Description
Book SynopsisA collection of essays by twelve scholars and museum curators examining the allure of Flemish painting to Americans over the past centuries, chronicling the roles played by determined individuals in forming private and public collections.
Trade Review“America and the Art of Flanders is yet another excellent volume in an already impressive series on the history of collecting in the United States. It investigates the changing interest in Flemish art over time—and what happens when private love of art becomes institutional collecting. It also deals with many different American museum collections as part of a greater national collection. This is rarely done, and it is great food for thought.”
—Peter Hecht,Professor Emeritus of Art History, Utrecht University, the Netherlands
“America and the Art of Flanders provides a thorough evaluation of the different forces that shaped collectors’ taste for Flemish art in the United States, thereby furthering our understanding of the diverse processes and mechanisms that constitute the creation of collections, both public and private. As such, the volume is a milestone in the systematic study of collecting and taste in America, as well as an important contribution to the history of collecting as an expanding research field explored from the academic as well as museum perspective.”
—Ulrike Müller caa.reviews
“America and the Art of Flanders [...] gathers together a dozen carefully researched, eloquently written, and beautifully illustrated essays bringing new and detailed focus to the American enthusiasm for Flemish art over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.”
—Virginia Brilliant Journal of the History of Collections
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations
Preface
Esmée Quodbach
Introduction: Pleasure and Prestige: The Complex History of Collecting Flemish Art in America Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr.
Part 1. The Early Years: The Formation of America’s Taste for Flemish Painting
1. Before Modern Connoisseurship: Robert Gilmor, Jr.’s, Quest for Flemish Paintings in the Early Republic
Lance Humphries
2. Collecting the Art of Flanders in Antebellum New York
Margaret R. Laster
3. The American Van Dyck
Adam Eaker
4. A Family Affair: Bruegel and Sons in America
Louisa Wood Ruby
Part 2. The Gilded Age and Beyond
5. In Search of Major Masters: Boston’s History of Collecting Flemish Baroque Painting
Ronni Baer
6. “Never a Dull Picture”: John Graver Johnson Collects Flemish Art
Esmée Quodbach
7. Creating an Acquired Taste for Flemish Paintings: The Advice of W. R. Valentiner and Others
Dennis P. Weller
8. Collecting Seventeenth-Century Flemish Paintings in the Midwest
George S. Keyes
Part 3. The Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries: The Dissemination of Flemish Art Across America
9. From Personal Treasures to Public Gifts: The Flemish Painting Collection at the National Gallery of Art
Alexandra Libby
10. Collecting Rubens in America
Marjorie E. Wieseman
11. “It Is a Great Painting for a Museum”: Collecting Flemish Paintings in Southern California
Anne T. Woollett
Notes
References
List of Contributors
List of Artists’ Names
Index
