Living with antiques: A collection where East meets West

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 2001 by Michael Quick

Beyond seeking works that require active investigation, the collectors have always looked for paintings the surfaces of which are themselves expressions of exceptional beauty. As mentioned above, the way something is painted is often everything in Japanese art, and it was of primary interest to some American artists of the late nineteenth century among them Abbott Handerson Thayer, who is represented in the collection by a landscape and a portrait. His Portrait of Bessie Price (Pl. II) won the Thomas B. Clarke Prize when it was exhibited at the National Academy of Design in 1898. Its image of the ideal young woman is appealing, even in reproduction, but what can be seen only in the original is the breathtaking brilliance of the brushwork, which makes believable fabrics out of a magical jumble of free unhesitating brushstrokes. Many collectors are oblivious to minor miracles of technique like this, but these two collectors were accustomed to always examining and responding to technique in their Japanese painti ng, and so they looked for it in their American paintings as well. Skillful, sensuous surfaces are an additional pleasure in almost all the American paintings in their collection.

Finally I would like to bring into sharper focus one unusual asset these collectors brought to their search, namely their respect for art. Consider how they display and view their large collection of choice Japanese scrolls and screens. Normally, these works are carefully stored away but when there is an occasion for viewing, individual pieces are brought out one at a time and displayed in a tokonoma, or alcove, alone or often with a flower arrangement. This approach, which anticipates that a special, rare experience will reward the fully focused and informed viewer; was the key element that they transferred from the one area of collecting to the other. They expected that their paintings would be wonderful, and those expectations gave them the courage to reach for the exceptional.

The combination of Asian art and American art in this collection calls to mind the celebrated collection of Charles Lang Freer (1854--1919), the founder on the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Interestingly, he began by collecting American paintings, and indeed owned works by some of the very artists who are prominent in the collection discussed here: Thomas Dewing, Dwight Tryon, Abbott Thayer, and especially James McNeill Whistler. Freer then moved in the opposite direction and began collecting the Asian art that so well represented the qualities he admired in his American paintings. It would appear that Asian art and this most poetic aspect of American art are a natural, perhaps inevitable, combination.

Most of the paintings in this article are on view in Poetic Painting an exhibition at Vance Jordan Fine Art in New York City until December 7.

MICHAEL QUICK is the director of the George Inness catalogue raisonne in Santa Monica, California, and serves as an adviser to certain collectors of American art.