An interview of Winslow Ames conducted 1987 April 29-June 2, by Robert F. Brown, for the Archives of American Art.
Ames speaks of his childhood in New York, his family's early New England and New York antecedents, his education at Columbia College, and studying fine arts at Harvard under Paul Sachs and Edward Waldo Forbes. He reminisces about his friendship with Edward M.M. Warburg and Lincoln Kirstein and their involvement in his purchase of Gaston Lachaise's "Standing Woman"; his work as the first director of the Lyman Allyn Museum, New London, Connecticut; service as a conscientious objector with the Civilian Public Service Corps during World War II; and assisting in the resettlement of European refugees with the American Friends Service Committee. He discusses directing a museum in Springfield, Missouri, researching and writing his, "Prince Albert and Public Taste," and teaching connoisseurship and museum practices at the University of Rhode Island and Brown University.
Biographical / Historical:
Winslow Ames (1907-1990) was a museum director, art historian, collector, conoisseur of drawings, and authority on Victorian art.
General:
Originally recorded on 3 sound cassettes. Reformatted in 2010 as 6 digital wav files. Duration is 4 hr., 18 min.
Provenance:
These interviews are part of the Archives of American Art 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.
Occupation:
Art teachers -- Rhode Island -- Interviews Search this
Art teachers -- Rhode Island -- Interviews Search this
Topic:
Museum directors -- Connecticut -- Interviews Search this
Museum directors -- Missouri -- Interviews Search this
Function:
Art museums -- Connecticut -- New London
Art museums -- Missouri -- Springfield
Genre/Form:
Sound recordings
Interviews
Sponsor:
Funding for the digital preservation of this interview was provided by a grant from the Save America's Treasures Program of the National Park Service.
0.3 Linear feet ((partially microfilmed on 6 reels))
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Drawings
Sketchbooks
Date:
1915-1977
Scope and Contents:
Biographical material, correspondence (1920-1977), diaries, notes and writings, art works, subject files (1939-1968), printed material (1919-1971), and photographs (1919-1929) document Geissbuhler's artistic activities in Paris and New England.
Reels 1267-1268: Many letters (1920-1971), written by Geissbuhler to his wife Elisabeth Chase Geissbuhler, are illustrated. Other correspondents include Adelyn Breeskin, Margaret Browne, Edward W. Forbes, and A. Conger Goodyear. Art works consist of 26 sketchbooks (1915-1962), annotated in French and English, and over 600 figure studies (1922-1970). Printed material includes a Sculptors' Guild brochure, art course announcements (1958), and clippings (1924-1971). Other materials consist of 2 autobiographical accounts, an award from the Cambridge Centennial Exhibition (1946), an address book and calling cards.
Reel 1271: Printed material includes reproductions of Geissbuhler's work, an advertisement for the Academie Julian (1919), an exhibition announcement (1921), and a clipping (1925). Photographs (1919-1922) and a photograph album (1921-1929) contain images of Geissbuhler in his studio, his works, his family, and friends including Otto Banninger, Antoine Bourdelle, Alberto Giacometti, his father Giovanni Giacometti, and Germaine Richier. Sixteen photographs show art classes, primarily Bourdelle's classes (1919-1922), and Charles Graffley's studio (1921). Other materials consist of biographical notes, an award certificate and 4 sketches (1918).
Reel 1331: Correspondence consists of letters received from Antoine and Rhoda Bourdelle (1921-1977) and general correspondence concerning art business matters (1927-1971). A diary in 8 volumes (1921-1922) contains some illustrated entries. Printed material (1934-1971) consists of 40 exhibition catalogs, 8 clippings, and a school brochure. Four loose sketches are undated. Seven subject files concerning Geissbuhler's sculpture projects contain letters, business records, notes, and clippings.
Reel 1813: Photographs of Geissbuhler's work and one of his house, ca. 1924-1933.
Unfilmed: Letters (1937-1941) concern Geissbuhler's work for the WPA, Treasury Department, and the Federal Works Agency, primarily the Medford project and the Foxboro, Massachusetts, post office project. Other material consists of 3 forms, 2 exhibition catalogs, a press release concerning government projects, 2 rolled charcoal drawings and 2 photographs of the sculptural relief "Straw Cutting and Weaving" from the Foxboro, Massachusetts post office project, and notes.
