- Adam Eaker, as you can tell
is doing double duty for us at this symposium because during the few months of our symposium planning, his rising star in the
New York museum world has taken him from the Frick to the Met, and this necessitated that he
not only speak about Van Dyke, but also about his new
collection as well up the street. So I hope those of you who
heard Esmay's introduction yesterday will bare with me as I tell those who didn't
hear it about Adam. Since March 7th of this year, Adam has been assistant curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
responsible for the northern Baroque works in that collection. Prior to that appointment
he was guest curator and previously an ml
pulet curatorial fellow at the Frick collection and
it was in that capacity that he co-curated the exhibition, Van Dyke: The Anatomy of Portraiture. Adam previously worked
as a research assistant at the Yale Center for British art, where he contributed to the catalogue, "Varieties of Romantic
Experience, Drawings from the Collection of Charles Ries Camp." That took place in twenty ten. And he worked as well as a
researcher for the drawings dealer Martin Moeller Pisani in Hamburg. Adam holds a B.A. from Yale and an M.A. and MPhil from Columbia University, soon to be completed by his PhD which he defended earlier this Spring. He was the recipient of
a Regio fellowship from Columbia University and a
research fellowship from the Belgian-American
Educational Foundation, which made possible a year as
a visiting scholar in Antwerp. In addition to his specialization
in early modern painting from the low countries in England, Adam maintains strong interest in German and Scandinavian art as well. So please welcome Adam back
to this podium this morning for his presentation,
"Building a Flemish Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art," Adam. (applause) - Thank you Inga for
that nice introduction and thanks to all of you who have had to hear it twice for your patience. Before I begin I would like
to say that this talk about my new collection is very
much indebted to the research of my MET colleague, Kathryn Bacher, and also to the work of my
predecessor Walter Liedtke, and I'd like to dedicate
this talk to Walter's memory. On September 28th, 1870,
William Tilden Blodgett and William J. Hoppin, two trustees of the recently founded
Metropolitan Museum of Art, made a visit to the home of
an art dealer in Brussels. The two Americans had traveled to Europe in the midst of the Franco-Prussian War, and Blodgett had already
made significant acquisitions of art in Paris in the weeks leading up to that city's siege by the Prussians. In Brussels he and Hoppin
sought out Etienne Le Roy, who was not only a dealer but
also a restorer responsible for the conservation of Ruben's great altar pieces in Antwerp's cathedral. As Hoppins subsequently reported to the MET's board of trustees, The writer went to Mr.
Etienne Le Roy's residence and spent two or three hours
in looking at these paintings. They were all stored in a small
room and perfectly lighted and were brought forward one at a time and placed on an easel for inspection. This method of examination
barely allowed a glimpse at even the principal pictures, and must be taken into account
in estimating the value of the opinion of the undersigned
in respect to them. They embrace several works of unusual merit and many of great excellence, while as might have been
expected there were some twenty or thirty which
were much less interesting. Over the course of the summer
and autumn of that year, Blodgett eventually acquired 174 paintings in Paris and Brussels, which he then offered for sale to the museum in December for
the price of $100,000. These paintings constituted
the so called "Purchase of 1871," which the trustees
approved in March of that year, incurring additional
costs of more than $47,000 for insurance, shipping, and customs. Dutch and Flemish 17th century
paintings were at the core of this foundational acquisition. These works define the MET's
early collection of old masters and northern Baroque
paintings continue to serve as one of the highlights of the museum, even as the MET has
spent the last 150 years pursuing its mission of an
encyclopedic representation of all periods and regions of
human artistic achievement. This morning I will focus
my remarks exclusively on the Flemish Baroque paintings, included with the 1871 purchase and their reception by one
particular New York art critic. I'll then proceed to offer
a brief survey of highlights from our acquisitions in this
field up through recent years. In accordance with the
theme of this conference and my own remit at the museum, I won't be discussing the MET's
holdings of Flemish drawings or of earlier Flemish paintings, although these acquisitions
could certainly serve as the subjects of talks
in their own right. The MET unveiled to the public
the 174 pictures acquired through the 1871 purchase
on February 22nd, 1872, at its' new premises, a former
