A Living Tradition: the Winterbothams and Their Legacy Author(S): Lyn Delliquadri Source: Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, Vol

The Art Institute of Chicago

A Living Tradition: The Winterbothams and Their Legacy Author(s): Lyn Delliquadri Source: Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, Vol. 20, No. 2, The Joseph Winterbotham Collection at The Art Institute of Chicago (1994), pp. 102-110 Published by: The Art Institute of Chicago Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4112959 . Accessed: 27/03/2014 16:47

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This content downloaded from 198.40.29.65 on Thu, 27 Mar 2014 16:47:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions A Living Tradition: The Winterbothamsand Their Legacy

LYN DELLIQUADRI

The Art Institute of Chicago

PA U L GA U G U I N. Portraitof a Womanin front of a Still Life by Cezanne, 1890 (pp. 128-29).

This content downloaded from 198.40.29.65 on Thu, 27 Mar 2014 16:47:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions y the less thana centuryafter its founding, tured his fancy, and he enjoyed frequent travel there, 1920s, Chicago had been transformed from a prairie sending back photographsof himself stepping into Vene- swampland to an exuberant industrial and cul- tian gondolas and browsing in Parisianquarters. By all tural metropolis. Skyscrapers, stockyards, steel mills, accounts,he was intelligentand witty, without pomposity streetcars, wharves, warehouses, locomotives, automo- or pretension. He remained close to his family, brought bile-clogged streets, and lake-going vessels laden with his sons into his businesses, encouraged his daughter grain and coal announced an unprecedentedprosperity. Rue in her passionate involvement with the arts, and Therewas opera,theater, a symphony orchestra,Jelly Roll regularlyinvited his grandchildrenfor Sunday breakfast Morton and Louis Armstrong;the literaryachievements at the VirginiaHotel. of Carl Sandburg,Sherwood Anderson, Theodore Dreiser, Rue Winterbotham(figs. 2-3) inheritedthe indepen- and Edna Ferber; the newly opened Field Museum of dence and energy of her father and undoubtedly helped NaturalHistory; and The Art Instituteof Chicago,whose shape his taste in and commitment to art. She was an Italian Renaissance facade was already blackened and accomplished linguist and talented interior decorator. stained from nearly three decades on Michigan Avenue. With her husband, musician and composer John Alden Some sources attributedthe city's wealth and progressto Carpenter,she spent a greatdeal of time in Europe,becom- "prairieenergy." Frank Lloyd Wright, himself endowed ing acquaintedwith the avant-gardeartists, dancers,and with it, remarked,"The real American spirit . . . lies in composers of the early twentieth century. the West and Middle West, where breadthof view, inde- Since the Chicago of the WorldWar I era had few art pendent thought, and a tendency to take common sense galleriesand the Art Institute'scollection at that time was into the realm of art, as in life, are more characteristic."1 largely dependent on the taste of its benefactors, who Of such a spirit the Winterbothamswere made. preferredearlier artistic expressions, Rue Winterbotham Joseph Humphrey Winterbotham(fig. i) was born Carpenter took it upon herself to establish a Chicago in Columbus, Ohio, in 1852. He settled in Joliet, Illinois; outpost for contemporaryart. In 1916,more than a decade marriedGenevieve Baldwin of New Haven, Connecticut; before the opening of New York'sMuseum of Modern and raised four children. The Winterbotham family Art, she helped found the Arts Club of Chicago, which moved to Chicago in 1892, where Joseph Winterbotham continues to this day to be a center for the exhibition became engaged in various successful business enter- and discussion of current artistic activity. Rue's father prises.During the course of his life, he organizedno fewer and brothers were among the club's first members. Two than eleven corporations,including cooperage manufac- years later,she became its president, retainingthe office ture, moving and transfer, and mortgage financing. A until her death in 1931. She designed the interiors of the practical-mindedman, he sent his sons, John and Joseph, club's severallocations and took on its mission of foster- Jr., to Yale, and his daughters, Rue and Genevieve, to ing and developingthe highest standardsof art. She orga- Europe. After his wife died in 19o6, he lived in an apart- nized first showings in Chicago of drawings by Pablo ment in the VirginiaHotel, a building at the intersection Picasso;sculpture by AugusteRodin, Gaston Lachaise,and of Ohio and Rush Streetsthat was considered one of the ConstantinBrancusi; paintings by Georges Braque,Marie first and finest of "modern,"luxury apartmentdwellings. Laurencin,and American modernists Arthur B. Davies, Europe, with its rich culturaltexture, seems to have cap- John Marin, Morton L. Schamberg, Charles Sheeler,

