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L’Art et la mesure

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Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel

Troisième partie. Défis pour l’approche métrique

Measuring the Chester Dale Collection and the canon of modern art

Jorgelina Orfila

Texte intégral

In memoriam Philip Conisbee

  • 2 The complete list is in the National Gallery of Art website : http://www.nga.gov/cgi-bin/tsearch?ow (...)

1The Chester Dale Collection was well known and widely praised both in the United States and abroad in the interwar period. Chester Dale (1883-1962) and Maud Murray Dale (1875-1953) formed the core of this collection between1926 and1936, the year in which they opened their New York house as a semi-public gallery. The National Gallery of Art holds 322 works of art, about one-third of the original Dale collection. Among its highlights are Mary Cassatt’s The Loge, 1882 ; Paul Cézanne’s House of Père Lacroix, 1873 ; Paul Gauguin’s Self-Portrait, 1889 ; Vincent van Gogh’s La Mousmé, 1888 ; Edouard Manet’s, The Old Musician, 1862 ; and Pablo Picasso’s Family of Saltimbanques, 19062. In spite of this breath-taking list of masterpieces by renowned artists, the collectors and the collection as a whole are today virtually ignored by the general public and overlooked by most art historians, even those interested in the history of American collecting. In2010 the Gallery will present an exhibition of the highlights of the Chester Dale Collection that will offer to the public and specialists the opportunity to measure its exceptional character.

2 The collection reflects one of the many approaches to modern art that thrived before the institutionalization of a canonical interpretation at the end of the1930s, that is, when the Dale collection was already formed. In general, the theoretical debate surrounding modernism does not focus on the historical process by which this discourse became hegemonic. This process is a fundamental aspect of the historical framework of the Chester Dale collection, and, as such, is inherent to its critical fortune. In fact, the history of the collection sheds light onto the process of institutionalization of modernism.

  • 3 http://histoiremesure.revues.org/index3543.html (February, 2009).

3This paper considers the creation of the « Chester Dale Resource Database » (hereafter CDRD) by the Archives of the National Gallery as part of the research in preparation for the2010 exhibition, and analyzes some of the challenges brought about by the special character of the collection. As Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel has noted, databases are tools « […] dont l’utilisation crée un besoin d’encadrement et de méthodes, et qui, en contrepartie, suscite des questions parfois insoupçonnées avant le début de la recherche. Cette approche oblige celui qui s’y essaie à renouveler son regard sur l’histoire de l’art3 ».

  • 4 Jorgelina Orfila, Paul Cézanne and the Making of Modern Art History, UMI, Ann Arbor, University of (...)

4In the1930s’ professional art historians began to include modern art among their professional interests and applied to its study the methodology and categories of analysis devised for the examination of earlier periods of the history of art. This largely unstudied episode of the historiography of art history, not only changed the way modern art was understood but also altered the contemporary art world4. As a result, the modernist approach to modern art and the critical categories it fostered became part of standard art historical methodology.

5The Museum of Modern Art, New York (hereafter MoMA), which opened its doors to the public in November of1929, had a critical role in this process as it helped to establish the canonical explanation of the early history of modern art. The Dales’ collecting and their many artistic endeavors, which peaked when MoMA was still in its formative period, differed substantially from those fostered by the museum. When building the database we became aware of the need to take into consideration the historical context in which the collection was created.

  • 5 My involvement with the Chester Dale Collection started in 1997 when Philip Conisbee, then curator (...)

6The CDRD is an interdisciplinary project directed by the Head of the Gallery Archives, Maygene Daniels, in which I participated as an art historian5. This is still a work in progress, even though the database has already provided new insights into the history of the collection. By structuring the information we had in a searchable document, this methodological tool allows researchers to establish relationships among data that are scattered throughout the Chester Dale Papers. Thus, the database helps to overcome one of the main hurdles facing those interested in the collection and suggests a radically new approach to it.

7What follows is my particular assessment of the work we have accomplished up to now, and of the epistemological value of the database as a methodological tool for the study of art history. Thus, prior to addressing the CDRD itself, I will contextualize the Dales’ taste and approach to collecting within the debates about modern art that were taking place at the time the collection was formed.

« Chester’s and Maud’s Collection of French Art »

  • 6 Her three monographs are Modigliani, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1929 ; From Manet to Modigliani fro (...)

8The Dale collection was a joint venture. Maud was an artist. Before her marriage to Chester in1911, she had attended the Art Students League of New York and had pursued her studies in Paris under the guidance of Théophile Steinlen. Chester was a stock broker who retired as a wealthy man in1935. The Dales were assiduous clients of the New York art galleries but, in1926, they decided to form an exemplary collection of French modern art. Chester often commented that he had the acquisitive nature needed to be a collector while Maud had the knowledge. A conspicuously cultivated woman, Maud abandoned the practice of art and devoted her energies to the curation of art exhibitions, and art writing6.

  • 7 These exhibitions were : Renoir and His Tradition, Degas and His Tradition, Portraits of Women Loan (...)
  • 8 Michael C. Fitzgerald, Making Modernism Picasso and the Creation of the Market for Twentieth-Centur (...)

