Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Self-Portrait with Donors Confessions of an Art Collector by John Walker ISBN 13: 9780316918039. Self-portrait with donors;: Confessions of an art collector. Walker, John. This specific ISBN edition is currently not available. From Kirkus Reviews, Oct. 1974: The title is something of a trompe l'oeil -- Walker, first the curator, then the director of Washington's National Gallery since its inception -- reveals very little of himself and is always modest and courteous in this guided tour of his life as an intermediary -- ""collecting collectors who would. . . become donors."" After Harvard, Walker spent three of his best and happiest years in the tutelage of Berenson in his beautiful sanctuary, I Tatti -- then as a still very young man assisted Mellon with his new gallery. His book rarely deals in the covert, avid scuffle for great works although his purchase of Leonardo's inaccessible Ginevra de Benci, from Liechtenstein, took a persistent sixteen years. Mostly he discusses men of great wealth who were able to vicariously achieve immortality through their acquisitions and later benevolences: two generations of Mellons; the Kress brothers; the tenacious Chester Dale guided by the taste of his wife; bargain hunter- entrepreneur ArmandHammer who liked to buy but then give away; Walker's close friends the Wrightsmans who he claims have the ""finest collection"" in the US. Walker teaches and chides from experience: collect contemporaries when you are young; beware of fashion (and the Impressionists); buy only what you genuinely love, although the collector inevitably becomes insatiable. And additional caveats for museums in an expansionist era. . . . All of which is to say that with genuine luster rather than the hustling chutzpah and razzle-dazzle of Duveen, Walker quietly ministered to the higher interests of art, artists and proud possessors. "synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title. Shipping: US$ 3.00 Within U.S.A. Customers who bought this item also bought. Top Search Results from the AbeBooks Marketplace. 1. Self-portrait with donors;: Confessions of an art collector. Book Description Condition: new. Seller Inventory # BBB_newH_0316918032. 2. Self-Portrait With Donors: Confessions of an Art Collector. Walker, John, Book Description Condition: New. New. Seller Inventory # Q-0316918032. 3. Self-portrait with donors;: Confessions of an art collector. Book Description Condition: New. A+ Customer service! Satisfaction Guaranteed! Book is in NEW condition. Seller Inventory # 0316918032- 2-1. 4. Self-portrait with donors;: Confessions of an art collector. Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. Brand New!. Seller Inventory # VIB0316918032. NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART. NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART. In December 1936, Andrew W. Mellon offered to build an art gallery for the United States in Washington, D.C., and to donate his superb art collection to the nation as the nucleus of its holdings. President Franklin D. Roosevelt recommended acceptance of this gift, described as the largest to the national government up to that time. On 24 March 1937, the Seventy-fifth Congress approved a joint resolution to establish the National Gallery of Art as an independent bureau of the Smithsonian Institution. The Genesis of the National Gallery of Art. Andrew W. Mellon (1855–1937), one of America's most successful financiers, came to Washington in 1921 as secretary of the treasury, a position he held until 1932. While in Washington, he came to believe that the United States capital needed a great art museum to serve Americans and visitors from abroad. He had begun to collect paintings early in life, yet he made his most important purchases after his plans for the national art gallery began to take shape. Most notably, in 1930 and 1931 Mellon purchased twenty-one paintings from the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad, USSR. He paid a total of more than $6.6 million for the works, including The Annunciation by Jan van Eyck, The Alba Madonna by Raphael, and A Polish Nobleman by Rembrandt. In 1930, he formed the A. W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust to hold works of art and funds to build the new museum. The institution that Mellon envisioned was to blend private generosity with public ownership and support. He laid out his proposals in two letters of 22 December 1936 and 31 December 1936 to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. These letters became the basis for the museum's enabling legislation. Mellon believed the museum should belong to the people of the United States and that the entire public "should forever have access" to it. To accomplish this, it should be open to the public without charge and maintained by annual Congressional