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This content downloaded from 198.40.29.65 on Thu, 27 Mar 2014 16:47:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FIGUREI. Joseph tributed to the museum by Chicago collectors Bertha Winterbotham, Humphrey Honor6 Palmer, Frederic Clay Bartlett, and Mr. and whose initial gift of $50,000 to the Art Institutein 1921 Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson, who gave them in subsequent enabledthe museumto years-1922, 1926, and 1933,respectively. The only works build a collection of thirty- of twentieth-century art by 1921 that were among the five Europeanpaintings. museum's were and Under the terms of Joseph holdings portraits landscapes pri- Winterbotham'sgift, the marily by Americanartists in the previous century'saca- museumwas permittedto demic tradition. changethe composition of Winterbothamdid not offer the Art Institute the WinterbothamCol- Joseph works of art from his own collection-no evidenceexists lection accordingto its needs as long the number that he even collected art-but, rather, he offered the of paintingsdid not exceed museum the opportunity to buy paintingsthat it wanted thirty-five. Photo and neededto broadenthe of its His initial of the scope holdings. courtesy was which he stated was to be Winterbothamfamily. 1921 gift $50,000, invested, with the interest to be used "for the purchase of works of art painted by European artists of foreign subjects."2 and Joseph Stella.During her tenure, Rue Winterbotham He designatedthat the collection of paintings purchased Carpenter produced an astonishing list of one-man with these funds should eventually number thirty-five, exhibitions by European artists Joan Mir6, Georges and that no more than $2,500 should be expended on Rouault, Jacques Villon, and Fernand LUger-all little any one. However, once a collection of thirty-five was known in Americaat the time. Broadeningthe scope of the accumulated, any picture could be replaced by one of club's activities, she also invited to perform there Sergei better quality,for a sum greaterthan $5,ooo. By making Prokofiev, Igor Stravinsky, Martha Graham, Harold this later stipulation,Winterbotham made clearhis inten- Kreutzberg, and Leonid Massine, who made his debut tion to insurethat "thepurchase of paintings,as time goes as a soloist for an Arts Club audience. on, is toward superior works of art and of greatermerit It was in this atmosphere of artistic profusion and and continuousimprovement."3 A letter to Winterbotham excitementthat, at the age of seventy,Joseph Winterbotham from Art Institutepresident Charles L. Hutchinsonreveals conceived a plan in 1921for assisting the Art Institute-- the warm reception to his unique and farsighted offer: one of the youngest of America'sgreat art museums-in "The terms of your splendid gift to the Art Institute have building its permanentcollection of Europeanpaintings. been announcedto the Board of Trustees,and I am writ- Previously, in I890, the museum had purchaseda group ing to tell you that the gift has been accepted with great of Old Mastersfrom the PrinceDemidoff Collection,sold enthusiasm.... There can be no doubt that your gift, that year in Paris,which comprisedworks by Rembrandt which makes possible building up of this much needed van Rijn, Jacob van Ruisdael, Meindert Hobbema, and section of our collection, will have far-reachingvalue in Adriaenvan Ostade. El Greco'smasterpiece The Assump- the developmentof the museum toward a more adequate tion of the Virginhad been bought in 1906,and a Gustave and well-balancedrepresentation."4 Courbet landscape and Henri Fantin-Latour's famous The originalterms of the deed of gift gavethe respon- Portrait of Edouard Manet had been acquired, as had the Henry Field Collection of Barbizon pictures by such mid-nineteenth-century French artists as Camille Corot, Jules Breton, and Jean FrancoisMillet. Following European precedents, an entire gallery was devoted to plaster-castcopies of Classical,medieval, and Renaissance FIGURE 2. Rue and architectural midwest- sculptures fragments, giving WinterbothamCarpenter, ern visitors a concept of the roots of WesternEuropean a founder of the Arts Club art. However, despite the 1913exhibition of the revolu- of Chicago. Her passion- there were few in the ate involvementin the arts tionary "ArmoryShow," examples and her love of the Art Institute of works the produced by contemporary Europeanavant-garde may art movements that had been underway on the Con- have been the guiding tinent since the turn of the century. Although the great force behind her father's French and originalgift to the Art Impressionist Post-Impressionist paintings, Institute.Photo courtesy for which the Art Institute has become renowned, had of the Chicago Historical been regularly exhibited, they had not yet been con- Society.

