Download or read book Henry Walters and Bernard Berenson written by Stanley Mazaroff and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collecting Italian Renaissance paintings during America’s Gilded Age was fraught with risk because of the uncertain identities of the artists and the conflicting interests of the dealers. Stanley Mazaroff’s fascinating account of the close relationship between Henry Walters, founder of the legendary Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, and Bernard Berenson, the era’s preeminent connoisseur of Italian paintings, richly illustrates this important chapter of America’s cultural history. When Walters opened his Italianate museum in 1909, it was labeled as America’s “Great Temple of Art.” With more than 500 Italian paintings, including self-portraits purportedly by Raphael and Michelangelo, Walters’s collection was compared favorably with the great collections in London, Paris, and Berlin. In the midst of this fanfare, Berenson contacted Walters and offered to analyze his collection, sell him additional paintings, and write a scholarly catalogue that would trumpet the collection on both sides of the Atlantic. What Berenson offered was what Walters desperately needed—a badge of scholarship that Berenson’s invaluable imprimatur would undoubtedly bring. By 1912, Walters had become Berenson’s most active client, their business alliance wrapped in a warm and personal friendship. But this relationship soon became strained and was finally severed by a confluence of broken promises, inattention, deceit, and ethical conflict. To Walters’s chagrin, Berenson swept away the self-portraits allegedly by Raphael and Michelangelo and publicly scorned paintings that he was supposed to praise. Though painful to Walters, Berenson’s guidance ultimately led to a panoramic collection that beautifully told the great history of Italian Renaissance painting. Based primarily on correspondence and other archival documents recently discovered at the Walters Art Museum and the Villa I Tatti in Florence, the intriguing story of Walters and Berenson offers unusual insight into the pleasures and perils of collecting Italian Renaissance paintings, the ethics in the marketplace, and the founding of American art museums.
Download or read book William and Henry Walters the Reticent Collectors written by William R. Johnston and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1999-10-25 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surprisingly, the story of how William Walters and his son Henry created one of the finest privately assembled museums in the United States has not been told."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Bernard Berenson written by Rachel Cohen and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-28 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Few would have predicted that Bernard Berenson, from a poor Lithuanian Jewish immigrant family, would rise above poverty. Yet Berenson left his crowded home near Boston's railyards and transformed himself into the world's most renowned expert on Italian Renaissance paintings, the owner of a beautiful villa and an immense private library in the hills outside Florence. The explosion of the Gilded Age art market and Berenson's work for dealer Joseph Duveen supported a luxurious life, but it came with painful costs: Berenson hid his origins and, though his attributions remain foundational, felt that he had betrayed his gifts as a critic and interpreter of paintings. This finely drawn portrait of Berenson, the first biography devoted to him in a quarter century, draws on new archival materials that bring out the significance of his secret business dealings and the central importance of several women in his life and work: his sister Senda Berenson; his wife Mary Berenson; his patron Isabella Stewart Gardner; his lover Belle da Costa Greene; his dear friend Edith Wharton, and the companion of his last forty years, Nicky Mariano. Rachel Cohen explores Berenson's inner world and extraordinary visual capacity while also illuminating the historical forces-new capital, the developing art market, persistent anti-Semitism, and the two world wars-that profoundly affected his life"--
Download or read book Smuggling the Renaissance written by Joanna Smalcerz and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-01-13 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Smuggling the Renaissance: The Illicit Export of Artworks Out of Italy, 1861-1909 offers an account of the dynamics and protagonists of the Post-Unification art spoliation crisis in Italy, focusing on the intertwinement of the art trade, scholarship and protection policies.
Download or read book Fifty Old Master Paintings from the Walters Art Gallery written by Walters Art Gallery (Baltimore, Md.) and published by Walters Art Gallery. This book was released on 1988 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The holdings in the old master painting collection were developed almost entirely by Henry Walters, although they have been supplemented in recent years by superb gifts and excellent, if infrequent, purchases. The core of Renaissance and Baroque paintings came with the purchase in 1902 of 1500 works from Rome's Massarenti collection. This massive acquisition inspired Henry Walters to build the great Renaissance Revival structure whose restoration and return to the public was completed in 1988. - Preface.
