The Macbeth Gallery records provide almost complete coverage of the gallery's operations from its inception in 1892 to its closing in 1953. Through extensive correspondence files, financial and inventory records, printed material, scrapbooks, reference and research material, and photographs of artists and works of art, the records document all aspects of the gallery's activities, charting William Macbeth's initial intention to lease his store "for the permanent exhibition and sale of American pictures" through over sixty years of success as a major New York firm devoted to American art. The collection measures 131.6 linear feet and dates from 1838 to 1968 with the bulk of the material dating from 1892 to 1953.
Scope and Content Note:
The Macbeth Gallery records provide almost complete coverage of the gallery's operations from its inception in 1892 to its closing in 1953. The records document all aspects of the gallery's activities, charting William Macbeth's initial intention to lease his store "for the permanent exhibition and sale of American pictures" through over sixty years of success as a major New York firm devoted to American art. The collection measures 131.6 linear feet and dates from 1838 to 1968 with the bulk of the material dating from 1892 to 1953.
The gallery's correspondence files form the core of the collection and illuminate most aspects of American art history: the creation and sale of works of art, the development of reputations, the rise of museums and art societies, change and resistance to change in the art market, and the evolution of taste. Ninety-five feet of correspondence house substantial and informative letters from dozens of important American painters and sculptors, including older artists and younger contemporaries of the gallery in its later years. There are also letters from collectors, curators, other galleries, and critics.
The financial files found in the collection offer insight into the changing economic climate in which the gallery operated. They include information ranging from the details of individual sales and the market for individual artists, to consignment activities and artist commissions, to overviews of annual sales. This information is augmented by the firm's inventory records and the photographs of artwork with their accompanying records of paintings sold. The inventory records provide details of all works of art handled by the gallery, both sold and unsold, and the buyers who purchased them; the photographs of artwork include images of artwork sold with accompanying sales information.
The highlight of the gallery's printed material is the publication Art Notes. Although published only until 1930, Art Notes provides an excellent and detailed view of the gallery's exhibition schedule and the relationship of the gallery owners with many of the artists whose work they handled. It was a house organ that also provided a running commentary on events in the art world. The gallery's 19 fragile scrapbooks, maintained throughout the firm's history, provide further coverage of activities through exhibition catalogs and related news clippings. Printed material from other sources provides a frame of reference for activities in the art world from the mid-19th to the mid-20th-centuries and includes an almost complete run of the rare and important pre-Civil War art publication The Crayon.
Reference files record the interest which the gallery owners took in the work of early portrait painters and in later artists such as George Inness and Winslow Homer. Together with the immense volume of correspondence with buyers and sellers of paintings by the great portraitists and the Hudson River School found in the gallery's correspondence files, these records are still useful sources of information today and underscore the deep interest that the Macbeths and Robert McIntyre took in 18th and 19th-century American art.
The photographs of artists found here are a treasure trove of images of some of the major figures of the 19th and 20th-centuries. There are photographs of artists such as Chester Beach, Emil Carlsen, Charles Melville Dewey, Frederick Carl Frieseke, Childe Hassam, Winslow Homer, George Inness, Maurice Prendergast, and Julian Alden Weir, many of them original prints and the majority of them autographed.
With the exception of the "The Eight" and a few of their contemporaries, an important aspect of art history, the modernist movement, is generally represented in the Macbeth Gallery records only in a negative form as the three successive proprietors of the gallery showed very little interest in this area. Nevertheless, the collection is a highly significant source of information on many of the major and minor figures in American art in the period after 1890.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged into eight series:
Missing Title
Series 1: Correspondence, 1838-1968 (Box 1-95, 163-164, OV 165; 96.2 linear feet)
Series 2: Financial and Shipping Records, 1892-1956 (Box 96-110; 11.8 linear feet)
Series 3: Inventory Records, 1892-circa 1957 (Box 111-113; 3.0 linear feet)
Series 4: Printed Material, 1838-1963 (Box 114-119, 162; 5.0 linear feet)
Series 5: Scrapbooks, 1892-1952 (Box 120-130; 3.3 linear feet)
Series 6: Reference Files, 1839-1959 (Box 131-132; 0.6 linear feet)
Series 7: Miscellaneous Files, 1912-1956 (Box 133-134; 0.8 linear feet)
Series 8: Photographs, circa 1880-circa 1968 (Box 135-161; 12.1 linear feet)
Historical Note:
The Macbeth Gallery was established in 1892 by William Macbeth, a Scotch-Irish immigrant who had spent ten years with the print dealer Frederick Keppel before he opened his doors to the art-buying public at 237 Fifth Avenue in New York. Despite the prevailing interest in foreign art at that time, particularly in that of the Barbizon and Dutch schools, Macbeth was determined to dedicate his gallery to "the permanent exhibition and sale of American pictures, both in oil and water colors."