Biographical / Historical:
Sculptor; Dennis, Mass. Born in Delemont, Switzerland. In 1914, Geissbuhler traveled to Zurich to become a sculptor's apprentice in the studio of Otto Munch. He attended the Kunst Gewerbe School and worked as Munch's assistant until 1919. In that year, Geissbuhler went to Paris to study with Antoine Bourdelle at the Academie Julian. He maintained a studio in Paris until 1927, when he travelled to the United States and married Elisabeth Chase, a Boston sculptor whom he met in Bourdelle's class. They moved to New England in 1933, and in 1937 he became an art instructor at Wellesley College.
Provenance:
Material on reels 1267-1268, 1271, 1331 and 1813 lent for microfilming 1977-1978; unmicrofilmed material donated 1984 all by Arnold Geissbuhler.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C., Research Center. Microfilmed materials must be consulted on microfilm. Contact Reference Services for more information.
An interview of Eleanor Sayre conducted 1993 April 19-1997 January 10, by Robert F. Brown, for the Archives of American Art.
Sayre talks about her early childhood in Williamstown and Cambridge, Mass.; her family background; visits to the White House with her maternal grandfather, Woodrow Wilson; living abroad while her father was in government service in Bangkok, then Siam (now Thailand), Paris, and Switzerland, with extensive recollections of her brothers and schooling in Europe.
Attending Winsor School in Boston; her mother's death; her years at Bryn Mawr College, including her switch to art history from political science; Georgianna Goddard King as an influential teacher; an internship under Laura Dudley at the Fogg Art Museum's Print Room and the lasting effect of this experience.
Being a graduate student in fine arts at Harvard and the importance of Edward Forbes and Paul Sachs as teachers; her decision not to pursue a PhD; working with Jakob Rosenberg; helping to get young Jews out of Europe; her position as assistant for exhibitions at Yale University Art Gallery under Theodore Sizer; the trauma of her father's internment by the Japanese in the Philippines, where he was High Commissioner and his rescue; and her decision to turn down a military intelligence job in order to work with German Jewish refugees.
Her brief tenure at Lyman-Allyn Museum, Conn., under Winslow Ames; her years in the education department under Lydia "Ma" Powel at the Museum of Art of the Rhode Island School of Design with Gordon Washburn as director; and working closely with Heinrich Schwartz on prints and drawings.
The liberal tradition of her father's wealthy family; her father; being brought to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston by its curator of prints, Henry Rossiter and on the charming collector and benefactor, Maxim Karolik; MFA curator of paintings, William George Constable; and George Harold Edgell, MFA director.
The collector, Philip Hofer, who by putting his Goya proofs on loan at the MFA, led to Sayre's life-long study of the artist; her research on Goya in Spain; raising of a large sum from Boston businesses to purchase Hofer's prints for the MFA, and the MFA's eminence by the 1960s in Goya's graphic work; the disgusting repression of dissent in Franco-era Spain; Goya's passionate self-assertion, which is what principally attracted Sayre to his work, and his conceptual process and method of work.
Earlier years at the MFA, Boston, including the accessibility of the print department's study rooms; Edwin J. Hipkiss, curator of American decorative arts; the Christmas poetry and prints exhibitions designed as profound learning experiences for a broad public; and being chosen as successor to Rossiter; and further comments on Maxim Karolik.
W.G. Russell Allen and other collectors who gave their collections to the MFA; her efforts to effectively present art to the broad public; her methods of appealing to the public coalescing at the MFA in 1989 with the "Goya and the Spirit of the Enlightenment" exhibition; and an exhibition of the work of Beatrix Potter.
Spain under the dictator, Francisco Franco; her first study in Spain of Goya's drawings and her urging the Prado Museum to conserve its drawings; the Prado's director, F. Sanchez-Canton; her research on prostitution at the Ministry of Justice; being decorated for her recommending the preservation of Goya's art and the marvelous private collections of Goya in Spain; and her obsession with interpreting the meaning of Goya's work.