9In1930 Maud was appointed Chairman of the Exhibition Committee of the Museum of French Art of the French Institute, New York, where she organized six temporary exhibitions that were acclaimed by the press and compared favorably to those presented by MoMA7. Concurrently, Chester bought a sizable block of stock in the Galeries Georges Petit, which had been renovated by the French dealers Etienne Bignou and the Bernheim-Jeune brothers, and became one of the gallery’s directors. As Michael Fitzgerald has commented « he effectively became both a dealer and a client in the tradition of shifting alliances that characterizes the art market8. »

  • 9 « Nos enquêtes : entretien avec Étienne Bignou », Feuilles volantes, Cahiers d’art, n° 7-8, 1927 n. (...)
  • 10 The documentation is in the Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Papers, 12. XII.1, The Museum of Modern Art Archive (...)

10Bignou aspired to « faire de sa galerie l’antichambre des musées9 » and the new venture moved in that direction. In1931 George Petit presented a retrospective exhibition of the works of Henri Matisse, and, a year later, one devoted to Picasso’s oeuvre. These exhibitions set the gallery in direct confrontation with MoMA, whose trustees aspired to establish this institution as the foremost museum devoted to the study and exhibition of contemporary art. Chester was among MoMA’s first trustees but is not mentioned in the institutional records and publications after1931. The scant documentation available indicates that Chester’s association with the French art dealers determined his departure from the museum’s board10.

11In 1932 Maud ceased to work at the French Museum. The Galeries Georges Petit folded as a consequence of the slump in the art market that followed the Depression in1933. In1935, when the Dales’ active participation in the art world both as collectors and as promoters of modern art started to dwindle, the couple opened their house in20 East79th Street, New York as a semi-public gallery. In the early1940s Maud’s health declined sharply. In1943 Chester became a trustee of the National Gallery of Art, which had opened its doors to the public in March of1941. He served on the Gallery’s board of trustees in different capacities until his death in 1962.

12Between 1944 and 1946 the Dales sold anonymously approximately one-fourth of the collection and offered numerous works of art to the National Gallery of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art as extended loans. In1952, the year of Maud’s passing, Chester married Mary Bullard who had been Maud’s secretary since1928.

The Chester Dale Collection

  • 11 Chester Dale, « Book… by Chester Dale », Chester Dale Papers, Reel 3969, Archives of American Art.

13In1926 the Dales decided to form a collection of « French art for [sic] the last150 years with ancestors11 ». The idea of rooting modern art in the historical tradition reflects the cluster of ideas known as the « call » or « return to order ». The urge to analyze, define, and classify the history of modern art was, in itself, a manifestation of this period’s fascination with order and clarity.

  • 12 See Silver, Kenneth E., Esprit de Corps : the Art of the Parisian Avant-garde and the First World W (...)

14In general, the art of the Interwar period was characterized by the retrenchment of the avant-gardes, the proliferation of more realistic styles, and a new awareness of the classical tradition12. Thus, the art contemporary to the creation of the Dale collection was dominated by the antimodernism and countermodernism that characterized the period.

  • 13 Maud Dale, Before Manet to Modigliani from the Chester Dale Collection, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, (...)

15Maud’s ideas about modern art and her taste conformed to those values. She considered that the modern tradition, established on the formal lessons provided by the old masters she referred to as « the ancestors », had begun at the time of the French Revolution. Maud affirmed that after the upheavals of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries art « has now returned to a new classicism that is entirely modern. Each of these movements has seemed a revolution at the time, but fortunately there is more in revolution than revolt ». And she added that « [t]oday we know that David, last signpost on the Classic road, who seemed to be pointing only to Ingres, was really pointing across the whole century, probably to all those textbooks on art that are about to be rewritten – his classic joke13 ».

  • 14 Maud Dale, From Manet to Modigliani, op. cit., p. 11.

16Maud believed that true modern art had overcome photographic realism and hinged on a deeply emotional response to reality. Thus, she shunned abstract art, for example, and, favored Picasso’s Blue and Rose periods as well as this artist’s neoclassical style. In addition, she made a point of encouraging contemporary artists. In the book she devoted to the collection Maud stated that « the younger painters shown are offered as one’s particular profession of faith in modern art — even official art14 ».

17One of the principles that guided the Dales’ collecting was to demonstrate the resilience and unbroken continuity of the « classical » Western tradition. They acquired works that reinforced these ideals such as early paintings by impressionist artists and works created by avant-garde artists in the 1920s and 1930s, that is, when they were under the influence of the « rappel à l’ordre ». Among the paintings in the National Gallery that can be associated with this taste are Auguste Renoir’s1867 Diana, his1865 Mademoiselle Sicot, Andre Derain’s 1910 The Old Bridge, and Georges Braque’s 1926 Nude Woman Seated, with Flowers.

  • 15 Henry McBride, « The Chester Dale Collection », The Washington Post, Sunday, January 16,1936. n.p.

18In1936 the renowned art critic Henry McBride, after visiting the installation of the collection in the Dales’ New York house, commented that « the character of the Chester Dale Collection is very definite and distinguished, and in spite of that is quite generally misunderstood ». According to McBride, the two main misconceptions were first « that the collection in [sic] intensely modern, and the second, that it is intensely classic ». Instead, he thought that in the Dale collection « the emphasis is laid not upon modernity nor upon classicism but upon the paramount quality of good painting itself15 ».