Although some of the gallery's earliest exhibitions were of work by European artists, the business soon became the only gallery in continuous operation that kept American art permanently on display. In the January 1917 issue of Art Notes, Macbeth recounts those early days remembering that "The opening of my gallery......was a rash venture under the existing conditions, and disaster was freely predicted." Nevertheless, he struggled through the financial crisis of 1893 and persisted with his devotion to American art; slowly the market for his pictures grew more amenable.
Macbeth moved to more spacious quarters at 450 Fifth Avenue in 1906 and two years later undertook what was to become the major event in the gallery's early history: the 1908 exhibition of "The Eight," featuring work by Arthur B. Davies, Willam J. Glackens, Robert Henri, Ernest Lawson, George Luks, Maurice Prendergast, Everett Shinn, and John Sloan. "The Eight" were an unlikely combination of social realists, visionaries and impressionists eager to challenge the dominating influence of the National Academy. The exhibition received an immense amount of publicity and instantly entered into art history as a successful assault on tradition.
Despite the splash that the exhibition made and its implications for the future of American art, nothing that the gallery did subsequently indicated that Macbeth intended to capitalize on its significance. It is true that Macbeth supported many artists later considered leaders in American art when the public would pay no attention to them because of their modernist tendencies; Arthur B. Davies, Paul Dougherty, Maurice Prendergast, Theodore Robinson, and F. Ballard Williams all held their first exhibitions at his gallery. Nevertheless, neither Macbeth nor the gallery's two successive proprietors, Robert G. McIntyre (William's nephew) and Robert Macbeth (William's son), who joined the gallery in 1903 and 1906 respectively, ever developed a true interest in modern art. The November 1930 issue of Art Notes summarizes their collective disdain for modernism, stating: "We believe that, by and large, modern art is amusing. We are heretical enough to believe that much of it was started for the amusement of its creators and that no one was more surprised than they when it was taken seriously by a certain audience to whom the bizarre and the unintelligible always makes an appeal." So while the Macbeths and McIntyre cetainly championed American artists and insisted they deserved as much recognition as the Europeans, their deepest and most abiding interest was undoubtedly the established artists of the 18th and 19th-centuries and those of the early 20th-century who continued in a more conservative style. Artists such as Emil Carlsen, Charles Harold Davis, Frederick C. Frieseke, Robert Henri, Winslow Homer, Chauncey F. Ryder, Abbot Handerson Thayer, J. Francis Murphy, A. H. Wyant were the gallery's bread and butter.
When William Macbeth died in 1917 Robert Macbeth took up the reins with the assistance of Robert G. McIntyre . Although they incorporated the business as William Macbeth, Inc., in 1918 the gallery continued to be known, as it always would be, simply as Macbeth Gallery. Macbeth and McIntyre continued to show work in the same vein as the elder Macbeth. They concentrated primarily on oil paintings at this time, having found by the 1920s that "oils are all that our gallery owners will buy," though they also exhibited an occasional group of watercolors and pastels in addition to bronzes and other sculpture by contemporary American artists such as Chester Beach and Janet Scudder.
Of the early American painters the Macbeths and McIntyre were particularly interested in colonial portraits and miniatures, especially those painted by prominent artists in the latter part of the eighteenth century such as John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart, Thomas Sully and John Trumbull. In its early years the gallery also handled the work of a few prominent American etchers including Frank W. Benson, Emil Fuchs, Daniel Garber, Childe Hassam and Chauncey F. Ryder. The print department was generally discontinued, however, in the late 1930s although the gallery continued to show prints by contemporaries such as Stow Wengenroth.