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This content downloaded from 198.40.29.65 on Thu, 27 Mar 2014 16:47:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FIGURE 3. Constantin Brancusi(French, born Romania, 1876-1957). Portrait of Rue Carpenter, 1926.Black chalk on paper;64.5 x 45 cm. The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Mrs. PatrickHill in memory of her mother, Rue Winterbotham Carpenter(1981.302). Rue Carpenterplayed a key role in bringingan exhibition of Brancusi'swork, the largestuntil that time, to the Arts Club of Chicago in 1927.

sibility for the selection and purchaseof paintings to the trustees or their appointed representatives. The early commitment to buying European art of modernist per- suasion was more the result of the individuals upon whom these responsibilities devolved than of a formal indicationby Winterbotham.A new directorand curator, Robert B. Harshe, was an amateurpainter and believed in a strong museum emphasis on European modern art; and trustee Frederic Clay Bartlett, also a painter, traveledwidely and, with his wife Helen Birch Bartlett, was forming an extraordinarycollection of avant-garde art, which included examples by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Andre Derain, Amedeo Modigliani, and late work by Paul Cdzanne, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, as well as the Midwest examples of the most recent European Georges Seurat'smonumental A Sunday on La Grande artistic activity. If, in time, their choices proved to be of Jatte-1884.5 Robert Harshe and FredericBartlett, along lesser interest, other pictures of greater significance to with Charles Hutchinson and Martin Ryerson, eagerly the museum'soverall collections could take their places. began buying for what would be called the Joseph Thus, implicit requirements for constant reevaluation WinterbothamCollection. and gradual growth-in quality rather than quantity- They lost no time in making their first purchase, a were integral parts of the WinterbothamPlan. To pro- Matisse canvas painted in Nice in 1919 entitled Woman vide a complete picture of the collection's changing Standing at the Window (fig. 4), which not only repre- composition, a chronological list of all of the paintings sented that artistfor the first time in the Art Institute,but acquired for it is included at the end of this issue (see was among the first works by Matisse in an American "Checklistof the JosephWinterbotham Collection, 1921- museum.Early in 1922,they purchasedtwo works by con- 1994," pp. 182-88). temporaryGerman and Austrianartists Max Clarenbach Impatient to see the collection grow, on three occa- and Julius Paul Junghanns, whose paintings had been sions Joseph Winterbotham,hearing of impending visits shown at the 1914Carnegie Institute InternationalExhi- to Europe by Art Institute trustees, sent checks to buy bition. Although these two paintingsand others acquired paintings. For one check, given in 1922, he specified that during the early years of the collection's formation did the painting to be purchased "be of superior excellence, not pass the test of time and were subsequently replaced of a beautiful landscape."6This charge was dispatched by finer pictures, it was the special feature of the with the acquisition of the Art Institute's first painting Winterbothamgift to take such risks. It must have less- by Gauguin, a lyrical landscape of 1892 entitled The ened the burden felt by the early executors to know that Burao Tree (Te Burao) (p. 131).In 1923, the Arts Club, their purchases were not necessarily irrevocable. They which administered a gallery in the museum between could pick from the current art of the day and bring to 1922 and 1927, mountedan exhibitionof paintingsby

