Russian icons at Hillwood

Magazine Antiques, March, 2003 by Wendy Salmond

The traveling exhibition of icons between 1929 and 1932 had done much to establish the prestige of medieval icons in the eyes of new American collectors, and the notion that "late" icons of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries represented the ignoble decadence of a long and glorious art tradition had become an unquestioned truism.

By contrast, the icons that Marjorie Post purchased shortly after leaving Moscow show her to have been a collector at ease with her taste, however unfashionable it might have been. While Ambassador Davies was ready to concede that "the primitives which are not incrusted with metal are generally older and in many instances more interesting than those with the metallic covering," (2) it was precisely these later icons with their often magnificent trappings that appealed to his wife. From A La Vieille Russie (1851-), which had opened in Paris in 1921, she purchased icons of the Mother of God "Pledge to Sufferers" (P1. II), the Three-handed Mother of God (1790), and the patron saints of marriage and family Guril, Samon, and Aviv (an unusually fine example of late nineteenth-century painting and metalwork). With their beautifully crafted covers ornamented with niello, filigree, and enamel, these icons were as much examples of the luxury decorative arts as of icon painting, and they coexisted quite happily with the porcelains and gold boxes in Marjorie Post's growing collection.

Returning to the United States in 1940, the Davieses found an environment unusually receptive to things Russian, thanks to the Soviet Union's heroic resistance to the German invasion. Like other American collections, such as those of Henry Walters (1848-1931), then in the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, and Hann's in Pittsburgh, the Davieses' icons were loaned to exhibitions in aid of Russian war relief and thus their historical and cultural importance were made more widely known. It was also during the years of World War II that Marjorie Post acquired two icons with imperial provenances. From the Schaffer Collection of Authentic Russian Imperial Art Treasures (subsequently A La Vieille Russie in New York City) came a small icon of the Iverskaia Mother of God in a filigree enamel and pearl-bedecked cover made by the Moscow firm founded by Pavel Akimovich Ovchinnikov (Pl. IV). It came with an unverified provenance stating that it was from the Alexander Palace (built 1792-1800) at Tsarskoe Selo where Nicholas II (r. 1894-19 17) and his family had had their private apartments. Marjorie Post's fascination for objects with imperial connections soon became known to her friends and family, and in 1943 she received a small, gold and gem-covered icon of the Mother of God "Surety of Sinners" from her niece Barbara Woolworth Hutton (1912-1979). An engraved plaque on the back recorded that it was a gift made in 1912 to the Czarevich Alexei (1904-1918) while he was suffering a severe hemophiliac attack.

In 1955 the Davieses divorced and their Russian collection was divided equally between them. Over the following years Post rebuilt the icon part of her collection, buying at auction, or from dealers whenever something especially fascinating came her way.