In 1924 relative prosperity allowed the gallery to move uptown to 15 East Fifty-seventh Street. When the 1930s brought new financial hardship for the gallery Macbeth and McIntyre took a variety of approaches to boosting sales. In 1930 they decided to hold only group exhibitions throughout the season to the exclusion of one-man shows, and also held some special exhibitions of paintings priced at a hundred dollars each in the hope that they could tempt those "willing to take advantage of a rare chance to secure representative examples of good art at a most attractive price." A move to smaller quarters at 15 East Fifty-seventh Street in 1935 was made with the intention of concentrating their efforts on the work of fewer contemporary artists, while continuing to handle the work of the older Americans they had long supported.
When Macbeth died suddenly and unexpectedly in August 1940 following an operation for appendicitis, McIntyre continued to run the gallery with the assistance of Hazel Lewis. During the 1940s McIntyre and Lewis showed primarily contemporary art in a wide range of media including oil, watercolor, pastel, drawing and sculpture, while continuing, as always, to show the occasional group of 19th-century Americans. The great success of the gallery's later years was undeniably Andrew Wyeth whose first exhibition, held at Macbeth Gallery in 1937, resulted in the sale of all twenty-two paintings cataloged.
Although subsequent Wyeth exhibitions were also successful, McIntyre struggled financially throughout the 1940s and periodically considered liquidating the company. Although "vitally interested" in contemporary art by people such as Robert Brackman, Jay Connaway, Carl Gaertner, James Lechay, Herbert Meyer and Ogden M. Pleissner he found that, for the most part, it did not pay. McIntyre continued operations until 1953 when he decided that doing so for profit was not only a financial burden but also ran contrary to his desire to spend more time devoted to his first love, early American art. When the lease expired on 11 East Fifty-seventh Street in April 1953 McIntyre did not renew it. After closing the gallery's doors he sold art from his New York apartment and from his home in Dorset, Vermont. He officially dissolved William Macbeth, Inc., in 1957.
The history of the Macbeth Gallery is a long and distinguished one with each successive proprietor making a significant contribution to art in America. William Macbeth helped establish an audience and a market for American art when few were willing to give it serious consideration. Robert Macbeth continued to cement the gallery's reputation as one of the leading firms in New York and was instrumental in organizing the American Art Dealers Association. Robert G. McIntyre claimed in a letter to Lloyd Goodrich, dated 22 June 1945, that the thing of which he was most proud was "the share I have had in the formation of the collection of the Addison Gallery of American Art, at Andover, Massacusetts." McIntyre was widely respected in the art community as a dealer, as an adviser to curators, and as a scholar whose research and book on Martin Johnson Heade helped "rediscover" an important American artist. One of his most significant and lasting contributions to the history of art in America, however, was undoubtedly his gift of the gallery's historical records to the Archives of American Art.
Related Material:
Among the holdings of the Archives of American are a small collection of scattered Robert McIntyre's papers and 9 items of William Macbeth's papers. Macbeth Gallery exhibition catalogs are also available in the American Art Exhibition Catalog collection and the Brooklyn Museum Records, both loaned and microfilmed collections.
An extensive collection of Macbeth Gallery exhibition catalogs are also held by the Frick Art Reference Library and the Watson Library of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Provenance:
The bulk of the Macbeth Gallery records were donated and microfilmed in several installments between 1955 and 1966 by Robert G. McIntyre and Estate. Additional Macbeth Gallery printed material was donated by Phoebe C. and William Macbeth II, grandchildren of William Macbeth, in 1974.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C., Research Center.
Rights:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
Macbeth Gallery records, 1838-1968, bulk 1892 to 1953. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing of this collection was provided by the Getty Grant Program. Digitization of the scrapbooks was supported by a grant from the Smithsonian Institution Women's Committee. Correspondence, financial and shipping records, inventory records, and printed material were digitized with funding provided by the Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for the Arts, the Terra Foundation for American Art and The Walton Family Foundation.
The Robert Henri papers date from 1880 to 1954. included are 26 diaries, dating from 1880 to 1928. The collection also includes writings, scrapbooks, printed material, and miscellany.
