Old Masters, New World

Home > Other > Old Masters, New World > Page 34
Old Masters, New World Page 34

by Cynthia Saltzman


  156“two weeks past”: HCF to AC, June 30, 1891, Martha Frick Symington Sanger, Henry Clay Frick: An Intimate Portrait (New York: Abbeville Press, 1998), 141.

  156“close attention”: HCF to AC, July 14, 1891, HCFP, GLB, TFC/FARL.

  156“the duties that surround me”: AC to HCF, August 3, 1891, HCFP, C, TFC/FARL.

  157“somewhat autocratic”: U.S. Congress ­House of Representatives, 1892, in Warren, Triumphant, 92.

  157“labor trouble”: HCF to AC, July 18, 1892, in Nasaw, Carnegie, 435.

  157“interfere in any way”: AC to the New York World (July 10, 1892), ibid., 429.

  157“those at seat of war”: AC to George Lauder, Jr., July 17, 1892, ibid., 434.

  157“wrong with industrial America”: Ibid., 460.

  158“the battle out”: HCF to AC, July 23, 1892, in Warren, Triumphant, 89.

  158“never, never!” John Elmer Milholland, July 30, 1892, ibid., 89.

  158“then give way”: AC to HCF, September 30, 1892, in Nasaw, Carnegie, 444.

  158“open for him”: HCF to AC, September 10, 1892, ibid., 445.

  158“wrongly got”: AC to HCF, October 1, 1892, ibid., 446.

  158“decline in the ­union:” Warren, Triumphant, 95.

  159reached $7 million: Nasaw, Carnegie, 469.

  159“Not one hour . . .” AC to George Lauder, Jr., June 23, 1899, ibid., 564.

  159$38,000: For the prices of HCF’s painting purchases, see HCFP, Art Files, and HCFACF, TFC/FARL.

  159to Pittsburgh: Arthur Tooth & Co. to HCF, August 30, 1899, HCFP, C, TFC/FARL. “I have instructed our New York ­House to send you the Rembrandt picture. The price is 38,000 dollars.”

  160“pop­u­lar today than Rembrandt”: Kenyon Cox, Old Masters and New (New York: Duffield & Company, 1908), 115.

  160first modern “blockbuster”: Francis Haskell, Ephemeral Museum, 102.

  160“Rembrandt’s style”: Catherine Scallen, Rembrandt: Reputation and the Practice of Connoisseurship (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2003), 134.

  161“better in En­gland”: Times (London), December 31, 1898, in Haskell, Ephemeral Museum, 143.

  161some thirty canvases: Quodbach, “Rembrandt’s Gilder,” 104.

  161over 640: Scallen, Rembrandt, 21.

  161“a high priced picture”: P. & D. Colnaghi & Co. to A. Tooth & Sons, October 5, 1899, HCFP, C, TFC/FARL.

  163“not come through M.K & Co.”: RK to HCF, October 9, 1899, HCFP, C, TFC/FARL.

  163“by Knight in stock”: DeCourcy E. McIntosh, “Demand and Supply: The Pittsburgh Art Trade and M. Knoedler & Co.,” in Gabriel P. Weisberg, DeCourcy E. McIntosh, Alison McQueen, Collecting in the Gilded Age: Art Patronage in Pittsburgh, 1890–1910 (Pittsburgh, PA: Frick Art and Historical Center, 1997), 134.

  163singularity of his taste: Ibid., 135.

  164“particularly fine”: HCF to RK, September 16, 1895, HCFP, GLB, vol. 10, TFC/FARL.

  164“preeminence in the Arts and Sciences”: AC to William Frew, October 1897, in Nasaw, Carnegie, 503.

  164“the gem” of his collection: HCF to AC, August 2, 1898, in Warren, Triumphant, 225.

  165“high prices”: RK to HCF, January 27, 1897, HCFP, C, TFC/FARL.

  165“silvery picture”: RK to HCF, February 23, 1898, ibid.

  166“opportunity for you”: HCF to RK, September 22, 1896, HCFP, GLB, vol. 12, TFC/FARL.

  166the “store”: DeCourcy E. McIntosh provided information on Knoedler’s early history.

  166“reputation for honesty”: René Gimpel, Diary of an Art Dealer, 36.