« MoMA : the context »

  • 16 For an analysis of the history of this kind of institution see J. Pedro Lorente, Cathedrals of Urba (...)
  • 17 Russell Lynes, Good Old Modern : An Intimate Portrait of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Athene (...)

19MoMA’s extraordinary institutional success has obscured the fact that the idea of a museum devoted to modern art was quite new at the time of its creation16. Even Gertrude Stein, the American writer and collector, who had been an intimate friend of Matisse and Picasso at the beginning of the twentieth century, considered that there was an intrinsic contradiction in the idea of an institution that was both a « museum » and « modern17 ». Since its inception the museum has distinguished itself with its professional staff, led by the art historian Alfred H. Barr Jr., its business-like organization, and its efficient use of marketing and advertisement for the promotion of modern art.

  • 18 Kirk Varnedoe, « The Evolving Torpedo », article cité, p. 14.

20Kirk Varnerdoe has noted that « [the founding fathers of MoMA] first conceived of a collection that would ‘metabolically’ discard older works as it acquired new ones, to honor the spirit of ‘modern’ as meaning of the present, and ever-changing18 ». In essence, the idea consisted of selling off older works, those which had become « classics » and were accepted by the general public, to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. This strategy would have allowed the museum to maintain its focus on the present and recent past. By progressively discarding this idea (which was definitively abandoned in1953) the museum indelibly linked the history of modern art with the reaction against Impressionism in the1880s and the development of the avant-gardes of the first part of the twentieth century.

  • 19 Alfred H. Barr, Jr., « Report on the Permanent Collection », typescript, November1933, p. 3. AHB, 9 (...)

21In1932 the museum’s trustees had agreed to award a stressed Barr a sabbatical year in Europe. While in Germany, Barr schematized his conception of the museum’s ideal permanent collection. The metaphor he chose, that of the « permanent collection as a torpedo moving through time, its nose the ever advancing present, its tail the ever receding past19 », demonstrates that, at the time, Barr did not conceive of modern art as a qualitatively different tradition pinned to a determined historical period. He illustrated this idea with a diagram shaped as a torpedo. This is why this famous document is known as the « Torpedo Report ».

22Barr’s approach was in fact very similar to the Dales’. Like them, he thought it advisable for the museum to collect chosen examples of old master paintings in order to demonstrate that modern art was a continuation of the Western tradition. In addition, the diagram demonstrates that, in 1933, Barr’s ideal collection consisted mainly of French art and gave pride of place to the School of Paris. The shape of Barr’s torpedo (with very little tapering at the tip) indicates the will to acquire significant amounts of contemporary art for MoMA’s collection.

  • 20 Alfred H. Barr, Jr., « Report on the Permanent Collection », typescript, November1933, p. 12 AHB, 9 (...)
  • 21 Barr acknowledges that the Dale collection was in transition as the Dales were about to move to a n (...)

23In the report Barr compares MoMA’s ideal permanent collection with the holdings of other institutions and private collections that might challenge the museum’s leadership in the field of modern art. Barr singles out the Dale collection for analysis. After commenting on the quality of the Dales’ collection of nineteenthcentury art, he notes that « [t]he xxth century school of Paris group […] is remarkable for its wealth of Modiglianis and large pre-Cubist Picassos. The more adventurous phases of xxth century painting in Paris are almost untouched – while the younger painters represented are principally of the neo-Courbet-Corot reaction20 ». The key word here is « younger ». Barr implies that the Dales do not own avant-garde art from before the First World War but have purchased contemporary art, which he considers to be a « reaction » against those movements21. Barr again illustrates this point with a diagram in which MoMA’s ideal permanent collection (the torpedo) is surrounded by the competing collections. According to this diagram, the Dale collection is weak where the ideal collection was to be strong, that is, in the art of the avant-garde movements of the first decades of the century. But the Dale collection reaches the tip of Barr’s torpedo and even surpasses MoMA’s ideal collection in the time band corresponding to the1920s, as Barr recognized the Dales’ interest in contemporary art.

  • 22 Maud Dale, From Manet to Modigliani, op. cit., p. 7.

24Maud wouldn’t have objected to Barr’s evaluation as she made a point of buying contemporary art. She, like many other scholars considered that cubism had been « a painful but very necessary operation, from which it [the public] is being permitted today to recover, in the hope that it is cured22 ».

  • 23 The three versions of the « Torpedo Report » are in AHB 9A7. MoMA Archives, NY.

25Barr qualified the « modernism » of the Dale collection as the year1933 advanced. There are three versions of the « Torpedo Report ». Whereas the text devoted to the Dale collection does not change, the diagrams that illustrate it show significant variations. In the version that Barr drafted in the summer, the Dale collection does not go beyond the year1925 while MoMA’s ideal permanent collection advances into the next temporal segment. In the third and final version, from November of1933, the Dale collection advances beyond the1925 mark together with MoMA’s23. Thus, Barr’s assessment of the Dale collection was pinned to his evolving interpretation of the history of modern art as well as to his plans for MoMA’s future direction. The « Torpedo Report » provides a unique point of view from which to understand the critical fortune of the Chester Dale collection.

