Caravaggio in America – Part 2

You may read the first part here.

The source of Byk’s excitement has to have been the remarkable Caravaggio The Ecstasy of St. Francis (fig. 23), and, although we have no firm evidence, we can assume that it was Austin’s desire to get this picture to Hartford that became the raison d’être for one of his most original exhibitions. As Austin wrote to William Valentiner, the director of the Detroit Institute of Art, in early 1940, “I am very much involved in getting together (rather hurriedly, I am afraid) an exhibition of Paintings of Night Scenes.”[74] These were to range from Bassano, Caracciolo, Monsù Desiderio, Rosa, Orsi, Poussin, and Honthorst, all acquired by him for the Atheneum’s collection, to loans including paintings by or attributed to Rembrandt, Georges de La Tour, El Greco, and Albert Pinkham Ryder.  But it was the newly arrived Caravaggio that was the star. The exhibition catalogue gave a full-page illustration to the painting, and the text, which we can assume to be Austin’s prose, stressed the painter’s “revolutionary” contribution, praised “the miraculous chiaroscuro of his plastic forms,” and noted rather grandly that this picture “is related to the Rest on the Flight of the Doria Gallery and the Story of St. Matthew in Luigi Dei Francesi in Rome.”[75] The painting was reproduced in the gravure section of the Hartford Courant,[76] and praised by that newspaper’s art reviewer as a work he “cherished” and described as “one of the most poetic and soft-tempered paintings by this artist that can be readily recalled.”[77] Then for an even wider audience Austin himself wrote an article about the exhibition for Art News, noting Caravaggio’s innovation in concealing the source of light and enhancing the chiaroscuro effect.[78]

On the St. Francis by Caravaggio, E. Peters Bowron has written, “Nearly every aspect of St. Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy is exceptional and innovative. It is Caravaggio’s first religious picture, his first use of a landscape setting, and one of the first instances of his use of light both literally, to illuminate a scene, and figuratively, as a metaphor for divine presence. Of all his achievements, the greatest is his interpretation of Francis’s miracle as an internalized experience.” And in the provenance he presents for it, St. Francis had originally belonged to the wealthy Genoese-born nobleman and banker to the papal court, Ottavio Costa, by 1606. It passed to his relatives and other Italian collections before ending up with a doctor in Trieste, where the dealer had purchased it in 1943.[79]

As the Night Scenes (fig. 24) exhibition was about to end, Byk wrote, now addressing the director as “Chick:”

In April Byk followed up, writing:

A decision by the trustees was, however, delayed until their September meeting, and Byk wrote in late August hoping that “if the Caravaggio should be the chosen picture I would be delighted,” As a further prod, Byk soon wrote again, “I have just had word from Ventura[82] from Italy asking me if we are still free for the Caravaggio and telling me that if and when the War is over he would have a great client in Italy for fine Baroque pictures and especially for this picture, which is so highly praised by Longhi all over the country.” Nothing was resolved that fall, and on December 3rd, Byk had to suggest that “if Mahomet does not come to the Mountain, I may come up for a brief visit between Christmas and the New Year.” Things dragged on into 1941 with Byk asserting repeatedly his “attachment to you and your Institution comes before any other consideration.” And that “you are my oldest and truest and most appreciated client.”[83]  In June 1941, Byk kept up the pressure, writing, “I have just come back from Cleveland, where I was for the Silver Jubilee. Francis [the curator of paintings and drawings] told me that if he ever comes into money he would like to buy the Caravaggio, because he thinks it is the only surely established picture by this master beyond any doubt in America. I told him that you were still seriously considering this picture.”[84] Since no solution could be found to the purchase impasse, the painting was returned to New York in May 1942.

