The Art Institute of Chicago The Bartletts and the Grande Jatte: Collecting Modern Painting in the 1920s Author(s): Richard R. Brettell Source: Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, Vol. 12, No. 2, The Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection (1986), pp. 102-113 Published by: The Art Institute of Chicago Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4115936 Accessed: 22-05-2017 15:53 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms The Art Institute of Chicago is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies This content downloaded from 198.40.29.65 on Mon, 22 May 2017 15:53:30 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms The Bartletts and the Grande Jatte: Collecting Modern Painting in the 1920s RICHARD R. BRETTELL, Searle Curator of European Painting HAD Frederic Clay Bartlett died in 1924, leav- ing his entire collection to The Art Institute of Chicago, he would be forgotten today, overshadowed even in Chicago by Arthur Jerome Eddy and Annie Swann Coburn.' Yet, he is remembered today as one of the great American collectors of modern art for a gift he made to the Art Institute in 1926 and added to in 1927, 1928, and 1932. In the short period between 1924 and 1928, he became a major collector. He began as an ama- teur, buying minor works by fashionable artists as sou- venirs and gifts. By 1928, however, he could be ranked with such figures as Madame Helene Kr~ller-Miiller from Holland and Samuel Courtauld from England.2 A great collector in a decade of great collectors, Bartlett embarked on a career that was intimately bound up in the purchase of a single work of art, Georges Seurat's Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (fig. 1). This purchase was made in 1924 by a man who had, only one year earlier, become a trustee of The Art In- stitute of Chicago, and it seems to have been made with FIGURE 1 Georges Seurat (French, 1859-1891). Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, 1884-86. Oil on canvas; 207.6 x 308 cm. The Art Institute of Chicago, Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection (1926.244). 103 This content downloaded from 198.40.29.65 on Mon, 22 May 2017 15:53:30 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 102 This content downloaded from 198.40.29.65 on Mon, 22 May 2017 15:53:30 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms that institution in mind. Hence, it was not in the least a Visitor, is different, and more accurate, in every respect: private purchase. Indeed, the Grande Jatte never hung in Bartlett and his wife met Lucie Cousturier, the owner of any of the several houses and apartments owned or the painting, in 1924, just one year before her death in rented by the Bartletts. It was sent directly to the Art 1925. Seeking to create a pension fund for her retirement Institute, where it has remained ever since, except for through the sale of the painting, her principal asset, she three short exhibitions in Minneapolis, Boston, and countered the Bartlett's offer of $12,000 with a final price New York.3 It entered the permanent collection of the of $20,000. At this point in the narrative, Mr. Bartlett museum in January 1926, only a year and a half after its himself is cited: purchase. There was, at that date, no work by Seurat in a public collection in France. We went to our hotel considering this offer and talked it over for a long time, wondering how we could trim our What happened to transform a conservative painter of expenses, cutting out this and that contemplated purchase. decorations who spent most of his time traveling The more we talked, the more determined we became to throughout Europe and America into a serious collec- possess this masterpiece. Finally, our minds were made up tor? The answer is not easy to find but perhaps can be and we arose at an unearthly hour the next morning and discovered by situating Bartlett's collecting in the larger went over and made the purchase.6 context of European and American taste for modern art in the mid-1920s. Certainly, this decade was the heyday Unfortunately, the author listed no source for this state- for the market in Post-Impressionist and "modern" ment, but the fact that it appears to be a direct quotation paintings. Although low by today's standards, prices for published in Chicago within Bartlett's lifetime leads one works by artists like Gauguin, C6zanne, van Gogh, to accept it as true. Toulouse-Lautrec, and even Matisse, Braque, and Pi- The scanty records that do survive corroborate all de- casso had risen sufficiently to ensure that there was no tails of this early account. They tell us that Bartlett did problem finding works by these artists in supply. In the pay $20,000 for the painting, although he insured it for almost virgin market of the 1920s, many of the greatest $25,000 just after its purchase.7 We also know that it masterpieces of modern art changed hands. Several arrived at The Art Institute of Chicago, shipped sepa- dozen men and women had both the business acumen rately from its stretcher and probably rolled, on July 7, and the finances to seize this opportunity and, for- 1924, indicating that the purchase was made no later than tunately for Chicago, Frederic Bartlett and his wife the spring of that year. And, we know from numerous Helen Birch Bartlett were among them. sources that the seller was Lucie Cousturier, who had We must keep in mind, however, that they were not owned the painting for more than twenty years and alone. Indeed, there were other courageous collectors in whom we see posed "au japonais" in a famous photo- Chicago, as well as in New York, London, Paris, Berlin, graph in front of Seurat's painting while it was still in her Washington, D. C., Brussels, Oslo, and Otterlo. The collection (fig. 2).8 names are legion: John Quinn, Justin K. Thannhauser, These few facts record what could be the most impor- Oskar Reinhardt, Chester Dale, Max Pellerin, Daniel tant transaction in the history of the Art Institute, as Tzanck, Charles Pacquemart, and the Comte de Beau- well as the single greatest event in the lives of Frederic mont. They all bought from the same dealers, confided and Helen Bartlett. All the evidence tells us that this secrets to the same agents, and vied for the same master- purchase was neither natural nor easy. None of their pieces. Sometimes-as in the case of the Grande Jatte- earlier acquisitions can compare in either aesthetic or the Bartletts won. Other times, as we shall see below, monetary value, and there are many indications that they lost. Such are the fortunes of the collector. Al- they were certainly not the first to attempt to purchase though Frederic met Samuel Courtauld, there is no evi- the work that has come to be known as the greatest dence that either of the Bartletts knew any of their other French painting outside of France. Forbes Watson, a major competitors personally.4 brilliant American critic, indicated in an article on the The story of the purchase by Mr. and Mrs. Bartlett of Bartlett Collection published in 1926 that The Metro- Georges Seurat's Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La politan Museum of Art, New York, had attempted to Grande Jatte has been told many times, and each version buy the painting as early as 1911, but that its trustees varies in its dates and details. According to the most refused to support the acquisition.9 A letter on file in the recent telling, which is also the most incorrect, the Department of European Painting tells us that the En- painting was bought for $22,000 in 1921 while the Bart- glish economist and Bloomsbury figure John Meynard letts were in the midst of a trans-Atlantic crossing. The Keynes had tried to buy the Grande Jatte in the early deal, we are told, was consummated by cable.5 An ear- 1920s at the urging of artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan lier version of the tale, published in 1932 in The Chicago Grant.io No doubt, there were other potential buyers, 104 This content downloaded from 198.40.29.65 on Mon, 22 May 2017 15:53:30 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms The Bartletts and the Grande Jatte FIGURE 2 Lucie Cousturier (French, 1876-1925), posed be- fore the Grand Jatte, which she owned from c. 1891/94 to 1924. because the existence of Seurat's painting was scarcely did athe work for him. Thus, it is most likely that, in the secret in the 1920s. negotiations for the Seurat, an anonymous intermediary The fact that the painting was of interest to collectors was involved.12 other than Bartlett is certainly proof of the brilliance of Analysis of Bartlett's collecting habits before and after the purchase; the purported failure of the Metropolitan the acquisition of the Grande Jatte proves beyond the to acquire the Grande Jatte has often been cited by pas- shadow of a doubt that this decision radically changed sionate Chicagoans as proof of the wisdom of their city.