To a High Place

Before he died, James Abbott McNeill Whistler sold one of his most famed canvases to the Luxembourg, one of Paris' great art galleries. The consideration for the transfer was small, and Whistler is supposed to have understood that some time after his death it would be translated to the magnificent Louvre and hang among the great masters. Whistler died in 1903, but the picture still hangs in the Luxembourg. It is unusual for paintings to be hung in the Louvre until some 50 years after an artist's death.

Americans have been growing anxious, however, almost clamorous, to step into the Louvre, when they make the grand tour, and see at least one canvas on which the paint has been applied by fingers born in America. Last week the Louvre announced that Americans have only to go into the Salle des Etats and see --But what matters it if this famed Whistler hangs in the Louvre or not? In nearly every 100% American home a reproduction of it already hangs. The lady of the house turns to the admiring guest saying: "That lovely one on the left is Old Ironsides, and that sweet one at the right is The Age of Innocence, and this one in the centre is, of course, Whistler's Mother, the one he called Arrangement in Grey and Black.