The MFA, Boston, under the directorship of Perry Rathbone, who wanted many more people involved than had his predecessor, George Harold Edgell, who ran it like a Boston Brahmin Club; Rathbone's accomplishments; his downfall and that of his assistant (and curator of European decorative arts and sculpture) Hanns Swarzenski in bringing a so-called Raphael into this country by irregular means, which led to Rathbone and Swarzenski's firing by George Seybolt, the trustee president; Rathbone's reluctance to hire women curators and Sayre's finally becoming curator of prints and drawings in 1967; her philosophy as curator; on Hanns and Brigitte Swarzenski as dear friends; her exchange of positions with the curator of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, where she put their valuable but neglected print collection in order.
The exhibition and catalog, "Rembrandt: Experimental Etcher," (1969) in collaboration with the Pierpont Morgan Library; general views on exhibitions; co-authoring the exhibition catalog "Goya and the Spiris of Enlightenment" (1989); her contributions to Goya research; her current research and writing on Goya's Capaprichos print series; and her satisfaction in having spent her career in art museums.
Biographical / Historical:
Eleanor A. Sayre (1916-2001) was a curator and art historian from Boston, Mass.
General:
Originally recorded on 8 sound cassettes. Reformatted in 2010 as 15 digital wav files. Duration is 11 hrs., 21 min.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives of American Art 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 administrators.
An interview with Rosamond Forbes Pickhardt conducted 1995 Feb. 13, by Robert Brown, for the Archives of American Art.
Pickhardt recalls her childhood as the daughter of Edward Waldo Forbes, long-time director of the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University (1909-1944) and Margaret Laighton; her early schooling and early interest in art; her family's 11-month stay in Europe in 1922, with the young Daniel Varney Thompson acting as her father's understudy, and during the time her father studied painting with Alexander Iacovleff in Paris; spending several weeks at the Villa Curonia, near Florence, where many art world figures visited. Pickhardt remembers Paul Sachs who, upon coming to the Fogg, encouraged her to go into museum work; Eric Schroeder, a specialist in Near Eastern art and a life-long friend; Frederick "Ted" Grace, a scholar of classical art who had been groomed by Edward Forbes and Paul Sachs to succeed them as director of the Fogg but who was killed during World War II; Jakob Rosenberg, a German refugee scholar; Deman Ross; Harold Zimmerman with whom she studied drawing; Langdon Warner, a scholar of Asiatic art and one of her father's oldest friends; Kingsley Porter; and Mark Tobey with whom she studied. Pickhardt talks about her third marriage to Carl Pickhardt in 1953 and their life-long ties with the Forbes family.
Biographical / Historical:
Rosamond Forbes Pichardt (1908-2004) was a writer from Sherborn, Mass.
General:
Originally recorded on 1 sound cassette. Reformatted in 2010 as 2 digital wav files. Duration is 1 hr., 28 min.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives of American Art 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 administrators.
Restrictions:
This transcript is open for research. Access to the entire audio recording is restricted. Contact Reference Services for more information.
Topic:
Authors -- Massachusetts -- Sherborn -- Interviews Search this
Genre/Form:
Sound recordings
Interviews
Sponsor:
Funding for the digital preservation of this interview was provided by a grant from the Save America's Treasures Program of the National Park Service.
An interview of Daniel Varney Thompson conducted 1974 September 25-1976 November 2, by Robert F. Brown, for the Archives of American Art.
Thompson speaks of authenticating a painting by Leonardo Da Vinci; teaching at Harvard University with Edward Waldo Forbes; his 1923-1925 expedition to India and China with Langdon Warner and Fogg Art Museum personnel to study cave paintings; setting up the art history department at Yale with Everett Meeks and teaching tempera painting; his studies in Europe and work at the Courtauld Institute in London; and translating manuscripts dealing with medieval painting techniques and media. He recalls Bernard Berenson and William Mills Ivins.
Biographical / Historical:
Daniel V. Thompson (1902-1980) was an art historian, conservator, professor, and chemist engineer. Thompson studied techniques of medieval and Renaissance painting. He was a professor at the Courtald Institute, London, 1938-1947.
General:
Originally recorded on 4 sound tape reels. Reformatted in 2010 as 7 digital wav files. Duration is 6 hr., 55 min.
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 is available on the Archives of American Art's website.
An interview with Henry E. Scott conducted 1980 May 30-June 23, by Robert F. Brown, for the Archives of American Art. Scott speaks of his childhood; his education at Harvard and in Italy under Edward Waldo Forbes; his teaching positions at Harvard, the University of Pittsburgh, Amherst College, and the University of Kansas; teaching aircraft identification during World War II; and his research on New England architecture.
