Period Piece
Phil Feldsine’s home is a love letter to historical art and design
Phil Feldsine’s home is a love letter to historical art and design
Phil Feldsine grew up in the Hudson Rivervalley of New York State and was used to “houses with historical character.”when he and Jill Hofstrand were looking for a house in Seattle, they found a period Tudor revival on the shores of Lake Washington designed by Arthur Loveless with gardens by the Olmsted Brothers, sons of the Central Park designer Frederick Law Olmsted. Both house and gardens were in disrepair but the couple were up to the challenge. A scientist used to looking at things in detail and wanting the project to be true to the integrity of its original character, Feldsine set about restoring house and gardens. He advised his landscape designers, Richard Hartledge and Jason Morse of the Seattle firm AHBL, that no new plants that weren’t available when the garden was at its peak in the ’30s and ’40s could be introduced. In the house, he wanted to keep to Loveless’s design but replaced all electrical, mechanical and plumbing systems to make living in an old house easier.when he commissioned Aaron Mollick of Stuart Silk Architects, now Studioam Architects, to design a coach house and porte-cochère he advised the architect,“i want this to look like Arthur Loveless did it!”the result is a building totally at one with the original residence.
Hofstrand found a photo of the original owner’s daughter sitting by a fountain in the garden with the bronze replica sculpture that was missing: Putto with Dolphin by the Renaissance sculptor Andrea delverrocchio (1435-1488).The original was in Palazzovecchio (Palazzo della Signoria), Florence, Italy. Armed with this knowledge the couple have since been able to find a replacement.
The couple also did their research and sourced everything from period light sconces and period phones for the house to cement tiles for the roof of the coach house.among the new systems, invisible but integral, is an electronic system to control everything from lights to sound. Feldsine has said, “So, now restored, basically you have the 2012 house in the skin of an Arthur Loveless Tudor.”
Within that skin is a growing collection of fine art that could have been in the home during the residency of its first owners, who lived there from 1927 to the 1990s.
Feldsine has known and worked with Allan Kollar of A.J. Kollar Fine Paintings in Seattle for 25 years.the two were introduced by an interior designer when Feldsine was building a home on Mercer Island.“over the years,” Feldsine says,“if Allan gets a piece by a well-known artist and wellvalued, he gives me a call. In December, 2016 I sold my company and have been able to step up my collecting. I’ve probably bought 25 pieces from Allan and five or six at Christie’s auctions.” Although provenance isn’t a primary concern for the collector, several pieces have an illustrious pedigree. Recently, Kollar has been working with a distinguished collector who is slowly liquidating his collection.
Kollar recently told me,“phil has done a marvelous job. His attention to the historical remodel of his home and the Olmsted Brothers gardens is beautifully
reinstated.the house is a perfect setting for his art collection. He has selectively chosen art on the basis of aesthetics and historical reference. He has traded up (as we say) after living with some art objects, while continuing to educate himself. Phil has a good eye, and has been willing to step up when he realized a certain work of art will only come his way once in his collecting career.”
Feldsine says,“i’ve never taken an art course. I’m a microbiologist. I buy what my eye likes and what I recognize as quality.”among the works that caught his eye were two lithographs by George Bellows, A Stag at Sharkey’s, 1917, and Dempsey Through the Ropes, 1923. Both had been in the collection of the family of A. Conger Goodyear for years. Goodyear was a founder and the first president of the Museum of Modern
Art in Newyork.
The collector admires Bellows’
command of anatomy in the musculature of the boxers and his ability at caricature in his representation of the men around the ring.
Dempsey Through the Ropes hangs next to a John Singer Sargent oil, Villa Torlonia, Frascati, 1907, one of several Sargents in the collection. Sharkey’s, in fact, hangs next to Sargent’s watercolor, San Geremia, circa 1903 to 1907, in the couple’s family room.
“I like Sargent’s use of color and his impressionistic style,” Feldsine says. “He doesn’t paint every detail and it’s a little abstract. Every time I walk by his paintings, I stop and take a look. I’ve never been interested in modern art. I can’t figure out what it is.as a technical guy I can’t see minimalism.” But he does see, know and understand the work he collects and he enjoys the stories behind the paintings. Cathedral Reims Façade, 1925, by Pieter
J. L. van Veen hangs in a large stairway. Feldsine tells the story of vanveen’s traveling around Europe after World War I, painting the facades of cathedrals, thinking they wouldn’t survive in another world war. Miraculously, they did. Although any painting of the façade of Reims recalls Monet, vanveen’s approach to light and context was very different. The collector relates that the painting was the centerpiece at an exhibition at the Smithsonian. “That feels good,” he says.
A collection of five Henri de Toulouse-lautrec lithographs had been amassed by the senior director of the board of the Seattle Art Museum and gave Feldsine the opportunity to acquire a lifetime’s searching and collecting in one purchase. He also acquired three Winslow Homer watercolors at one time as they were being deaccessioned from an important private collection. His Willard Metcalf languished in storage in a Georgia museum for five decades. It now has a home where it can be enjoyed. Feldsine comments that art makes a home warm, inviting and visually interesting .“buy what your eye likes,” he says,“and make sure it’s visually interesting and is compatible with the house.”