  • 24 Susan Noyes Platt, « Modernism, Formalist, and Politics : The “Cubism and Abstract Art”Exhibition o (...)
  • 25 Susan Noyes Platt, « Modernism, Formalist, and Politics », article cité, p. 290.

26Susan Noyes Platt has demonstrated that Barr’s understanding of the history of modern art was influenced by specific historical events24. While staying in Stuttgart in1933, Barr had observed the widespread resurgence of realistic styles and had witnessed the first attacks against modern art by the Nazis. Platt has adroitly noted that « in the fall of1933, just as these attitudes towards realism were coalescing throughout Europe and America Barr began increasingly to emphasize the significance of Cubism and abstract art, and to downplay realism25 ». He dismissed this style on ethical-political grounds and associated modernism and abstraction with freedom and revolution against Totalitarianisms.

  • 26 Alfred J. Barr Jr., « Modern and “Modern” » in Defining Modern Art Selected Writings of Alfred H. B (...)

27In1934, Barr asserted the impossibility of defining or describing the dominant characteristics of contemporary art : « [a]ny attempt to classify modern artists must lead to treacherous simplification », and added, « modern art cannot be defined with any degree of finality either in time or in character and any attempt to do so implies a blind faith, insufficient knowledge, or an academic lack of realism26 ». However, in1936, he organized two extraordinary exhibitions : Cubism and Abstract Art, and Fantastic Art : Dada and Surrealism, where the museum offered for the first time an explanation of the history of modern art. These exhibitions established MoMA’s position as the foremost institution devoted to the study and exhibition of modern art.

  • 27 See for example W.J.T. Mitchell, « “Ut Pictura Theoria” : Abstract Painting and the Repression of L (...)
  • 28 Christopher Green, Art in France 1900-1940, op. cit., p. 13.
  • 29 See Astrit Schmidt Burkhardt, « Shaping Modernism : Alfred Barr’s Genealogy of Art », op. cit., p.  (...)

28The jacket of the Cubism and Abstract Art catalogue introduced « The Diagram of Stylistic Evolution from1890 until1935 », which also hung in the exhibition rooms as a poster. Reprinted in1966, 1974, and1986 this catalogue attained the status of a classic and, for years to come, the diagram acted as a blueprint for the display of MoMA’s permanent collection. For this reason the flowchart has been subjected to strong scrutiny by art historians interested in the historiography of modernism27. Christopher Green has noted that Barr « had produced a history of interconnecting linear developments describing the ascent of movements out of ‘Synthetism’ and ‘Neo-Impressionism’ in the1890s, through Cubism and ultimately into ‘Abstract Art’ ; the frontispiece of his catalogue was that history reduced to a diagram28 ». In addition, Astrit Schmidt Burkhardt, has observed that the flowchart identifies the artists with the artistic movements in which they participated29.

  • 30 See Alfred H. Barr. Jr., « Cubism and Abstract Art », Exh. Cat, Museum of Modern Art, New York, New (...)

29Barr’s text defines Impressionism as the last manifestation of the Western realist tradition and establishes that modern art originated as a reaction against this artistic movement30. The vertical axis of the flowchart is divided in five-year interval periods and shows the progression of modern art toward abstraction. Cubism has pride of place at the center of the diagram whereas the School of Paris and other more contemporary artistic tendencies are not represented. The section of the chart corresponding to the years1905 to1925 is the busiest.

  • 31 Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Cubism and Abstract Art, op. cit., p. 9.

30Barr’s interest in securing the critical fortune of cubism as the antecedent of abstract art determined his retrospective approach to the history of modern art and his lack of interest in contemporary artistic movements. In the catalogue, he declared that « earlier and more creative years of a movement or individual have been emphasized at the expense of later work which may be fine in quality but comparatively unimportant historically31 ». Thus, Barr prioritized historical relevance over artistic quality, and tacitly indicted the art produced in the last ten years.

  • 32 See Susan Noyes Platt, « Modernism, Formalist, and Politics », article cité, p. 292.

31Barr considered the flowchart provisional and thought of updating it, especially since several of the artists who read the catalogue complained to him about its inexactitudes and what they considered to be a biased interpretation of the history of modern art. Nevertheless, and even though the diagram was created to map exclusively the development of the tendencies associated with abstract art, it became the paradigmatic explanation of the origin and early history of modern art32. In the end, MoMA’s trustees, for reasons that cannot be addressed here, decided to maintain a permanent collection. Structured according to the1936 flowchart, this collection still today determines the museum’s identity and influences its approach to contemporary art.

32Varnedoe has noted that MoMA’s decision to keep a permanent collection framed the « modern » in its present usage, that is, « as an epoch or a tradition with a fairly clear beginning around 1880, but with an open-ended prospect for the present and future », and concluded,

  • 33 Kirk Varnedoe, « The Evolving Torpedo », article cité, p. 14.

I believe the idea is not merely convenient but true. At the same time, however, I recognize that it differs in important ways from the vision of the « modern » on which the Museum was founded in1929, and that, as a matter of institutional policy, this more current definition has arisen far less from reasoned decisions about history than from a patchwork of pragmatic accommodations and particular contingencies33.

