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SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 511 
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MADE BY BAKER-VAWTER CO.
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The organization of the Committees proved to be well advanced and the reports of the Chairman with respect to personnel and activities were received with much interest.  The functions of the several Committees, previously in cases not well understood, received attention.  It was made plain that their activities relate not only to consideration of art works already in view, but to the encouragement of the vital interests of the Gallery in every direction, in making these interests known to the people, and more especially the need of recognition and support by Congress, including the authorization of a Gallery building. 

In this connection Dr. Moore, Chairman of the Committee on Building, presented the draft of a bill for the approval of the Commission and of the Regents, intended as an appeal to Congress, which follows:-

^[[image: handwritten, in red, a triangle with a center dot]] "WHEREAS, the Government owns portraits and statues of the founders of the Republic and of statesmen and other public servants of high distinction, all of which works of art should be gathered into a National Portrait Gallery, where they can be cared for adequately and exhibited as a means of teaching patriotism to the generations of citizens; and

WHEREAS, the Nation has received portraits of statesmen, rulers, generals and naval commanders, leaders in the Great War, painted from life by representative American artists, which portraits are the free gift of public-spirited citizens of New York, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Cincinnati, and Cleveland; and

WHEREAS, by the bequest of Mrs. Harriet Lane Johnston, the Government, in 1906, acquired thirty-one works of art, by Beechey, Constable, Hoppner, Lawrence, Reynolds and other masters, which paintings are valued at more than $150,000; and 

WHEREAS, Mr. William T. Evans of New Jersey, between 1907 and 1916, bestowed upon the Nation upwards of one hundred and fifty paintings by Winslow Homer, John La Farge, John W. Alexander, William Morris Hunt, George Inness, H. W. Ranger, Frederic Remington, Abbott H. Thayer, J. Alden Weir, A. H. Wyant, and other American artists of high distinction, which collection has a value of more than $1,000,000; and

WHEREAS, by the provisions of the will of Henry Ward Ranger, the United States is made the beneficiary in the case of works of art purchased from the income of a fund of $200,000, left for the promotion of American art; and 

WHEREAS, the Ralph Cross Johnson collection, a gift to the Gallery in June, 1919, is a group of twenty-four masterpieces from the brushes of nineteen of Europe's foremost artists, collected by Mr. Johnson during a period of twenty years or more, each work acquired not merely as the work of a famous painter, but on account of the intrinsic interest and merit, representing artists as follows:  F. Guardi (2), Thomas Gainsborough (2), Sir Thomas Lawrence (2), Richard Wilson (2), Sir Joshua Reynolds (2), Titian, Bernard Van Orley, Rubens, Rembrandt,

[[initialed]] CDW [[/initialed]]