appropriation. At the same time, however, Mellon believed the museum, which would be built with private funds, should grow through gifts of works of art from private citizens. To encourage such gifts, Mellon stipulated that the museum not bear his name but be called "the national gallery of art or such other name as would identify it as a gallery of art of the National Government." To ensure its excellence, he also stipulated that all works of art in the museum be of the same high standard of quality as his own extraordinary collection. Reflecting the combined public and private character of the museum, its enabling legislation specifies that the National Gallery of Art will be governed by a board of nine trustees consisting of four public officials: the Chief Justice of the United States, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, and the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, and five private citizens. Mellon selected architect John Russell Pope (1874– 1937), one of the best known architects of his generation, to design the museum's original West Building. The building Pope planned is classic in style, but thoroughly modern in its proportions and structure. The location of the museum was of particular concern to Mellon. He believed that it should be close to other museums and accessible for visitors. After considering various alternatives, he selected a site on the north side of the national Mall, close to the foot of Capitol Hill near the intersection of Constitution and Pennsylvania Avenues. Construction of the West Building began in June 1937. In August 1937, less than three months later, Andrew W. Mellon died. John Russell Pope died less than twenty-four hours later. The building was completed by Pope's associates, architects Otto Eggers and Daniel P. Higgins, under the direction of the A. W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust. Dedication. On the evening of 17 March 1941, the National Gallery of Art was dedicated before a gathering of roughly nine thousand invited guests. Andrew Mellon's son Paul presented the gift of the museum and the Mellon Collection to the nation on behalf of his father. In accepting the gift for the people of the United States, President Franklin D. Roosevelt concluded the ceremonies: "The dedication of this Gallery to a living past and to a greater and more richly living future, is the measure of the earnestness of our intention that the freedom of the human spirit shall go on." In keeping with Andrew Mellon's vision for the National Gallery of Art, by the time of the museum's dedication, its collections were already being augmented by gifts from other donors. In July 1939, Samuel H. Kress (1863–1955), founder of the chain of five and dime stores, had offered the museum his large collection of mostly Italian Renaissance art. The great Widener Collection, including paintings by Rembrandt, Vermeer, El Greco, Degas, and others, also had been promised. Nonetheless, vast possibilities remained for further expansion. The War Years. The museum opened on the eve of World War II. Less than ten months after its dedication, on 1 January 1942, the Gallery's most important works of art were moved for safekeeping to Biltmore House in Asheville, North Carolina. The museum remained open throughout the war and made every effort to make its rooms welcoming to men and women of the armed services. Following the example of the National Gallery in London, the museum began a series of Sunday afternoon concerts to entertain and inspire visitors. The concerts proved so successful that they were extended throughout the war and continue to the present. The National Gallery of Art was instrumental in the establishment and work of the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas (the Roberts Commission). At the request of a number of organizations and individuals in the American cultural and intellectual community, on 8 December 1942 Chief Justice of the United States Harlan Stone, then Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the National Gallery of Art, wrote President Roosevelt to ask him to set up a commission to help in protecting historic buildings and monuments, works of art, libraries, and archives in war areas. The Commission was formed as a result of this request. Its headquarters was in the National Gallery building. In December 1945, shortly after the close of hostilities, the United States Army asked the National Gallery to accept temporary custody of 202 paintings from Berlin museums until conditions permitted their return to Germany. The move proved highly controversial. Nonetheless, the works remained in secure storage at the museum until March 1948 when they were placed on public display for 40 days. Nearly a million people viewed the works during this brief period. Following the exhibition, paintings on panel were transferred