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This content downloaded from 198.40.29.65 on Thu, 27 Mar 2014 16:47:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Jean Louis Forain, from which the Art Institute pur- other works by artists he thought quite promising:Jean chased Forain's Sentencedfor Life (p. 141), one of the Lurqat,Charles Dufresne, Jean Marchand,and an Aus- artist'scharacteristically insightful works of social com- tralian-bornFrenchman named Edouard Goerg, whose mentary.During the next few years, a painting by Leo work he liked so much that he bought one of his paint- Putz, an Austrian colorist living in Munich, and another ings for himself. The final acquisition of the year,Andre by Gauguin, the ravishing 189o Portrait of a Womanin Dunoyer de Segonzac'sSummer Garden (The Hat with front of a Still Life by Ceizanne(p. 129), were added to the Scottish Ribbon) of 1926, had been initially pur- the collection, bringing the number of works to seven. chased by Rue Carpenter and then was bought by the Shortlybefore he died in 1925,Winterbotham experienced museum for the WinterbothamCollection, bringing the the great satisfactionof seeing Toulouse-Lautrec'sarrest- number of works to a total of fifteen at the close of the ing and unconventional composition of 1887-88, Eques- decade. Of these, five-two by Gauguin and one each trienne (At the Circus Fernando) (p. 125), added as the by Forain, Toulouse-Lautrec,and Braque-have been of collection'seighth picture. Earlier that year,the canvashad such enduring significance and value that they are still been shown in Chicago's first exhibition of paintingsby part of the collection and mark an extraordinaryperiod that artist,also organizedunder the aegis of the Arts Club. of vitality and experimentation,both by Europeanartists After their father's death, Rue Carpenter and John and by the Art Institute. Winterbotham augmented the principle of his gift to In 1935,Joseph Winterbotham,Jr. (fig. 5) suggested $70,000. Six more paintings were acquired in 1929. Five that the composition of the Winterbotham Committee of them were purchased in Europe by Frederic Clay be changedto include the active participationof a family Bartlett, who wrote back to the director that he had member, along with the museum director and a trustee. wrangledwith the dealersto reduce their prices in order Highly qualified to represent the family, this younger to meet Winterbotham's original $2,500 per-painting son of the original benefactor had assembled his own terms. "I think we must try very hardto changethe terms worthy collection of Europeanand Asian art. In fact, the of the gift, otherwise as things are going, we could never Arts Club opened its new quartersin the WrigleyBuilding get together a collection worthy of Mr. Winterbotham's in 1936with an exhibitionof paintingsand drawingsfrom aim,"he lamented.7Nevertheless, he returnedto Chicago his collection. At the time the younger Winterbotham with a still life by Georges Braque (p. 155) and four assumed a position on the Winterbotham Committee, he also proposed an amendmentto the 1921 deed of gift that formalizedan emphasison contemporaryart, stating: "No picture is to be purchased for the Winterbotham Collection executed by an artist who has been dead over ten years--only foreign, contemporary, living artists' work to be purchased."8 During the 193os, because of the worsening polit- ical situation in Europe, trips there became less frequent. Chaim Soutine's 1929canvas Small Town Square, Vence was bought in Paris in 1931,but, soon after, the

FIGURE 4. Henri Matisse (French, 1869-1954). WomanStanding at the Window, 1919. Oil on canvas.Private collection. This painting, which is no longer in the Art Institute's collection, was the first work purchased for the Winterbotham Collection. Acquired in 1921, it was the first work by Matisse in the Art Institute's collection and one of the first works by the artist in an American museum.

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This content downloaded from 198.40.29.65 on Thu, 27 Mar 2014 16:47:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FIGURE 5. Joseph Winterbotham,Jr., late 1940s.A discerning collector of Europeanand Asian art, this younger son of Joseph Humphrey Winterbotham(fig. I) had a prominentrole in acquiringtwentieth- century works for the WinterbothamCollection. Photo courtesy of the Winterbothamfamily.