dancing school on 5th Avenue, between 53rd and 54th Streets. And on the screen you see an illustration of the opening from
Frank Leslie's "Weekly." Among the art critics who
responded to the inaugural exhibition was the 29
year old Henry James. And as an aside I've been
delighted by both Henry James and Edith Wharton's representation in the talks of this conference. As a novelist James would
find rich subject matter in American attempts to acquire the products of European culture. An important piece of early
American art criticism, James' essay on the 1871 purchase offers an eloquent and
fascinating statement of the aesthetic values current
among the most sophisticated museum goers at the time
of the MET's founding. The essay also provides
particularly significant insight into one 19th century
New Yorker's sense of the essential qualities of Flemish art. After all, James begins his
essay by noting that, quote, "The pictures are with some dozen exceptions of the Dutch
and Flemish schools." The contrast between these two
schools and Italian paintings represents one of the
sustained themes of the essay. Like so many commentators
before and since, James saw the Dutch and Flemish
schools as closely allied in their realism and ability to capture the poetry of everyday life. He contrasted this with an
Italian art that in his view conveyed a great deal of style
but very little substance. The bulk of James' essay is an enumeration of the most significant paintings in the collection, most of them Flemish. Indeed he begins by describing
two works by Rubens, before moving on to Van
Dyck and then Jordaens, an explicitly hierarchical
sequence that still structures most surveys of Flemish Baroque painting. But to visitors with the MET's present day holdings of Flemish art, James' catalogue offers
an occasionally jarring mix of works both familiar and unknown. What on earth has become, for example, of the Rubens "Return from Egypt," whose virgin James praises
as a gentle giantess, or the Van Dyck portrait of
Miss Decristine that James singles out as first among the museum's collection of portraits. As the current curator of
Flemish painting at the MET, I hasten to add that these
seemingly lost masterpieces have not fallen prey to
theft or catastrophe. Rather, the museums in James'
attributions of these works reflect the state of
connisseurship before the emergence of academic art history at
the end of the 19th century. For example, the Rubens
he discussed in his essay, is in fact a workshop piece or copy deaccessioned by the museum in 1980. While the so-called mis-ta-chris-tine, is now considered to be a charming, if poorly preserved portrait
by Cornelius Defoss. In fact, of the five works
supposedly by Ruben's Van Dyck and Jordaen's that the MET trustees saw during the Brussels
visit with which I began, only one, Van Dyke's St. Rosalie, which you see here on the left still carries its' 19th
century attribution. And on the right you see Frank
Waller's depiction of the museum at its' temporary
second home on 14th Street with both Defoss' portrait
and St. Rosalie hung together as works by Van Dyck. Other works have retained
their attributions, but suffered in the estimations
of their caretakers. James devotes nearly
half a page to the quote, "Large and brilliant Gaspar de Crayer, which hangs in the place of
honor in the gallery," unquote. And you can just make it
out at the background of the illustration of the museum's opening. Today's visitor, however will
look in vain for this enormous painting displaced to the
curatorial offices to hang above our scanners and printers. And when I was preparing this PowerPoint I was actually dismayed to discover we don't even have a color photograph of it. A few of the works that
James singles out have, however retained both their attributions and their status within the collection. Although he and the
museum misidentified the subject of the picture James
writes vividly of quote, "The lovely flesh glow of the
tumbling cherubs," unquote, in Van Dyck's St. Rosalie,
quote, "who uplift the pretty postulate into the blue and
who form with the warm purple of her robe the main success
of the picture," unquote. And indeed this painting remains
one of the most important Flemish 17th century devotional
works in the collection. As I said above, James moved in turn from Rubens to Van Dyck to Jordaens, a sequence that he explicitly casts as a progression from greatest to least great. In James' words, Van Dyck
is quote, "the name next in importance to that of Rubens," unquote, while Jordaens is merely a smaller name. However James felt that only
in the case of Jordaens, the least great of the trio
of Flemish Baroque geniuses had the MET manage to acquire
a work that was quote, "little short of a masterpiece." This work was Jordaens' "The Holy Family," with St. Ann and the young
baptists and his parents, a painting that Blodgett had acquired in Paris before his visit to Brussels. While still considered to
be an autograph Jordaens, the painting is now recognized
as a complicated palimpsest, reworked at various stages
