Introduction - Winterthur

Magazine Antiques, Jan, 2002 by Leslie Greene Bowman

Henry Francis du Pont had a grand design for everything he orchestrated at Winterthur. He integrated masterpieces within rooms, rooms with the garden outside, and the garden with the surrounding farmland landscape (see Pl. VI). That grand design was a crown that bore all of Winterthur's many jewels. Winterthur was and remains a great American country estate, perhaps the most culturally significant of all that survive as public institutions. As we celebrate our golden anniversary, we commit ourselves to preserving the estate and its history. We pledge ourselves to the vision H. F. du Pont expressed for Winterthur in the last decade of his life:

I sincerely hope that the Museum will be a continuing source of inspiration and education for all time, and that the gardens and grounds will themselves be a country place museum where visitors may enjoy as I have, not only the flowers, trees, and shrubs, but also the sunlit meadows, shady wood paths, and the peace and great calm of a country place which has been loved and taken care of for three generations.... My idea of Winterthur is that it is a country estate Museum... to show the Americans of the future what a country place and farm were like. (5)

And so it shall.

LESLIE GREENE BOWMAN is the director and chief executive officer of the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library in Winterthur, Delaware.

(1.) Biographical information in this article is taken from Ruth Lord, Henry F. du Pont and Winterthur. A Daughter's Portrait (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1999).

(2.) For more information about Chestertown House. see Joshua Ruff and William Ayres, "H. F. du Pont's Chestertown House, Southampton, New York," The Magazine ANTIQUES, vol. 160, no. 1 (July 2001), pp. 98-107.

(3.) Several articles about Odessa were published in The Magazine ANTIQUES in April 1981.

(4.) Du Pont was heavily influenced by the color and design theories of two tum-of-the-century British gardeners: William Robinson, the author of The Wild Garden (1870) and Gertrude Jekyll, the author of Wood and Garden: Notes and Thoughts. Practical and Critical, of a Working Amateur (1899).

(5.) Henry Francis du Pont, "A Possible Future: The Winterthur Museum." Willits Report (1961); and instructions to "the executors of my will, to the officers of the Winterthur Corporation, and to the... Officers, and Director of the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum" (c. 1964) (both documents in Winterthur archives, Winterthur Library, Winterthur, Delaware).