to Germany and the remaining works toured to twelve other museums in the United States before being returned. The Collections. During the war and afterward, the collections of the National Gallery of Art continued to grow. In 1943, Lessing J. Rosenwald (1891–1979) gave his collection of old master and modern prints and drawings. He continued to enlarge and enhance the collection until his death in 1979, when his gifts to the Gallery totaled some 22,000 prints and drawings. In 1943, Chester Dale (1883–1962), who eventually assembled one of the greatest collections of French impressionist and post-impressionist paintings, gave his first gift to the museum. When Dale died in 1962, he left the Gallery a bequest that included 252 masterworks of painting and sculpture. Andrew Mellon's own children, Ailsa Mellon Bruce (1901–1969) and Paul Mellon (1907–1999) became the museum's most important supporters and benefactors. Throughout her life, Ailsa gave the museum works of art and funds that were used for the purchase of such masterpieces as Leonardo da Vinci's Ginevra de'Benci. Her brother Paul served as a trustee for more than 40 years before retiring in 1985. Paul Mellon also was an important collector, especially of British and French impressionist works. By the time of his death, he had given more than 1,000 works of art and generous endowments to the museum his father founded. The East Building. By the time of its twenty-fifth anniversary in 1966, the National Gallery of Art had outgrown the original West Building. Additional space was needed for the display of the permanent collection, including large modern paintings and sculpture; for temporary exhibitions; and for new library and research facilities. Realizing these needs, in 1967 Paul Mellon and Ailsa Mellon Bruce offered funds for a second museum building. Architect Ieoh Ming Pei (1917–) was selected to design the new building, which was to be built on the trapezoidal site immediately to the east of the original building. The site had been set aside for the museum in its enabling legislation. Pei designed a dramatic modernist building, whose public spaces are centered around a grand atrium enclosed by a sculptural space frame. The ground breaking took place in 1971, and the East Building was dedicated and opened to the public in 1978. Special Exhibitions. Even as the East Building was being designed and built, museums were becoming ever more popular destinations for the public and temporary exhibitions began to receive enormous public attention. At the National Gallery of Art, the exhibition Treasures of Tutankhamun attracted more than 800,000 visitors during the four months it was on view from November 1976 to March 1977. The Treasure Houses of Britain: 500 Years of Patronage and Collecting, the largest and most complicated exhibition undertaken by the Gallery, was on view from November 1985 to April 1986. It attracted nearly a million visitors who viewed some 700 works of art in 17 specially constructed period rooms. The museum attracted national attention between November 1995 and February 1996 when an unprecedented Vermeer exhibition brought together 21 of the existing 35 works known to have been painted by the Dutch artist. The exhibition was closed for a total of 19 days during its showing due to two Federal budget-related shutdowns and a major blizzard. In recent decades, the museum's collection also continued to grow. In 1991, to celebrate the museum's fiftieth anniversary, over 320 works of art were given or committed to the National Gallery by more than 150 donors. National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden. With the opening of the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden in 1999, the museum added an area for the outdoor display of large sculpture to its campus. Designed by landscape architect Laurie D. Olin in cooperation with the National Gallery of Art, the garden was a gift of the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation. The garden's design is centered on a circular pool, which is transformed into an ice skating rink in winter. Museum Programs. As the museum enters its seventh decade, it continues an active exhibition program, presenting approximately fifteen temporary shows annually. It also lends its own works of art widely to make the national collections available beyond Washington. With its superb collection of works of art and outstanding library and research facilities, the National Gallery of Art has become an important center for the scholarly study of art. Its Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) was created in 1977 to promote research in the history of art, architecture, and urbanism. The Center supports fellowships and sponsors lectures and symposia on specialized topics intended to shape new directions in research. Education programs are an important part of the