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[[Partial periodical title heading: "THE NEW" YORK TIMES]] FRICK BUYS 'MALL' BY GAINSBOROUGH

Famous Painting Soon to be Hung Among Other Art Treasures in Collector's Home.

PRICE PAID NEAR $300,000

Comes from Country Seat of Sir Audley Dallas Neeld on Grittelton, Wiltshire, England.

HENRY C. FRICK has authorized THE NEW YORK TIMES to say that he has bought the famous Gainsborough, "The Malls," which is soon to be brought to this country by Duveen Brothers, Incorporated, through whom it was purchased. This is the finest landscape of Thomas Gainsborough, a painting after the style of Watteau, but in which the English artist excels the French in his own line of work. It is a scene in St. James's Park, an imaginative, impressionistic picture, the figures and the soft foliage of the trees blending harmoniously. It is the scene of a fashionable promenade with many women, the central group including several of the Royal Princesses, in the picturesque costumes of that day. It was painted in 1786, two years before the artist's death at the age of sixty-one, and it is used by the critics as an illustration of the continued strength of his work to the end of his life, painted at a time when he was, as they say, on the verge of old age. "The Mall" was originally the possession of a Mr. Kilderbee of Ipswich, who owned many of Gainsborough's pictures, including portraits of his wide and of his two little daughters. He was an intimate and life-long friend of the artist. The later owner of the picture was Sir Audley Dallas Neeld, from whose country seat at Grittelton, Wiltshire, England, it has now been obtained. It has been said that $300,000 had been refused for the picture and its present cost can be estimated at between $250,000 and that sum. The early critics spoke as highly of the picture as later ones. Sir Horace Walpole said of it: "You would suppose it would be stiff and formal with the straight rows of trees and people sitting on benches--it is all in motion and in a flutter like a lady's fan. Watteau is not half so airy." "There is an elegance about the composition, a delicacy in the color," another said about it, "and a freedom in the handling which combine to make it one of the masterpieces of English art, a superb tour de force of painting." Prior to the arrival in New York of "The Mall," Mr. Frick's pictures are being rearranged in his home, 1 East Seventieth Street, to provide a suitable sitting for the newcomer.