The Great Divide
Things were different. It might have been the war. Newyork, politically divided on the war, was the scene of some of the most violent urban clashes. Geographically removed from the conflict, there was ample evidence of its impact in the tally of war dead and wounded. New York city and state would suffer more casualties than all of New England combined, yet the city would ultimately be a significant beneficiary of the Civil War. The New York port, already prosperous through trade that had depended heavily on Southern cotton shipments and the transport of finished goods coming from New England mills, continued to benefit through the production of war materiel as well as arriving immigrants who would find employment in the vast industrial landscape of the city.the population saw a dramatic increase, from 515,547 in 1850 to 942,292 by 1870, and the foundations for extraordinary post-war prosperity were laid.this would be the period labeled by Mark Twain and his collaborator, Charles Dudley Warner, as “The Gilded Age.” It was a period that was also marked by an increasing divide between the wealthy upper class and urban poor.
American artists hoped to benefit from new concentrations of wealth and the promise of expanded patronage. In fact, that dream seemed to be on the verge of realization with the founding of the Metropolitan Museum in 1870, 150 years ago (the ultimate reality will be discussed in a future column).
Building an audience for American art had been an ongoing struggle in the first half of the 19th century, as discussed in my column in the previous issue of this magazine.but the dependence on individual patronage fostered by the National Academy of Design with its enormous public exhibitions (an average of 530 works in the annual exhibitions of the 1870s) and the smaller private installations at clubs like the Century Association, had been enhanced by another important enterprise, the shortlived American Art Union (1839-1851). The Art Union was conceived as a promotional vehicle for American artists and aimed at improving the taste of the citizenry. It published a magazine that counts as the earliest sustained publication dedicated to reviewing current work and reporting on developments (and gossip) within the art world.with the proceeds from the sale of subscription tickets for $5, the merchant amateur managers acquired works that were assembled into an exhibition and distributed through an annual lottery. Every subscriber received a print made from a picture in the current year’s lottery. The popularity of the Art Union is evidenced by the fact that toward the end, nearly 19,000 subscriptions were sold to an audience stretching from Maine to Mexico.
The motive was altruistic—the desire to aid and influence the pictorial arts of America. And in response, painters acknowledged that this patronage allowed them to move beyond their traditional boundaries of subject matter. Early private collectors such as Robert Gilmore and Luman Reed built personal relationships with the artists, and by their choices and
their conversation had influenced the subject of works they acquired.
Other enterprises like the American Art Union but with a more commercial intent were established in the wake of the Art Union’s dissolution by New York State on the grounds that it was a gambling enterprise.the future lay in some degree in the fact that those later enterprises helped spawn the development of commercial art galleries,some of which included contemporary American work. New York social clubs still played an important role.the Union League Club was founded in 1863 with a specific mission of promoting patriotism and loyalty to the Union during the war. It was designed to act as an agency of political action. Ensconced in a clubhouse on the north side of Union Square in 1864, it introduced a policy of acquiring American art and accepting works of art in lieu of dues, thereby encouraging the admission of artists, some of whom were, in fact, already members of the Century Association. Union League members were principal players that year in the organization of a milestone event in the public exhibition of American art, The Metropolitan Fair, whose purpose was to raise funds for the United States Sanitary Commission, a precursor of the Red Cross.
There were other sanitary fairs around the country, but New York’s, housed in a temporary structure on 14th Street near the Union League, was the most spectacular and was widely covered in the press.the call for submissions to the fair noted: Every branch of agriculture, trade, industry and art, will be invited to contribute its choicest and costliest products for exhibition and sale. Musical and dramatic artists will be invited to aid the common cause with their talent and genius.all the material resources of the great City of New-york and of the region directly tributary to it, are to be invoked. The Metropolitan Fair, which ran from April 4 to 23, attracted around 100,000 and raised $1,176,671.90 for the Union cause. A principal feature was the exhibition of American art.the display of historical portraits and the commanding presence of Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze’s historical epic, Washington Crossing the Delaware, were amplified by major landscapes by Frederic Church and Albert Bierstadt. While Church’s painting of The Andes of Ecuador spoke to the influence of scientific exploration, the glorification of the American landscape in Bierstadt’s Rocky Mountains sent a strong message. Portraying the native landscape seemed important in fostering national identity and in the preservation of the Union. The creative achievement of the dozens of American painters in the fair was also a cause for celebration although the inclusion of many European works lent by private collectors could have been seen as an omen of the future.
