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Old Masters, New World: America's Raid on Europe's Great Pictures
A spellbinding account of the rapacious pursuit of the most exquisite paintings in the world In the Gilded Age, newly wealthy and culturally ambitious Americans began to compete for Europe's extraordinary Old Master pictures, causing a major migration of art across the Atlantic. Old Masters, New World is a backstage look at the cutthroat competition, financial maneuvering, intrigue, and double-dealing often involved in these purchases, not to mention the seductive power of the ravishing paintings that drove these collectors-including financier J. Pierpont Morgan, sugar king H. O. Havemeyer, Boston aesthete Isabella Stewart Gardner, and industrialist Henry Clay Frick. Packed with stunning reproductions, this is an ideal gift book for art lovers and history buffs alike.
329 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 14, 2008
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May 20, 2019
Cynthia Saltzman provides the reader some important insights into the art world of the 19th century. In doing so, she charts the transition of culture in America from its rough beginnings to the desire (at least of people of wealth and station) to possess the prized paintings of Western Civilization, particularly those of the past several centuries.
She gives us many sketches of those Europeans who owned the art but couldn’t afford to keep it; and those Americans and others who wanted to acquire it; and the “dealers” and middlemen who made it possible. She charts the flow of art first from the European Continent to England and then across the Atlantic Ocean. "There, they spent part of their vast wealth on art—particularly on Italian Baroque paintings. Even before 1700, the British (ignoring laws forbidding the importation of pictures) began purchasing canvases from Europe at a rapid"
She cites several “authorities” attesting to the USA’s lack of great art and culture. "Commentators complained of the monotony of New York’s architecture and the absence of civic monuments. “One sees neither dome, nor bell tower, nor great edifice, with the result that one has the constant impression of being in a suburb,” Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in 1835."
She centers on Henry Marquand as the person who, with vision and determination, sought out art for his “hometown” New York City museum. "(Henry) Marquand launched Dutch pictures and grand manner English portraits as the two categories of Old Master pictures that the American tycoons who succeeded him would insist on possessing." "… the attraction of Dutch paintings for Americans sprang from their potent marriage of realism and visual splendor."
She burrows into his personality and his “art of the deal.” "Earlier Marquand had attempted to appease Methuen with the thought that his paintings would “educate a new country.” Already, one of them had. Vermeer’s Young Woman with a Water Pitcher The encounter with van Dyck’s James Stuart elevated Henry Marquand’s collecting ambitions. “In regard to buying anything else, I do not expect to waste my time on seeing everything which will not rank with the Rembrandt & van Dyck,” he told Deschamps on October 13, 1886. In 1887, he set out for Europe, again tracking Old Masters.”
And she charts the “Old World’s” reaction. “Everyone here who cares for art is much interested in this step of yours,” the London Times critic J. Humphrey Ward wrote Marquand. “But we tremble a little at the thought of what may happen to our old collections if our Old Masters become a fashion over there!”
Among the others she profiles is Henry Clay Frick whose personal collection was one of America’s greatest. She provides the reader with some of the ways in which Frick “got up to speed” as his collection grew and improved: "By now, the Pittsburgh tycoon (Frick) had learned his way in matters of taste, absorbing the lessons of restraint, old money, and aristocracy—lessons taught not only in Europe but in the neoclassical aesthetic of Morgan’s new library." “I do not wish to purchase anything unless it ranks with the Rembrandts I have and the Velasquez [sic].” The ambition to acquire “important” pictures also infected"
Saltzman also gives plenty of space to those entreprenureial dealers who tried to acquire, then interest clients in their acquisitions.
"Recognizing that his clients wanted paintings to decorate their houses, Henry Duveen shied away from paintings even by the most celebrated masters if they had what he considered “unpleasant subjects,” such as “an ugly man with a knife in his hand,” or “an interior with a woman nursing a child.”
"Apparently Duveen heard that Berenson had questioned some of the attributions of the Italian paintings in the Hainauer Collection, which he had bought in 1906, and hired the connoisseur to examine the pictures. Soon he enlisted Berenson to expand his trade in Old Masters. In 1909, Duveen gave Berenson a secret contract promising him 25 percent of the profits of every picture he authenticated. For the Duveens, Berenson provided invaluable services, in both buying and selling pictures. He scouted for Old Masters (mostly but not exclusively Italian pictures) and advised their “various houses [branches] about things proposed” to them. He also spent much of his time “working up” eloquent letters promoting paintings the Duveens had purchased, posing as the disinterested scholar writing about a particular picture strictly for the art historical record. As a means of marketing Old Masters, Berenson’s letters were hard to surpass."