  167Overholt: McIntosh, “Demand,” 113.

  167grip as “firm”: Minutes of a Special Meeting of the Board of Directors of M. Knoedler & Co. July 14, 1928, Knoedler.

  167“be the same”: OG to CSC, February 14, 1906, Colnaghi; CSC to OG, March 2, 1906, Knoedler.

  167“important customer”: Frances Howard to CSC, June 13, 1913, Knoedler.

  168“picture talks”: CSC to OG, December 6, 1910, Knoedler.

  168“confidence in than yours”: HCF to CSC, July 29, 1908, HCFP, GLB, vol. 27, TFC/FARL.

  168“you and Mrs. Frick ­were ­here”: CSC to HCF, July 1, 1902, Knoedler.

  168“horrible existence”: CSC to OG, February 20, 1907, Knoedler.

  169Joshua Reynolds’s Miss Puyeau  : McIntosh, “Demand,” 145.

  169“since its purchase”: CSC to HCF, February 19, 1902, HCFP, C, TFC/FARL.

  170“glory to any museum”: CSC to HCF, November 24, 1900, Knoedler.

  170“by the masters”: RK to Lockett Agnew, December 29, 1899, Knoedler.

  170“picture hunting”: CSC to Andrew Mellon, December 8, 1906, Knoedler.

  170“art collectors in America”: Colnaghi to J. Pierpont Morgan, February 21, 1900, in Hall, “Old Masters,” 15.

  170“Rembrandt portrait already hanging there”: Edmond Deprez to HCF, ibid., 15.

  170“business with you”: Deprez to M. Knoedler, ibid., 18.

  171“insults in the future”: HCF, Carnegie Steel, board minutes, in Nasaw, Carnegie, 570.

  171“below their value”: HCF brief against AC, spring 1900, in Warren, Triumphant, 263.

  171“forced to leave”: Charles Schwab and AC in ibid., 257.

  171$15 and $30 million: Nasaw, Carnegie, 575.

  171$40 million that year: Ibid., 578.

  172“not satisfied”: “Response by Carnegie Steel Co. (Ltd.),” 1899, ibid., 576.

  172a $31.6 million share: Nasaw, Carnegie, 579.

  172some $60 million: Harvey, Frick, 268.

  172“had been expelled for the general good”: Warren, Triumphant, 265.

  173“Thermopylae of bad taste”: Edith Wharton in Colin B. Bailey, Building the Frick Collection: An Introduction to the ­House and Its Collections (New York: The Frick Collection in association with Scala, 2006), 19.

  173“paintings and their frames”: Inventory of Furniture, ­etc., 640 Fifth Avenue, 1905, HCFP, Subject File 242, TFC/FARL.

  173“size of the paintings”: Helen Clay Frick, Statement for Rocke­fel­ler Lawsuit, n.d., [1947], Helen Clay Frick Papers, Alphabetical File, John M. Harlan, TFC/FARL.

  173Vanderbilt declined: George Vanderbilt to HCF, October 20, 1905, HCFP, Subject File 242, The New York ­House, TFC/FARL.

  173Dutch landscapes and En­glish portraits: See The Frick Collection, An Illustrated Cata­logue (New York: The Frick Collection, 1968).

  174“of the En­glish school”: CSC to HCF August 30, 1904, HCFP, C, TFC/FARL.

  175“Legion of Honor”: CSC to HCF, February 12, 1902, ibid.

  175 Saint Jerome as a Cardinal: At the time the El Greco’s subject was thought to be Cardinal Gaspar de Quiroga, Archbishop of Toledo.

  175“apartments of the palace”: OG to CSC, July 14, 1905, Colnaghi.

  175“for the nation”: Roger E. Fry, “Pietro Aretino by Titian,” Burlington Magazine 7, no. 29 (August 1905), 344, 347.

  176“on the left”: Thomas Gerrity to CSC, October 4, 1905, Knoedler.

  176 “GALLERY HUNG”: Gerrity to CSC, October 6, 1905, Knoedler.

  176“for a lot more”: Gerrity to RK, October 4, 1905, Knoedler.

  176“enough to settle it”: RK to CSC, November 17, 1905, Knoedler.

  177“we don’t want to talk about it”: CSC to Thomas Robinson, December 23, 1905, Knoedler.

