Mona Lisa in Camelot

At the age of fifty-five, John Walker was the second director of the nation’s most important gallery, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., which housed America’s greatest collection of art. The only child of a prominent Pittsburgh family, Walker had forged ties to the British aristocracy through his marriage to Margaret Gwendolen Mary Drummond, the titled eldest daughter of the sixteenth Earl of Perth. He and Lady Margaret, stars of the social scene in Washington, frequently entertained prominent guests at their Georgetown home.

Tall and lean with handsome chiseled features, Walker was known for his intellect and his humorless manner. His dashing good looks and social airs ably served his career, and, by all accounts, he was exceedingly charming. His great love of museums had originated when, as a boy, he was stricken with polio. When he lived in New York City to receive treatment, his mother used to drive him up and down Fifth Avenue in an open barouche for the healthful benefits of fresh air. “I am one of the few people to have been driven around New York day after day in his pajamas,” Walker said.

When he felt well enough, Walker was allowed to steer himself in his wheelchair through the halls of the Metropolitan Museum. There he found his first love—a blonde girl in an empire dress attributed to artist Jacques-Louis David.

“My curiosity about the works of art became increasingly intense, and the only way I could satisfy it was to read,” he said. “All my tedium and loneliness had vanished. I had found my profession. I wanted to be a curator.”

After graduating summa cum laude from Harvard in 1930, in good health, Walker studied for the next three years with Bernard Berenson at Villa I Tatti. In 1935 he was appointed professor of fine arts at the American Academy in Rome.

A “confirmed esthete,” Walker condemned exhibitions mounted for casual viewers and the public at large. “I was, and still am, an elitist,” he wrote in his memoirs published in 1969. He believed museums should be places of enjoyment and enlightenment. “I am indifferent to their function in community relations, in solving racial problems, in propaganda for any cause,” he said. He preached an understanding and respect for quality; he measured the success of a museum by the importance of its collection and the harmony of its display—and never by the number of its visitors.

He further frankly admitted that his supreme pleasure was buying great art with “other people’s money” to hang on the walls of the National Gallery. Walker’s close ties with America’s wealthiest families—the Mellons, Carnegies, and Fricks—permitted him access to sublime works of art and helped his quest to gather important pictures. And the wealthy clearly warmed to his robust intellect, charm, diplomacy, and persistence as they relinquished their masterpieces. It was no accident, Walker once said, that the undertaker and the museum director arrived simultaneously.

Walker’s favorite time of day was after the museum doors closed and the public disappeared. In the late evenings he would transform into a regal prince strolling through his own private palace, with the high vaulted ceilings, marble corridors, and galleries designed solely for his pleasure. All the paintings and sculpture—the high achievements of human genius—existed for no one else. “Can life offer any greater pleasure,” he asked, “than these moments of complete absorption in beauty?”

On May 11, 1962, a pack of press photographers waited outside the National Gallery’s massive bronze doors to capture the precise moment Jacqueline Kennedy would arrive to greet Minister André Malraux. At 9:30 A.M., the presidential limousine pulled to the curb along Constitution Avenue, and Jackie stepped out of the car and paused to pose for the photojournalists. Attired in a three-button, cream-colored wool suit with three-quarter sleeves and white gloves, she wore a jewel-encrusted brooch near her left lapel, a handsome panther bracelet designed by Cartier, and patent leather low-heel pumps.

Smiling with satisfaction, she kissed Malraux’s right and left cheeks in the European fashion, then gave a warm greeting to Mrs. Madeleine Malraux. Walker, who’d been anxiously waiting, bolted out of the front door and raced down the steps to clasp Malraux’s hand vigorously and fondly embrace Jackie.

It had been almost a year since Malraux had taken the First Lady on his tour of the Musée du Jeu de Paume to view the works of the master impressionist painters. Now it was her chance to return the favor. Photographs of that morning show Jackie in an exceptionally happy mood as she went out of her way to accommodate the photographers and lingered outside the museum. Her French dignitary responded in like fashion. Even though Malraux refused to smile for the cameras, he could not conceal his pride: one photograph with Jackie was worth a thousand statements to the press.