"Frick’s competitors—Pierpont Morgan, Peter Widener, Benjamin Altman, and Arabella Huntington. Now in their sixties and seventies, they had years of experience buying pictures and limited time left. Already possessing substantial collections, they sought to upgrade and round them out. They wanted paintings that were famous, costly—the envy of the world and of one another. Contriving to be given first refusal of every major Old Master to appear on the market, they observed each other’s moves."
I thought Saltzman was particular strong in her description of the art involved. Here is a typical description of one of the paintings: Bellini/Titian Feast of the Gods
"Spread across the strange but ravishing painting (as though in a frieze) are seventeen carefully characterized figures—most of them classical gods and goddesses, caught in distinctly human guise. They are dressed in greens, oranges, blues, reds, and countless other colors that Bellini created by spreading glazes, one upon another, and mixing ground glass into the paint to produce tones as luminous as stained glass. The subject is a bacchanal of classical divinities and a youthful company of male and female figures, eating and drinking and making erotic advances, some lost in their own thoughts and some gazing at the others. Bellini playfully signed the canvas by painting his name onto the image of a piece of paper stuck to a wine barrel in its lower right corner.
If this was an era where American plutocrats competed to see who could amass the greatest art collection, I found that Saltzman also provided some insights that balanced the scales. It was Henry Marquand who insisted and provided the funds for the Metropolitan Museum of Art to be open on Sundays……………the only day that many working-class people (with six day work weeks) had to themselves. Frick and Morgan, too, eventually made their vast collections available to the public. Unlike in most of the “Old World” at that time where private collections had been the rule. Is it a coincidence that I recently reviewed a history of the populist movement in America? https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
It was very helpful that she includes photos of many of the paintings and characters involved in her narrative.
She gives us many sketches of those Europeans who owned the art but couldn’t afford to keep it; and those Americans and others who wanted to acquire it; and the “dealers” and middlemen who made it possible. She charts the flow of art first from the European Continent to England and then across the Atlantic Ocean. "There, they spent part of their vast wealth on art—particularly on Italian Baroque paintings. Even before 1700, the British (ignoring laws forbidding the importation of pictures) began purchasing canvases from Europe at a rapid"
She cites several “authorities” attesting to the USA’s lack of great art and culture. "Commentators complained of the monotony of New York’s architecture and the absence of civic monuments. “One sees neither dome, nor bell tower, nor great edifice, with the result that one has the constant impression of being in a suburb,” Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in 1835."
She centers on Henry Marquand as the person who, with vision and determination, sought out art for his “hometown” New York City museum. "(Henry) Marquand launched Dutch pictures and grand manner English portraits as the two categories of Old Master pictures that the American tycoons who succeeded him would insist on possessing." "… the attraction of Dutch paintings for Americans sprang from their potent marriage of realism and visual splendor."
She burrows into his personality and his “art of the deal.” "Earlier Marquand had attempted to appease Methuen with the thought that his paintings would “educate a new country.” Already, one of them had. Vermeer’s Young Woman with a Water Pitcher The encounter with van Dyck’s James Stuart elevated Henry Marquand’s collecting ambitions. “In regard to buying anything else, I do not expect to waste my time on seeing everything which will not rank with the Rembrandt & van Dyck,” he told Deschamps on October 13, 1886. In 1887, he set out for Europe, again tracking Old Masters.”
And she charts the “Old World’s” reaction. “Everyone here who cares for art is much interested in this step of yours,” the London Times critic J. Humphrey Ward wrote Marquand. “But we tremble a little at the thought of what may happen to our old collections if our Old Masters become a fashion over there!”
Among the others she profiles is Henry Clay Frick whose personal collection was one of America’s greatest. She provides the reader with some of the ways in which Frick “got up to speed” as his collection grew and improved: "By now, the Pittsburgh tycoon (Frick) had learned his way in matters of taste, absorbing the lessons of restraint, old money, and aristocracy—lessons taught not only in Europe but in the neoclassical aesthetic of Morgan’s new library." “I do not wish to purchase anything unless it ranks with the Rembrandts I have and the Velasquez [sic].” The ambition to acquire “important” pictures also infected"
Saltzman also gives plenty of space to those entreprenureial dealers who tried to acquire, then interest clients in their acquisitions.
