Samuel H. Kress Professors 1995 – 2016 Titian, Cupid with the Wheel of Fortune, c. 1520, oil on canvas NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON, SAMUEL H. KRESS COLLECTION Samuel H. Kress Professors 1995 – 2016 Edited by Therese O’Malley Introduction by Elizabeth Cropper National Gallery of Art CENTER FOR ADVANCED STUDY IN THE VISUAL ARTS Annibale Carracci, River Landscape (detail), c. 1590, oil on canvas NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON, SAMUEL H. KRESS COLLECTION 7 Director's Foreword EARL A. POWELL III 9 Introduction ELIZABETH CROPPER 14 Samuel H. Kress Professors 1995 – 2016 Director’s Foreword It is a pleasure to reflect on the Samuel H. Kress Study in the Visual Arts since its founding in 7 Foundation’s legacy of giving at the National 1979. The Kress Professors are an ever-renewing Gallery of Art. Over the past seventy-five years, the source of energy and enlightenment for this foundation has inestimably enriched the nation’s institution, leading our community of scholars and collections; supported countless publications, ensuring that the Gallery’s collections are studied symposia, catalogs, and exhibitions; and brought and understood. the world’s finest scholars to our Center for The Board of Trustees of the National Gallery Advanced Study in the Visual Arts. of Art joins me in saluting the Samuel H. Kress Samuel H. Kress, founder of the Kress Foundation and more than fifty years of the Kress Foundation, holds special distinction as the first Professorship. On behalf of the trustees and major benefactor to join with Andrew W. Mellon the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, in offering his private collection to the National I extend our deep gratitude for the Kress Gallery of Art for the people of the United States. Foundation’s continued generosity. This volume This gift was not only an extraordinary founding and the decades of scholarship it documents are collection: it was a definitive endorsement of a testament to the foundation’s distinguished the idea of an American national gallery jointly academic and philanthropic legacy. supported by private citizens and the federal government. When the Gallery opened its doors Earl A. Powell III in 1941, the Kress donations accounted for more National Gallery of Art than two-thirds of the works of art on view, and in the ensuing years the Kress family and foundation have continued to donate and fund notable gifts of art that add breadth and depth to the nation’s collection. The visionary support of the Kress Foundation extends well beyond the walls of the National Gallery. Kress Collection gifts to scores of regional and academic art museums and Kress grant programs in scholarship, conservation, and digital resources have transformed the entire museum landscape in the United States. The Samuel H. Kress Professorship has played an integral role in the life of the National Gallery since 1965 and in the fellowship program of the Center for Advanced Élisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun, Madame d’Aguesseau de Fresnes, 1789, oil on wood NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON, SAMUEL H. KRESS COLLECTION Introduction In 1995 the National Gallery of Art published foreword here. It should be noted, however, that 9 A Generous Vision: Samuel H. Kress Professors, the growth in number and size of fellowships 1965 – 1995, edited by Elizabeth Pendleton Streicher, for both predoctoral and senior fellows, greatly with a preface by Henry A. Millon, dean, Center inspired by the vision of Franklin D. Murphy for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, and a brief (president, Kress Foundation, 1963 – 1984), has been foreword by Marilyn Perry, then president, Samuel crucial for the sustained evolution of CASVA. H. Kress Foundation. J. Carter Brown, director Marilyn Perry observed in her 1995 foreword that emeritus, National Gallery of Art, provided an the Samuel H. Kress Professorship at the National introduction. This year, when the National Gallery Gallery of Art was established as the “unifying of Art celebrates the seventy-fifth anniversary of symbol” of all the new Kress programs across the its inauguration by President Roosevelt on March United States, reflecting the (then) threefold 17, 1941, the opportunity to bring the Kress increase over thirty years in doctoral programs volume up to the present was irresistible. This new in the history of art as well as growing public record of achievement for the years 1995–2016 interest. Within the embrace of the nation’s gallery, is intended to reflect the previous volume in spirit as she put it, the Kress Professor, selected on the and structure, with short reminiscences about basis of outstanding accomplishments, “has only each Kress Professor by a young scholar (typically the assignment of providing consultation to the a predoctoral fellow) who was part of that National Gallery’s predoctoral fellows, confirming year’s cohort at CASVA. The focus remains on these the