The two art lovers toured the Gallery as John Walker expounded on important pieces and their historical significance. As planned, Walker escorted the group to see the museum’s first public display of its recent acquisition, The Copley Family, a monumental portrait by American Colonial painter John Singleton Copley. Walker had purchased the picture through the Andrew W. Mellon Fund. In what Walker called “the most important group portrait by an American artist,” Copley painted a warmly emotional portrait of himself with his family.

Malraux stood with his hands folded behind his back and listened intently. But soon he stepped out of the role of guest and took on the role of lecturer, explaining the artist’s work to his hosts. As the group stood gazing at Copley’s enormous canvas—seven-and-one-half feet wide and six feet high—Malraux shared his observations about the seemingly patriotic motive inherent in the picture, which was painted in 1776. “Some paintings are in the Gallery because they belong to humanity,” he said, “and others because they belong to the United States of America.”

Malraux and his entourage strolled through the Gallery as the minister pointed to objects and discussed their merit. As he examined each piece, Jackie and Walker waited for his reaction. He paused to study a Byzantine painting of the Nativity by Duccio di Buoninsegna from about 1308. One photographer captured him in a contemplative moment in front of a work by fifteenth-century Italian painter Fillipo Lippe.

At first John Walker found Malraux’s rapid highbrow discourse on the museum’s works of art annoying, but as the morning came to a close he found himself surprisingly captivated by the colorful intellectual, whom journalist C. L. Sulzberger had described as a brilliant, fast-talking “combination of orchestra conductor and stage manager, a sort of super P. T. Barnum.”

According to Paris Match, a leading French weekly news magazine, at some point during the tour Jacqueline Kennedy, in a quiet aside to the French minister, broached the topic of the international significance of great art. “You should lend us some of your art works,” she told him. “I would love to see the Mona Lisa again and show her to Americans.”

Malraux’s cerebral comments on the Gallery’s prized objects were quoted in newspapers across the globe, from London to Paris to Berlin. In the States, the front page of the New York Times put it succinctly: “Malraux Takes Over National Gallery Tour: Explains Works to Mrs. Kennedy and Museum Officials.”

As Malraux posed for photographers in front of the imposing Copley canvas, it was clear that his visit straddled the worlds of art and politics. Combined with the presence of the popular First Lady, the simple museum tour became a vivid international drama, and the widespread media coverage created the illusion of Franco-American solidarity. Malraux’s artistic day trip, thanks to his genius for publicity, had brought attention to the French regard for culture—but Malraux would top himself when he next returned to the National Gallery on the night of January 8, 1963.

At 11:00 A.M., the Malrauxs said their goodbyes as they departed for the French Embassy, where the minister rested in his suite. At 1:00 P.M., his driver took him to the nearby Sheraton-Carlton Hotel, where Malraux attended a stag luncheon hosted by the Overseas Writers Club, a group that consisted of a thriving membership of diplomatic reporters that had formed following the Versailles Peace Conference in 1921.

Over the decades guests had included many secretaries of state and important visiting dignitaries. One member observed that access was the club’s main business, as journalists and diplomats connected with one another for mutual benefit. “Trust was currency” at the group’s prestigious monthly luncheons, and the general rule for speakers was off the record or deep background with no attribution. When calls came from an Overseas club member, officials were quick to answer.

Malraux was in lively form in front of the all-male assembly. He talked across an array of disciplines and engaged in a “torrential discourse” on politics, culture, and the plight of man. The previous Sunday, the minister had been featured in a lengthy profile in the New York Times in which journalist Curtis Cate expounded on Malraux’s momentous role: “If France’s culture was imperiled by bureaucratic paralysis, bourgeois complacency or public apathy, what man was better fitted to play the role of providential savior than the revolutionary author of Man’s Fate, the romantic man of destiny with the pale Napoleonic brow?”

