The John Wilmerding collection: a scholar's gift to the National Gallery of Art

Magazine Antiques, Sept, 2004 by Nancy K. Anderson

At a dinner last May to celebrate an exhibition of paintings and drawings from his personal collection at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D. C., John Wilmerding astonished the guests by announcing that the artworks on display would remain in the museum as his gift to the nation. (1) As the gallery's former senior curator of American art and deputy director, Wilmerding knew its collection well, and over a long period of time had thoughtfully acquired works that both filled gaps and built on strengths. (2) His gift brings to the National Gallery its first painting by George Caleb Bingham, its first oil from Winslow Homer's important Cullercoats period, its first marsh scene by Martin Johnson Heade, its first watercolor by Thomas Eakins, its first European landscape by John Frederick Kensett, its first oil study by Frederic Edwin Church, its first drawings by Ralph Albert Blacklock and Fitz Hugh Lane, and its first works in any medium by Thomas Charles Farrer, Jervis McEntee, Alvan Fisher, Edward Seager, Alfred Thompson Bricher, and Adelheid Dietrich. It is one of the most important gifts in the history of the museum.

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These paintings and drawings reflect Wilmerding's early experience growing up in a family of passionate collectors as well as his later career as a teacher, curator, and scholar. By his own account, Wilmerding's interest in art history as a discipline began when he enrolled in an introductory course (affectionately dubbed "Darkness at Noon") at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Held in the basement of the Fogg Art Museum, the course was taught by a group of charismatic instructors that included John Phillips Coolidge (1913-1995), the noted architectural historian, and Seymour Slive, the eminent scholar of northern baroque art. As Wilmerding later recalled,

When the lights went out, there was this world of visual images that
struck a nerve with me instantly, and the realization early on that you
could look at facades or a ground plan--it didn't matter from where or
when--and suddenly a whole culture came to life. That was the experience
that set me on the track. (3)

Although he had entered college intending to study American literature, Wilmerding soon became an art history major and later wrote his senior thesis on the American marine painter Fitz Hugh Lane.

As a boy, Wilmerding had learned to sail under the tutelage of his father, an accomplished and highly competitive recreational sailor. Not only did he grow to love sailing as a youngster, he later found an unexpected application for his nautical skills:

My understanding of sailing helped me evaluate paintings of sailing
vessels from a practical point of view. I knew how to write about
rigging and details of boat handling, and I was able to distinguish
good painters like Lane from other marine painters.

His research on Lane eventually led to his first professional publication (4) and his first acquisition.

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During his student days in Cambridge, and especially while conducting research on Lane, Wilmerding regularly visited the art galleries along Newbury Street in Boston. In 1960, near the end of his senior year, he learned that an exceptionally beautiful painting by Lane had arrived at Childs Gallery. Entitled Stage Rocks and Western Shore of Gloucester Outer Harbor (Pl. III), it was painted during the decade following Lane's return to Gloucester, Massachusetts, his birthplace. Rich in the subtle effects of light and meditative calm for which the artist is justly celebrated, the painting understandably carried a high price. After consulting his father (who warned that such a purchase would require sacrifices in other areas), Wilmerding bought the painting. For more than forty years, Lane's harbor view remained a touchstone in his collection, setting a standard of quality against which other possible acquisitions were measured.

At the National Gallery, Stage Rocks and Western Shore of Gloucester Outer Harbor will join three other paintings by Lane: New York Harbor (1852), Becalmed off Halfway Rock (1860), and Lumber Schooners at Evening on Penobscot Bay (1863). Wilmerding's gift also includes two drawings completed during Lane's early trips to Maine: Castine from Wasson's Hill, Brooksville, Maine (1850) and Entrance of Somes Sound, Mount Desert, Maine (1855).

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Five years after acquiring Lane's view of Gloucester Harbor, Wilmerding bought his second painting, a rare work by George Caleb Bingham entitled Mississippi Boatman (Pl. IV). As he later recalled, he saw the picture shortly after it arrived at Vose Galleries on one of his "regular pilgrimages to Newbury Street." The price was high, and others had already expressed interest in the picture. Again he consulted his father, and after being advised to make his own decision, he bought the painting. Reflecting on the purchase years later, Wilmerding noted: "I did not know I was collecting--it was the decision to buy the Bingham that made me a collector. I went from acquiring a work I knew extremely well to adding something very different."