By 1906, when Charles Lang Freer officially donated his collection to the Smithsonian, the fifty-two-year-old retired railroad industrialist had acquired thousands of objects from many parts of the globe. Although he began as a collector of modest means with a focus on European prints, Freer's ambitions expanded as his fortunes grew and his knowledge of art developed. Almost immediately after seeing his first collection of prints by James McNeill Whistler in 1887, Freer set his sights on acquiring a comprehensive collection of the artist's work, in addition to the work of a select group of American painters with related sensibilities, including Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Dwight William Tryon, and Abbott Handerson Thayer. Around he same time, he also acquired a Japanese fan, making the start of his East Asian collections. Between 1894 and 1911, during five Asian tours, he purchased artifacts from the Near and Far East, including Egyptian glass, Syrian Rakka ware, Indian miniature painting, Chinese porcelain, and Japanese screens, collections which he added to until his death, in 1919.

Lee, Elizabeth. Charles Lang Freer: Collecting the Disabled Body. In The Routledge Companion to Art and Disability, edited by Keri Watson and Timothy W. Hiles, 202-223. New York, NY: Routledge, 2022.

Elizabeth Lee is a professor of Art History at Dickinson College.

For more information on the published version, visit Routledge's Website. https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Companion-to-Art-and-Disability/Watson-Hiles/p/book/9780367444785

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