Reels 885-887: 25 diaries kept by Robert Henri, August 15, 1881 to October 20, 1928 (some entries with illustrations). Henri writes about his studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and in Paris; his instructors Thomas Anshutz, Thomas Hovenden, and Adolphe Bouguereau, and fellow students Alexander Stirling Calder, Edward Redfield, Charles Grafly, and others; his opposition to the National Academy of Design and academic painting between 1902 and 1912; the exhibition of The Eight in 1908; the 1910 Exhibition of Independent Artists; the MacDowell Club; the founding of the Association of American Painters and Sculptors; and other topics. Also included are typescripts of 4 plays; scrapbooks of clippings, 1888-1954 and loose clippings; 82 photographs of Henri, including a group photo of Henri, Elmer MacRae, Maxfield Parrish, and four unidentified women, classes, and models; a letter and receipt from John Sloan; clippings regarding The Eight; and a copy of Memoirs of My Dead Life, by George Moore, annotated by Henri.
Reel 1654: Robert Henri diary, May to November 1880. Henri writes about his daily activities as a 15-year-old boy growing up on the Platte River, including entries on family events, playing with his brothers and friends, fishing, celebrating July 4th, bailing hay for his father, a dance and fair, and houses in Cozad, Nebraska (122 pages).
Biographical / Historical:
Robert Henri (1865-1929) was a painter and instructor in New York, N.Y.
Provenance:
Material on reels 885-887 was lent by Mrs. Janet LeClair, the widow of John LeClair, nephew of Henri's sister-in-law, Violet Organ. Organ inherited these papers and planned on using them in a biography of Henri which was never written. The papers passed to John LeClair upon Organ's death in 1959 and subsequently donated to Yale University. Organ donated other Henri papers, including correspondence, notes, notebooks, photographs and other manuscript material to Yale University's Beinecke Library in the 1960s. The diary on reel 1654 was lent by Dr. Robert Gatewood, a cousin of Robert Henri, who reported that he had at one time possessed several of Henri's illustrated boyhood stories and other diaries which were all destroyed in a fire.
Restrictions:
The Archives of American art does not own the original papers. Use is limited to the microfilm copy.
The Ira and William Glackens papers, circa 1900-1990, measure 2.3 linear feet. The collection consists primarily of the papers of Ira Glackens relating to the artwork of his father, William Glackens, but also contains scattered correspondence of William and his wife Edith, including letters from Albert Barnes. Ira Glackens' papers include books written by Ira; exhibition catalogs and clippings about William and others; photographs of the Glackens family and friends, of Ira, and of the Glackens residence; and an audio recording of William Glackens' remarks upon accepting an award at the Carnegie International Exhibition in 1936. There are also records of the Sansom Foundation, which was set up by Ira Glackens and his wife Nancy.
Scope and Content Note:
The Ira and William Glackens papers, circa 1900-1990, measure 2.3 linear feet. The collection consists primarily of the papers of Ira Glackens relating to the artwork of his father, William Glackens, but also contains scattered correspondence of William and his wife Edith, including letters from Albert Barnes. Ira Glackens' papers include books written by Ira; exhibition catalogs and clippings about William and others; photographs of the Glackens family and friends, of Ira, and of the Glackens residence; and an audio recording of William Glackens' remarks upon accepting an award at the Carnegie International Exhibition in 1936. There are also records of the Sansom Foundation, which was set up by Ira Glackens and his wife Nancy.
Biographical information consists of genealogical research on the Glackens family and a copy of Ira Glackens birth certificate.
Correspondence of the artist William Glackens includes letters to his wife, Edith, written while on a trip to Paris in 1912 to purchase paintings for collector Albert C. Barnes. Barnes' letters to William and Edith Glackens are about paintings in the Barnes Collection, the educational plans of his Foundation, and Glackens' work and exhibitions. Letters to Edith Dimock Glackens are from relatives and friends including her father, Ira Dimock, her sister, Irene Dimock FitzGerald, author James L. Ford, and painter Maurice Prendergast. There is also a copy of a letter concerning the estate of Lenna G. Borton, the Glackens' daughter.
Ira Glackens' correspondence largely concerns exhibitions, sales, loans, donations and the authentication of artwork by William Glackens. Correspondents include museums, galleries and artists, in addition to personal correspondence with family and friends. Names of significant correspondents in Ira Glackens' correspondence include Laura (Mrs. Albert C.) Barnes, Charles Buckley, Delaware Art Museum, Kraushaar Gallery, Walt Kuhn, Vivian Liff, George Luks, Stearns Morse, National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Bennard Perlman, Eugenie Prendergast, Arnold T. Schwab, Helen (Mrs. John) Sloan, and Williams College Museum of Art.