Winterbotham Committee began to look to the New The complete Joseph WinterbothamCollection was York galleries,which were representingmore and more shown as a group for the first time in 1947 (see fig. 6) in European artists, many of whose work had been banned a special month-long exhibition.An illustratedcatalogue, by the Nazis. Soon after it was constituted, the new written by KatharineKuh, who would shortly become committee bought pictures by Raoul Dufy, Derain, Karl the Art Institute'sfirst Curator of Modern Painting and Hofer, Matisse (p. I35), Modigliani (p. 15I), another by Sculpture,was published in conjunction with the exhi- Soutine (p. 161), and a third version of Marc Chagall's bition. One of Joseph Winterbotham'soriginal stipula- The PrayingJew (p. 149), painted in 1923 and exhibited tions had specified that, once the collection was com- at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1932.Joseph plete, a room should be equipped for its permanent Winterbotham,Jr., donated the collection'sfirst Surrealist installation. In 1945, his son modified this directive to example, a mysterious canvas by SalvadorDali entitled require only an annual showing of the group.9 During Shades of Night Descending, which was later traded for the rest of the year, each painting was placed where the Dali'sInventions of the Monstersof 1937(p. 169).With the museum deemed it could be shown to best advantage, help of the committee, Daniel Catton Rich, the director among other works of its type or period. Every year,for of the Art Institute from 1938to 1958,engineered a num- many years,the collectionwas mountedtogether at regular ber of remarkablepurchases for the collection: Giorgio intervals.On one occasion in 1949,a selection of twenty- de Chirico's haunting early canvas The Philosopher's four paintings was requested by the Dallas Museum of Conquest of 1914 (p. 147); Oskar Kokoschka's color- Fine Arts for exhibition at the TexasState Fair, under the saturated1919 landscape Elbe River near Dresden, which title "TheJoseph Winterbotham Collection of Twentieth- had been confiscated in Austria, but was smuggled out Century European Paintings."The paintings have never of the country to a New York art dealer; and Picasso's again traveledtogether as a group, in part because they Cubist FernandeOlivier of 1909(p. 139),formerly among are integratedprominently within the museum's collec- GertrudeStein's famed collection of early twentieth-cen- tion of late nineteenth- and twentieth-century art, and tury art. The committee decided to loosen the restriction their absence would be keenly felt. on purchases of only European art after several exhibi- The time had now arrived when, according to the tions in the United Statesof the excitingwork of Mexican deed of gift, exchanges and replacementsin the collec- muralists and painters Jos6 Clemente Orozco, Rufino tion could be made with the objective of improvement. Tamayo, and Diego Rivera. During the 1940s,paintings As mentioned earlier,the elder Winterbotham foresaw by each of these artists were acquired, with Rivera's the necessity of providing more money for this purpose Mother Mexico of 1935 coming as a gift from Joseph and required that each replacement cost no less than In to the collection's Winterbotham,Jr. deference origi- $5,ooo. An astute businessman,he seems to have antici- nal conception, these pictures were replaced many years pated the upward spiral of the art market. The first later by works of European artists. In 1946, with the opportunity to make an exchange came in 1949, when purchaseof YvesTanguy's Surrealist landscape The Rapid- Joseph Winterbotham, Jr., offered to sell to the Art ity of Sleep (p. I77), painted the previous year,the Joseph Institute, for a modest sum, one of the centerpieces WinterbothamCollection finally achieved its designated of his own collection, El Greco's The Feast in the House goal of thirty-five paintings. of Simon (c. 161o-I4). In making this generous offer,

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This content downloaded from 198.40.29.65 on Thu, 27 Mar 2014 16:47:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Winterbothamrescinded his earlier amendment requir- avant-garde,she broughtto Chicagoits first exhibitionsof ing the purchaseof only contemporaryart and proposed works by Max Ernst, Hans Hofmann, Jacques Lipchitz, a return to his father'sbroader stipulation.1oThus began Wifredo Lam, Arthur B. Davies, Jackson Pollock, Isamu an era of major contributions to the collection by the Noguchi, Robert Motherwell-only a few in a lengthy Winterbothamfamily, replacing pictures of lesser quality list of adventurousshows. She counted among her close purchased in the 1920s and 1930s.Fernand L6ger's The friends many great artists, composers, and authors in Railway Crossing(Preliminary Version) of 1919 (p. 157), both the United States and Europe, including Marianne originallypurchased by Rue Carpenter,was given in her Moore, Virgil Thompson, and AlexanderCalder. One of memory by her daughterMrs. PatrickHill in I953.Also, Calder'sfinest stabiles,commissioned by her in the early in 1953,the Art Instituteacquired van Gogh'sThe Drinkers 1940s,still can be seen in the Arts Club foyer. When the (after Daumier) of 1890 (p. 127)from Winterbotham,Jr., club moved to its present day location in 1951,members and accepted his gift of Cezanne's Apples on a Table- could boast of an interior designed by Ludwig Mies van cloth (c. 1886-90); when he died at age seventy-six, der Rohe, for Rue Shawhad persuadedthe greatarchitect in 1954,he bequeathed the major portion of his private of the InternationalStyle, who was teaching in Chicago collection of Europeanand Asian art to the Art Institute. at the Illinois Institute of Technology,to donate his ser- A total of eight works were eventually added to the vices. The club's modernist elegance reflected the taste, WinterbothamCollection. gentility, and integrity that Rue Shaw brought to her Rue WinterbothamShaw (fig. 7), granddaughterof work, earningher a reputationas the most esteemed and the elderJoseph Winterbotham,had assumed the mantle influentialmember of the Chicago art community. of her aunt Rue Carpenteras president of the Arts Club At the time Rue Shaw began to representthe family in 1940,and she was the.natural heir to her uncle's posi- on the Art Institute'sWinterbotham Committee, the col- tion on the WinterbothamCommittee. In both realms, lection was taking a direction quite different from one she provided firm and perspicaciousleadership. She had that emphasized contemporary European art. Along studied painting with Walt Kuhn in New York and with with other committee members-Daniel Catton Rich, Nathalie Gontcharovain Paris.After settling in Chicago trustee Leigh Block, and Katharine Kuh-Mrs. Shaw with her husband Alfred Phillips Shaw, a prominent believedthat the collection would be enhancedby adding architect,she followed in the art activist footsteps of her to it some of the predominantly nineteenth-century predecessors.For thirty-nineyears (1940-79),as president paintings included in her uncle's bequest. The first of the Arts Club, she directed a program of exhibitions, group of additions consisted of Cezanne'sHouse on the lectures, and concerts that assured and maintained the River (I885/90;p. 121), van Gogh's masterfulSelf-Portrait club's internationalreputation. A tireless defenderof the (c. 1886/87; p. 123), Odilon Redon's luminous Sita (c. 1893;p. 133),and a canvasthought to be by Gauguin called Of Human Misery. Four other pictures from Joseph Winterbotham, Jr.'sbequest were brought into the collection several years later; these included an undated pastel by Matisse called Dancer in Red; Edgar

