PURCHASE & LOAN

WHEN the city of New Orleans began making plans to celebrate this year's sesquicentennial of the Louisiana Purchase, the Delgado Museum put in its bid for a part in the show. It agreed to stage an exhibition of French painting, showing the cultural heritage that France bequeathed to its descendants overseas. Last week the results were on display in the museum's galleries: 82 borrowed French paintings, ranging from the 15th to the 20th centuries. American collections supplied 60 of the paintings; the remaining 22 (including those reproduced on the following pages) came from the Louvre and six other French museums--the finest art loan ever made by the French government outside Europe.

Even the Delgado's go-getting director, red-topped Alonzo Lansford, 43, was overwhelmed by the generosity of the lenders. "This exhibition is bigger and better than we deserve," he confessed. "It has set an extremely high standard."

The chief organizer of the show was multimillionaire Art Dealer Georges Wildenstein, who has galleries in Manhattan, Paris, London and Buenos Aires. He rounded up the American contributions and helped persuade the French government to cooperate in celebrating a bargain that Frenchmen can only regard as a bad one.

In a preface to the exhibition catalogue, Wildenstein boldly generalized the whole history of French painting and arrived at a conclusion which was probably as true as such sweeping statements about any subject can ever be. Throughout the show, he maintained, "we find a common approach to life conceived of charm and optimism. Without evasions and without false sentimentality, the French painter expresses his love, his mystic respect of nature and of man."

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