John Quinn, Art Advocate Introduction Today I’m going to talk briefly about John Quinn (fig. 1), a New York lawyer who, in his spare time and with income derived from a highly-successful law practice, became “the twentieth century’s most important patron of living literature and art.”1 Nicknamed “The Noble Buyer” for his solicitude for artists as much as for the depth of his pocketbook, Quinn would amass an unsurpassed collection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American and European art. At its zenith, the collection con- tained more than 2,500 works of art, including works by Con- stantin Brancusi, Paul Cézanne, André Derain, Marcel Du- champ, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Paul Gaugin, Juan Gris, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Georges Rouault, Henri Rousseau, Georges Seurat, and Vincent van Gogh.2 More than a collector, Quinn represented artists and art associa- tions in all types of legal matters. The most far-reaching of these en- gagements was Quinn’s successful fight for repeal of a tariff on im- 1 ALINE B. SAARINEN, THE PROUD POSSESSORS: THE LIVES, TIMES AND TASTES OF SOME ADVENTUROUS AMERICAN ART COLLECTORS 206 (1958) [hereinafter PROUD POSSESSORS]. 2 Avis Berman, “Creating a New Epoch”: American Collectors and Dealers and the Armory Show [hereinafter American Collectors], in THE ARMORY SHOW AT 100: MODERNISM AND REVOLUTION 413, 415 (Marilyn Satin Kushner & Kimberly Orcutt eds., 2013) [hereinafter KUSHNER & ORCUTT, ARMORY SHOW] (footnote omitted). ported contemporary art3 – an accomplishment that resulted in him being elected an Honorary Fellow for Life by the Metropolitan Mu- seum of Art.4 This work, like much Quinn did for the arts, was un- dertaken pro bono.5 Quinn was also instrumental in organizing two groundbreaking art exhibitions: the May 1921 Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition of “Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Paintings” (that museum’s first exhibition of modern art),6 and the landmark 1913 “International Exhibition of Modern Art”7 – otherwise known as the Armory Show. The Armory Show was the most important American art exhibition ever mounted, and exerts an influence on American art that lasts to this day – an influence in which the city of Milwaukee played a sur- prisingly pivotal role. 3 See generally B.L. REID, THE MAN FROM NEW YORK: JOHN QUINN AND HIS FRIENDS 157-160 (1968) [hereinafter MAN FROM NEW YORK]. 4 Accessions and Notes, 10 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM ART BULL. 56, 57 (1915) (Quinn elected “[i]n recognition of his services to Art through his efforts in advancing the recently enacted Tariff Bill”). 5 Art Society Muddle, AM. ART NEWS, June 13, 1914, at 1, 1 (“Mr. Quinn took no fee, and gave his own time and that of his office, to the cause, which he had at heart as a collector of modern art. His campaign, conduct- ed single-handed, was completely successful, although a similar one, when prosecuted years before by the combined art bodies of the country, was a complete failure.”). 6 Judith Zilczer, John Quinn and Modern Art Collectors in America, 1913-1924, 15 AM. ART J. 57, 65 (1982) [hereinafter Quinn and Collectors]; see generally MAN FROM NEW YORK at 498-99; see also Hamilton Easter Field, The Metro- politan French Show, THE ARTS, May 1921, at 2 (reproducing seven works Quinn lent to the exhibition – a Derain, a Gauguin, a Picasso, and four by Odilon Redon). 7 American Collectors at 414-15; see generally MAN FROM NEW YORK at 142- 52; JUDITH ZILCZER, “THE NOBLE BUYER:” JOHN QUINN, PATRON OF THE AVANT-GARDE 25-27 (1978) [hereinafter AVANT-GARDE]. - 2 - Quinn died in 1924 at the early age of fifty-five (fig. 2).8 Fittingly, his death resulted in a final, perhaps permanent, impact on American art and artists. Quinn directed in his will that his artwork be liquidat- ed, and fellow patrons of the arts considered the resulting dispersal of the Quinn collection a tragedy. Unease over the breakup of Quinn’s collection prompted founding of the Museum of Modern Art,9 and lead to formation of many of America’s public modern art collec- tions10 – collections often counting as part of their most treasured holdings works bearing the label “ex-Quinn Collection.”11 A Practicing Attorney Quinn grew up in Fostoria, Ohio, the son of a well-to-do baker.12 He graduated from high school in 1887, and spent a year at the Uni- versity of Michigan.13 When Charles Foster (former Governor of Ohio and close friend of the Quinn family) was appointed Secretary of the Treasury, Quinn left Ann Arbor to serve as Foster’s private secretary.14 Quinn studied law at night, graduating in 1893 from Georgetown University.15 He then studied international law at Harvard, obtaining a second law degree in 1895.16 Quinn passed the New York bar in 8 Obituary, ART NEWS, Aug. 16, 1924, at 4. 