The American journalists gathered in the ballroom of the Sheraton-Carlton were transfixed by the passion of the celebrated writer, war hero, and Resistance fighter. Following Malraux’s stirring forty-five-minute homily, the room was opened for a session of questions and answers.

First on his feet was veteran reporter Edward Folliard of the Washington Post. Folliard had prepared his question far in advance, and at long last the moment had arrived. Folliard told Malraux of an old dream that the French minister had the power to make true. The dream he explained, was that the masterpiece of Leonardo da Vinci—the Mona Lisa—might someday be exhibited in America. “Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing if the Mona Lisa could be shown in the National Gallery?” he asked. The room fell silent as the group waited for the reply.

The question gripped the minister’s full attention—the idea of sending the painting caught his fancy. After all, Jackie had mentioned this very thing to him during their tour of the Gallery that morning. Malraux responded that he didn’t know why this could not be accomplished. “Perhaps a loan could be arranged,” he said. “France feels that these masterpieces belong to mankind—that she has no copyright on them.”

Malraux then added his hope that in the next five years Americans could see many of the master artworks from France’s great museums. The room burst into roars of laughter when Folliard suggested that President Kennedy would be only too happy to assign a regiment of U.S. Marines to protect the Mona Lisa if Malraux would permit the masterpiece to travel to America.

Folliard was regarded with respect and affection by his fellow journalists. “Tall and gangling, he had an intense prying look that often was transformed by a broad, boyish smile,” observed one Post reporter. He dressed in three-piece vested suits, wore a dark felt fedora on the back of his head, and pecked out an avalanche of front-page stories with two fingers on his manual Smith Corona typewriter. At the age of sixty-three, Folliard accompanied President Kennedy almost daily, covering the White House and national news for the Post. Folliard filed hundreds of Kennedy-related stories, and his front-page features covered the gambit of the White House news on Khruschev, Laos, Berlin, civil rights, the space race, the Supreme Court, the UN, NATO, and the atomic bomb. The reporter and the President’s press secretary, Pierre Salinger, were frequently at odds over Folliard’s tough form of probing journalism.

Folliard was even known to frequently wander into Salinger’s office for discussions both on and off the record. “Here’s a question I’m going to ask your man today,” he would say. “You had better have him ready for it.”

Known by his nickname “Eddie,” he had covered the White House since it was occupied by Calvin Coolidge. He had traveled with King George and Queen Elizabeth in 1939, filing daily reports for the Post, and during World War II he had been at the front lines with the Ninth Army during the Battle of the Bulge and reported from Paris on VE-Day. He had recorded some of the greatest newsworthy moments of the twentieth century, including the flight of Charles A. Lindbergh.

Folliard’s idea for the Mona Lisa’s trip to Washington originated in 1935, when he was dispatched to Pittsburgh by the Post to interview Andrew Mellon, the wealthy financier and former Secretary of the Treasury who had served under Presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover. Folliard spent hours with Mellon during the course of several interviews in which the eighty-year-old “Pittsburgh Croesus” with the snow-white moustache revealed engrossing details about his collection of rare masterpieces, which included works by Raphael, Titian, Van Eyck, and Botticelli.

Mellon held forth on his deep-rooted desire to build a magnificent national museum for fine art—an American Louvre. Mellon had begun plans for a National Gallery of Art in the 1920s. “From a Hollywood standpoint, Andrew W. Mellon is a very unorthodox millionaire,” Folliard told his readers in the Post. “His home here is an unpretentious one and so is his office in the Mellon National Bank. He does not own a yacht, nor a private railroad car or a racing stable. And aside from a pair of gold cuff links, he does not wear any jewelry.”

Folliard told readers of Mellon’s concept for a great national gallery in Washington for which the government would provide only the land and funds for operation. Congress was not to appropriate funds for art. Mellon believed that the private sector would join him in donating works to the nation. To this end he insisted that the museum not bear the Mellon name. While Mellon did not live to see the fulfillment of his vision, his son Paul Mellon saw his dream to fruition, and in the decades after its dedication the National Gallery received important collections from such donors as dime-store magnate Samuel H. Kress, Sears Roebuck & Co. heir Lessing Rosenwald, Wall Street investment tycoon Chester Dale, and the Widener family of financiers and industrialists.