"Recognizing that his clients wanted paintings to decorate their houses, Henry Duveen shied away from paintings even by the most celebrated masters if they had what he considered “unpleasant subjects,” such as “an ugly man with a knife in his hand,” or “an interior with a woman nursing a child.”
"Apparently Duveen heard that Berenson had questioned some of the attributions of the Italian paintings in the Hainauer Collection, which he had bought in 1906, and hired the connoisseur to examine the pictures. Soon he enlisted Berenson to expand his trade in Old Masters. In 1909, Duveen gave Berenson a secret contract promising him 25 percent of the profits of every picture he authenticated. For the Duveens, Berenson provided invaluable services, in both buying and selling pictures. He scouted for Old Masters (mostly but not exclusively Italian pictures) and advised their “various houses [branches] about things proposed” to them. He also spent much of his time “working up” eloquent letters promoting paintings the Duveens had purchased, posing as the disinterested scholar writing about a particular picture strictly for the art historical record. As a means of marketing Old Masters, Berenson’s letters were hard to surpass."
"Frick’s competitors—Pierpont Morgan, Peter Widener, Benjamin Altman, and Arabella Huntington. Now in their sixties and seventies, they had years of experience buying pictures and limited time left. Already possessing substantial collections, they sought to upgrade and round them out. They wanted paintings that were famous, costly—the envy of the world and of one another. Contriving to be given first refusal of every major Old Master to appear on the market, they observed each other’s moves."
I thought Saltzman was particular strong in her description of the art involved. Here is a typical description of one of the paintings: Bellini/Titian Feast of the Gods
"Spread across the strange but ravishing painting (as though in a frieze) are seventeen carefully characterized figures—most of them classical gods and goddesses, caught in distinctly human guise. They are dressed in greens, oranges, blues, reds, and countless other colors that Bellini created by spreading glazes, one upon another, and mixing ground glass into the paint to produce tones as luminous as stained glass. The subject is a bacchanal of classical divinities and a youthful company of male and female figures, eating and drinking and making erotic advances, some lost in their own thoughts and some gazing at the others. Bellini playfully signed the canvas by painting his name onto the image of a piece of paper stuck to a wine barrel in its lower right corner.
If this was an era where American plutocrats competed to see who could amass the greatest art collection, I found that Saltzman also provided some insights that balanced the scales. It was Henry Marquand who insisted and provided the funds for the Metropolitan Museum of Art to be open on Sundays……………the only day that many working-class people (with six day work weeks) had to themselves. Frick and Morgan, too, eventually made their vast collections available to the public. Unlike in most of the “Old World” at that time where private collections had been the rule. Is it a coincidence that I recently reviewed a history of the populist movement in America? https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
It was very helpful that she includes photos of many of the paintings and characters involved in her narrative.
July 4, 2010
The use of the word "raid" in the subtitle is sensationalism, in my opinion. What Napoleon did to European art was a raid; what Hitler did to European art was a raid. What the wealthy Americans did in the 19th century, at the height of American wealth, was purchase masterworks, often that the British had themselves acquired at the height of their own wealth. It is funny that the British seemed to think their national wealth was being plundered when so much of the art purchased from them was actually Dutch or Italian or Spanish or French. And much, if not most, of what these Americans purchased ended up in public collections, many of them having started out in very private collections in England and Europe. Economies rise and fall, and when they fall, masterworks often return to the market. So it will go as long as there is a market for art.
May 7, 2015
Even though I'm the kind of gallery-goer who looks on the wall to see the painting's provenance (Widener Collection, for example), this book barely held my interest. It was so dry. Pages upon pages of dealers locating Old Masters in Europe, cabling their super wealthy clients, asking for cheques, clients negotiating, purchases consummated. There are 15 color plates and many black and white reproductions inserted into the text.
Maybe the dryness created a thirst that led to this typo: "Like many English diplomats, Methuen found that his travels on the Continent wetted his appetite for pictures..."
August 10, 2021
I loved this book! The subject is right up my alley and it was so fun to read about all of the art collectors of the Old Masters all in one place. From Frick, to Morgan, to the Havemeyers, this book had it all! It’s the story of the ultra rich Americans who acquired Old Master paintings from Europe. Think works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, and van Dyck for hundreds of thousands of dollars. I loved learning about the art dealers who brought these millionaires masterpieces and all of the emotion and strategy that played into it. It was especially exciting for me to read about the works that made their way to the Met and gave me a greater appreciation for all of the effort that went into collecting my favorite pieces. If you love art, this is a book for you!