Download or read book The Outcry written by Henry James and published by Double 9 Booksllp. This book was released on 2022-12-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Henry James wrote a book titled The Outcry in 1911. It was once intended to be a play. His final work, The Outcry, was finished just before he passed away in 1916. The plot centers on affluent Americans purchasing priceless works of art from Britain. The widower Lord Theign intends to sell American millionaire Breckenridge Bender his exquisite painting Duchess of Waterbridge by Sir Joshua Reynolds to pay off the gambling debts of his daughter Kitty Imber. Young art critic Hugh Crimble opposes the sale, saying that Britain's priceless works of art should remain in the nation. Lady Grace, Theign's astute daughter, lends him encouragement. When word of the Reynolds' impending sale reaches the media, a patriotic uproar erupts, much to Bender's delight. Crimble, meantime, has discovered another artwork in Theign's collection that he believes to be a Mantovano rare. (James believed this artist to be a fabrication; nevertheless, it was later discovered that a little-known painter by that name actually existed.) Crimble's suspicion on the Mantovano eventually proves to be accurate. Theign decides not to sell the Reynolds to Bender and instead chooses to gift the Mantovano to the National Gallery. His friend Lady Sandgate joins forces with Theign by giving her family's Sir Thomas Lawrence artwork to the Gallery.
Download or read book From Object to Concept written by Stacey Pierson and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ming porcelain is widely regarded among the world's finest cultural treasures. From ordinary household items patiently refined for imperial use, porcelain became a dynamic force in domestic consumption in China and a valuable commodity in export trade. In the modern era, it has reached unprecedented heights in art auctions and other avenues of global commerce. This book examines the impact of consumption on the evolution of porcelain and its transformation into a foreign cultural icon. The book begins with an examination of ways in which porcelain was appreciated in Ming China, followed by a discussion of encounters with Ming porcelain in several global regions including Europe and the Americas. The book also looks at the invention of the phrase and concept of 'the Ming vase' in English-speaking cultures and concludes with a history of the transformation of Ming porcelain into works of art.
Download or read book A Paris Life A Baltimore Treasure written by Stanley Mazaroff and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2018-04-16 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Prologue -- CHAPTER ONE: The Cultivation of Lucas -- CHAPTER TWO: The Wandering Road to Paris -- CHAPTER THREE: Lucas and Paris in a Time of Transition -- CHAPTER FOUR: Lucas and Whistler -- CHAPTER FIVE: The Links to Lucas -- CHAPTER SIX: From Ecouen to Barbizon -- CHAPTER SEVEN: M, Eugène, and Maud -- CHAPTER EIGHT: When Money Is No Object -- CHAPTER NINE: The Lucas Collection -- CHAPTER TEN: The Final Years -- CHAPTER ELEVEN: The Terms of Lucas's Will -- CHAPTER TWELVE: A Collection in Search of a Home -- CHAPTER THIRTEEN: The Shot across the Bow -- CHAPTER FOURTEEN: The Glorification of Lucas -- CHAPTER FIFTEEN: In Judge Kaplan's Court -- CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Lucas Saved -- Postscript -- Appendix -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Z
Download or read book Bernard Berenson the Making of a Legend written by Ernest Samuels and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1987 with total page 740 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Controversy swirls around Bernard Berenson today as it did in his middle years, before and between two world wars. Who was this man, this supreme connoisseur of Italian Renaissance painting? How did he support his elegant estate near Florence, his Villa I Tatti? What exactly were his relations with the art dealer Joseph Duveen? What part did his wife, Mary, play in his scholarly work and professional career? The answers are to be found in the day-to-day record of his life as he lived it--as reported at first hand in his and Mary's letters and diaries and reflected in the countless personal and business letters they received. His is one of the most fully documented lives of this century. Ernest Samuels, having spent twenty years studying the thousands of letters and other manuscripts, presents his story in absorbing detail. Berenson helped Isabella Stewart Gardner build her great collection and performed similar though lesser services for other wealthy Americans. It was merely an avocation and a useful source of income; his vocation was scholarship. But after 1904, when the book opens, his expertise was in ever-greater demand: a purchaser's only assurance of the authorship of an Italian painting was the opinion of an expert, and in this field Berenson was pre-eminent. Increasingly he was drawn into the lucrative world of the art dealers; inevitably Joseph Duveen found it essential to enlist his services, at first ad hoc, then by contractual agreement. Samuels charts the course of Berenson's long association with Duveen Brothers, detailing the financial arrangements, the humdrum chores and major contested attributions, the periodic clashes between the stubborn scholar and the arrogant entrepreneur. The portrayal of Berenson's relationship with Mary is especially intriguing: a union of opposites in all but brains and wit, bonded--despite love affairs, jealousies, recriminations--no longer by passion but by shared concerns. Impinging on their lives are those of a huge circle of friends and acquaintances in America and the beau monde of Europe. Both as biography and as a chapter of social and cultural history, it is a compelling book.