FIGURE6. Left to right:Mrs. Joseph Winterbotham,Jr., Mrs. Rue WinterbothamShaw, Miss Rue Diana Hill, and Joseph Winterbotham,Jr., at the first exhibition of the Winterbotham Collection at the Art Institute, 1947.

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This content downloaded from 198.40.29.65 on Thu, 27 Mar 2014 16:47:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FIGURE7. Rue Winterbotham Shaw on the stairs of the Arts Club of Chicago, i951. Mrs. Shaw was instrumental in persuading the architect Mies van der Rohe to design the interior of the Arts Club at 109 East Ontario Street in Chicago. Her efforts at the Art Institute resulted in the additionto the Winterbotham Collection of many of its finest nineteenth-century paintings. Photo courtesy of the Winterbotham family.

Degas's Portrait after a Costume Ball (Portrait of Mme Dietz-Monin) of 1877/79(P- 115);a landscapeby a student of GustaveCourbet named MarcelOrdinaire, which was thought to be by the master;and a portrait by Edouard Manet entitled Young Woman (c. 1879). The composition of the Winterbotham Collection thus began to appearas one featuring key artists and styles in the his- Stanley M. Freehling, who succeeded James W. Alsdorf tory of modern art. To further develop this new direc- as chairmanof the museum's Committee on Twentieth- tion, Katharine Kuh was able to find and propose the Century Paintingand Sculpturein 1990. This committee purchaseof three importantpaintings by early twentieth- has greatly enhanced the Surrealist component of the century pioneers: Oscar Kokoschka's 1908 Commerce collection, adding Yves Tanguy'suntitled screen of 1928 Counselor Ebenstein (p. 137);Joan Mir6's 1918Portrait (p. 167), one of the masterpiecesof this artist'scareer, as ofJuanita Obrador (p. 153); and Robert Delaunay's 1911 well Max Ernst's The Blue Forest of 1925 (p. 159) and Champs de Mars: The Red Tower (p. I43). A. James Paul Delvaux's The Awakening of the Forest of 1939 Speyer, who succeeded Kuh as Curator of Twentieth- (p. 173).The committee acquiredLyonel Feininger's1911 Century Painting and Sculptureand as a Winterbotham Carnival in Arcueil (p. 145) after the rediscovery of a Committee member in i961, continued to look for group of important paintings from this artist's early paintingsthat would highlightthe majoraccomplishments career.Two other paintingspurchased during this time by of twentieth-century art. In the ensuing years, Speyer the committee-Max Beckmann's Reclining Nude of suggested the purchase of Ben Nicholson's November, 1927 (p. 163) and GerhardRichter's Christa and Wolfiof 1956 (Pistoia) of 1956; Balthus'sSolitaire of 1943 (p. 175); 1964 (p. i8i)-add considerably to the Art Institute's Dubuffet's Genuflection of the Bishop of 1963 (p. 179); holdings in twentieth-century German art. Finally, the and, in 1970, Rene Magritte's Time Transfixed of 1938 addition of two earlier paintings--Gustave Courbet's In the committee added a (p. I7I). 1973, painting by 1862 Reverie (Portrait of Gabrielle Bourreau) (p. 113) Claude Monet, Etretat: The Beach and the Falaise and Arnold B6cklin's 1883 In the Sea (p. II7)-can be d'Amont of I885 (p. II9), that had been given earlier seen, in part, as reflecting the committee's continuing to the Art Institute by Rue Shaw'smother, Mrs. John H. desireto representnineteenth-century art in the collection. Winterbotham. In the nearly seventy-five years of its existence, the For fourteen years the composition of the collection Joseph Winterbotham Collection has taken on various remainedthe same.Since 1987,however, the Winterbotham forms, each attempting to fulfill the objective of its Committee has made a series of purchases and changes creator to give the Art Institute a group of European that have added eight new paintings to the collection. paintings of the highest quality. So astute were many of PatrickShaw, the son of Rue Shaw,joined the committee the early choices that fourteen of the original group of in 1979 as the representativeof the Winterbothamfam- thirty-five paintings remain in the collection." Guided ily; the other current committee members are James N. by the capablehands and unfailinggenerosity of succeed- Wood, director and president of the Art Institute, and ing generations of the Winterbothamfamily, the Joseph