Biographical / Historical:
Henry E. Scott (1900-1990) was a painter and educator from Massachusetts and California.
General:
Originally recorded on 2 tape reels. Reformatted in 2010 as 4 sound files. Duration is 3 hr., 33 min.
Provenance:
These interviews are part of the Archives of American Art 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.
Topic:
Educators -- Massachusetts -- Interviews Search this
Painters -- Massachusetts -- Interviews Search this
Genre/Form:
Sound recordings
Interviews
Sponsor:
Funding for the digital preservation of this interview was provided by a grant from the Save America's Treasures Program of the National Park Service.
Interview of Richard B.K. McLanathan, conducted by Robert F. Brown for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution in Phippsburg, Maine, on August 31, 1994.
McLanathan speaks of his parents and his childhood in Methuen, Massachusetts and then Andover, Massachusetts; the frequent presence of formidable aunts and uncles who entertained Episcopal bishops; attendance at a "dame school" there, then at classes given by a retired teacher at Phillips Academy, Andover; the trauma of one year at Phillips Academy with its large classes and severe teachers; the effects his father's ruin in the financial crash of 1929 had on his family; attendance at Choate (graduated 1934) and Harvard College (graduated 1938) on scholarships; his several years teaching in Manhattan at a small private school and marriage (1942) to Jane Fuller, a prominent designer of knitwear; his disqualification from the military because of flat feet and his teaching in night schools as a form of alternative service; and his matriculation (1943) as a graduate student in fine arts at Harvard. McLanathan also recalls Chandler Post, Arthur Pope, Paul Sachs, Edward Forbes, and Arthur Kingsley Porter, and others.
Biographical / Historical:
Richard B.K. McLanathan (1916-1998) was an art historian, administrator, and writer. McLanathan received a Ph.D from Harvard in 1951. Ass't Curator of Paintings, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1946-1948, and Secretary, 1949-1956; Director, Museum of Art, Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, 1957-1962; Curator of the Art Exhibit of the American National Exhibition, Moscow, Russia, 1959; New York State Council on the Arts,1960-1964; Director, American Association for Museums, 1976-1978; author of numerous publications on art.
General:
Originally recorded on 2 sound cassettes. Reformatted in 2010 as 3 digital wav files. Duration is 1 hr., 52 min.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives of American Art 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 administrators. Additional interview sessions are planned.
Biographical material, correspondence, business records, extensive portrait files, sketches and drawings, notes and writings, art works, subject files, printed materials, photographs, audio-visual material and palette samples relate chiefly to Cox's career as a portrait painter.
Included are: short biographical sketches, a résumé, and membership cards; correspondence, primarily with the gallery Portraits, Inc. and with sitters; early letters of recommendation and letters from Austin Stevens, who painted Cox's portrait; contracts, insurance records, leases, frame invoices, and extensive income tax records; ten cassette tapes and transcript of an interview conducted by Phoebe Barnes Driver; notebooks, notes and writings, including a biographical sketch of Edward W. Forbes, a transcription of a portrait dedication, invitation lists; notebooks; appointment calendars; sketchbooks and loose sketches.