Noteworthy writings include speeches, a memoir, and a short play by Ira Glackens, and family recollections of Edith Glackens. A 1936 audio recording is of remarks made by William Glackens upon being presented with an award for his entry in the Carnegie Institute's International Exhibition. Writings by others include essays by John Bullard and Everett Shinn about Glackens.
Printed material includes Ira Glackens' books, catalogs of group and solo exhibitions featuring the work of William Glackens, clippings concerning William Glackens, and reviews of Ira Glackens' books.
Records of the Sansom Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization founded in 1950 by Ira and Nancy Glackens to oversee their art interests, consist of annual reports, a charitable trust registration form, and financial and tax records.
Photographs are of the Glackens family, travel scenes and artwork by William Glackens, The Eight, and other artists.
A card index of William Glackens' paintings, prepared by Ira Glackens, provides details of artwork in William Glackens' estate.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged as 8 series.
Missing Title
Series 1: Biographical Information, circa 1900-1990 (Box 1; 2 folders)
Series 2: Correspondence, 1902-1989 (Box 1; 0.7 linear feet)
Series 3: Writings, 1963-1982 (Boxes 1, 3; 0.2 linear feet)
Series 4: Sansom Foundation, Inc., 1957-1973 (Box 2; 0.2 linear feet)
Series 5: Printed Material, 1903-1989 (Boxes 2-3; 0.6 linear feet)
Series 6: Scrapbook, 1956-1980 (Box 3; 0.1 linear feet)
Series 7: Photographs, circa 1900-1986 (Box 2; 0.3 linear feet)
Series 8: Card Index of William Glackens' Paintings, circa 1940-1949 (Box 3; 0.2 linear feet)
Biographical Note:
Ira Dimock Glackens (1907-1990), the first child of painter and illustrator William Glackens and Edith Dimock Glackens, was born in New York City. Raised in the art world, he was well acquainted with his father's friends and colleagues. Upon his father's death in 1938, Ira became responsible for managing and administering the art remaining in William Glackens's estate.
Educated at the Choate School, Ira Glackens became a writer. He published two books about his father: William Glackens and the Ashcan Group: The Emergence of Realism in American Art (1957) and William Glackens and the Eight: The Artists who Freed American Art (1984). An opera expert, Ira Glackens was also the author of Yankee Diva: Lillian Nordica and the Golden Days of Opera (1963) and an authority on apples.
William Glackens (1870-1938) was born in Philadelphia and studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts with Robert Henri while working as an illustrator for local newspapers, including the Philadelphia Press. In 1895, he departed for a year in Paris and then moved to New York City where he continued to work as an illustrator for various newspapers and periodicals. Before long, Glackens began to focus on scenes of city life and street crowds and, in 1908, he participated in the groundbreaking exhibition of The Eight at the Macbeth Gallery in New York City.
Between 1925 and 1932 William Glackens lived and worked in France and his painting was strongly influenced by Renoir. He spent the remainder of his life in New York City, exhibiting widely from 1894 on. Glackens was named an Associate of the National Academy of Design and was the recipient of several awards including those of the 1901 Pan-American Exposition (gold), the 1904 St. Louis Exposition, the 1915 Pan-Pacific Exposition, the 1933 Society of Independent Artists Exhibition, and the 1936 Carnegie International Exhibition.
Related Materials:
The Archives also holds several collections related to Ira and William Glackens, including the Ira Glackens letters to Jane Wasey; the Illustrations by William Glackens and letter from Ira Glackens; the Lillian E. Travis papers relating to William Glackens and Charles Prendergast; and the Thomas Hart Benton and Ira Glackens letters. Substantial correspondence between William Glackens and the Kraushaar Gallery can also be found in the Kraushaar Galleries records.
Separated Material:
Published books not authored by Glackens family members or related to Glackens' family members were transferred to the Smithsonian's American Art Museum Library in 2007. A few pieces of artwork were given to Williams College, also in 2007.
Provenance:
The Ira and William Glackens papers were donated to the Archives of American Art by Ira Glackens in 1987, and by his estate in 1991. In 2007 a small cache of papers found in the Glackens home was donated by Susan Corn Conway, who had purchased the Glackens' house.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment.