Download or read book Money in the Air written by Gail Feigenbaum and published by Getty Publications. This book was released on 2024-06-25 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the crucial role of art dealers in creating a transatlantic art market in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. “There was money in the air, ever so much money,” wrote Henry James in 1907, reflecting on the American appetite for art acquisitions. Indeed, collectors such as Henry Clay Frick and Andrew W. Mellon are credited with bringing noteworthy European art to the United States, with their collections forming the backbone of major American museums today. But what of the dealers, who possessed the expertise in art and recognized the potential of developing a new market model on both sides of the Atlantic? Money in the Air investigates the often-overlooked role of these dealers in creating an international art world. Contributors examine the histories of wellknown international firms like Duveen Brothers, M. Knoedler & Co., and Goupil & Cie and their relationships with American clients, as well as accounts of other remarkable dealers active in the transatlantic art market. Drawing on dealer archives, scholars reveal compelling findings, including previously unknown partnerships and systems of cooperation. This volume offers new perspectives on the development of art collections that formed the core of American art museums, such as the National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Frick Collection.
Download or read book Dealing Art on Both Sides of the Atlantic 1860 1940 written by Lynn Catterson and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-07-31 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dealing Art on Both Sides of the Atlantic, 1860-1940 aims to bring the marketplace dynamic into sharper focus by examining the functionaries who participate in the art market–agents, scouts, intermediaries, restorers, fakers, decorators, advisers and experts.
Download or read book Italian Forgers written by Carol Helstosky and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2024-05-15 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Italian Forgers takes an unorthodox approach to the fascinating topic of art forgery, focusing not on art forgery per se, but on the major forgery scandals that shifted the Italian art market in response to constant, and often intense, demand for Italian objects. By focusing on power dynamics that both precipitated forgery scandals and forged Italian cultural identities, this book connects the debates and discussions about three well-known Italian forgers—Giovanni Bastianini, Icilio Joni, and Alceo Dossena—to anchor and investigate the mechanics of the Italian art market from unification through the fascist era. Carol Helstosky examines foreign accounts of transactions and Italian writings about the art market. The actions and words of Italian dealers illustrate how the Italian art and antiquities market was an undeniably modern industry, on par with tourism in terms of its contribution to the Italian economy and to understandings of Italian identity. These accounts also reveal how dealers, artists, go-betweens, guides, and restorers worked to not only meet the intense demand for Italian products but also to develop highly sophisticated business practices to maintain financial stability and respond to shifts in demand consciously (but not always conscientiously). Italian Forgers weaves a compelling narrative about the history of Italian identity, forgery, and the value of the past. As a result, Helstosky brings historical perspective to the study of art forgery and art fraud. She reveals how historical circumstances and structural imbalances of cultural power shaped the market for art and antiquities and amplified incidents of art deception and forgery scandals.
