The Daily Telegraph - Saturday
George Gershwin’s secret passion revealed
Letters show the American composer was an avid art collector who wanted ‘only masterpieces’
GEORGE GERSHWIN, the celebrated US composer, has been revealed as one of the greatest art collectors of his time.
Known for 20th-century masterpieces such as and
his passion for collecting contemporary art has now been uncovered in previously unpublished letters written in the 1930s.
Gershwin, who died in 1937, wrote letters to his cousin, an artist, who was in Paris seeking possible art purchases for him. He wrote of wanting “only masterpieces” by artists such as Modigliani and Gauguin, saying that if “those are not available… I would rather pay a little more money for a good work of a master than a little less for a good work of a second-rater”.
In another letter, he wrote: “It was very interesting to me to note the prices of the various items… For instance, the small Renoir called the Guitariste for fourteen thousand francs. It seems like a very good buy to me. Isn’t that very cheap for a Renoir, or is the picture just a poor example of his work?”
While Gershwin found fame at a young age and was wealthy when the world was experiencing the Great Depression, he observed in another letter: “Money is very scarce during these depressing times and one must be 10 times as careful of what he spends.”
Responses from Henry Botkin, his cousin, have also been unearthed. “Nobody is more anxious and interested in seeing you build a collection that would eventually rate as one of the finest,” Botkin told Gershwin. “I assure you with your knowledge and enthusiasm and real proven love for painting this could be accomplished.”
Gershwin died aged 38 after failed brain surgery. The letters will be published for the first time in a forthcoming
from Scala Arts Publishers. Its author, Dr Olivia Mattis, discovered them in a US archive. She said: “There have been many books on Gershwin, some of which mention that he collected paintings. There might be an artist that gets mentioned, but nothing more. I started to get really curious.”
Over 20 years she identified his entire collection, one of the most significant of his day. There were works by Modigliani, Kandinsky and Picasso, including the latter’s 1901, now in a private collection.
Dr Mattis said: “This painting from Picasso’s blue period was the crown jewel of Gershwin’s collection.” In one of his letters, Gershwin wrote of Utrillo’s “It seems to throw out its own light. I am crazy about it, and it fits in perfectly in my living room.”
Dr Mattis noticed that Gershwin had cultivated his own image in photographs. The pose of a figure in a Chagall ‘A painting from Picasso’s blue period was the crown jewel of Gershwin’s collection’ painting that Gershwin hung in front of his piano mirrored his own pose in a photograph of himself alongside songwriter Irving Berlin.
Gershwin was also an amateur painter, Dr Mattis said, revealing a “whole visual practice that nobody knows about”. He wrote to his cousin: “What a great advantage painting has over composing!… When I finish a canvas it’s there. That’s the end. But a composition… after writing it, I have to assemble 60 musicians, and make arrangements of the music before I can hear the results of my efforts.”
Dr Mattis has co-curated the first major museum exhibition devoted to the composer’s art, opening this month at the Baker Museum in Florida. While the bulk of Gershwin’s art collection was widely dispersed, many pieces remain within the family. The exhibition will feature loans from international museums and private collections, including those of his descendants.