museum's activities. Regular public lectures, tours, and film programs help interpret works of art for visitors. An extensive docents program provides guided tours and other activities for school groups. Films and videos are loaned to schools throughout the United States through an extension program. The MicroGallery, an interactive computer information center, is available to visitors on-site. The National Gallery of Art web site (http://www.nga.gov) is among the most extensive art museum sites available on the Internet. It was among the first to provide access to complete, searchable information about the collection on-line. Extensive features and information relating to the museum's history, buildings, collections, and special exhibitions are included. The museum operates an art conservation laboratory that monitors the condition of paintings, sculpture, and works on paper, and develops methodology to ensure the security of art during transportation. Since 1950, the museum has sponsored a program to conduct scientific research into conservation methods and artists' materials. Research analyzing the physical materials of works of art and the causes and prevention of deterioration continues to the present. To date, there have been four directors of the National Gallery of Art, including David Finley (1939– 1956), John Walker (1956–1969), and J. Carter Brown (1969–1992). Earl A. Powell III became director in 1992. BIBLIOGRAPHY. Finley, David Edward. A Standard of Excellence: Andrew W. Mellon Founds the National Gallery of Art at Washington. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1973. Kopper, Philip. America's National Gallery of Art: A Gift to the Nation. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1991. Mellon, Paul, with John Baskett. Reflections in a Silver Spoon: A Memoir. New York: William Morrow, 1992. Nicholas, Lynn H. The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994. Walker, John. Self-Portrait with Donors: Confessions of an Art Collector. Boston: Little, Brown, 1974. ———. National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1984. Walker, John, III. First chief curator and second director of the National Gallery of Art, Washgington, D. C. Walker was born to a wealthy Pittsburgh industrialist family, Hay Walker III (d. 1925) and Rebekah Friend (Walker), whose fortune, like that of the Fricks and Mellons, came from iron ore and steel. His parents divorced early and Walker lived with his mother. At age 13, he contracted polio and was confined to a wheel chair for many years. Because of this, he frequently visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and gained a love of paintings. He attended Harvard University, where his coursework included the museum and connoisseurship classes of Paul J. Sachs. In his junior year, 1928, he helped found the Harvard Society for Contemporary Art together with fellow students Lincoln Kirstein (1907-1996) and Eddie Warburg, which sponsored exhibitions of contemporary artists in rented rooms. These included Thomas Hart Benton, Edward Hopper, George Bellows and Alexander Calder. After graduating from Harvard summa cum laude in 1930, Walker continued study with Bernard Berenson for three years at Villa I Tatti, where the two developed a lasting friendship. In 1935 Walker was appointed professor in charge of fine arts at the American Academy in Rome. There he met and married Margaret Gwendolyn Mary "Margie" Drummond (d.1987), the eldest daughter of the British ambassador and the 16th Earl of Perth. While in Rome, too, he completed the negotiations with Berenson to cede his villa to Harvard as a study center after Berenson's death. During this time in Italy, Walker learned of plans by art patron Andrew Mellon (1855-1937) to create a national art gallery in Washgington, D. C., on the mall. Walker wrote Mellon's son, Paul (1907-1999), who had been a childhood friend of Walker in Pittsburgh, asking for a position in the new museum. Walker came to the gallery temporarily in 1938 to supervise construction when Andrew Mellon and the museum architect, John Russell Pope (1874-1937), died within 24 hours of one another. One of three members of the building committee, he was largely responsible for the inner appearance of the gallery. In January 1939 he was appointed chief curator under first director David Finley. When World War II was declared, Walker's physical limitations prevented him from participating in war activity, but he went to Europe in 1945 to help identify looted works of art by the Nazis. As chief curator, Walker devoted himself to the NGA, installing the acquisitions from the Mellon gifts (some which had recently been acquired from the Hermitage in Russia) and encouraging other donations. Walker succeeded Finley as director in 1956, beating out the Gallery's secretary and legal council, Huntington Cairns (1904-1985). Walker's