Also included are extensive portrait files of sitters containing correspondence, invoices; some contain photographs. Sitters include Dean Acheson, Judge Bailey Aldrich, Hamilton Fish Armstrong, Dean George Baker, Ann Banks, Talcot M. Banks, Barry Bingham, Sr., Eleanor Bowman, Justice William Joseph Brennan, Jr., Kingman Brewster, Jr., John Nicholas Brown, Orville H. Bullitt, William A.M. Burden and sons, J. B. CanantHammond E. Chaffetz, Secretary William T. Coleman, Abram T. Collier, Mary Crocker, Nathan Cummings, Justice R. Ammi Cutter, Dr. Francis de Marneffe, Dr. Derek Denny-Brown, Douglas Dillon, Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, Frederick M. Eaton, Daughter of Frederick M. Eaton, Dr. Frank Elliott, John Franklin Enders, Justice Felix Frankfurter, Robert Frost, Richard Glenn Gettell, Justice Arthur Goldberg, Honorable and Mrs. Gordon Gray, General Wallace M. Greene, Burton Grey, Najeeb E. Halaby, Justice John M. Harlan, Averell and Pamela Harriman, Judge William Hastie, Francis W. Hatch, Hatcher, Paul V. Hayden, Alfred Hayes, Ralph Helverson, Christian Herter, Hopkinson, V.P.H. Humphrey, R. Keith Kane, John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Rev. Kinsolving, Secretary Henry Kissinger, Henry Laughlin, Martina Lawrence, Lessing, Edward H. Levi, Wilmarth Sheldon Lewis, Lippman, Stacy Lloyd, Professor Louis Loss, Robert Lovett
Professor Edward Mason, Jean Mayer, Secretary Robert S. McNamara, Professor Donald H. Menzel, Hary Myers, Dr. Francis D. Moore, Maurice Needham, William Oates, John Lord O'Brian, Daniel H. O'Leary, Howard C. Peterson, Edwin H.B. Pratt, Norman S. Raab, R. Stewart Rauch, Herbert Read, Dr. Duncan Reid, Resor, Arthur Ross, Eugene V. Rostow, Dean Rusk, Dean Albert M. Sacks, Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger, Sally Scott, George C. Seybolt, Dr. Howard Sprague, Justice Potter Stewart, J. Statton, Lewis Toepfer, Marian Vaillant, Margaret Vaughan, Chief Justice Earl Warren, James Webb, Fred Weed, E. A. Weeks, Professor Fred L. Whipple, Justice Byron White, George M. White, Judge Raymond Wilkins, Michael Wiseman, Professor Arnold Wolfers, and Judge Charles Wyansky.
Also found are institution files relating to activities with the American Academy in Rome, Boston Arts Festival and its revival in 1985, Massachusetts Art Commission, St. Botolph Club, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and memorials to Samuel Morison, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and Robert Gould Shaw; exhibition files, containing correspondence, catalogs and announcements; and files relating to Cox's home and studio and the publication of LAWYERS PAINTED BY GARDNER COX. Also, clippings, invitations, announcements and printed material from clubs and other organizations; and photographs of Cox, his family, a bust of Cox, and many of his portraits.
ADDITION (UNMICROFILMED; ca. 12 ft.): Biographical material; correspondence; writings; notebooks; sketches and drawings; financial papers; photographs of portrait and non-portrait work; printed material; exhibition announcements; lists of work; posthumous inventory with photographs of selected work. The strength of this group lies in the abundance of studies for portraits, ranging from quick sketches in notebooks to studies of aspects of sitters to preliminary drawings, to photographs of his work, predominantly portraits but also including his paintings of forms abstracted from nature.
Biographical / Historical:
Portrait painter; Cambridge, Mass. Died 1988. Cox was a friend or acquaintance of many leading cultural figures in Boston and Cambridge, painted the portraits of many of them, and often developed friendly relations with his eminent sitters.
Provenance:
Papers on reels 4486-4494 were donated 1982-1985 by Gardner Cox and by his widow, Phyllis Byrnes Cox, 1989-1990. Additional papers received in 1998 from Cox's sons, James and Benjamin, and his daughter, Phyllis Koch.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C., Research Center. Microfilmed materials must be consulted on microfilm. Contact Reference Services for more information.
An interview of Molly Luce conducted 1981 Mar.10-1981 June 18, by Robert F. Brown, for the Archives of American Art.
Luce speaks of her childhood; her early interested in drawing and botany; her two years of study at Wheaton College; her training at Art Students League; her acquaintances from the League including Anne Rector, Katherine Schmidt, Kenneth Hayes Miller; her travels in Europe with her first husband, Alan Burroughs; her residences in Minneapolis, Boston, and finally Little Compton; and observations on a range of her own paintings. She recalls Lloyd Goodrich, Dennis Miller, Kenneth Hayes Miller, Peggy Bacon, Isabel Bishop, Dorothy Varian, Alexander Brook, Edward Forbes, and many others.
Biographical / Historical:
Molly Luce (1896-1986) was a painter in Little Compton, R.I.
General:
Originally recorded on 2 tape reels. Reformatted in 2010 as 3 digital wav files. Duration is 2 hrs., 27 min.
Provenance:
These interviews are part of the Archives of American Art 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.