Folliard covered the historic 1941 Gallery opening for the Post and witnessed President Roosevelt as he spoke to the nation amidst the splendor of seven centuries of Old World masterpieces. As World War II raged in Europe, Roosevelt asserted America’s intention that the “freedom of human spirit” that created objects of beauty would never be destroyed. “I yearned for the day when great art from foreign museums would be shown in our National Gallery,” Folliard said. “This became almost an obsession with me and in 1948—I wrote my friend Henri Bonnet, the French ambassador, to ask if we could borrow the Mona Lisa.”

On the afternoon of May 11, as Malraux delivered his lecture in front of the Overseas writers, Jackie confirmed the logistics for the Malraux state dinner with White House chief usher J. B. West. “She had a total mastery of detail—endless, endless detail—and she was highly organized,” West recalled. Jackie triple-checked every item reviewing her famous memos on long sheets of yellow legal-ruled paper.

The drab green State Dining Room had been repainted in shades of pastel white, and the awkward horseshoe table was replaced with round tables for eight or ten. Jackie requested the handsome chairs she had seen in Paris—small gold faux-bamboo seats—to replace the old cut-velvet eyesores. Most important, she improved the lighting, replacing the bright light of the old chandeliers with a soft glow. “Wrinkles take on wrinkles under this cruel light,” she told Tish Baldridge.

Jackie coordinated the menu with White House chef René Verdon to ensure it was the very best. Plans for the meal included a light cold soup garnished with crème fraîche and caviar followed by Homard en Bellevue, a chilled lobster salad—a delectable creation once served by French courtesan Madame de Pompadour to Louis XV. An elegant French seafood dish made of fresh sea bass and spinach, Bar Farci Polignac, was selected as the main course. For dessert, Jackie planned to serve La Croquembouche aux Noisettes, a delicate pastry made of tiny cream puffs glazed with carmelized sugar and adorned with marzipan flowers. (The delicate croquembouche would entail one full day of labor by pastry chef Ferdinand Louvat.) To complete the meal, Jackie specifically selected fine French wines and champagne, including a 1959 Carton Charlemagne, a 1955 Chateau Gruaud-Larose, and a 1952 Dom Perignon. She insisted that the number of courses be limited to four, although in previous administrations state dinners typically offered six or more. Her streamlined menu included only seasonal items that fused “spring fare with French flair.”

As the highlight of the evening, Jackie wanted a concert performed in the East Room by a gifted American artist who would represent the finest in American life. She repeatedly telephoned violinist Isaac Stern, widely known as the “Prince of Carnegie Hall,” and asked him to come to Washington. Stern supported the administration’s promotion of the arts, and shortly after the inauguration he wrote the First Lady: “It would be so difficult to tell you how refreshing, how heartening it is to find such serious attention and respect for the arts in the White House. To many of us it is one of the most exciting developments on the present American cultural scene.” After a few well-timed telephone calls, all of the details were finalized, and the renowned violinist was scheduled to perform in the restored East Room on the new crimson velvet-upholstered stage designed by Lincoln Kirsten.

The First Lady tackled every aspect of protocol and insisted on presenting her guest with a memorable welcoming gift. To that end, she cajoled her stepfather, Hugh Auchincloss, into giving her two rare books from his private library. Inside one volume of nineteenth-century political caricatures she wrote for Malraux, “How strange to give a book to someone whose books—and words—have given so much to me.”

The guest list was also of great concern. When a proposed list had been typed and submitted for her review, Jackie asked for additional names of guests who spoke French. “List very good but ask [Ambassador] Alphand—and see if we can add a few people who speak French. Alphand might know some—you think too—send me back list soon so can OK it if we have time to add—if we get lots of refusals. Try and get authors whose plays or works have been performed or translated with success in France; Ask Alphand whom he suggests [and] send him proposed list.”