  177“just now seems America”: OG to CSC, December 30, 1905, Colnaghi.

  177“in the country”: CSC to OG, January 9, 1906, Knoedler.

  177“such a man”: OG to CSC, January 20, 1906, Colnaghi.

  178“want in my collection”: HCF to Roger Fry, April 18, 1912, HCFP, C, TFC/FARL.

  178“16,000 through Bode”: OG to CSC, February 1906, Colnaghi.

  178“­here & at Berlin”: OG to CSC, October 18, 1907, Colnaghi.

  178“presented themselves lately”: OG to CSC, January 24, 1908, Colnaghi.

  178“artistically warmed up”: OG to RK, October 18, 1907, Colnaghi.


  179“by this steamer”: CSC to OG, January 10, 1911, Knoedler.

  179give $300,000: CSC to HCF, June 18, 1906, Knoedler.

  179“immortal, unchanging interest”: Times, in Dutch Paintings of the Seventeeth Century (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, ca. 1995), 259n7.

  179“for once & all”: OG to CSC, January 24, 1906, Colnaghi.

  180“full length lady in blue!!!”: OG to CSC, December 30, 1905, Colnaghi.

  180“for the money”: OG to CSC, February 5, 1906, Knoedler.

  180 DECISION CARSTAIRS: CSC to HCF, November 5, 1906, HCFP, C, TFC/FARL.

  180southwest of London: Henry Edward Fox-Strangways, Earl of Ilchester, Cata­logue of Pictures, [London], 1883.

  181 FIRST OFFER: CSC to RK, November 7, 1906, Knoedler.

  182borrowed from Frick: “Notes,” MMA Bulletin 1, no. 6 (May 1906), 88.

  182“rage and laughter”: Virginia Woolf, Roger Fry: A Biography (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1940), 153.

  182“matter to any one”: Herbert P. Horne, to Roger Fry, April 19, 1906, in Denys Sutton, “Herbert Horne and Roger Fry,” Apollo 123, no. 282 (August 1985), 139.

  182“Agnew’s hands”: Horne to Fry, May 14, 1906, in Sutton, “Horne,” 140.

  183“discuss the matter”: Fry to Horne, May 17, 1906, ibid., 154.

  183“for the ­whole year”: Gennari Santori, “Eu­ro­pe­an Masterpieces,” 107; Roger Fry in Letters of Roger Fry, vol. 1, ed., Denys Sutton (London: Chatto & Windus, 1972), 262.

  183“mercies of Agnew”: Horne to Fry, May 21, 1906, in Sutton, “Horne,” 140.

  183“acquire it himself”: Fry to Bryson Burroughs, February 21, 1909, MMA, EP.

  184“Rembrandt portraits of himself”: Wilhelm von Bode, The Complete Works of Rembrandt (Paris: Charles Sedelmeyer, 1901), vol. 6, 13, no. 428, Rembrandt Seated with a Stick in His Left Hand.

  184keep it in place: “Rembrandt’s fascination with the hand,” explains Svetlana Alpers, “is related to the instrumental role of the artist’s hand in the making of pictures,” Rembrandt’s Enterprise (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 29.

  185“picture for a big price”: CSC to RK, July 17, 1906, Knoedler.

  185“big game”: OG to BB, May 20, 1897, Colnaghi.

  185 IMPORTANT: OG to Fry, July 17, 1906, MMA, EP.

  185“letting me know”: Fry notes on July 18, 1906, on reverse of tele­gram text from Otto Gutekunst, July 17, 1906, MMA, EP.

  185 “AMERICAN PURCHASER”: Fry to J. P. Morgan, July 17, 1906, MMA, EP. Also in Carolyn Elam, Roger Fry & the ­Re-­Evaluation of Piero della Francesca (New York: Council of the Frick Collection Lecture Series, 2004), 53n41.

  185“ARRANGE NOW”: Morgan to Fry, July 17, 1906, MMA, EP.

  186 THE MUSEUM ONLY: Fry to Morgan, July 18, 1906, MMA, EP.

  186 “OUT OF POCKET”: Ibid.

  187“is our only hope”: CSC to RK, July 19, 1906, Knoedler.

