LANDSCAPE ADDED TO MUSEUM

Through the generosity of Edward D. Bettens '73 the Fogg Art Museum has acquired an exceptionally fine landscape in oil by John Singer Sargent. It represents Lake O'Hara in British Columbia, with the mountains rising behind it. The picture is a memorial to Mr. Bettens' mother, Mrs. Louise E. Bettens. The museum has also acquired as a gift from a group of people, one of the water colors which Mr. Sargent painted at the same time near Lake O'Hara.

Mr. Sargent, who is one of the greatest of living painters, is now in Boston overseeing the placing of his large new decorative religious paintings in the Boston Public Library. He spent last summer in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, where he painted two large landscapes in oil, one being the recent gift to the Fogg, Museum, the other having just been added to Mrs. John L. Gardner's collection at Fenway Court. The Alumni Bulletin comments as follows upon this recent gift:

"This acquisition of a distinguished modern work of art is an event of moment in the development of the Museum, which hitherto has received most of its enrichments in the field of the earlier masters. It is evident that the Museum can never be expected to compete with the large public collections of pictures. It may readily be seen, however, that a small, rigidly selective collection of paintings, representing the best in many schools, and periods, would add an element of high value to the courses of instruction in the fine arts at Harvard. The Sargent landscape marks a possible starting-point for future 'accessions' of the greatest significance."