9 PROUD POSSESSORS at 364-366. 10 American Collectors at 425. 11 PROUD POSSESSORS at 237. 12 MAN FROM NEW YORK at 4; AVANT-GARDE at 15. 13 MAN FROM NEW YORK at 5; AVANT-GARDE at 15. 14 MAN FROM NEW YORK at 5-6; AVANT-GARDE at 15; Richard Camp- bell, Memorial of John Quinn, in ASSOCIATION OF THE BAR OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK, YEAR BOOK 513 (1925), reprinted in 72 BULL. N.Y. PUB. LIBR. 584, 584 (1968) [hereinafter Quinn Memorial]. 15 AVANT-GARDE at 15; MAN FROM NEW YORK at 6. 16 AVANT-GARDE at 15; MAN FROM NEW YORK at 6. - 3 - 1896, and joined the firm of General Benjamin F. Tracy.17 Tracy’s firm “enjoyed a lucrative practice,” and it clients “included many of the prominent figures of that time in finance and industry.”18 In 1900, Quinn moved to the firm of Alexander & Colby, coming on as a junior partner.19 While at Alexander & Colby, Quinn took on a matter that made his career – the battle for control of the Equitable Life Assurance Society (at the time one of the three largest insurance companies in the world, with a valuation of $400 million).20 Fought in 1905, this battle had its roots in 1899, when the company’s founder died, leav- ing his controlling stake in the company (502 of the company’s 1,000 shares) to his 23-year old son, James Hazen Hyde, but placing the shares in trust until James turned thirty in 1907.21 On January 31, 1905, James held a Versailles-themed costume party (fig. 3).22 This private event became a matter of public scandal when other Equita- ble shareholders circulated untrue rumors James that had paid for the party with $200,000 of company money.23 The rumors had a tre- mendous impact on the insurance industry: The squabble which had begun quietly ended in a noisy scandal of earthquake proportions, shaking open the devious passages of manipulative high finance. Public demand for investigation of the Equitable’s affairs, which was bound to involve scrutiny of insurance company financing generally and thereby draw in the 17 MAN FROM NEW YORK at 6; AVANT-GARDE at 15. 18 Quinn Memorial at 584. 19 Id.; MAN FROM NEW YORK at 7. 20 See generally MAN FROM NEW YORK at 33-35. 21 Id. at 33. 22 PATRICIA BEARD, AFTER THE BALL: GILDED AGE SECRETS, BOARD- ROOM BETRAYALS, AND THE PARTY THAT IGNITED THE GREAT WALL STREET SCANDAL OF 1905 169-178 (2003) [hereinafter AFTER THE BALL]. 23 Id. at 4. - 4 - country’s greatest money men and the largest investment trusts and syndicates, forced Governor Higgins of New York to ap- point a legislative investigating committee, the Armstrong Committee. The Committee’s examining lawyer, Charles Evans Hughes, by his incisive, scrupulous, and implacable conduct of fifty-seven public hearings in the four months at the end of 1905, established his own reputation, ruined a good many other reputations that needed ruining, and prepared the way for a thorough reformation of insurance practice by legislative action in the first months of the following year.24 The rumors also resulted in James eventually selling his 502 shares (for only $2.5 million) to Thomas Fortune Ryan, “one of the more private Gilded Age tycoons,” who made much of his money through “developing urban transit systems” and would die “with nearly dou- ble the fortune of J.P. Morgan.”25 Quinn was Ryan’s counsel in the fight for control of the Equitable,26 and “Quinn’s performance during the legal battle for control of the Equitable Life Assurance Society in 1905 established his reputation as a brilliant financial lawyer.”27 Alexander & Colby dissolved in 1906, and Quinn opened his own firm at 31 Nassau Street.28 He was sole counsel for the National Bank of Commerce (then the country’s second-largest bank), “whose adviser he remained until his death.”29 He eventually became tax counsel to the New York Stock Exchange.30 Quinn was known as 24 MAN FROM NEW YORK at 34-35. 25 MAN FROM NEW YORK at 34; AFTER THE BALL at 96, 259; see generally id. at 261-63. 26 MAN FROM NEW YORK at 34. 27 AVANT-GARDE at 15 (footnote omitted). 28 PROUD POSSESSORS at 209; MAN FROM NEW YORK at 45. 29 Quinn Memorial at 584; AVANT-GARDE at 15; PROUD POSSESSORS at 210. 30 MAN FROM NEW YORK at 156. - 5 - “cool-headed, astute and respected by the respectable in corporation and financial law,”31 and his practice grew accordingly: In the years intervening between 1906 and the time of his death, he built up a great practice and his advice and counsel were sought by many of the leaders in finance and industry.