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

Magazine Antiques, Jan, 2000 by Carrie Rebora Barratt

The trustees' only discussion of Hearn's offer pertained to his condition that his paintings hang together in a single gallery, rather than being split into their native schools, as was the practice at many of the large European museums. Hearn's previous donations had included works by English, Dutch, Flemish, and French artists, and he wished to hang American works side by side with these-to "show that good American pictures can hold their own against the foreigners." [7] The trustees prevailed upon Hearn to honor the museum's policy against gifts with conditions as to display, and the gift was readily accepted, with the understanding that the museum authorities would "consider themselves under moral obligation" [8] to conform to Hearn's wish that the collection be kept together for no less than twenty-five years and that thereafter the pictures could be divided by school so long as they were neatly labeled as gifts of George A. Hearn.

With the gift settled, the museum quickly dipped into the Hearn Fund, and in 1906 acquired three paintings for five thousand dollars: Frank Weston Benson's Portrait of a Lady of 1901, William Merritt Chase's Seventeenth Century Lady of about 1895, and William Sergeant Kendall's Seer of about 1906. Hearn himself oversaw the fund and the expenditures from it, acting as the de facto curator of American paintings while abiding by his own terms for the fund, which stipulated that it be used for "paintings by persons now living, who are, or may be at the time of purchase, citizens of the United States of America, or by those hereafter born who may at the time of purchase, have become citizens thereof." [9] He had allowed for every contingency in terms of upgrading the collection and welcomed deaccessioning a work if a better example by the same artist was found, or if it proved to be inauthentic.

Hearn's generosity doubled and redoubled over the years, as he not only sought out paintings to purchase with the Hearn Fund but also presented many fine works as outright gifts. In 1907 he used the fund to purchase John Francis Murphy's Old Barn of 1906 and Robert Reid's Fleur de Lis (P1. I); then in 1908, two more: John White Alexander's Study in Black and Green, painted before 1906, and William Merritt Chases Still Life. Fish (P1. IV). In 1909 he directly gave ten paintings, including John Henry Twachtman's Water fall (P1. VI) and Frederick Chide Hassam's Coast Scene, Isles of Shoals of 1901, and used the Hearn Fund to purchase five others, among them Mary Cassatt's Mother and Child (Baby Getting Up from His Nap) (P1. V). In 1910 he gave eleven more pictures outright, including William MacGregor Paxton's Tea Leaves (P1. IX), Theodore Robinson's Bird's-Eye View, and Elihu Vedder's Pleiades, painted in 1885. The twenty-one paintings Hearn donated over this two-year period all came from his private collect ion, which he continually replenished.

In 1911 Hearn commemorated the sudden death of his son, on Christmas Day 1910, by creating a separate endowment fund of one hundred thousand dollars and by presenting the museum with four additional paintings. [10] In addition, his daughters, Mary Hearn Greims and Alice Hearn Schanck, each gave a painting in memory of their brother--John White Alexander's Ring of 1911 and Alexander Helwig Wyant's Tennessee of 1866, respectively.