essential nexus between scholarship and reflections and on the achievements of the great art.” appointees, now enlivened by a richer program From inside the Gallery, J. Carter Brown of illustrations. brought a different perspective, crediting leadership The introductory material to the original in supporting the research of young scholars volume, available as a PDF file online, thanks to in the museum field not only to Franklin Murphy the Kress Foundation, provides a succinct but also to Paul Mellon and former director John history of the institution of the Kress Professorship. Walker. As a young man Walker had experienced It is important not to lose sight of this important the benefit of working with senior scholars at the account. In his preface Henry Millon calls attention American Academy in Rome and at Bernard to the breadth of the Kress Foundation’s support Berenson’s Villa I Tatti, and it was Walker who for scholarship and research in the history of art and wrote on February 4, 1964, to Mary Davis, in conservation at the National Gallery, building then assistant director of the Kress Foundation, upon the original gift of the Kress Collection. This to propose that the presence of a senior scholar is not the occasion to document the full extent would enhance the experience of younger research- of Kress generosity to the National Gallery of Art, ers at the Gallery. Paul Mellon, he added, had to which director Earl A. Powell III refers in his suggested the title should be “resident professor.” Leone Battista Alberti, Self-Portrait, c. 1435, bronze NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON, SAMUEL H. KRESS COLLECTION I NTRODuction SAMUEL H. KRESS PROFESSORS 1995 – 2016 10 The Kress Foundation responded generously, and for more regular daily exchange as well as for in Carter Brown’s words, by the mid-1960s closer contact with the rest of the Gallery that might “the critical mass that this full range of fellowships allow them to contribute more to its activities. and a senior professorship provided, in terms of Visits to the collection and to other museums, as visiting scholars, meant that the National Gallery well as frequent entertainment, whether dining had already created, de facto, a center for in Georgetown town houses, playing tennis, or even art-historical scholarship.” watching belly dancing and wrestling, broke the There was as yet, however, no physical expres- ice and often led to lifelong professional friendships. sion or permanent setting for such a center, and The annual presence of the Kress Professor was there were few tools for research beyond the collec- certainly never forgotten by the fellows. tion itself. Many of the essays in the first Kress As Carter Brown tells the story, it was this volume reflect upon the cramped and often bizarre center without a home that prompted the East spaces in which fellows were housed. Charles Building project. Andrew Mellon had secured Talbot (1965 – 1966) had an office in an unused the oddly shaped piece of land for future needs, cloakroom overlooking the tennis courts; over the and John Walker, inspired by Professor John years several fellows were located on a mezzanine White of Johns Hopkins University, worked to level accessible only through a hidden door in the realize his and Paul Mellon’s vision of a place boiserie paneling of a period room. Ann Percy where works of art and scholarly resources might (1967 – 1968) recalls René Huyghe, member of the come together around a group of scholars and Académie française and holder of several French curators. The demonstrable success of existing orders of merit, disappearing quite literally into programs clustered around the Kress Professor the woodwork; and Arthur Wheelock remembers helped to make the argument to Congress that the overdoor painting above the same secret the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual doorway depicting monkeys dressed as human Arts should be at the core of the East Building. beings (one of Christophe Huet’s Singeries). With the dedication of I. M. Pei’s building A mocking reminder of the need for humility, this in 1978, the vision for CASVA could be realized, was, in his words, “not an auspicious door through even if the fellowship program remained “on which to pass,” and it “captured a sense of the the scale of a cottage industry,” as Mary Smith benign neglect for the fellows’ program as it then Podles put it when writing about the first year existed at the National Gallery.” William C. Seitz of residency in the new building under the guid- (1971 – 1972) and Wolfgang Lotz (fall 1976) strug- ance of Kress Professor George Heard Hamilton gled with windowless offices. Egbert Havercamp- (1978 – 1979). Only in 1980 – 1981, with Leopold Begemann’s (1968 – 1969) office did have windows Ettlinger serving as Kress Professor, was there overlooking the greenhouse, but he worked so an entire year of programming at CASVA under long and late that the holiday poinsettias refused the deanship of Henry Millon.