April 22, 2023
Very interesting. I never really thought about the origins of all these famous pictures in museums. I read "Picasso's Wars" last month about American collectors of art from Picasso's era, so this book was a good read about how so many of the Old Masters made it to the USA, as well as the founding of American museums. It included reference to Bernard Berenson, who I learned about in The Personal Librarian. I learned more about Isabella Stewart Gardener (we saw her museum when we lived in Boston), the Wideners (there is a library at Harvard names after them), etc. And much of the book was about Henry Clay Frick, a Pittsburgh icon.
May 12, 2023
Fascinating read about American collectors who brought old masters paintings to this country, forming the nucleus of our museums and, subsequently, American taste in art.
November 27, 2008
Very interesting book about how and why Americans acquired many of the old master painting of Europe. Lots of discussion of Henry Clay Frick and Isabella Stewart Gardner. This book dovetailed nicely with the book Merchants and Masterpieces I read last year about the development of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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May 4, 2025I read this book (I never recorded it.) because I read Plunder: Napoleon's Theft of Veronese's Feast. More and more, I'm intrigued how art was bought or plundered by museums and people.
Because I visited the newly renovated Frick on Thursday - 5/1/25, I was reminded of this book that was referenced by the NYTimes article, "He Built the Frick Collection With Passion, Patience and Bargaining, published April 24, 2025.
Chapter V - "A Picture for a Big Price" Henry Clay Frick, Charles Carstairs, Otto Guttekunst and the Ilchester Rembrandt (For almost 100 years, the portrait had been been in the collections of the Earls of Ilchester at their house at Melbury Park in Dorset, 100 miles southwest of London.) Rembrandt's self portrait, signed and dated 1658, when the artist was fifty-two. Frick bought it for $225,000. Actually he paid only $200,000 because he returned a painting by Jules Breton that he had bought 11 years earlier. Frick bought that painting for $14,000 and calculated that the painting was now worth, $25,000. So, he subtracted the cost and paid $200,000 for the Rembrandt painting.
The Frick Museum just reopened (April 2025) after a 5 year renovation opening up the 2nd floor which were the private rooms of the Frick's and later offices for the museum staff. Also, a great series of the art in the Frick Museum on youtube or the Frick's website - Cocktails with a Curator. It was started at the beginning of Covid, every Friday for "happy hour" There are 60+ episodes. And my husband bought me the published book!
Because I visited the newly renovated Frick on Thursday - 5/1/25, I was reminded of this book that was referenced by the NYTimes article, "He Built the Frick Collection With Passion, Patience and Bargaining, published April 24, 2025.
Chapter V - "A Picture for a Big Price" Henry Clay Frick, Charles Carstairs, Otto Guttekunst and the Ilchester Rembrandt (For almost 100 years, the portrait had been been in the collections of the Earls of Ilchester at their house at Melbury Park in Dorset, 100 miles southwest of London.) Rembrandt's self portrait, signed and dated 1658, when the artist was fifty-two. Frick bought it for $225,000. Actually he paid only $200,000 because he returned a painting by Jules Breton that he had bought 11 years earlier. Frick bought that painting for $14,000 and calculated that the painting was now worth, $25,000. So, he subtracted the cost and paid $200,000 for the Rembrandt painting.
The Frick Museum just reopened (April 2025) after a 5 year renovation opening up the 2nd floor which were the private rooms of the Frick's and later offices for the museum staff. Also, a great series of the art in the Frick Museum on youtube or the Frick's website - Cocktails with a Curator. It was started at the beginning of Covid, every Friday for "happy hour" There are 60+ episodes. And my husband bought me the published book!
July 18, 2018
Saltzman has a lively style and she tells the stories of the late-nineteenth century art collectors who bought up so many European pictures and brought them to America. The book includes not only the stories of the collectors, but of the dealers and advisers who guided their purchases. I had no idea of that Mary Cassatt was a friend and adviser to Isabella Gardner; nor had I any idea of the dubious role Bernard Berenson played in influencing so many buyers over the years. I had always thought of him as an art historian, but he was also a dealer and not above some sharp dealings. I was glad to run into Havemeyer again, a man I had read about in connection with the history of Williamsburgh. It's interesting to connect the dots between all these people. Saltzman helped me to see the background that led to the collections of art we now see in museums. There are so many names and so many events that I'm afraid I have already forgotten many, but I enjoyed reading about them. The book also includes footnotes and a bibliography that may lead me to more books I'd like.