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This content downloaded from 198.40.29.65 on Thu, 27 Mar 2014 16:47:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions WinterbothamCollection now containssome of the signal 7. Frederic Clay Bartlett to Robert B. Harshe, June 5, 1929, works in the museum'spermanent holdings of nineteenth- AIC Archives. and twentieth-centuryart. Yet, accordingto the terms of this farsightedgift, the currentcomposition of the collec- 8. Joseph Winterbotham, Jr., modification to Deed of Gift, tion is not immutable. It will continue to be reassessed Nov. 25, 1935,AIC Archives. on a regular basis and, undoubtedly, opportunities will arise to make advantageousexchanges. There seems to 9. Joseph Winterbotham,Jr., to Chauncey McCormick, Mar. be little question that the collection's future will be just 17, 1945,AIC Archives. as it was envisioned by its founder; and because of that vision, visitors to the Art Institute will continue to enjoy io. Joseph Winterbotham,Jr., to Chauncey McCormick, Sept. outstanding examplesof Europeanart. 27, 1949, AIC Archives. El Greco's The Feast in the House of Simon was later moved from the Winterbotham Collection into the generalcollection of the Art Institute.

ii. The fourteen paintings from the original group of thirty- Notes five that remain in the WinterbothamCollection are: Forain's Sentencedfor Life, Gauguin'sThe Burao Tree (Te Burao) and Portrait of a Woman in front of a Still Life by Cezanne, I. Quoted in Emmett Dedmon, FabulousChicago (New York, Toulouse-Lautrec's Equestrienne (In the Circus Fernando), 1953). Braque'sStill Life, Dufy's Open Window,Nice, Soutine'sDead Fowl, Matisse's The Geranium, Chagall's The Praying Jew, 2. Joseph WinterbothamDeed of Gift to The Art Institute of Modigliani's Madame Pompadour, de Chirico's The Chicago, Apr. 9, I92I, The Art Institute of Chicago Archives Philosopher's Conquest, Picasso's Fernande Olivier, Dali's (hereafterreferred to as AIC Archives). Inventions of the Monsters, and Tanguy's The Rapidity of Sleep. Seven additionalpaintings from the originalgroup remain 3. Ibid. in the Art Institute'spermanent collection: Albert Besnard'sBy the Lake, Edouard Georg's The Epicure, Karl Hofer's Girls 4. Charles L. Hutchinson to Joseph Winterbotham, Apr. 18, Throwing Flowers, Jose Clemente Orozco's Zapata, Rufino 1921, AIC Archives. Tamayo'sWoman with Bird Cage, El Greco's The Feast in the House of Simon, and MarcelOrdinaire's Landscape. For a discussion of Frederic Bartlett and the Helen 5. Clay Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection, which was given to the Art Institute in 1926,see The Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 12, 2 (1986),which is devoted entirely to this collection.

6. Joseph Winterbotham to Charles L. Hutchinson, June 8, 1922, AIC Archives.

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