Buying Baroque

Italian Seventeenth-Century Paintings Come to America

Edgar Peters Bowron

• Publisher: Penn State University Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780271077277
• eBook ISBN: 9780271079462
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art General

Although Americans have shown interest in Italian Baroque art since the eighteenth century—Thomas Jefferson bought copies of works by Salvator Rosa and Guido Reni for his art gallery at Monticello, and the seventeenth-century Bolognese school was admired by painters Benjamin West and John Singleton Copley—a widespread appetite for it only took hold in the early to mid-twentieth century. Buying Baroque tells this history through the personalities involved and the culture of collecting in the United States.

The distinguished contributors to this volume examine the dealers, auction houses, and commercial galleries that provided access to Baroque paintings, as well as the collectors, curators, and museum directors who acquired and shaped American perceptions about these works, including Charles Eliot Norton, John W. Ringling, A. Everett Austin Jr., and Samuel H. Kress. These essays explore aesthetic trends and influences to show why Americans developed an increasingly sophisticated taste for Baroque art between the late eighteenth century and the 1920s, and they trace the fervent peak of interest during the 1950s and 1960s.

A wide-ranging, in-depth look at the collecting of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Italian paintings in America, this volume sheds new light on the cultural conditions that led collectors to value Baroque art and the significant effects of their efforts on America's greatest museums and galleries.

In addition to the editor, contributors include Andrea Bayer, Virginia Brilliant, Andria Derstine, Marco Grassi, Ian Kennedy, J. Patrice Marandel, Pablo Pérez d'Ors, Richard E. Spear, and Eric M. Zafran.

Table of contents

• COVER Front
• Copyright Page
• Series Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: The Critical Fortunes of Italian Baroque Painting in America (Edgar Peters Bowron)
• Notes to Introduction
• Chapter 1: Italian Baroque Paintings at the Ringling Museum: The Legacy of John Ringling and Chick Austin
• Notes to Chapter 1
• Chapter 2: The Atheneum to the Fore: Hartford and the Italian Baroque (Virginia Brilliant)
• Notes to Chapter 2
• Chapter 3: The American View of the “Forgotten Century” of Italian Painting: Reminiscences of a Conservator and Art Dealer (Marco Grassi)
• Notes to Chapter 3
• Chapter 4: An Invisible Web: Art Historians Behind the Collecting of Italian Baroque Art (Richard E. Spear)
• Notes to Chapter 4
• Chapter 5:Baroque in the Caribbean: Luis A. Ferré and the Museo de Arte de Ponce (Pablo Pérez d’Ors)
• Notes to Chapter 5
• Chapter 6: Dealing and Scholarship: The Heim Gallery, London, 1966–1995 (J. Patrice Marandel)
• Notes to Chapter 6
• Chapter 7: The Detroit Institute of Arts and Italian BaroquePainting (Andria Derstine)
• Notes to Chapter 7
• Chapter 8: The Bob Jones University Collection of Italian Baroque Paintings (Ian Kennedy)
• Notes to Chapter 8
• Chapter 9: Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., and His Collection of Italian Baroque Paintings (Eric M. Zafran)
• Notes to Chapter 9
• Chapter 10: Better Late than Never: Collecting Baroque Painting at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Andrea Bayer)
• Notes to Chapter 10
• NOTES
• References
• List of Contributors
• List of Artists
• Index
• COVER Back