Provenance, Ownership, and art in America

Hello readers!

I have decided to revive this blog and use this venue more specifically for writing about issues about researching art and artworks, since my other blog platform has gotten far broader than library issues.  There is so much exciting work happening on museum websites that makes it easier to locate provenance and exhibit history, and that is what I want to write about today.

But let's back up a little bit:  researchers often want to know how a certain artwork came to reside in a certain place, as well as the places where an artwork has traveled for exhibition.  I had the uncanny feeling of time travel this spring when I went to see an exhibition at of artwork owned by the National Galleries of Scotland.  While I have read about the artwork of Frederick Edwin Church and seen images of his paintings, the exhibit at the De Young was the first time I saw one of his canvases in person.  The enormous canvas of Niagara Falls is stunning--in size and in artistry.  It is one of those miraculous canvases that continues to open up the longer you gaze at it and every time you look at it from another place in the room.  You can see a digital copy here:  https://www.nationalgalleries.org/collection/artists-a-z/c/artist/frederic-edwin-church/object/niagara-falls-from-the-american-side-ng-799

You may be dazzled by the digital version, as well you might be by the composition and colors, but on my screen it displays about the size of a postcard.  This is a shame!  In person, the canvas is taller and (thank goodness) wider than me--it is enormous, you can lose yourself in the shimmering water and try to see just around the bend of the river. 

I was feeling time-traveley when I looked at this painting and then noted on the exhibition information that it was painted in New York, possibly exhibited in Paris in 1900, then donated to Scotland by one Mr. John Stewart Kennedy.  And there I was in San Francisco, halfway around the world from Scotland, looking at a scene of New York over 100 years old, the blues of the water and sky so fresh and skillful that I was captivated.  This canvas outlived its creator, but I experienced Church's vision of the famous waterfalls.

So, the exhibition note gave me some information, as does the museum website, but what would I do if I wanted to confirm the 1900 exhibition of the painting, read more about Church, and more about J.S. Kennedy?

To the catalog of course, to search for Church, Frederic Edwin as the author and the subject, doing these same searches in Link+ to find more books. 

My interest in John Stewart Kennedy is piqued because there are not entries for him in American National Biography or the Dictionary of National Biography.  In  Link+ there is this title:  The man who found the money : John Stewart Kennedy and the financing of the western railroads / Saul Engelbourg and Leornard Bushkoff and the titles that also list Kennedy, Stewart J have the following juicy subject headings:  Kennedy John S John Stewart 1830 1909 Trials Litigation Etc

Now, why is it then when we are researching Philanthropists, the subject heading Capitalists and Financiers appear hmm?? 

This summer I have been reading a title that answers that question in part:  Old Masters, New World:  America's Raid on Europe's Great Pictures by Cynthia Salztman (Viking 2008).  She puts it eloquently but plainly to explain why America's robber barons were eager to acquire and display European paintings, "Although it may seem ironic that Americans were drawn to images of England in the era of George III--the king from whom they had independence in the Revolution a century before, by taking possession of the portraits, Americans marked a financial and cultural conquest"  (107).

Financial and cultural conquest indeed.  Having been to the Morgan "library" in New York City and been simultaneously dazzled and disheartened at the bibliographic treasures in floor to ceiling locked cases, it is clear that Morgan's acquisitions of art was more about inventory than taste.  While the Isabella Steward Gardner collection presents its own series of curious acquisition,

Of course, who am I to judge the desire to acquire art in the days before large museums, mass produced books, and now online galleries of digital images?  The historical precedent for "collecting" art as a means of demonstrating cultural dominance was already a tradition by Napoleon before J.P. Morgan Chase came along, wasn't it?  At least when Capitalists and Financiers purchase art, the provenance trail is a little clearer than wartime looting and hoarding?

But to return to my original discussion about researching provenance and exhibition history, I want to return to the idea of patronage.  Let's take the Titian canvas "Rape of Europa" as our example.  As Saltzman recounts, the canvas that Isabella Stewart Gardner coveted and ultimately brought the U.S. was originally created as a commissioned artwork by Philip II of Spain.  However, the canvas traveled after its creation.  "Titian's Europa had remained in the Spanish royal collection until the early eighteenth century when Louis Philippe, duc d'Orleans, acquired it.  When, in 1798, the Orleans collection was sold and the paintings went to  England, Europa ended up in the possession of the 4th Earl of Darnley, who hung it in his house, Cobham Hall, in Surrey" (74). 

How does a 21st Century viewer understand this wildly out of context painting? Does it matter that the painting is separated from the other Titian "poesies" based on Ovid, that is no longer in a royal collection, that it hangs in a gallery an ocean away from where it was created?

I leave you with these questions for now.