 600 Chinese snuff bottles. But these items came by bequest; the museum uses its own funds to buy U.S. paintings, drawings and etchings.

Lost & Found. With a few notable exceptions--most regrettably, Albert Ryder, whose works are few and hard to come by--Montclair covers its field pretty well, from early primitives to such contemporaries as Edward Hopper and Charles Burchfield. It has a Whistler, an Eakins, a Cassatt, a Prendergast, two Homers, and twelve paintings by George Inness, who lived in Montclair most of his life. It has a Portrait of Caleb Whitefoord by Gilbert Stuart that was at one time thought to be lost; mentioned in a London auction catalogue in 1834, it was not heard of again until a former president of the museum found it in a private collection in 1945. The museum's Cromwell Dissolving the Long Parliament is one of five historical canvases done for the Earl of Grosvenor in 1782 by Benjamin West, the Pennsylvanian who became president of the Royal Academy of Arts and court historical painter to George III.

Charles Willson Peale had West in mind when he sent his two portraits to England via General Reed: he hoped that West would recommend a first-rate engraver for his portraits. For some reason that lies buried in the past, General Reed's in-laws, a family named De Berdt, consigned them to their attic. One evening last spring, an art dealer got to talking to a member of the De Berdt family who casually mentioned that there were two early American paintings somewhere in his house. They were identified as Peale's, and the news was flashed to Montclair's alert director, Miss Kathryn Gamble, who promptly put in a bid. The paintings were covered with dust but otherwise unharmed--as crisp and clear as they were when they crossed the Atlantic 178 years ago.

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