of the artist's career. James praised the painting
while simultaneously revealing prejudices toward the artist
that typify Victorian attitudes toward much Flemish Baroque painting. According to James, "The
Holy Family", quote, "would have needed only to be
pitched a note or so higher in the scale of the ideal to challenge comparison with Rubens at his best. But these high notes, we take
it, Jordaens never struck and he remains simply one of the
first of the secondary masters. He seems oppressed and sobered
by that sense of reality which sat so lightly on the buoyant spirit of his master, Rubens. The present composition
represents the infant Jesus, a tall, lusty, ugly baby. The virgin is a sweet faced
young woman whom the painter evidently meant to make pretty within the limits of Flemish probability. James said it, not me. And the child has an odd
look of having just waked up the least bit cross from a nap. In his sense that Flemish art, with the prominent exceptions
of Rubens and Van Dyck, is too mired in reality to affect truth's transcendence to a higher plane, James was continuing a
tradition that extended back to Italian art writing of the 16th century. It is, I might add a tradition
whose platitudes still haunt much writing on Dutch and
Flemish art to this day. Perhaps more surprising to a
contemporary reader than James' discussion of Rubens,
Van Dyck and Jordaens, is his praise for a
scene of peasants dancing and feasting by David Teniers the Younger. James goes so far as to declare this work, quote, "the gem of the museum." Whereas Rubens, Van Dyck and
Jordaens have held their places as the great three of
Flemish Baroque painting, Teniers reputation has
declined precipitously since the 18th and 19th centuries
when his genre scenes were universally known across Europe,
not only in the original, but also in print and
porcelain reproduction. Reflecting the artist's status
as the embodiment of certain qualities he perceived
as essentially Flemish, James devoted the single
longest acrastic passage in his essay to Tenier's painting, and it merits quotation at length. According to James the picture quote, "presents in remarkable purity
every merit which we commonly attribute to those vivid
portrayals of rustic conviviality. Elaborate finish, humor tempered
by grace, charm of color, and mingled minuteness
and amplitude of design. It swarms with figures of
indescribable vivacity and variety and glows with an undimmed
clearness of tone, which promises a long
enjoyment of its' perfections. May it speak to our children's children, with the same silvery accent
and help them to live for an hour in this alien modern world, the life of old bucolic Flanders. To drink and to dance, to
dance and to drink again, was for the imagination of Teniers the great formula of human life, and his little bonshommes picked
out in the tenderest hints of gray and blue, russet and yellow, lift their elbows and lock their
hands and shake their heels with a rich hilarity
which makes each miniature clown of them, whether
in jacket or in kerchief, seem a distinct and complete creation." James contrasts the warmth
of Teniers vision of Flemish peasant life not only with a quote, "alien modern world," of
19th century New York, but also with the cruder
creations of Teniers' Dutch contemporaries,
such as Isaac Fonostada, of whom he declares, "It is
impossible to conceive a more unprotestingly sorted view of humanity." In James' account, Flemish
art with its joyful transfiguration of peasant
pleasures can provide a happy middle ground between the
unsparing realism of the Dutch and the flimsy style of the Italians. The MET's rich early holdings
of works by Teniers indicate that James was by no means alone in his esteem for the artist. In tribute to that legacy
and in honor of our symposium I've just this week created
an installation of three works by Teniers that very early
on entered our collection, with the scene of feasting
that James so admired, hung in pride of place. In his essay, James lamented
that the young museum had quote "no first-rate example
of a first-rate genius." And although the MET had
indeed bought major works by Van Dyck, Teniers and Jordaens
with its' founding purchase, it was not until 1902 at the
bequest of James Henry Smith that a major autographed
Rubens entered the collection. And yesterday Arthur Wheelock
gave us some wonderful background on the social
context of James' gift. Sorry of James Henry Smith's gift. This was Rubens' Holy Family with St. Francis and the
infant John the Baptist. Ironically while the mediocre
Rubens copy that had been part of the 1871 purchase was
praised by contemporary critics, this monumental late
religious painting had failed to sell at Christy's in 1884. This same auction house
did manage to sell it five years later and it passed through a number of hands before
landing at the museum. Even once it entered the MET's collection, the painting was not
immediately recognized as a significant, autographed work. However, the careful
