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NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART • BULLETIN • NUMBER 56 • SPRING 2017 NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART • BULLETIN 2 The Sculpture Collection: • C. D. Dickerson III, Curator and Head of Department, Sculpture and Decorative Arts ohn Russell Pope’s magnificent West Building is more than a temple of paintings. Within the Jsublime galleries, on both the main and ground floors, awaits one of the preeminent sculpture and decorative arts collections in the world, comprised of 4,000 objects created before the mid-1900s — from works of marble and bronze to examples of ceramics, textiles, metalwork, and furniture. Stretching from ancient Greece to the early twenti- eth century, the collection spans an even wider historical range than the West Building’s great paintings. Partic- ularly rich in works from the Italian Renaissance and eighteenth- and nine- teenth-century France, the Gallery’s collection began with Andrew W. Mellon’s founding donations and has expanded through the present century with the transformative arrivals of the distinguished Kaufman collection of American furniture and masterpieces from the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Mellon’s original vision for the Gallery did not include sculpture or decorative arts, however. He loved paint- ings and assumed that any museum he established would be filled entirely with them. It was only during the final years of his life that his outlook toward sculpture changed. As he wrestled with planning the expansive museum he intended to build on the National Mall in Washington, DC, he was led to think more openly about sculpture, paving Fig. 1. Style of Agostino di Duccio, the way for a series of acquisitions that Madonna and Child, 1460s or later, helped bring the West Building to life marble, Andrew W. Mellon Collection when it opened in 1941. NUMBER 56 • SPRING 2017 3 Shaping a Vision, Expanding a Legacy Mellon acquired his first sculp- Fig. 2. Otto R. Eggers, Preliminary ture in January 1935, only a couple Study: Central Gallery for the Exhibition years before his death in 1937. It was a of Sculpture, c. 1936, graphite with marble relief of the Madonna and child white wash and cream gouache, then attributed to the Florentine mas- ter Agostino di Duccio (fig. 1). Mellon Acquired from Eggers and Higgins, may have been attracted to the sculp- Architects ture because it enjoyed a distinguished provenance, formerly owned by the who can only have wondered where financier John Pierpont Morgan, whose all these sculptures would come from. collection drew Mellon’s interest when Part of the answer revealed itself it was exhibited at the Metropolitan almost simultaneously. Mellon spent Museum of Art in 1913. But the choice the summer of 1936 in London, and one was still unusual for Mellon. By 1935 he of his first appointments was with the had been collecting old master art for renowned art dealer Joseph Duveen, almost two decades — but never sculp- with whom he had had a longstanding ture, always paintings. Unsurprisingly, and productive relationship. Duveen his preference in museums was for pure told Mellon of a major group of Italian picture galleries like the National Gal- Renaissance paintings and sculptures lery in London, where he had spent that he had been fortunate to secure long hours while serving as the United from the Parisian collector Gustave States ambassador to England between Dreyfus. Mellon agreed to inspect the 1932 and 1933. His attitudes began to material at Duveen’s salesroom in New change around 1935, however, as he York at the end of the summer but contemplated the first designs for the was preempted by illness. He sent the Gallery’s building. His chosen archi- Gallery’s first director, David Finley, tect, John Russell Pope, was convinced in his place. Finley was instructed to that the interior should be organized survey the offerings and have the best around a great domed rotunda from works shipped to Washington where which two monumental halls would Mellon could judge them for himself. extend to the east and west. Pope By October, twenty-four paintings and planned for these vast spaces to be twenty sculptures had been installed filled with sculpture, as revealed in in a vacant apartment beneath Mellon’s a perspective drawing by his partner, on Massachusetts Avenue. After some Otto R. Eggers, from around 1936 weeks of pondering the collection in (fig. 2). In that conception, large figures quiet, Mellon commenced negotiations in marble and bronze stand in niches with Duveen, and the purchase was along the walls and atop pedestals consummated on December 15, 1936. around the immense room. The draw- Three of the newly acquired sculp- ing must have been a jolt to Mellon, tures could not have been better chosen NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART • BULLETIN 4 for the vast