October 11, 2025
This is a well-written book about how rich Americans bought culture for their country at the beginning of the 20th century. Each chapter covers one wealthy person and how they built up their collection with the help of one or more art dealers.
The same dealers appear in many of the stories, and sound like shrewd businessmen at a time when customers travelled by sea to Europe, then toured churches and stately homes while dealers discretely enquired what was for sale and arranged the purchase.
An "old master" btw is a painter who worked before 1800, or a work by them. That means the impressionists were not being bought because they were seen as too modern.
Makes you want to go to a museum :-)
The same dealers appear in many of the stories, and sound like shrewd businessmen at a time when customers travelled by sea to Europe, then toured churches and stately homes while dealers discretely enquired what was for sale and arranged the purchase.
An "old master" btw is a painter who worked before 1800, or a work by them. That means the impressionists were not being bought because they were seen as too modern.
Makes you want to go to a museum :-)
April 22, 2018
As I was researching how Old Masters made their way from Europe and England to America during the Guilded Age, this book appeared in many of my searches. It is a wonderful treasure trove regarding the dealers, patrons and the formation of multiple American galleries; ultimately, it answered many of the questions I had. “Old Masters, New World” is a wonderfully written chronology of the major players in the American market at the turn of the 20th century. This book is well written and not dry at all, as some histories can be. Saltzman has clearly extracted the best narratives from the letters, archives and newspapers used in her research.
May 8, 2024
It is an excellent book. However, just a couple of notes on it not being VERY thorough: it focuses a lot on Frick and I think the reason is that the author was able to get the most amount of material on him. This isn’t an area I’ve seen a lot of books on and getting access to and information about the spending habits of millionaires of the fin de siecle would definitely be a difficult task - even now so many paintings in special exhibitions are labeled with “private collection” because the owners don’t want to reveal their ownership. But that said, it is a very enjoyable and informative book. Still giving it 5 stars.
November 22, 2018
Loved the contents of the book, as well as the way it was organized. It tells of how the US started and built up its collection of Old Masters and Impressionist paintings starting from the Gilded Age - or rather, how industrialist by industrialist their collections grew and eventually became contributions to museums that we get to enjoy today. I've been to every US art and house museum referenced in this book; it was fantastic to get a better understanding of how these collections came to be.
January 31, 2025
While a bit technical and full of less-than-exciting detail, I loved Saltzman's descriptions of the paintings. Her richly composed representations did les peintures justice and brought them to life for me. I would recommend this book to art lovers who already have a bit of background knowledge of European artists and want to learn the stories of the great migration of European pictures to America.
September 8, 2021
I read this book after reading the more recent anthology 'Old Masters Worldwide' and I found it easier to read but more superficial and ultimately disappointing. You can see the language and the methods are dated. Entertaining, but just that.
May 4, 2017
Excellent. The blurbs are understated. My only wish was for more photographs of the many many paintings.
March 7, 2019
great book!
September 12, 2021
Somewhat like art history 101 but much more about how American tycoons came into possession of many of Europe's most beautiful paintings in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
March 1, 2022
I would like this author to write a book about the current global art market.
June 5, 2013
This was a great read for the plane ride back to Seattle after visiting my favorite places in NYC: the Morgan, the Frick, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I'd even recently seen the Kenwood collection (from the Guinness family) in Seattle, so a huge proportion of the works discussed here are well known to me. The only paintings that I couldn't picture in my head were the ones owned by Widener and Mellon that landed in the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., which I've seen but only once or twice.
Saltzman gives us capsule biographies of Isabella Stewart Gardener, Henry Clay Frick, J. Pierpont Morgan, Marquand, and the Havemeyers: the collectors who fell in love with the Old Masters and brought them to America. She also introduces us to the dealers and connoisseurs who connected them with European sellers, and peripheral figures like Carnegie and Mellon who were part of the same milieu but not in the same league of avid collecting. The book is nicely organized in a roughly chronological way that felt natural and easy to follow.
Some key points were that the collections I love so much were funded by Gilded Age excesses (.e.g union-breaking) that I dislike seeing in today's America, and that the collectors profited by the economic troubles in Europe at the time, which aroused controversy and concerted attempts to keep certain paintings in England.