  187 “ENTIRELY FREE”: Fry to Deprez, cabled text scribbled at bottom of letter from Deprez to Fry, July 27, 1906, MMA, EP.

  188“worth 3 times as much”: CSC to RK, November 2, 1906, Knoedler.

  188“at these times”: RK to CSC, November 9, 1906, Knoedler.

  188“not be interested in it”: Ibid.

  189“a great deal for it”: CSC to RK, November 7, 1906, Knoedler.

  189“over-­admired Dutchman”: BB to ISG, [London], 1906, Letters, 388.

  189“four months” to pay: CSC to Scott & Fowles, November 23, 1906, Knoedler.

  189“made the offer”: RK to CSC, November 23, 1906, Knoedler.

  190“holding for $250,000”: CSC to RK, November 23, 1906, Knoedler.

  190“4 hundred thousand dollars”: Ibid.

  191“to the Berlin gallery”: CSC to HCF, November 23, 1906, HCFACF, TFC/FARL.

  191“ought to have the picture”: RK to CSC, December 7, 1906, Knoedler.

  191“how much I like the picture”: Ibid.

  191“or April 30th if you wish”: RK to HCF, December 6, 1906, TFC/FARL.

  191$25,000: HCF Voucher to M. Knoedler & Co. “Received January 16, 1907, of H. C. Frick $200,000,” HCFP, Art Files TFC/FARL.

  192“all things considered”: CSC to RK, January 2, 1907, Knoedler.

  192“for 20% above that”: CSC to OG, February 10, 1906, Knoedler.

  192“many moods”: CSC to W. D. Lawrie, February 27, 1906, Knoedler.

  192“fine work”: RK to HCF, July 29, 1900, HCFP, C, TFC/FARL.

  192“keeping us waiting”: CSC to RK, December 7, 1915, Knoedler.

  193“force sales”: M. K. Knoedler to Lewis L. Clarke, American Exchange Bank, February 11, 1915, Knoedler.

  193“very slowly”: Henry Thole to CSC, June 1, 1906, Knoedler.

  193Frick’s check arrived: Walter T. Herckenrath to RK, July 13, 1906, Knoedler.

  193“business we are doing”: RK to HCF, June 1, 1906, July 3, 1906, HCFP, C, TFC/FARL.

  193“looks superb”: RK to CSC, January 26, 1907, Knoedler.

  194“lucky to have it”: CSC to HCF, February 18, 1907, HCFP, C, TFC/FARL.

  194“interested in them”: RK to Maurice Hamman, December 7, 1906, Knoedler.

  194in the Tribune: Royal Cortissoz, “from the ‘Tribune,’ September 19, 1909,” in MMA Bulletin 4, no. 10 (October 1909), 162.

  194museum’s Bulletin : Byron P. Stephenson, “Great Dutch Artists,” MMA Bulletin, 4, no. 10 (October 1909), 167.

  194“imaginative significance”: W. R. Valentiner, The ­Hudson-­Fulton Celebration, vol. 1 (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art), xix.

  195agreed to their purchase: CSC to Lockett Agnew, February 1, 1911, Knoedler; HCF to Fry, January 26, 1911, HCFP, Art Files; tele­gram Fry to HCF, February 8, 1911, Purchase File, HCFAF, TFC/FARL.

  195“on human beings”: Charles M. Schwab in Warren, Triumphant, 374.

  196“than Morgan”: CSC to OG, December 22, 1905, Knoedler.

  196“rising [stock] market”: CSC to Trotti, January 29, 1908, Knoedler.

  196 $1.4 million on more than thirty pictures: “List of Oil Paintings, ­etc. owned by H. C. Frick” [1903], HCFP, GLB; “List of Paintings,” account at January 1905, HCFP, Art ­File-­Inventories, TFC/FARL.

  196spent $2.25 million: Bailey, Building the Frick, 22.

  196“up Fifth Avenue”: New York Times, December 18, 1906, ibid., 22–23.

  CHAPTER VI. “OCTOPUS AND WRECKER DUVEEN”

  199“Octopus and wrecker Duveen”: OG to BB, December 22, 1909, in Samuels, Legend, 37.