interior spaces that Pope was planning. A fine bronze example of Giovanni Bologna’s soaring Mercury, now known to be a later cast, would become the focal point of the rotunda, crowning the fountain (fig. 3). Two other life-size bronzes, a Venus and a Bacchus, now known to come from a Renaissance villa near Milan, would become the centerpieces of the west sculpture hall, installed on monumental plinths on the main axis, as visitors find them today. Neither Mellon nor Pope lived to see the propitious effects of introducing sculpture into the Gallery’s collection. They died a day apart, Mellon on August 26 and Pope on August 27, 1937 — only weeks after breaking ground on the Gallery. When the Gallery officially opened on March 17, 1941, visitors were treated to many more sculptures than the twenty-one that Mellon had person- ally selected for the Gallery during his lifetime. In 1940, the Gallery’s trustees acquired two monumental urns in the style of Clodion for the east sculpture hall, as well as a pair of French foun- tains from the gardens of Versailles for the two garden courts (fig. 4). The remainder of the forty-four sculptures that had joined the Gallery’s collection by the opening arrived thanks to Samuel H. Kress, founder of the popular five- and-ten-cent-store chain. Travels to Italy during the 1920s had converted Kress into an impassioned collector of Renaissance art. He housed the col- lection in his New York apartment on Fifth Avenue, which came to be filled with almost three thousand objects, including old master paintings, Italian and French sculptures, Italian bronzes, as well as important frames, furniture, tapestries, porcelains, and other decora- tive pieces. By the early 1930s, he was Fig. 3. After Giovanni Bologna, Mercury, c. 1780/c. 1850, bronze, Andrew W. Mellon Collection NUMBER 56 • SPRING 2017 5 contemplating establishing a museum Although Samuel Kress suffered in New York, but Finley was able to a debilitating stroke in 1946 and was convince Kress that the collection forced to stop buying, his legacy as was better off in Washington where a collector continued thanks to his it would complement Mellon’s. He younger brother, Rush, who succeeded also appealed to Kress’s sense of civic him as president of the Samuel H. duty, reminding him that Mellon Kress Foundation. Under Rush Kress’s had expected other collectors to join leadership, the foundation reached new him in building the nation’s art col- heights in collecting. It also widened its lection. In 1939 Kress made an initial focus to represent other schools of art transfer of 133 works to the Gallery, besides Italian. The Samuel H. Kress of which nine were sculptures from Foundation would ultimately donate the Italian Renaissance. more than 1,900 works of art to the Fig. 4. Pierre Legros I, Cherubs Playing with a Lyre, 1672–1673, lead with traces of gilding, Andrew W. Mellon Collection NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART • BULLETIN 6 Fig. 5. Leon Battista Alberti, Self- his father’s death in 1915 and contin- Portrait, c. 1435, bronze, Samuel H. ued to add to it. He also followed in Kress Collection his father’s footsteps by insisting that if the collection went to a museum, Gallery. Of these, more than 1,480 it could not be divided. Mellon knew were sculptures, with roughly 85 per- Joseph Widener well and was desperate cent being Renaissance small bronzes, to secure his paintings for the Gallery. medals, and plaquettes (fig. 5). Rush He was reluctant, however, to take Kress had purchased them as a group the decorative arts, unsure how they in 1944 from Duveen. They were part of would mesh with the paintings. No the famed Dreyfus collection of Renais- deal was reached before Mellon died, sance sculpture — the same collection and Finley and Mellon’s son, Paul, were that Duveen had offered to Mellon in left to determine a way around the 1936. Dreyfus, who died in 1914, had impasse. The solution they presented to assembled one of the preeminent groups the trustees was to convert areas of the of Renaissance bronzes in the world. Gallery’s ground floor into dedicated The Kress collection was given in 1957, decorative arts spaces. Joseph Widener and with it the Gallery could boast embraced the idea and even took an of Renaissance sculpture holdings of active role in shaping the rooms, which truly international stature. were designed to evoke the galleries at Between Mellon’s death in 1937 and Lynnewood Hall. the opening of the Gallery in 1941, his Legal complications prevented example inspired another dramatic the collection from being in place in pledge to the nation. Joseph Widener time for the Gallery’s opening in 1941. of Philadelphia was the Gallery’s third Instead, it was packed and shipped to Founding Benefactor. His collection Washington at the end of the following had started with his father, Peter Arrell year.

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