Rights:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
Topic:
Illustrators -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia Search this
Authors -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia Search this
The records of Owen Gallery measure 9.4 linear feet and 0.093 GB and date from 1929-2010, bulk 1980-2010. The gallery, which operated from 1986 to 2009 in New York, specialized in late nineteenth and early twentieth century American art with an emphasis on The Eight, Ashcan, and early American modernism. Michael Owen and James Yost owned and directed the gallery. Found within the records are exhibition files; inventory and sales records; printed and digital material; and records regarding painter Yasuo Kuniyoshi. Material dating from before 1986 when the gallery was established is research related to an artwork's provenance.
Scope and Contents:
The records of Owen Gallery measure 9.4 linear feet and 0.093 GB and date from 1929-2010, bulk 1980-2010. The gallery, which operated from 1986 to 2009 in New York, specialized in late nineteenth and early twentieth century American art with an emphasis on The Eight, Ashcan, and early American modernism. Artists represented include Thomas Hart Benton, Arthur B. Davies, William Glackens, Robert Henri, Ernest Lawson, George Luks, Maurice Prendergast, Everett Shinn, John Sloan, and others. Michael Owen and James Yost owned and directed the gallery. Found within the records are exhibitions files; inventory and sales records; printed and digital material; and records regarding painter Yasuo Kuniyoshi. Material dating from before 1986 when the gallery was established is research related to an artwork's provenance.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged as four series
Missing Title
Series 1: Exhibition Files, 1989-2010 (2.1 linear feet; Box 1-3, 0.001 GB; ER01)
Series 2: Inventory and Sales Records, 1929-2010, bulk 1980-2010 (5.7 linear feet; Box 3-8, 0.092 GB; ER02-ER04)
Series 3: Printed Material, 1994-2008 (0.4 linear feet; Box 8-9)
Series 4: Records Regarding Yasuo Kuniyoshi, circa 1955-2000 (1.2 linear feet; Box 9-10)
Biographical / Historical:
Owen Gallery, a New York gallery specializing in late nineteenth and early twentieth century American art, operated from 1986 to 2009 and was owned and directed by Michael Owen and James Yost. The gallery represented many artists associated with The Eight, Ashcan, and American modernism. Although exhibitions and the retail gallery have closed, the business remains in operation.
Provenance:
The Owen Gallery records were donated to the Archives of American Art in 2015 and 2016 by Michael Owen and James Yost.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C. Research Center. Contact Reference Services for more information.
Rights:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
An interview of Abraham Walkowitz conducted by Abram Lerner and Mary Bartlett Cowdrey for the Archives of American Art.
Walkowitz discusses his childhood and schooling; travelling abroad; influence of Claude Monet exhibit; his book, "Artists of Walkowitz: 100 Portraits"; Paul Cezanne's death; meeting artists in Europe; his 1908 exhibition of modern art at the Julius Haas Gallery, New York; getting Max Weber a show at the Haas Gallery; Steiglitz and his "291" Gallery; the Armory Show, especially the roles of Arthur B. Davies, Walt Kuhn, and Walter Pach; reactions to Nude Descending a Staircase; the Society of Independent Artists; thoughts on criticism of his work; his relationship with the critic Peyton Boswell; the importance in his work of dancer Isadora Duncan; opinions on American art, modern art, art schools, students and patrons; good art versus bad art; and the role of critics. Among others he recalls are Lizzie Bliss, William Merritt Chase, Kenyon Cox, The Eight, Jacob Epstein, Childe Hassam, and Georgia O'Keeffe.
Biographical / Historical:
Abraham Walkowitz (1880-1965) was a painter in New York, New York.
General:
Sound has been lost on tape reels; reels discarded.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives' Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and others.
Restrictions:
Transcript available on the Archives of American Art website.
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Abraham Walkowitz, 1958 December 8-22. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Exhibition of paintings by Arthur B. Davies, William J. Glackens, Robert Henri, Ernest Lawson, George Luks, Maurice B. Prendergast, Everett Shinn, John Sloan
Macbeth Gallery. Exhibition of paintings by Arthur B. Davies, William J. Glackens, Robert Henri, Ernest Lawson, George Luks, Maurice B. Prendergast, Everett Shinn, John Sloan, 1908. Miscellaneous art exhibition catalog collection, 1813-1953. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
