Cavalcade

Last week Washington's Corcoran Gallery opened the liveliest art show the capital had seen in many a month. Its big, rambling "American Procession: 1492-1900" filled twelve galleries and six corridors, and was as exciting and various as the history it recounted. Moreover, there wasn't a painting that the average summer visitor couldn't grasp at first blink.

For eight months, 15 Corcoran staff members had scoured the U.S., made expeditions to Canada, Mexico and Europe to round up paintings, prints and Americana. In Paris they uncovered a 1775 mezzotint of A Society of Patriotic Ladies at Edenton, N.C. emptying their tea caddies in protest against George III's unwelcome taxes. From Canada's National Gallery came Benjamin West's enormous, detailed

Death of Wolfe, on loan for the first time. The Mexican National Museum of History contributed scenes from the Mexican War, and from his private collection King George VI sent a print of a naval engagement on Lake Champlain.

The Corcoran's procession began majestically with Sebastiano del Piombo's Renaissance portrait of Columbus, ended with realistic turn-of-the-century studies of New York's lower East Side. Along the way there were pictures of battles and historic meetings done in the grand style.

When gallerygoers got tired of pomp & circumstance, they could relax with many a pleasant glimpse of U.S. manners, e.g., Edwin Elmer's A Lady of Baptist Corner,

Ashfield, Mass., or a visiting Russian watercolorist's impressions of early 19th Century Night Life in Philadelphia (some young fops and a floozy gathered around an oyster barrel).

Besides gleanings for the curious, there was some good art: early genre studies by Winslow Homer, William Glackens' moveing paintings of the Spanish-American War, and Thomas Eakins' The Agnew Clinic, 1889, a monumental study of an operation in an early hospital. There was even a small painting by the great French impressionist, Edgar Degas, of 19th Century Cotton Merchants. But the show's main appeal was to the ordinary American with a warm heart and a taste for a good story. It was a good bet that by the time the Corcoran closed its big cavalcade in December, Americans trooping to "see the show would break all attendance records.

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