The art exhibit was, in some ways, a last hurrah for traditional subjects of American painting. The more nuanced work of the post-war American art reflected the influence of European study as well as a shift in collecting taste.
At the Union League, the exhibition committee, dominated by collectors, dealers and art amateurs, was for some years chaired by the voracious patron/ collector Thomas B. Clarke (1848-1931) whose personal collection, assembled between 1872 and 1898, at one time exceeded 700 works by American artists. Clarke’s earliest acquisitions were of paintings by established artists but included work of the coming generation, including Winslow Homer, George Inness, Homer Martin and Alexander H.wyant. Clarke’s commitment to artists such as Homer and Inness along with a vast and unorthodox range of American works he owned meant that he was regularly asked to lend works to exhibitions both in New York and in other cities. He also acted as an agent for artists, other collectors and dealers resulting in substantial support for the American market. He ultimately purchased nearly 1,000 works by American artists either for himself or in his role as agent. And when, in 1899, he decided to sell his collection at auction, the success of that sale of 372 works provided substantiating benchmarks for those who previously questioned the marketability of American painting.
The appeal of American art to the collectors whose names are not as legendary as J.p.morgan,henry Clay Frick or Isabella Stewart Gardner was not only nationalism but affordability.a selling point was the suggestion that you could get an “A” by and American painter while you would only score a “B” or even a “C” by a trendy French artist. (That was still a part of the dialogue for us in American paintings at Christie’s nearly a century later!)
During Clarke’s chairmanship, exhibitions at the Union League, which were open to the public and regularly reviewed, included work lent by dealers and collectors. When American works were lent by recognized private collectors during the 1880s, that ownership became a seal of approval increasing the status of the artists whose work was exhibited. But equally revealing was the shift of taste toward imported European art that reflected a new cosmopolitanism on the part of the wealthy and art-buying elite. A few galleries such as Samuel P.avery and Knoedler included American art in their roster and a handful of others followed suit.the most promising enterprise aimed at promoting native art was the American Art Gallery which abandoned its founding mission and as the American Art Association, ultimately became an auction gallery. It wasn’t until 1892, when William Macbeth opened his gallery exclusively devoted to American art (with a few minor forays into contemporary French art), that a broadened marketplace for American painting began to evolve. Macbeth not only mounted dozens of exhibitions of work by American artists, but also published Art Notes, which fostered work by the diverse artists in his stable promoting the gallery itself and commented on exhibitions and the state of the market in general. He lent generously to loan exhibitions which became increasingly important as a generation of new art museums was established around the county. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, following the lead of the art museums in Boston and New York, municipal art museums were established in important metropolitan areas such as Cincinnati, Buffalo, Cleveland, St. Louis, Chicago and Brooklyn.their ambition was to enhance their communities with significant collections of world-class art. A pioneering effort at creating a museum exclusively devoted to American art began in 1903 in New Britain, Connecticut.the museum’s origins lay in the New Britain Institute, chartered in 1853 shortly after New Britain was incorporated as a town. The Institute was established with the aim of promoting education and art for the blue-collar community that continued to be welcoming to an immigrant population. New Britain had become a successful center for hardware manufacturing, but despite the ensuing prosperity, did not nurture a collecting community. Civic welfare was a goal of the town fathers in establishing the Institute. And by 1870, just before its incorporation as a city, New Britain commissioned Frederick Law Olmsted to design Walnut Hill Park, one of his first projects as a full-fledged landscape designer. A handsome beaux-arts home for the Institute, including a library and art gallery, was built in 1901, and two years later a bequest of $25,000 from John Butlertalcott to acquire “original modern oil paintings either by native or foreign artists” became the founding motive of an art museum. With little experience,the board consulted Bryson Burroughs,then curator of paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, who suggested that American art would be both affordable and meaningful for the community.the museum took his advice and the board proceeded timidly to acquire a handful of works by contemporary artists.the very first acquisition, made five years after the bequest was received, was a painting by an artist from nearby Hartford, William Gedney Bunce.the growth of the collection was desultory until Grace Judd Landers donated her house, adjacent to Walnut Hill Park, as a new home for the museum in 1934.