33Varnedoe failed to acknowledge the power of ideologies to determine the way scholars and the public understand the field of study and how they shape people’s basic apprehension of reality.

34Historically determined and provisional, the critical categories derived from Barr’s modernist approach are not adequate objective tools for the assessment of the Dale collection. This is why, when building the CDRD we had to take this historical and institutional framework into consideration.

The sources

35The Chester Dale Papers are held in two main repositories. The Archives of the Gallery received an important part of these papers along with the paintings in1962. In the1970s Mary Dale gave her papers to the Archives of American Art.

  • 34 The National Gallery of Art Photographic Archives holds an album with photographs showing the insta (...)

36The Dales wanted to be remembered for their collection. The bulk of the material consists of ten scrapbooks of press clippings about the collection and the Dales’ art related activities. The Dales also preserved scores of press clippings related to their social life, numerous family photographs, photographs of the works of art in the collection, as well as a series of photographs of Maud’s installations34. The sheer amount of information, compounded by the lack of original context, makes it difficult for the researcher to organize and interpret the wealth of data provided by the papers.

  • 35 The tape was transcribed, presumably soon after it was dictated. Parts of the text were corrected i (...)

37There are two important sets of documents among the material microfilmed by the Archives of American Art. One is the autobiographical reminiscences that Dale recorded into a dictation machine in195335. The second is the records of the original Chester Dale Collection. All seem to indicate that they were created after the core of the collection had already been assembled. Although they are incomplete, these records afford a good starting point for assessing the importance and true scope of the collection before its dispersion. These records provided the basic building blocks on which the database was constructed.

The database

38The CDRD was the idea of Daniels, the Head of the Gallery Archives. I consider it a « virtual primary source » as it organizes a significant amount of information in a set of interconnected tables. In this way, it compensates for the lack of structure and original context that characterizes the Dale Papers. The challenge was to devise a tool that, while taking into consideration the particular historical framework and history of the collection, would not determine the researchers interpretation of the data.

  • 36 « Dale Notebook » refers to the tome that contains the data downloaded from the reels of microfilms
  • 37 The source of the information is recorded in a group of boxes located in the upper half of the firs (...)

39The CDRD has various screens that gather different categories of data. The first screen, « Works of Art from Notebook », reflects the information provided by the records concerning the acquisition and disposition of the works of art in the collection as well as the exhibitions to which they were loaned while under the Dales’ guard36. Once these755 entries had been created we added the information gathered from other sources, which raised the number of works of art in the database to 80337.

Fig.1 – Chester Dale Resource Database. National Gallery of Art, Archives. February 2008. Works of Art from Notebook. Object ID: 101.

Fig.1 – Chester Dale Resource Database. National Gallery of Art, Archives. February 2008. Works of Art from Notebook. Object ID: 101.
  • 38 The vogue of the Art Deco style was resisted by Barr and the professionals in charge of MoMA’s coll (...)

40One of the most fundamental figures in a database is the number of entries, which in this case corresponds to the works of art in the Dale collection. Unfortunately, the CDRD only reflects the most « modern » aspect of the couple’s collecting. The Dales, like many contemporary American collectors, were interested in lace and antique costumes, and in Chinese decorative arts and painting. In addition, the photographs of their apartments show that they owned a variety of Art Deco or « moderne » objects, which complemented the installation of the art collection. Due to the dearth of data concerning these objects, only the Chinese paintings were included in the database38.

41A second screen provides « Additional Information » on the works of art such as present location, and new attribution. This screen corrects and updates the information provided by the records and allows scholars to search the database starting from contemporary data. When available, we added thumbnails of the works of art in order to facilitate their identification.

Fig.2 – Chester Dale Resource Database. National Gallery of Art, Archives. February2008. Works of Art, Additional Information. Object ID :101.

Fig.2 – Chester Dale Resource Database. National Gallery of Art, Archives. February2008. Works of Art, Additional Information. Object ID :101.

42A field with time bands allows the researcher to parse the data according to the period in which the works were created. We established 1915 and 1929 as the watershed years of the twentieth century. Moreover, as we wanted to be able to address the changes in the definition of « modern » art, we created the box « contemporary purchase ». In the context of the CDRD, it indicates that a work was created within a span of five years previous to its acquisition by the Dales.

43Maud’s writings demonstrate that she had an especial predilection for still-lifes and portraits, which is consistent with her interpretation of modern art as an offshoot of the Western realist tradition. In the early1930s she organized exhibitions devoted to particular genres, such as « La Nature morte » from Chardin to the Abstract. The database, then, had to give the option to group works of art according to genre in order to help researchers determine to what degree this inclination had influenced the Dales’ collecting.

44This field was, and still is, one of the most problematic as this categorization is incompatible with modernism’s teleological master narrative, which hinges modern art’s evolution towards abstraction. The task consisted of creating a list of genres such as portrait, landscape, scenes of everyday life, figures, and nudes that could be used for the classification of all the works of art in the collection. But, can we consider a painting of ballet dancers by Edgar Degas a genre painting ? Are Matisse’s renderings of his models portraits or figure paintings ? What genre is Picasso’s Family of Saltimbanques ? Is Henri Rousseau’s inventive La Forêt équatoriale a landscape ? Is Camille Pissarro’s The Bather a nude ?

