Walter and Matilda Gay in Paris and the country

Magazine Antiques, Dec, 2000 by William Rieder

The Gays did not think of themselves as collectors of antiques. The eighteenth-century furniture, porcelain, clocks, and other objects they bought were of good, often very good, quality, but they were regarded as essentially decorative furnishings. Where they did see themselves as collectors, and accurately so, was in the field of old master drawings (see frontispiece). The formation of the collection was described by their friend "Daisy" Margaret Terry Chanler (1862-1946):

Very early in Walter Gay's career he began to collect the drawings and paintings which now hang on his walls, the envy of museums. They were gathered slowly, one by one, with great love. Some of the masterpieces were bought in the old days when money was scarce, before fame was attained. Matilda agreed to go without a carriage one winter that he might acquire Durer's wonderful watercolor of a hare. The collection has a quality all its own....His sensitive understanding seems to reconcile the differing schools and widely different periods, for they do not clash or detract from one another. [5]

Many of the best drawings were bought at auction, where Matilda's first experience of bidding was a not uncommon one. At a sale in 1905,

The Gays' collection was strongest in Dutch drawings of the seventeenth century (including twenty-three by Rembrandt) and French works of the eighteenth century. Matilda presented most of the drawings to the Musee du Louvre in 1938 as "La Donation Walter Gay."

we sat in the front row, in reserved seats, and I became very much excited, having never before bid at an auction sale. Trembling in every limb, hot and cold by turns, we bid for and carried off the aquarelle La Fete de Saint-Cloud by Fragonard.

Of collectors in general, Matilda did not have a high opinion, writing: "I am convinced that collecting dries up the milk of human kindness, if you do nothing else to counteract it. Collectors are really birds of prey." As collecting was only a small part of their very busy lives, the Gays did much to counteract its evil effects. They generally spent January through April in Paris and the rest of the year at Le Breau, a large eighteenth-century chateau in a three-hundred-acre walled park near the Fontainebleau forest (see P1. II). On May 10, 1913, Matilda wrote in her diary:

With W.G. to Le Breau, to settle ourselves for the season, a very rococo thing to do in the eyes of our mundane friends, who prefer to spend this most enchanting time of the year in the dust, noise, and crowd of Paris, entertaining each other.

The Gays generally stayed for several days at a nearby hotel while their twenty servants (including gardeners and groundskeepers) prepared the house.

The chateau had been acquired and extensively renovated in the 1880s by the comte de Gramont, who had installed Louis XV-style paneling in the principal reception rooms. The Gays fell completely in love with the house when they first saw it in 1904. "It is a beautiful place, and a fine house handsomely furnished with authentic 18th century furniture," Matilda wrote. The Gays first leased the house and then in 1907 bought it fully furnished for 765,000 francs (about $2.5 million today). The furniture represented about one-fifth of the cost. "Madame de Gramont wrote us the price of the furniture at Le Breau," Matilda recalled. "The sum total was a blow--it seems such a large amount for us to sink. We went to see her about it, and managed to come to a better understanding. She was an angel--and of such is the kingdom of heaven."