Sanford B. D. Low (1905-1965), a Hawaiian-born painter, became the museum’s first director in 1939, inheriting a collection of a mere two dozen works. It was Low’s prescience and energy that began the journey of acquisitions making the New Britain Museum not only a stellar resource for this still-small town (population 72,000) but a major national institution. Whether he was following Burroughs’ initial suggestion or simply his own artistic intelligence, Low bought early and well from the whole sweep of American art from colonial to contemporary. Many important works acquired early when they were still under the radar of the market. Without much in the way of published literature, he succeeded in acquiring textbook examples.while he became a regular customer of the handful of New York galleries that exhibited American art,
including Kraushaar, Macbeth, Frank Rehn and Knoedler, he formed a special and important bond with the now 179-yearoldvose Galleries and its fourth generation partner, Robert C.vose Jr. (1911-1998). Vose’s detailed memoir, Tales of an Art Dealer (2012), is a treasure trove of information and insights on the history of the art trade in America as well as a personal account of relationships with collectors, museums and other dealers.vose describes the time when he brought a handful of paintings to customers in New Britain for consideration as Christmas presents, his offerings were rejected. Not wanting to waste the journey,vose visited Low on a social basis.after he told of his failure to sell what he considered worthy paintings, Low viewed the pictures and suggested a visit to Alix Stanley whose career had been with the family tool works company. Low admitted that he didn’t know Stanley, but the aging widower might welcome a “social” visit. It was a conversion of the innocents: Stanley not only bought three works but ended up funding the purchase of hundreds of American works of art for the museum through funds he established. Vose recounts having found such masterworks as Frederic Church’s Haying Near New Haven on a porch in New Hampshire where the family kept their snowshoes and skis.within the year, he made a tidy profit on his $200 purchase when he sold it to New Britain for $1,000. The list of works that Low acquired over 15 years (approximately 1,500) is extraordinary, but the quality is even more impressive.a selective accounting from the early years tells the story: 1940—Winslow Homer watercolor; 1941—Robert Brackman, George Inness, Robert Henri; 1942—Benjaminwest,john Singer Sargent, William M. Harnett, Albert Blakelock, Thomas Eakins, Eugene Speicher; 1943— John Sloan, George Luks, Paul Sample, Winslow Homer oil, Everett Shinn; 1944— Glackens, Sargent, Bellows, Prendergast; 1945—Kensett, Lafarge, E.L. Henry, Jerome Myers,thomas Cole, J.alden Weir; 1946— S.S. Carr, Mcentee, Eastman Johnson; 1947—N.c.wyeth; 1948—Andrew Wyeth; 1949—Whistler; 1953—Max Webber.
Low also demonstrated that, even without a group of collectors in the community, it was possible to build a significant collection with ample funding. And that funding came from Alix Stanley and the Charles F. Smith Fund. Low scored a great coup for the museum when he learned that thewhitney Museum in New York City was thinking of selling Thomas Hart Benton’s mural series The Arts of Life in America as they were planning to move to a new building uptown. Alix Stanley financed the $500 purchase price which was said to be less than it cost to remove and transport the murals. Low and Benton were friends from summers in Martha’s Vineyard. Benton offered an appreciation of Low saying he was “the damnedest museum director I’ve ever known. For one thing, he’s an artist himself, he’s also a person who knows about art and art history, he’s got a good eye, and he likes bourbon almost as much as I do.”
Low’s sudden death from a heart attack was a shock, but it was not a total setback. A committee was formed to develop a collection of American illustration in his memory that is one of gems of the museum today.and ensuing directors have continued to expand the collection, enlarge the group of museum supporters, and reach out to a widening audience.a new building constructed during the recent directorship of Douglas Hyland replaces older additions. It is the fruition of Hyland’s vision to allow the New Britain Museum, now five times larger,to generously accommodate a greatly expanded collection,which numbers around 8,000 works—a fourfold increase achieved during his tenure.the range has expanded as well to include photography, a maritime collection, more contemporary work, and 25 outdoor sculptures which enhance the link with the adjacent park.there is even an important collection of pulp art! In many ways, New Britain today is not only a model of a single-focus institution; it has enhanced its popular appeal. At last count, the 80,000 annual visitors exceed the total population of the city. Its appeal is not only the marvelous quality of the collections, but also the engaging display and the intimate settings which contrast with the often cold and cavernous spaces of larger museums. It is a place that encourages visitors to indulge in quiet but informed contemplation. A worthy retreat for the mind and the eye.