It mattered to her deeply what Malraux thought, and she worked to ensure that the visit “confirmed his estimate of her intellect and taste.” At one point she confided to Ambassador Alphand that she feared Malraux would become bored during his Washington visit. Alphand wrote in his memoirs that he told Jackie to invite the kind of American artists that Malraux would like to meet. When she worried if she should invite only French-speaking guests, Alphand discouraged her. “All she needed to do was fill the White House with luminaries, and Malraux would be thrilled.”

Invitations were mailed to more than 175 distinguished cultural figures, and the guest list grew so large that the White House dinner had to be hosted in two rooms. President Kennedy would host twelve tables in the State Dining Room and Jackie would play hostess to five smaller tables in the Blue Room. In a break from tradition, husbands and wives were seated at different tables so that guests were forced to meet and interact with new people. The seating chart prepared by Sanford Fox, chief of the social entertainments office, underwent multiple versions with a pair of scissors as Jackie juggled the names to create the perfect arrangement. Pierre Salinger recalled that Jackie spread the seating charts on the floor and planned exactly who should be seated next to whom. “I worked carefully on the guest list,” she said, “wanting to include artists admired abroad, not only the traditional, established ones.”

She found them. Mark Rothko and Franz Kline, noted abstract expressionists, were there along with oft-described “painter of the people” Andrew Wyeth. From the field of letters were Pulitzer Prize-winning writers Arthur Miller and Thornton Wilder, and future Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow. Dramatist Paddy Chayefsky came, as did producer Elia Kazan, playwright S. N. Behrman, and choreographer George Balanchine. Tennessee Williams first balked at the invitation, saying it was “too far to go to dinner,” but a phone call from Jackie persuaded him to come to Washington.

“I hoped [Malraux’s] visit would call attention to the importance of the arts,” Jackie said. She made sure the leadership of the nation’s premier museums and libraries were also invited, including David E. Finley, the first director of the National Gallery and chair of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts; National Gallery Director John Walker; Metropolitan Museum of Art Director James J. Rorimer, Museum of Modern Art Director René d’Harnoncourt; Leonard Carmichael, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution; Frederick B. Adams, Jr., Director of the Pierpont Morgan Library; and Archibald MacLeish, poet and former Librarian of Congress.

President Kennedy wanted the reclusive Charles Lindbergh and his wife Anne to be invited as well because they were “Great Americans.” Jackie told Tish Baldridge that she was an admirer of Anne Lindbergh’s writing. To the surprise of many, the couple accepted the invitation and agreed to stay overnight at the White House. Jackie saw to it that Lindbergh was seated at the President’s table, along with artist Andrew Wyeth, author Irwin Shaw, actress Geraldine Page, and Nicole Alphand. “Even among these illustrious people,” Baldridge later wrote, “the attendance of the Lindberghs caused a sensation.”

For her formal gown, Jackie chose a strapless duponi shantung in a warm shade of pink designed by Guy Douvier for Christian Dior. The design of the gown assured that she would be eye-catching from any direction. The back was fitted at the top with a series of bows that flared from the waist in a cascade of fabric creating a slight train. She wore white gloves that reached the elbow and diamond earrings. In her upswept hair she fastened a jeweled ornament like a tiara. (The eighteenth-century sapphire and diamond starburst pin was one of Jackie’s favorite pieces. She had found the brooch at Wartski’s, the London jeweler, and traded in several significant pieces she already owned so that she could purchase it.)

For table decorations Jackie selected lilies-of-the-valley, baby’s breath, red and white tulips, blue iris, gerbera daisies, lavender and pink sweet peas, violas, and leucocoryne. She preferred informal “Flemish” floral designs for the White House table settings and insisted the arrangements at the center of the table be placed below the sight line so that guests could see one another and engage in easy conversation. “The total sensual appeal of sight, fragrance, taste, and sound,” noted scholar Elizabeth J. Natalle, made Jackie’s White House gala a “communication extravagance that boosted everyone’s ethos.”

