Hammer to Give National Gallery 47 Old Masters

Industrialist Armand Hammer today announced he is bequeathing his collection of more than 47 drawings by old masters and impressionists to the National Gallery.

The 88-year-old chairman of Occidental Petroleum Corp. told a press conference he also has arranged to buy a large Raphael drawing of Madonna and Child from a private British collection for the gallery.

Hammer, who has been an active worker for detente between the United States and the Soviet Union, told reporters:

“To me this collection has been a labor of love for a quarter of a century. I give it willingly in gratitude for the opportunities that have been afforded me as an American who has tried his best to make the world a better place.”

National Gallery Director Carter Brown said four of the sketches, all of which are on display in the gallery until the end of May, will come at once to the gallery.

A new chapel-shaped room has been constructed to house the promised Raphael drawing, which was his sketch for the painting “La Belle Jardiniere,” now hanging in the Louvre.

The four pieces that will be added immediately to the National Gallery collection are Albrecht Durer’s “The Satyr Family,” studies by Paolo Veronese, Andrea Sacchi’s “A Sacrifice to Pan” and Donota Creti’s “Apollo Standing in a River Landscape.”