Fig. 3 – Chester Dale Resource Database. National Gallery of Art, Archives. February2008. Works of Art, Additional Information. Object ID : 519

Fig. 3 – Chester Dale Resource Database. National Gallery of Art, Archives. February2008. Works of Art, Additional Information. Object ID : 519

45Maud Dale used these classifications quite liberally. She exhibited as a portrait one of Matisse’s odalisques and included Odilon Redon’s Le Vieillard aux fleurs. Évocation de Roussel in the exhibition she devoted to still-lifes. The CDRD presents a rather long list of genres, which offers the researcher the opportunity to think of the collection under these terms. Thus, it invites scholars to reflect about the appropriateness of the application of these categories to the analysis of works of modern art.

46The third screen, « About the Exhibitions », organizes the works of art in the Dale collection according to the exhibitions to which they were loaned. It informs researches, for example, of how many works the Dales lent to MoMA and when, and of the works that Maud included in the exhibitions she organized.

47Picassos’ Family of Saltimbanques, for example, was acquired at the time of the Picasso-Braque-Léger exhibition she organized at the Museum of French Art. In his autobiography Chester refers to this acquisition as a chance opportunity, which allows him to boast about his business acumen. The database does not deny his version, but suggests that, at the time, the Dales’ might have been shopping for a representative Picasso for the exhibition.

Fig. 4 – Chester Dale Resource Database. National Gallery of Art, Archives. February2008. About the Exhibitions. Exhibition ID 29.

Fig. 4 – Chester Dale Resource Database. National Gallery of Art, Archives. February2008. About the Exhibitions. Exhibition ID 29.

48Two of the fields in the screen « Artists » were particularly problematic. As the Dales collected both French and American art, we wanted to provide scholars with the option to discriminate the works according to national schools. The main problem was how to classify artists like Picasso, Cassatt, or the members of the School of Paris. We chose to create one field for the artist’s nationality and another for the national school they represent.

49The determination of the artist’s style was another vexing issue, especially since it is here where the Dales’ particular approach to modern art is more evident and where their attitude towards art most differs from the discourse of modernism. We created a field that classifies the artists according to the « artistic style with which the artist is generally associated ».

Fig. 5 – Chester Dale Resource Database. National Gallery of Art, Archives. February 2008. Artist. Artist ID 37.

Fig. 5 – Chester Dale Resource Database. National Gallery of Art, Archives. February 2008. Artist. Artist ID 37.

50Thus, Picasso and Georges Braque are listed as cubist artists, and Matisse, André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck and Raoul Dufy as fauves even though none of the works by these artists in the collection is representative of these styles. The discrepancies between the categories used to classify the artists – which reflect the modernist approach to modern art – and the works of art by those artists in the Dale collection, point out to the limitations of this interpretive system. By highlighting this discrepancy the CDRD addresses the paradigm shift that took place after the Dales’ had formed the collection, while encouraging researchers to arrive at their own conclusions.

51In addition, this approach brings to light the openness and even assertiveness of these collectors’ taste, and underlines the arbitrariness and historicity of art historical categories. Gustave Caillebotte, an artist whose work began to attract critical attention only in the last quarter of the twentieth century, was among the impressionist artists represented in the collection. The Dales’ also owned works by Adolphe Félix Cals, an artist who participated in four of the Impressionist exhibitions but is nowadays not considered a member of the group. The couple also dared to acquire an outstanding group of paintings by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, at a time when this artist was considered the ultimate in bad taste in Academic art.

Conclusions = results

52The CDRD is a work in progress but has already provided new insights into the history of the collection while suggesting avenues for future research. It has proven to be a fantastic tool for the analysis of Chester’s autobiography, as it provides contextual information that serves to confirm and correct his account of the history of the collection.

53The database allows us to analyze the Dales’ acquisition strategies, and their preferences regarding art galleries and dealers. We now know that164 of the 803 works of art in the collection were acquired in auction houses, and that Bignou was the Dales preferred dealer and broker as they acquired 54 works of art from or through him.

54The Dales did not deal directly with Ambroise Vollard, the epitome of the modernist art dealer, but acquired 23 paintings at Paul Rosenberg’s gallery, which implies that the Dales preferred the posh dealers on the Rue de la Boëtie. However, the database shows that the couples also haunted the progressive art galleries of the Rive Gauche such as the Galerie Jeanne Boucher.

55The core of the collection was formed between 1926 and 1936. The Dales purchased more than half of it, 455 works of art, between 1926 and 1930 ; and in the next five years they acquired 117 works. This was the time when Maud was active as curator and art writer and the high moment of the « call to order ». The information provided by the CDRD will allow us to focus on the historical events that might have influenced the Dales’ collecting. In 1926, for example, the Art Institute of Chicago unveiled the Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection. Concurrently, the New York art scene was abuzz over the much debated sale of the John Quinn collection of modern French art.

  • 39 There were a few cubist paintings in the collection but these were not by Picasso or Braque. Picass (...)