In the meantime, the largest Baroque exhibition since the Hartford one of 1930 (fig. 25) took place in 1941 in San Francisco. Here Caravaggio was represented by that Chastisement of Love now owned by Mr. and Mrs. Charles Worcester of Chicago (fig. 26).[85]

Then, in October 1942, the St. Francis was sent back to Hartford for renewed consideration. On November 30th, Paul Byk wrote to Austin, “I trust you will decide this week about the Caravaggio, as I would very much like to see this picture in Hartford, where after all it belongs as far as my very incompetent judgement is concerned.” Austin in one of his rare direct responses to a dealer answered on December 2nd that “I shall speak to you about the Caravaggio at the earliest possible moment.” What was said is unknown, but on December 11th, Byk sent to the museum a transcript of enthusiastic endorsements of the painting by the leading Italian experts Longhi, Morassi, and Fiocco.[86]

By this time Austin was having a multitude of troubles with the Atheneum’s trustees, and a six-month sabbatical for the director had been scheduled to begin in July, so he may have sought to make his last stand over the Caravaggio. On June 10th, 1943, he wrote a passionate, yet reasoned, long letter to Robert Huntington of the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company, who was also the chairman of the trustee acquisition committee and had already gone on vacation to Maine:

Mr. Huntington was persuaded by this plea and gave his consent to the acquisition. A new invoice for the painting was sent on June 15, and on June 26 there opened in the Atheneum’s Avery Court (fig. 27), which had been designed by Austin, the boldly titled exhibition Caravaggio and the Seventeenth Century. According to the typewritten checklist, this consisted of forty works, including the Caravaggio Boy and Ecstasy of St. Francis as well as all the other Baroque paintings that Chick Austin had acquired during his directorship. Seven other paintings were lent by New York galleries.[88] The Hartford Times reported:

A few years later, in 1946, the work was borrowed to also be the centerpiece in Caravaggio and the Caravaggisti held at Durlacher Brothers, New York City.[91] This was the first of what would be a long series of exhibitions in America devoted to the master and his followers. The Wadsworth Atheneum’s painting was number 1 followed by the Fogg Card Players now called “Follower of Caravaggio”. [92] As a contemporary review observed:

A short while after his final Caravaggio show at the Wadsworth Atheneum, Chick Austin departed that museum for good and after a brief stint in Hollywood reemerged in the museum world as the first director of the John and Mable Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida.[96] John Ringling (fig. 29), the circus magnate, who died in 1936, had made in the 1920s and 30s one of America’s leading private collections of European paintings and built a magnificent museum to house it.  He had a particular love for Italian Baroque art and with the assistance of the German art dealer Julius Böhler sought with great diligence to build a collection representative of all the great masters. In this pursuit he acquired two works attributed at the time to Caravaggio.[97] One was a Christ at Emmaus (clearly based on Caravaggio’s painting now in the National Gallery, London) that was purchased in 1927 at auction from Anderson Galleries in New York. This was later downgraded to “follower of Caravaggio”, and is now listed by the museum as Neapolitan.[98] The other, a very beautiful St. Matthew and the Angel (again based on an authentic Caravaggio of the subject that was destroyed in Berlin) has passed in attribution from Gentileschi to the French painter Nicolas Régnier (fig. 30).[99] In addition, Ringling had also somewhere acquired a nineteenth-century copy or rather pastiche after Caravaggio [100] that has probably never been on view in the museum.

In his few years at the Ringling until his untimely death in 1957, Austin oversaw the installation of the collection, sought to add appropriate works, and also founded a Circus Museum – befittingly, he had a personal interest in acting and performing magic (fig. 31). He was not able to find (and probably could not have afforded) another Caravaggio, although the Strozzi he acquired has been described as “painted when the artist was under the influence of Caravaggio.”[101] In his role as Ringling Museum director (figs. 32-33), Austin also penned a substantial essay on “The Baroque” for the Art News Annual of 1950. In this he was able to give free reign to his high regard for Caravaggio and summarize effectively the complete turnaround in the appreciation of the master, writing:

This painting had a distinguished provenance, having originally belonged to Caravaggio’s early patron Cardinal del Monte in Rome and then subsequently owned by Cardinal Antonio Barberini, who probably gave it to Marechal Charles I de Créquy of Paris from whom it went to Cardinal Richelieu and then later entered a series of English collections, where little recognized in its grimy state, it was with a Mr. Joe Cookson of Kendal, Westmoreland when purchased from him by the retired naval Surgeon Captain W. Thwaytes in 1947 for £100.[104]

But even before then, Mahon had sent photos of the work and a letter in late 1951 to Theodore Rousseau, the Metropolitan Museum’s suave curator of European Paintings, stating as follows:

And in a follow up note, he added, “It seems very clear that you ought to hop over to London early in January.”[108]

By February, Mahon could report to Rousseau that he and Benedict Nicolson (fig. 36), the editor of the Burlington Magazine and also an expert in matters Caravaggesque, had been to see the captain, who had decided to offer it to the National Gallery, “but they do not regard it as ‘their cup of tea’ especially at the suggested figure of £25,000 ($70,000).” He also noted that “a stream of people have been viewing it. [But] if you came to London to see it, he would sell it without further ado for $70,000.”[109] Mahon’s article had, as he had predicted, “repercussions…with lots of press focusing on the national heritage.” Plus, he noted “Zeri recently in London was quite ecstatic about it.”[110]

Rousseau wrote in response to Mahon that “Thwaytes informed me that there is likely to be no objection to an export permit since the National Gallery will not buy at that price. He suggests that representatives of the Met go to London to make the final decision. I have suggested to bring the picture over by plane.”[111] The wily captain then countered in March that, “If the museum finances his trip over, he would bring the picture with him by boat, since the extremes of cold in an aircraft would possibly injure it. Advise sending it by boat.” Mahon then suggested “the need for a thoroughly heavyweight caliber offer,” as there had been another offer.[112]

Then finally on May 14, 1952, Mahon wrote, “Captain Thwaytes is off in the Queen Elizabeth today with the Musica, the export license having been granted. I expect the considerable cost of the trip was a shock all around! However, maybe your committee will seize the opportunity it has secured, and such considerations will then become incidental.”[113] Fortunately, they did and Mr. Rousseau could announce to the press, that this was the “key picture of Caravaggio’s lifetime. Its recovery becomes highly important, historically as well as esthetically.” And, he further stated, “it was one of the most important single additions to the museum’s collections in recent years (fig. 37).”[114]

This information was discovered by the Nelson-Atkins provenance specialist, MacKenzie Mallon, who also learned from the gallery records that the initial purchase from the Chichester Constable family was made by the London dealer Edward Speelman, who then went into partnership with Agnew’s and the dealers Vitale Bloch and Gualtiero Volterra.[116] It was Geoffrey Agnew whose London Gallery took the lead in offering the painting. He gave the first option to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but curator Theodore Rousseau, as we have seen, had already decided to pursue instead the multi-figured Musicians.[117] As he later wrote, “I had [the Kansas City Young St. John] in my office for a long time. I gave it up because I did not think it was quite powerful and typical enough to be the only Caravaggio in our Museum. I do, however, still admire it greatly.”[118] He, therefore, very kindly informed Mario Modestini, the brilliant art restorer then advising the Kress Collection, about it. In conjunction with the Kress team of William Suida, curator, and Guy Emerson, art director, he was forming the core Kress collection for the National Gallery of Art in Washington D. C. Agnew’s thus sent the work to the Kress headquarters on West Fifty-Seventh Street, and the staff was quite enthusiastic about it. However, John Walker (fig. 40), the director of the National Gallery, after a visit to see it in New York declined the painting. According to his autobiography, he felt that since the picture had once belonged to his wife Margaret’s relatives in Yorkshire, her enthusiasm for it was prejudiced, and he, for the first and only time, ignored her advice, making what he said was “a mistake that still haunts me.”[119] As E. Peters Bowron has pointed out, Walker was also oddly not following the opinion of his mentor, Bernard Berenson, who in his 1951 monograph on the painter identified this as the superior version of the painting.[120]  The St. John was thus returned to Agnews in London.