To ensure that the cultural minister received a proper toast of welcome, one that seamlessly fused the history of France with that of the United States, she turned again to Arthur Schlesinger for assistance. The White House aide had sent Jackie a copy of the recent New York Times profile of the celebrated Frenchman. “Could you write a toast for Jack to make to Malraux,” Jackie asked, “along the lines of this article you sent me, which I adore. Then, would you send your proposed toast, plus the article, over to Jack so he can read it himself.”

With less than twenty-four hours before the grand affair, Jackie wanted to read the feature a second time to be totally prepared for her guest. “Would you give strict instructions to Mrs. Lincoln to return the article on Malraux to me when Jack is through with it,” she asked.

Finally, the much anticipated moment arrived. President and Mrs. Kennedy left the second-floor residence and descended the executive mansion’s Grand Staircase. (Under Jackie’s direction the red carpet along the stairs had been changed into a deeper crimson, less garish shade of red.) At the bottom of the stairs, the couple posed with André and Marie Madeleine Malraux as White House photographer Abbie Rowe captured the glamour and importance of the occasion.

Jackie was the “center of attention,” recalled Letitia Baldridge, dressed in the daring strapless pink gown. Attired in a finely tailored tuxedo and black tie, President Kennedy had tucked a small pink rose in his left lapel. Madame Malraux wore a white floor-length gown embroidered with pearls along the neckline, and in her dark brown hair she had affixed a small diamond and pearl pin in the shape of a bow.

With the guests assembled in the State Dining Room, President Kennedy raised his glass in a toast to honor the distinguished French visitor. “I suppose all of us wish to participate in all the experiences of life,” President Kennedy said of Malraux, “but he has left us all behind.”

“This will be the first speech about relations between France and the United States that does not include a tribute to General Lafayette,” he said. “It seems that every Frenchman who comes to the United States feels that Lafayette was a rather confused sort of intellectual, elderly figure, hovering over French politics, and is astonished to find that we regard him as a golden, young romantic figure, next to George Washington our most distinguished citizen.

“Therefore he will not be mentioned, but I will mention a predecessor of mine, John Adams, who was our first President to live in the White House and whose prayer on occupancy is written here.” President Kennedy gestured to the words of John Adams carved on the nearby marble mantelpiece, including the phrase “May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.” Then Kennedy said, “John Adams asked that on his gravestone be written ‘He kept the peace with France!’” The room burst into applause, laughter, and cheers as waiters scurried across the polished floors and prepared to serve the evening’s first course.

Following the superb French meal prepared by Chef Verdon, guests were escorted into the East Room, with its enormous crystal chandeliers and flickering candelabra, where they were entertained by the virtuoso performance of violinist Issac Stern, cellist Leonard Rose, and pianist Eugene Istomin as they performed the full forty-five-minute Schubert Trio in B-flat. (The gilt-bronze candelabra purchased by President Monroe in 1817 had been stored away unseen until Jackie found them and displayed them once again.)

Photographs taken during the concert show Jackie seated close to Malraux, smiling with her right shoulder nearly tucked under his arm. Baldridge recalled that the musical performance among the giants of the arts made an enormous impression. Later that evening Mrs. Kennedy told her, “You know, these are the moments of history I will really remember the rest of my life.”

The gathering of the most accomplished men and women of the American cultural scene not only underscored the Kennedys’ support for the arts, but also demonstrated how adept Jackie was at employing the arts in order to add prestige to Jack’s presidency. “Malraux himself understood just how profoundly she had been transformed by her trip to Paris,” said biographer Barbara Leaming, “and how much an evening such as this owed to that experience.” As the candlelit party came to a close, Malraux felt compelled to share his delight with Jackie. He leaned near Mrs. Kennedy’s right ear. In a moment caught on film, Malraux whispered a promise that he would send her France’s cultural treasure—the Mona Lisa—as a loan to her and President Kennedy. “Je vais vous envoyer La Joconde,” he said softly.