research of Walter Liedtke established the complex
genesis of the MET's picture, and we can recognize it today
as one of the few monumental religious compositions by
Rubens in the United States. It is a painting, moreover,
with a prestigious providence, originating in the estate of the master himself before passing through the collection of Cardinal
Giovanni Carlo de Medici. The MET's gallery of
large-scale paintings by Rubens and Van Dyck is a testament to the important legacies of
individual collectors. It is primarily through gifts and bequests rather than acquisitions
that the museum has acquired monuments of
Flemish Baroque painting. These include such major
Van Dycks as the portrait of the Duke of Richmond and Lennox
that I discussed yesterday which came to the museum thanks to the generosity of Henry G. Marquand. Or the portrait of Lucas van Uffel, which you see on the right, part of the splendid
bequest of Benjamin Ultman. Van Uffel's portrait also brought
with it a grand providence having once belonged to the
Landgraves of Hesse-Kassel, to Empress Josephine at Malmaison, and the Dukes of Sutherland. The long standing taste of
European royalty for Flemish Baroque paintings has added to its luster in the eyes of
ambitious American collectors. Particularly, in the case
of Van Dyck portraits, such lines of decent only
further the association between the artist and
aristocratic collecting, heightening their status
as trophies in the transfer of cultural capital from
Europe to the New World, as I discussed in my
presentation yesterday. No donors to the museum have
done more to continue the legacy of Gilded Age
benfactors like Altman, than Mr. and Mrs. Charles Reitsman. It is to them that we owe
one of our most important Flemish Baroque paintings,
Rubens' self portrait with his second wife, Helen
Fourment, and one of their sons. Like other Flemish Baroque
paintings in the collection, the Rubens family portrait
has a prestigious providence having belonged to both the
Dukes of Marlborough and the Rothschild family before
entering the Reisman collection. And the painting was incidentally
among those stolen from the Rothschilds by the
Nazis during World War II, before being restituted in 1946. In the acquisition papers
regarding the gift, Walter Liedtke wrote that
quote, "Even before cleaning, this seemed to me one of the
greatest of Rubens' works, and a picture which would,
if it were acquired, establish itself by virtue
of its directness, intimacy, and humanity as one of the most popular paintings in the museum." If the crowds lingering
everyday before this image of family intimacy
are any indication, Walter's prediction has
indeed proved accurate. It was perhaps fitting that 1981, when the family portrait
entered the collection, was also the year that the MET
deaccessioned the Rubens copy which had formed part of
the original 1871 purchase. Some 80 years after Henry James lamented the mediocre quality of this work, the MET finally had
its Rubens masterpiece. The Rubens family portrait
bipasses one of the major difficulties in presenting Flemish Baroque painting
to a 21st century public, namely the inaccessibility
of heavily allegorical religious or classical subject matter. Indeed the portrait
provides a recognizable image of family life however cloaked in the trappings of
17th century prosperity. The MET's greatest
Flemish acquisition since the family portrait is likewise in a genre relatively accessible to modern tastes. In a letter of November 27th,
1989, Walter Liedtke wrote, quote, "Whenever I am asked
what we want most in my area, a landscape by Rubens
is the first answer." A few weeks later, the
museum succeeded at acquiring the last Rubens landscape
known in private hands. As Walter wrote subsequently
in the acquisition report, "A Rubens landscape is the
single most desired addition to the museum's collection of
Dutch and Flemish paintings. A Rembrandt landscape would
be of similar importance but is absolutely unobtainable, whereas this panel by
Rubens is probably the last finished landscape by Rubens
that will ever be available. Every other important example
of about 20 known from all periods of the artist's career, is already in a major museum
or in a royal collection. The credit line of the
landscape bespeaks the combined efforts of many of the
museum's benefactors to acquire the painting noting that it
was purchased with the help of, and I quote, "The Annenburg Foundation, Mrs. Charles Reitsman, Michelle Davivay, the Dillon Fund, the Henry
Jay and Drew Heinz Foundation, Lulla Karmosky, Annette de la Renta, Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, the Vincent Aster Foundation,
and Peter J. Sharp gifts, with special funds, gifts, and other gifts and bequests by exchange. It is, I think fitting,
that a collection of Flemish Baroque painting that began
with a collective endeavour of a group of pioneering trustees, should find one of its capstones
in such a collaborative effort to bring another
Flemish masterpiece to the MET. Thank you. (applause)