friendship with Jacqueline Kennedy helped solidify the 1963 loan exhibition of the Mona Lisa to the National Gallery, on loan to President John F. Kennedy and the American people, from the French government. Throughout the years, Walker strengthen donor relationships with the Mellon family (Paul and his sister, Ailsa Mellon Bruce,1901- 1969) and Joseph E. Widener (1872-1943), as well as creating new ones with Armand Hammer (1898-1990), and Lessing J. Rosenwald (1891- 1979). His frustrations and ultimate success dealing with Chester Dale (1883-1962), a quixotic stockbroker and collector of magnificent 19th- and early-20th-century French paintings were outlined in his 1974 book Self-Portrait with Donors . Walker's many spectacular acquisitions included Rembrandt's Aristotle with the Bust of Homer , Fragonard's La Liseuse , El Greco's Laocoon , and the Ginevra de' Benci by Leonardo da Vinci bought in 1967 from the Prince of Liechtenstein. He made the selections from the Samuel Kress collection of Renaissance art bequest. Walker was also responsible for the planning of the gallery's east building expansion, designed by architect I M Pei and completed in 1978. In 1961, Walker took as his personal assistant the 25-year-old J. Carter Brown, whose father, John Nicholas Brown (1900-1979), had been a fellow student with Walker's in Sachs' classes. Brown succeeded Walker in 1969 as Director and Walker assumed the title Director Emeritus. Walker and his wife settled in Sussex, in Amberley (near Arundel), England, and Fishers Island, New York, spending winters in Florida. In his retirement he authored monographs on James McNeill Whistler and John Constable. Walker was one of the few major museum directors with a strong career in art history (as opposed to politics, as his predecessor had, or development, from which many modern directors are drawn). His writings on art drew the praise from Berenson, who was his principal mentor. Walker displayed Berenson's attitude that museums' successes lay in the quality of it collections as much as crowd pleasing. He took a conservative stance on cleaning of pictures, regarding aggressive cleaning as an act of vandalism. He was also forthright about his duty to curry favor for donations. ''In the United States,'' he wrote in his autobiography, ''it is axiomatic that the undertaker and the museum director arrive almost simultaneously.' John Walker Biography. John Walker III (December 24, 1906 – October 16, 1995) was an American art curator, and the second director of the National Gallery of Art, from 1956 to 1969. Walker received an undergraduate degree in art history from Harvard University in 1930, where he studied with Paul J. Sachs. He formed the Harvard Society for Contemporary Art, with Philip Johnson, Lincoln Kirstein, and Edward Warburg. He studied at Villa I Tatti in Florence with Bernard Berenson, and served as professor and assistant director of the American Academy in Rome from 1935 to 1939.Walker became chief curator of the National Gallery of Art in 1939 and was involved in identifying works of art looted by the Nazis following World War II. In 1956 he was named director of the National Gallery, succeeding David E. Finley Jr., and remained in the position until his retirement in 1969. During his tenure at the gallery, Walker cultivated donor relationships with collectors such as the Mellon family, Joseph Widener, Armand Hammer, and Chester Dale; his significant acquisitions included Rembrandt's Aristotle with the Bust of Homer, Fragonard's La Liseuse, El Greco's Laocoon, and the Ginevra de' Benci by Leonardo da Vinci. Walker was the author of six books, including Bellini and Titian and Titian at Ferrara, and an autobiography, Self-Portrait with Donors. Like his predecessor, David Finley, Walker served on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, from 1967 to 1971.In 1961, Walker hired J. Carter Brown as his assistant. He retired in 1969, and lived in Florida, Fishers Island, New York, and England. Works. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1963, and subsequent American and European editions. Self-Portrait with Donors: Confessions of an Art Collector. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1974, ISBN 978-0-316-91803-9. Joseph Mallord William Turner. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1976; concise edition: New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1983. Portraits: 5,000 Years. