Robert Sterling as a collector of Homer - painter Winslow Homer - Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute

Magazine Antiques, Oct, 1997 by Franklin Kelly

Robert Sterling Clark's tastes embraced many different periods and artists, but in only a few instances did he acquire more than one or two examples by a particular artist. There is Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), of course (see pp. 552-535), but the artist actually represented in the Clark collection by the largest number of works in all mediums is Winslow Homer. Clark acquired the first of ten Homer oils, Two Guides [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE V OMITTED] in 1916, and the last, Playing a Fish [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE III OMITTED], in 1955, the year the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute opened. In the years between he also amassed a rich representation of works in the other mediums in which Homer worked during his long career - watercolor, drawing, etching, and wood engraving. Anyone seriously interested in Homer's work knows very well that the Clark Art Institute simply must be visited, for its holdings rival those of larger institutions like the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City; the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; and the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York City.(1) But numbers alone do not do justice to just how well Clark collected Homer, for included in his purchases are a number of works that are unarguably among the artist's finest creations. Moreover, they cover the entire chronological span of Homer's career, from the luminous early oil Bridle Path, White Mountains [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE VI OMITTED] to the heroic Undertow [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE IV OMITTED] from the mid-1880s and the extraordinary late seascape West Point, Prout's Neck [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE VII OMITTED], and from early watercolors of Houghton Farm (near Mountainville, New York) to unsurpassed late examples such as An October Day [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE I OMITTED] and A Good Pool, Saguenay River [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE II OMITTED].

What drew Clark to Homer's work, and just what in it so appealed to him? He left few clues about his collecting generally, but perhaps there is something to be gleaned about his feelings for Homer from an encounter he had with another great collector of his generation, Chester Dale (1885-1962).(2) In November 1945 both men were in New York and Dale insisted on taking Clark to an exhibition of paintings by George Wesley Bellows (1882-1925), whose work Dale greatly admired. Clark, though generally skeptical of Bellows's greatness, did admire several of the pictures. He described one as "a seascape of waves bursting on a solitary rock with leaden sky" that was "powerful like a Winslow Homer but very personal,"(3) provoking Dale to assert that Bellows was the "greatest American painter greater than Homer." On that point, Clark noted, "we agreed to disagree."

The following day Clark managed to pull, as he described it, "a real one on Dale." He suggested they go to M. Knoedler and Company in New York City "to see a couple of good pictures," but did not tell Dale what they were. He arranged to have brought in Frederic Remington's Dismounted: The Fourth Trooper Moving the Led Horses(4) and Homer's West Point, Prout's Neck, and then observed Dale's reaction with satisfaction:

Both big pictures and very powerful. They really supplement one another. Dale was positively stunned. Never said a word for 2 or 3 minutes. It takes something to stun him! While I thoroughly enjoyed my triumph. Then he remarked "I never saw a Homer nor a Remington like those before." I agreed "Neither have I except the fine Homely in the Metropolitan and I never expected to be able to buy any as impressive in the market." He looked and be looked at the Homer & I could feel he was becoming dubious about Bellows being greater than Winslow Homer. But he was loyal to Bellows and finally said "But the Bellows will not fall down alongside of it. "I agreed. It won't because Bellows was a sincere painter. As a matter of fact I reserved the Bellows seascape until Monday when I an going to have the Homer and it face-to-face. What a day! Two crazy old picture collectors admiring each others pictures and actually saying so. I think you could say a most unusual occurrence.

The face-off between the Homer and Bellows paintings (if it actually occurred) most have convinced Clark that his initial judgment was correct, for he never did acquire a painting by Bellows. Nor, for that matter, did Dale change his mind, for although he massed a stunning group of works by Bellows (all now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.), he seems never to have owned a painting by Homer. But the amusing details of the two collectors' encounter do tell us something about what Clark found in Homer's art. That he considered West Point, Prout's Neck (and Remington's Dismounted) a "big" picture most likely meant not that he admired its physical size but that he appreciated in it the qualities that Thomas Eakins (1844-1916) had identified as distinguishing the work of "big" painters, namely honesty, allegiance to nature, and the ability to use color and form to get to the essence of things.(5) According to Eakins: