“The Soul Sense of a Beautiful Thing”

Katharine Nash Rhoades, a painter, Charles Lang Freer’s assistant, and a member of the Stieglitz Circle, met Freer at Mount Kisco, New York, the country home of Asian art collectors Agnes and Eugene Meyer on June 29, 1913. Their friendship lasted until Freer’s death on September 25, 1919. Although their relationship was relatively short in duration, it was characterized by loyalty, warmth, and mutual respect. Rhoades and Freer shared the pursuit of beauty as the guiding principle in their lives. Rhoades’s paintings reveal the influence that the Japanese art in Freer’s collection had upon her work. She was instrumental in the creation of the Freer Gallery of Art as it is known today. This article, based on extensive research using primary sources, sheds new light on the relationship between Katharine Rhoades and Charles Lang Freer and the ways in which the art of Japan played a key role in their lives.