George A. Hearn: "Good American pictures can hold their own." - Metropolitan Museum of Art benefactor

Magazine Antiques, Jan, 2000 by Carrie Rebora Barratt

As a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a decade beginning in 1903, George Arnold Hearn (1835-1913) typically took a seat near one end of the long boardroom table. He rarely said a word and sat "smiling the quiet smile which was his peculiar attribute," all the while offering tremendous gifts of art and cash to the museum. [1] In total, he provided acquisition endowments amounting to $251,000 and gave no fewer than 130 paintings, ranging from his first gift in 1894, George Inness's Peace and Plenty (P1. II), to his last in 1913, Edwin Austin Abbey's "King Lear," act I, scene 1 (P1. III). Heam's personal collecting interests were varied and voracious, and although he gave the museum a group of choice English pictures and old masters, he dedicated the vast majority of his nearly annual gifts and expenditures to works by living American artists. By the time of his death, the otherwise unassuming Heam was called "one of the most conspicuous and enthusiastic patrons of art in the country" [2] and "the first [collector] to cause Americans to appreciate their art." [3]

The son of Caroline Lancaster and James Arnold Hearn, George A. Hearn was the scion to one of the country's most reputable and profitable dry-goods concerns. Established as Arnold, Hearn and Company in 1827, by the middle of the century the company was known as Hearn Brothers. Located at 425 Broadway near Canal Street, it successfully rivaled A. T. Stewart, Brooks Brothers, and a slew of other specialized retailers. In 1860 George A. Hearn became his father's partner in the business, which was renamed James A. Hearn and Son and moved again, this time into grand quarters on West Fourteenth Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, where Macy's was its principal competitor. In 1884, George Hearn's son, Arthur, joined the firm, and eventually so did his three sons-in-law. [4] Entering the twentieth century, the firm was one of the most stable businesses in the country. It remained viable until 1955.

Hearn's commitment to the Metropolitan Museum followed his involvement in numerous other social and cultural associations. He served on the council of the University of the City of New York and was a patron of the American Museum of Natural History and of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences (now the Brooklyn Museum of Art). He was a member of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, the New York Chamber of Commerce, and the Seamen's Christian Association, His collecting habits seem to have evolved over the course of his adult life, with an escalation of acquisitions during the 1890s, and it may have been his outstanding and varied collections, as well as his business acumen, that brought him to the attention of the museum. Hearn regularly loaned works from his collection to exhibitions at the Lotos Club, where he was an active member after 1894 and held a seat on the art committee. After one such show the New York Telegram of January 25, 1895. reported that Hearn owned "the choicest collec tion of pictures of anyone in this country."

By the time he took his seat at the Metropolitan Museum's board table, Hearn owned more than three hundred paintings, primarily English and European, and had amassed significant collections of Chinese porcelain, gold watches, jade, bronzes, English miniatures, and carved ivories. Select gifts had preceded his invitation to join the board, and his involvement swiftly accelerated after his acceptance. He became a member of the trustees' committee on painting and the auditing committee, serving for many years as chairman of the latter. In 1905 he was named a museum benefactor, a title that acknowledged his generosity

While his philanthropy could be measured on a grand scale, he customarily assisted the museum m arcane matters as well. For instance, in early 1906, after conservators and preparators first devised a satisfactory method of lining cases for the display of small works of art (in this instance it was William Henry Huntington's [1820-1885] collections of medals of Washington, Franklin, and Lafayette), curators shopped for the proper fabric at Hearn's on Fourteenth Street, and George Hearn personally waited on them and paid the bill. [5]

Hearn came to American art relatively late in his career as a collector, and perhaps rather casually An acquaintance of many artists, he was a regular at exhibitions at the National Academy of Design and began buying American paintings in the mid1890s, later explaining, "I have never discriminated in making purchases, the test always being, 'Is the picture good,' and the only preference being, to buy the American when quality and value were equal." [6] His decision to build an American paintings collection for the Metropolitan Museum came almost entirely of his own volition and was received as a mixed blessing.

The museum had been founded with contemporary artists on its board, but little attention had been paid to American art. In 1879 the museum's first director, General Luigi Palma di Cesnola (1832-1904), had suggested that the collection include key examples of early American painting and a number of trustees had complied: Henry G. Marquand gave a portrait of Alexander Hamilton by John Trumbull, Collis P. Huntington presented a full-length of George Washington by Charles Willson Peale, Henry O. Havemeyer donated a Gilbert Stuart of Washington, and Samuel P. Avery gave Matthew Pratt's American School of 1765. In 1905, long after Cesnola's initiative had languished, the trustees passed a motion to renew these efforts, but by all accounts, no one anticipated Hearn's proposal of December 18, 1905, when he offered the trustees twenty-seven American paintings and an endowment fund of one hundred thousand dollars for future purchases. The paintings offered included recent works by some of the country's leading artists , including Ralph Albert Blakelock, George H. Bogert, Elliott Daingerfield, Abbott Handerson Thayer, Dwight Tryon, and others, as well as two paintings by Winslow Homer (see Pl. VII).