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1983. References. Description above from the Wikipedia article John Walker (curator), licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia. John Walker Knew Art—Even If He Didn't Love It. When a prominent figure publishes his memoirs, there is always a chance that he will let his hair down. Not John Walker, who retired in 1969 as director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington. D.C. In his recently published “Self‐Portrait with Donors: Confessions of an Art Collector,” Mr. Walker remains perfectly coiffed from the first to the last word, The attentive reader may even catch him, from time to time, patting a stray lock back into place. The precipitous rise of the National Gallery is one of the great success stories in the history of museums. John Walker was there from the beginning, first as chief curator when the museum opened in 1911 and later as director. When the National Gallery was established by an act of Congress in 1937, it hardly seemed possible that enough master paintings could be available anywhere at so late a date to form one more great public collection. But today the National Gallery stands on Constitution Avenue chockablock with paintings that any museum in the world would like to have —proof that it was done. How it was done is another story. To some people, the National Gallery looks less like a marble shrine to culture than a robber baron's castle filled with plunder. This is especially true o af generation of museum directors who failed to recognize the potential of Samuel H. Kress and his brother Rush a collectors. Philadelphians who expected the Joseph E. Widener collection to come to their museum, and of Mr. Walker's contemporaries who lost out to him in the noholds‐barred fight for the Chester Dale collection. It is always safer for any person who figures in someone else's memories to be alive and able to kick rather than dead. In this case, with his collection irretrievably ceded to the National Gallery, Samuel H. Kress is in the latter position, and I find it hard to forgive the way Mr. Walker treats him. He describes Mr. Kress's apartment as “expensively decorated in what might be called New York Renaissance” when he visited it a pre liminary to the campaign that finally won him the cream of the Kress collection. (The National Gallery has never had anything to do with skimmed milk.) Mr. Kress's early Italian paintings were hung from floor to ceiling, each painting individually illuminated, Mr. Walker says that these “packaged bore witness to a storekeeper's sense of order and his convicition that merchandise should be well lighted and attractively presented.” Mr. Walker forgets that his own job was to package art as attractively as possible for popular consumption. I could not help thinking of how ostentatiously, years later, Mr, Walker packaged and lighted for a press conference the Leonardo portrait of Ginevra de Benci, the super expensive piece of merchandise he acquired for the National Gallery in a major coup. The picture of Mr. Kress as a vulgar and suspicious fellow may be true and worth presenting as a matter of historical record. But Mr. Walker succumb entirely to the snobbish attitude that mars these memoirs when he tells how Mr, Kress, in his uneducated efforts to get authentications for his paintings, wrote to the very top authority, Bernard Berenson, “about whom he had heard in some mysterious way.” This is one unsightly stray lock of hair that Mr. Walker failed to notice, and it is not put back in place by his statement that he grew to be very fond of Mr. Kress — a statement which takes on a condescending flavor in context. I was bothered also by the chapter on Chester Dale, which Mr. Walker admits, “should be spoken from couch not written at a desk. Written at the desk, it’ re‐veals enough specifically, Mr. Walker cannot under‐stand (and even cannot quite forgive) the fact that a self‐made, self educated rnan could have formed a great collection. Inherited wealth and education at a select university seem the prerequi‐:, sites for acceptance in Mr. Walker's world. Chester Date (who left Mr. Walker “to my stunned surprise … a considerable sum of money”) still throws him for a lood. Those are the irritating giveaways in Mr. Walker's self‐portrait, but he has also painted himself with modesty that may eseape many readers. He makes his career, with its achievements and occasional defeats, sound like one long Stretch of graceful gaiety—a veritable Fred Astaire tap dance In fact, his was a career of hard Work inspired by acute alertness to the potentials of arsituation and disciplined by a knowledge of, if no apparent. “We are all whores,” said the late Fiske Kimball, direc tor of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, with exactly the kind of unwary exaggeration that contributed to Philadelphia's losing the Widener collection. “We are ell, courtiers” would have been close to the truth, and a sudcessful courtier's life is not an easy one. “Self. trait with Donors” is a firsthand view of some of the greatest art patrons of VA, 20th century and a subliminal revelation of what it takes.to please them. “Self‐Portrait with Dnors Confessions of an Art Collector” by John Walker. 320 . ges. Little, Brown & to$12.95.