56As Barr noted in the summer of 1933, the Dales actively purchased works of contemporary art. 77 of the 168 works of French art of the twentieth century they purchased were contemporary according to our standards. All of the paintings by Braque owned by the Dales fall under this category as they were painted in the 1920s. Of the 15 paintings by Picasso in the collection, 9 belong to the artist’s early period, and 3 correspond to the neoclassical style the artist developed after the First World War. Of the 8 paintings by Matisse they owned, 6 were created in this period as well as 6 of their 8 Derains. This confirms that the Dales were interested in the styles that the artists who had participated in the first avant-garde movements developed in the1920s and early1930s39.

  • 40 Maud wrote the introduction of a picture book on Modigliani published by Alfred Knopf in1928 and he (...)

57The School of Paris was well represented in the collection. The Dales owned works by 14 artists associated with it. Modigliani’s art had pride of place as they owned 21 of his works40.

  • 41 At the time, American collectors usually loaned and eventually bequeathed their collections to the (...)

58Between 1944 and 1946 the Dales sold anonymously 163 works of art at public auctions. This was not unusual as at the time even Alfred Barnes and MoMA were selling off parts of their holdings and refining their collections. These sales were determined by the upheavals provoked by the Second World War and by the fluctuations in the definition and interpretation of modern art. The Dales’ sales coincided with other, more fundamental changes in the couple’s life as they sold the New York house and placed significant parts of the collection on extended loan in public institutions outside New York41. As Maud’s health declined, Chester began to pay heed to the opinion of the museum officials with whom he interacted.

59Chester was involved with the National Gallery of Art from the time it opened to the public. His attachment to this institution would last until his death. Even though the Gallery’s regulations prevented accepting modern art as part of the permanent collection (the artist had to have been deceased for at least twenty years before his or her work could be accepted) Chester bequeathed much of the collection to this institution. In the environment of the Gallery, he could be the valiant defender of modern art he had been in the 1920s and1930s.

60This chapter of the history of the Dale Collection is well documented and has shaped its critical fortune. The CDRD, by providing access to the documentation of the original Dale Collection, will allow researchers to gain a new understanding of the historical significance of this collection and of the period in which it was formed.

Notes

2 The complete list is in the National Gallery of Art website : http://www.nga.gov/cgi-bin/tsearch?ownerid=229

3 http://histoiremesure.revues.org/index3543.html (February, 2009).

4 Jorgelina Orfila, Paul Cézanne and the Making of Modern Art History, UMI, Ann Arbor, University of Maryland, 2007.

5 My involvement with the Chester Dale Collection started in 1997 when Philip Conisbee, then curator of the Department of French Paintings, suggested that I study the collection. Concurrently, I started to work on the organization of the Chester Dale Papers at the Gallery Archives. I found there an incredibly knowledgeable group of professionals who shared with me their passion for archival work and their immense expertise in archival processes. The other members of the staff of the Archives are Anne Ritchie, Michele Willens, Angela Salisbury and Jean Henry. Elizabeth Croog, General Counsel of the Gallery deserves special mention for her unflinching support of our work.

6 Her three monographs are Modigliani, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1929 ; From Manet to Modigliani from the Chester Dale Collection, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1929 ; and Picasso, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1930.

7 These exhibitions were : Renoir and His Tradition, Degas and His Tradition, Portraits of Women Loan Exhibition : Romanticism to Surrealism, Fantin-Latour, Picasso-Braque-Léger, and Derain-Vlaminck.

8 Michael C. Fitzgerald, Making Modernism Picasso and the Creation of the Market for Twentieth-Century Art, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1995, p. 195.

9 « Nos enquêtes : entretien avec Étienne Bignou », Feuilles volantes, Cahiers d’art, n° 7-8, 1927 n.p.

10 The documentation is in the Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Papers, 12. XII.1, The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. See also Michael C. Fitzgerald, Making Modernism, op. cit., chapter 5.

11 Chester Dale, « Book… by Chester Dale », Chester Dale Papers, Reel 3969, Archives of American Art.

12 See Silver, Kenneth E., Esprit de Corps : the Art of the Parisian Avant-garde and the First World War, 1914-1925, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1989 ; Romy Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia, Art and Politics in France Between the Wars, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1995 ; and Christopher Green, Art in France : 1900-1940, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2000.

13 Maud Dale, Before Manet to Modigliani from the Chester Dale Collection, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1929, p .2-3. These principles were at the foundations of the exhibitions Maud organized such as Degas and His Tradition, and « La Nature morte » from Chardin to the Abstract.

14 Maud Dale, From Manet to Modigliani, op. cit., p. 11.

15 Henry McBride, « The Chester Dale Collection », The Washington Post, Sunday, January 16,1936. n.p.

16 For an analysis of the history of this kind of institution see J. Pedro Lorente, Cathedrals of Urban Modernity. The First Museums of Contemporary Art, 1800-1930, Aldershot, H., Ashgate, 1998. The best analysis of the early history of MoMA is by Kirk Varnedoe, « The Evolving Torpedo : Changing Ideas of the Collection of Painting and Sculpture of The Museum of Modern Art », Studies in Modern Art 5, « The Modern Museum of Modern Art at Mid-Century Continuity and Change », The Museum of Modern Art, New York,1995, p. 13-73.

17 Russell Lynes, Good Old Modern : An Intimate Portrait of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Atheneum,1973, p. 287.

