Naval Art

Nothing so stirs the heart of a navy man as a picture of embattled frigates spitting billows of cannon smoke at each other across a strip of wreck-laden sea.

Last year the U. S. Naval Academy added a large, two-story museum to its campus. Last week, in the Academy's brand-new museum, its curator, Captain Harry A. Baldridge, opened the U. S. Navy's first art show.

Arranged in chronological order on the museum's walls were U. S. admirals and naval battles, from the American Revolution on, lent by naval enthusiasts, from William Randolph Hearst to President Roosevelt. Some famed battle scenes: the U. S. flagship Bon Homme Richard and British frigate Serapis (1779), Battle of Lake Erie (1812), Battle of Mobile Bay (1864).

For those who preferred admirals to ships there were 20-odd polite portraits by such U. S. classics as Gilbert Stuart and Charles Willson Peale, depicting bigwigs of early U. S. naval days. Crustiest entry: a full-length portrait by 18th-Century, German-born Genre Painter Daniel Nicolas Chodowieki of John Paul Jones standing in a misty landscape with a defiant expression and one day's growth of beard.

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