Download or read book Sargent Whistler and Venetian Glass written by Sheldon Barr and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-12-14 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Murano Glass and its Collectors in Aesthetic America / Melody Barnett Deusner -- Venetian Mosaics and Glass in the United States, 1860-1917 / Sheldon Barr -- "Where Have Titian's Beauties Gone?" : Sargent and Whistler on the Streets of Venice / Stephanie Mayer Heydt -- Interweaving Worlds : Antique and Revival Lace in Italy and in the United States, 1872-1927 / Diana Jocelyn Greenwold -- Sparks of Genius : American Art and the Appeal of Modern Venetian Glass / Crawford Alexander Mann III -- Biographies / Brittany Emens Strupp, Crawford Alexander Mann III.
Download or read book A Market for Merchant Princes written by and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Duveen written by Samuel Nathaniel Behrman and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2003 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published as a serial in "The New Yorker, " this dramatic true-life story of Joseph Duveen--called "the Most Spectacular Art Dealer of All Time"--chronicles how he single-handedly built some of the world's great art collections.
Download or read book Collecting Shakespeare written by Stephen H. Grant and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2014-04-26 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first biography of Henry and Emily Folger, who acquired the largest and finest collection of Shakespeare in the world. In Collecting Shakespeare, Stephen H. Grant recounts the American success story of Henry and Emily Folger of Brooklyn, a couple who were devoted to each other, in love with Shakespeare, and bitten by the collecting bug. Shortly after marrying in 1885, the Folgers started buying, cataloging, and storing all manner of items about Shakespeare and his era. Emily earned a master's degree in Shakespeare studies. The frugal couple worked passionately as a tight-knit team during the Gilded Age, financing their hobby with the fortune Henry earned as president of Standard Oil Company of New York, where he was a trusted associate of John D. Rockefeller Sr. While a number of American universities offered to house the collection, the Folgers wanted to give it to the American people. Afraid the price of antiquarian books would soar if their names were revealed, they secretly acquired prime real estate on Capitol Hill near the Library of Congress. They commissioned the design and construction of an elegant building with a reading room, public exhibition hall, and the Elizabethan Theatre. The Folger Shakespeare Library was dedicated on the Bard's birthday, April 23, 1932. The library houses 82 First Folios, 275,000 books, and 60,000 manuscripts. It welcomes more than 100,000 visitors a year and provides professors, scholars, graduate students, and researchers from around the world with access to the collections. It is also a vibrant center in Washington, D.C., for cultural programs, including theater, concerts, lectures, and poetry readings. The library provided Grant with unprecedented access to the primary sources within the Folger vault. He draws on interviews with surviving Folger relatives and visits to 35 related archives in the United States and in Britain to create a portrait of the remarkable couple who ensured that Shakespeare would have a beautiful home in America.
Download or read book Buying Baroque written by Edgar Peters Bowron and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2017-03-01 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although Americans have shown interest in Italian Baroque art since the eighteenth century—Thomas Jefferson bought copies of works by Salvator Rosa and Guido Reni for his art gallery at Monticello, and the seventeenth-century Bolognese school was admired by painters Benjamin West and John Singleton Copley—a widespread appetite for it only took hold in the early to mid-twentieth century. Buying Baroque tells this history through the personalities involved and the culture of collecting in the United States. The distinguished contributors to this volume examine the dealers, auction houses, and commercial galleries that provided access to Baroque paintings, as well as the collectors, curators, and museum directors who acquired and shaped American perceptions about these works, including Charles Eliot Norton, John W. Ringling, A. Everett Austin Jr., and Samuel H. Kress. These essays explore aesthetic trends and influences to show why Americans developed an increasingly sophisticated taste for Baroque art between the late eighteenth century and the 1920s, and they trace the fervent peak of interest during the 1950s and 1960s. A wide-ranging, in-depth look at the collecting of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Italian paintings in America, this volume sheds new light on the cultural conditions that led collectors to value Baroque art and the significant effects of their efforts on America’s greatest museums and galleries. In addition to the editor, contributors include Andrea Bayer, Virginia Brilliant, Andria Derstine, Marco Grassi, Ian Kennedy, J. Patrice Marandel, Pablo Pérez d’Ors, Richard E. Spear, and Eric M. Zafran.