18 Kirk Varnedoe, « The Evolving Torpedo », article cité, p. 14.

19 Alfred H. Barr, Jr., « Report on the Permanent Collection », typescript, November1933, p. 3. AHB, 9A 7, MoMA Archives, N.Y.

20 Alfred H. Barr, Jr., « Report on the Permanent Collection », typescript, November1933, p. 12 AHB, 9A 7, MoMA Archives, NY.

21 Barr acknowledges that the Dale collection was in transition as the Dales were about to move to a new apartment. In1933 the Dales had seven paintings by André Derain, who was attempting to reconcile modern art with the lessons of Corot and Courbet among other masters of the past. However, as Derain was born in1880. Barr would not have considered him a « young » artist.

22 Maud Dale, From Manet to Modigliani, op. cit., p. 7.

23 The three versions of the « Torpedo Report » are in AHB 9A7. MoMA Archives, NY.

24 Susan Noyes Platt, « Modernism, Formalist, and Politics : The “Cubism and Abstract Art”Exhibition of 1936 at the Museum of Modern Art », Art Journal 47, Winter, 1988, note 17.

25 Susan Noyes Platt, « Modernism, Formalist, and Politics », article cité, p. 290.

26 Alfred J. Barr Jr., « Modern and “Modern” » in Defining Modern Art Selected Writings of Alfred H. Barr, Jr. edited by Irving Sandler and Amy Newman with an Introduction by Irving Sandler, New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1986, p. 83.

27 See for example W.J.T. Mitchell, « “Ut Pictura Theoria” : Abstract Painting and the Repression of Language », Critical Inquiry 15 (Winter,1989), p. 348-371 ; Astrit Schmidt Burkhardt, « Shaping Modernism : Alfred Barr’s Genealogy of Art », Word & Image, Vol. 16, No. 4 October-December 2000, p. 387-399.

28 Christopher Green, Art in France 1900-1940, op. cit., p. 13.

29 See Astrit Schmidt Burkhardt, « Shaping Modernism : Alfred Barr’s Genealogy of Art », op. cit., p. 389.

30 See Alfred H. Barr. Jr., « Cubism and Abstract Art », Exh. Cat, Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York, 1936, p. 20.

31 Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Cubism and Abstract Art, op. cit., p. 9.

32 See Susan Noyes Platt, « Modernism, Formalist, and Politics », article cité, p. 292.

33 Kirk Varnedoe, « The Evolving Torpedo », article cité, p. 14.

34 The National Gallery of Art Photographic Archives holds an album with photographs showing the installation at20 E79th street. http://library.nga.gov:7488/cgibin/Pwebrecon.cg i?v1=14&ti=1,14&Search%5FArg=dale&Search%5FCode=BLDG&CNT=50&PID=PLWShbZccLoA V_zkV_z2akty&SEQ=20081102113855&SID=1

35 The tape was transcribed, presumably soon after it was dictated. Parts of the text were corrected in1954 and most of the document was retyped in1959.

36 « Dale Notebook » refers to the tome that contains the data downloaded from the reels of microfilms.

37 The source of the information is recorded in a group of boxes located in the upper half of the first screen.

38 The vogue of the Art Deco style was resisted by Barr and the professionals in charge of MoMA’s collection of design, who promoted the « international style » instead. See Evelyn Carol Hankins, Homes for the Modern : En/Gendering Modern Art Display in New York City, 1913-1939, UMI, Ann Arbor, 1999.

39 There were a few cubist paintings in the collection but these were not by Picasso or Braque. Picasso’s 1918 Large Still Life - Table, Chair, Playing Cards and Mandolin, is a late cubist painting that the Dales purchased at Paul Rosenberg’s gallery. On the relationship between Picasso and Rosenberg see Michael Fitzgerald, Making Modernism, op. cit., chapter 3.

40 Maud wrote the introduction of a picture book on Modigliani published by Alfred Knopf in1928 and helped in the organization of several exhibitions of his work.

41 At the time, American collectors usually loaned and eventually bequeathed their collections to the museums of the cities in which they lived.

Table des illustrations

Titre Fig.1 – Chester Dale Resource Database. National Gallery of Art, Archives. February 2008. Works of Art from Notebook. Object ID: 101.
URL http://books.openedition.org/editionsulm/docannexe/image/8802/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 47k
Titre Fig.2 – Chester Dale Resource Database. National Gallery of Art, Archives. February2008. Works of Art, Additional Information. Object ID :101.
URL http://books.openedition.org/editionsulm/docannexe/image/8802/img-2.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 44k
Titre Fig. 3 – Chester Dale Resource Database. National Gallery of Art, Archives. February2008. Works of Art, Additional Information. Object ID : 519
URL http://books.openedition.org/editionsulm/docannexe/image/8802/img-3.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 44k
Titre Fig. 4 – Chester Dale Resource Database. National Gallery of Art, Archives. February2008. About the Exhibitions. Exhibition ID 29.
URL http://books.openedition.org/editionsulm/docannexe/image/8802/img-4.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 44k
Titre Fig. 5 – Chester Dale Resource Database. National Gallery of Art, Archives. February 2008. Artist. Artist ID 37.
URL http://books.openedition.org/editionsulm/docannexe/image/8802/img-5.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 39k

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School of Art, Texas Tech University.

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