By a stroke of great good luck on May 5, 1952, one of the three trustees of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Milton McGreevy and his wife, Barbara, accompanied by their daughter Jean, recently graduated from Vassar, ended their two-month European sojourn by visiting the dealer from whom they had acquired many English paintings and Old Master drawings (fig. 41). They had begun in Sicily and made their way through Italy encountering such art world luminaries as Frederick Mason Perkins, Bernard Berenson, Harold Acton, and even the erstwhile advisor on European art to their museum, Harold Parsons. As they had no specific appointments in London, they strolled down Bond Street after lunch at Claridge’s and decided to visit Agnews. When they entered and were spotted by senior partner, Geoffrey Agnew (later Sir Geoffrey), he surprisingly cut short his session with Robert Lehman and had them ushered into the plush red velvet viewing room, saying he had something he really wanted to show them. However, it was only after looking at some indifferent Italian and modest Cubist works, that Geoffrey Agnew had the Caravaggio wheeled in, one suspects little expecting the outcome. In any case the McGreevys were all “bowled over” by it and insisted that it be sent to Kansas City for inspection by the other trustees and museum staff.[121] It was Mrs. McGreevy who was especially enthusiastic. A descendent of Jesse James’s family, a graduate of Vassar, and founder of Planned Parenthood in Kansas City, she was a dynamic mover and shaker in the city, and her husband was soon to become the next head of the museum board.[122]

The asking price for the painting was £30,000, and since the director, Paul Gardner, was at his ranch in New Mexico for the summer, it was the museum’s deputy director, Laurence Sickman, an expert in Asian art, but broadly knowledgeable, who took the lead in the negotiations. He wrote to Geoffrey Agnew that, “at the present time funds are heavily committed.”[123] In fact, the museum had earlier that year purchased for nearly twice that amount El Greco’s Portrait of a Trinitarian Friar (fig. 42), so finances were indeed strained. Nevertheless, following the trustees meeting of May 26, their enthusiasm was so great that they asked for the painting to be sent to Kansas City. On seeing it, the decision was made to acquire the Caravaggio and sacrifice all the acquisition funds for the remainder of the year. So, on August 8, 1952, an agreement was negotiated for its purchase at the price of £25,000, or $70,250, with the museum paying for the shipping but Agnews keeping the frame.[124] Since the balance of the funds due was only paid later, the announcement of the purchase was not made until the end of January 1953, after the painting had been cleaned [125] and went on exhibition in the museum’s Masterpiece of the Month Room. The painting’s acquisition was highlighted in Art News,[126] and the local newspaper, The Kansas City Star, observed:

The Nelson-Atkins had actually earlier purchased from Henry Duveen a supposed Caravaggio coming out of Spain, The Guardian Angel with Saints Ursula and Thomas (fig. 43) in 1930,[128] but already in 1947 Juan Ainaud de Lasarte rightly attributed it to Cecco del Caravaggio and this was also the opinion of Richard Spear.[129] So, once the great, authentic Caravaggio had been acquired, this still impressive work was demoted to School of Caravaggio,[130] and it was eventually sold at auction in New York.[131] Purchased by the late dealer Stanley Moss, it was acquired by the Prado in 1993.[132]

In a sad postscript for Washington D. C., Modestini, who remained convinced of the St. John’s significance, had finally persuaded Rush Kress to agree to an offer of $60,000 in early August of 1952,[133] but the deal with Kansas City was already done, and America’s National Gallery has never been able to fill the gap.

Mr. Sickman, soon after the Caravaggio acquisition, became the beloved director of the Nelson-Atkins (April 1953) and always took great pride in his role of acquiring the painting. When asked many years later to select his favorite work in the museum, he chose this very painting (fig. 44)![134] ❖