  199“knows no defeat”: Archer M. Huntington, in Mitchell A. Codding, “A Legacy of Spanish Art for America: Archer M. Huntington and The Hispanic Society of America”; Gary Tinterow and Geneviève Lacambre, ­Manet/Velázquez: The French Taste for Spanish Painting (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 313.

  199En­glish portrait: Edward Fowles, Memories of Duveen Brothers (London: Times Books, 1976), 23.

  200“greatest pictures in the world”: Ibid., 37.

  200 21 million francs: Rodolphe Kann Collection, Undisclosed Kann no. 1, Box 257, Folder 2, DBR.

  200choice of pictures: BB to ISG, Letters, 402.

  200“En­gland in everything”: Henry Duveen, in Fowles, Memories, 3.

  201“first call on its artisans”: Ibid., 7.

  201“show him the very finest”: HD to JD, April 8, 1913, in Frances Haskell, “The Benjamin Altman Bequest,” Past and Present in Art and History (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1987), 196.

  202“rate equal, others”: HD to HCF, June 30, 1906, Frick ­Residences-­Ea­gle Rock, TFC/FARL.

  202“last thing a man buys”: Fowles, Memories, 23.

  202Wildenstein, in Paris: Ibid.

  202entire collection: Rodolphe Kann, Paris Ledger, Kann Collection, Box 118, 1906–1908, DBR.

  203“nursing a child”: HD to Altman, June 14 and July 11, 1912, in Haskell, “Altman,” 196–97.

&nb
sp; 204“billiard room”: “The Travel Diaries of Otto Mündler,” ed. Dowd, in Walpole Society, 152.

  204“lying in wait”: Bode to McKay, May 24, 1900; McKay to RK, February 27, 1907, Colnaghi.

  205to acquire the Genoese portraits: 1907 Stock Book, Knoedler.

  205“will he give the price?”: CSC to RK, December 18, 1906, Knoedler.

  205“out of Genoa”: CSC to HCF, February 18, 1907, HCFP, C, TFC/FARL.

  206“sold it [to] him already”: BB to ISG, July 21, 1907, Letters, 401.

  207“bought them immediately”: CSC to HCF, July 2, 1908, HCFP, C, TFC/FARL.

  207Widener had negotiated: CSC to HCF, July 21, 1908, HCFACF, TFC/FARL.

  207 25 percent of the profits: Samuels, Legend, 142.

  207“things proposed”: BB to HD, February 25, 1913, Box 535, Folder 2, DBR.

  208“authentic one”: BB to Louis Duveen, January 19, 1913, Box 535, Folder 2, DBR.

  208“its condition”: BB to Louis Duveen, January 19, 1913, DBR.

  208“course of further studies”: BB to Messrs. Duveen, October 15, 1913, Box 537B, Folder 7, DBR.

  208“Rev. Langton Douglas”: Ibid.

  208“many others”: MB to her family, January 12, 1913, in Mary Berenson, Strachey and Samuels, 186.

  209“reputation and authority”: BB to HD, February 25, 1913, Box 535, Folder 2, DBR.

  209“potent to you”: BB to Messrs. Duveen, April 7, 1913, Box 537B, Folder 7, DBR.

  209“and so on”: MB to her family, January 12, 1913, in Mary Berenson, Strachey and Samuels, 186.

  209“school of Jura”: MB to her family, October 25, 1913, ibid., 192.

  209to fill his Prides Crossing ­house: HCFP, Ledger No. 5, TFC/FARL.

  209design of his clients’ ­houses: Nicholas Penny and Karen Serres, “Duveen and the Decorators,” Burlington Magazine, 149, no. 1251 (June 2007), 401.

  209“two Italian pictures”: RK to CSC, November 13, 1906; CSC to RK, November 23, 1906, Knoedler.

  210“sell it to Mrs Jack Gardner”: HD to JD, Fowles, Memories, 34.

  211“any price within reason”: RK to CSC, April 8, 1910, Knoedler.

  211Duveen sign it: HCF contract for Lady Duncombe and Lady Milnes, May 3, 1911, HCFACF, Purchases, TFC/FARL.

  CHAPTER VII. “HIGHEST PRIZES OF THE GAME OF CIVILIZATION”

  213“very important”: HCF to CSC, August 22, 1908, HCFP, GLB, vol. 27, TFC/FARL.

 

‹ Prev