Living with antiques: A collection where East meets West

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 2001 by Michael Quick

How collectors decide on the focus of their collection is often a fascinating process. An interesting case in point is the story of a couple who came to American art after having achieved distinction as collectors of Asian, especially Japanese, art.

Their approach to American art was conditioned by what they had learned from Japanese art. First, they had acquired an advanced awareness of two-dimensional design, an essential quality of Japanese art and one that immediately sets up a tension between what is represented and how it is represented. Thus, for this couple, a painting's subject does not hold the absolute primacy it does with most collectors. A second quality they had learned through their study and collecting of Japanese art was attentiveness to subtlety for the goal of all Japanese masters is refinement and nuance. This is different from the expectations of many collectors of American art, who often do not expect to find much beyond the first impact. Yet another distinctive quality that these collectors brought to their collecting was connoisseurship. In collecting Japanese art, they sought the advice of distinguished experts, from whom they could learn not only about their subject but also the skills of perception that mark the connoisseur. I was flattered to be chosen by these collectors as their adviser for American art and to have the opportunity to work with them, observe their approach, and assist with their choices.

Their expectations about art inevitably led the collectors to focus on American art of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, a period that itself had felt the influence of Japanese art. Between about 1875 and 1885 the aesthetic movement brought to American decorative and fine art circles a new consciousness of Japanese art, particularly an emphasis on the decoration of surfaces and thus an increased awareness of two dimensional design. Evidence of this influence can be found in the work of artists as important as Winslow Homer (1836-1910) and George Inness (1825-1894) in the late 1870s, as well as in the work of many other painters.

Coinciding with the influence of the aesthetic movement was a new consciousness of the painted surface among young artists returning to New York from study in Munich and especially Paris in the late 1870s and 1880s. There they had learned to appreciate brilliant technique. Subject matter diminished in interest, while how the subject was painted became paramount. This reversal of the usual interest was seen in the exhibitions of the newly formed Society of American Artists in the late 1870s, to which young artists often sent their preparatory oil sketches for the finished paintings they exhibited the same year at the National Academy of Design. In their sketches they were showing their colleagues how economically or expressively they could paint and how beautifully they manipulated the medium. Thus another point of contact between American art of this period and Japanese art is an intense interest in the way a work is painted.

The artists who emerged in the 1870s were supported by a considerable expansion in the amount of newspaper coverage for contemporary art, together with a noticeable increase in the sophistication of the reviewers. As the latters' sensitivity and influence steadily increased past the turn of the century, artists could take chances on more complicated or more subtle paintings, certain that they would be viewed sympathetically. They were likewise supported by avant-garde dealers such as Newman E. Montross (1849-1932) and William Macbeth (1851- 1917), both in New York City, and by a generation of collectors of great sophistication, including William K. Bixby, Thomas B. Clarke, William T. Evans, Charles Lang Freer, John Gellatly, and George A. Hearn.

The artists were, however, painting for a relatively small group of perceptive individuals, and many decades later much of their work still did not have broad appeal. This is where their years of developing a discriminating eye for Japanese art began to pay off for the couple whose collection is featured in this article. For example, they were able to purchase two wonderful paintings by Dwight William Tryon, May (Pl. IX) and Early Morning (Pl. XIII), at a time when the artist was of little interest to major dealers. The collectors' crucial advantage was that they were accustomed to responding to subtlety. In Early Morning Tryon used dim light and mist to soften shapes, and he placed one screen of trees in front of two others, further confusing the reading of the landscape. Such layering makes the painting inaccessible to anyone responding to it hastily or superficially. Displayed in a gallery window at street level on Madison Avenue in New York City, Early Morning was by-passed by many glancing American art c ollectors, but these collectors stopped, studied it, and recognized it for what it was.

Like many of their paintings, Early Morning was painted with the expectation that the viewer would take an active part in understanding and enjoying it. To appreciate it, one must spend some time registering the slight variations in the intensity of the several greens that provide the key to the spatial separation of the three screens of trees, opening up the distant space. Close observation of the intensity and texture of the painting also unveils considerable space in the foreground meadow, which initially appears flat and shallow. By this point the patient viewer is also able to see the slight pink that so gently tints the sky and parts of the landscape. Next the viewer senses the warm light filtering through the cool green of the fine foliage in the screen of tallest and nearest trees. More and more content gradually emerges--the light on the distant field, the low wall crossing the painting near the row of tall trees, the bushes by the wall, and the foreground weeds. Most importantly, the viewer begins t o experience the painting's very poetic feeling, a delicate, tender, and exquisite feeling that is produced by suggestion and nuance.