I enjoyed this book but can't quite give it 5 stars. The author writes well about the art (she thanks Svetlana Alpers in the acknowledgments, so lots of cred there) but there's too much ink devoted to haggling that even I as a passionate fan found a little repetitive. If you're not a fan of this art, I'm not sure this book will help you picture or understand it. This book would be best read after a visit to the museums I mentioned above.
Side note: The other art collection I visited on my trip was the Barnes, and it's interesting to consider him as consciously being separate from this fashion.
Saltzman gives us capsule biographies of Isabella Stewart Gardener, Henry Clay Frick, J. Pierpont Morgan, Marquand, and the Havemeyers: the collectors who fell in love with the Old Masters and brought them to America. She also introduces us to the dealers and connoisseurs who connected them with European sellers, and peripheral figures like Carnegie and Mellon who were part of the same milieu but not in the same league of avid collecting. The book is nicely organized in a roughly chronological way that felt natural and easy to follow.
Some key points were that the collections I love so much were funded by Gilded Age excesses (.e.g union-breaking) that I dislike seeing in today's America, and that the collectors profited by the economic troubles in Europe at the time, which aroused controversy and concerted attempts to keep certain paintings in England.
I enjoyed this book but can't quite give it 5 stars. The author writes well about the art (she thanks Svetlana Alpers in the acknowledgments, so lots of cred there) but there's too much ink devoted to haggling that even I as a passionate fan found a little repetitive. If you're not a fan of this art, I'm not sure this book will help you picture or understand it. This book would be best read after a visit to the museums I mentioned above.
Side note: The other art collection I visited on my trip was the Barnes, and it's interesting to consider him as consciously being separate from this fashion.
January 29, 2015
Just finished reading Cynthia Saltzman's Old Masters, New World: America's Raid on Europe's Great Pictures, 1880-World War I (New York: Viking, 2008) and began Colin & Justin's Home Heist Style Guide (a bit of fluff). Saltzman, "a former reporter for Forbes and The Wall Street Journal" has written a book that gives a brief overview of the dealer's, buyers and artists who were involved in the trade of European Old Master paintings at the turn of the 20th-Century. The stories she writes about are unfortunately more interesting than her prose or style. To often the names and identities are lost in a ponderous writing style that is weighted down with names that are never clearly drawn out or detailed. The most exciting part of the book for me was reading about Isabella Stewart Gardner's collections and the brief glimpses Saltzman gives into her life (she is such a fascinating woman). The book operates primarily as a primer, wetting the reader's taste for more, introducing the trade in fine paintings to new readers while never really giving any background to the nature of the trade and how it operates. To often her brief chapters could be helped with a more detailed account of who is who and what is actually happening (O often found the names of dealers and galleries collapsing together). While I found myself looking forward to reading the book each night I found myself sometimes skipping past sections of Saltzman's heavy-handed handling of what could be a really fascinating subject. At times the stories that Saltzman told carried the book.
April 8, 2009
This is great! I'm two chapters into it and I know it will be a consistently used reference. The chapter on Mrs. Gardner and her connection with Berenson is especially fascinating and raises interesting points about his character and their relationship. This is a must have/read for all my Gardner friends and anyone else interested in art history and/or the Gilded Age. .... Finished it! Great research, so much insight into how galleries functioned and how works of art were steered to collectors. Fascinating view of the characters of Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, who were basically rapacious businessmen who remade their images as benevolent benefactors. This is a reference I will return to.
July 12, 2015
This was great! I realize that it wouldn't appeal to everyone, but it gave me an insight into art dealers and collectors of art. From about 1880 through World War I, the industrial giants, including J. Pierpont Morgan (US Steel-largest conglomerate in the world), Havermeyer (sugar), Frick (coke & steel), Isabella Gardner (wife of a Boston Brahmin), and Marquand (banker) as well as others, are followed in their quest to own important works of art. The art dealers who brokered their deals are also examined. The movement (provenance ) of the art pieces is traced, how it came to be acquired and how & where it ended up in the U. S. Is traced. The author describes the pieces beautifully, makes me want to visit each of them in the edifices so engagingly described.
May 7, 2021
These are the times I wish I could do half stars. I reserve four stars for books I think are great in terms of the writing, the subject, character development etc. This nonfiction book is remarkably interesting, even though it teeters close to the "too academic" side. This book is an exceptional story, well told, about the late nineteenth century and early 20th century collection of European art (mostly paintings) by Americans. Most of these pictures were bought by wealthy individuals for their personal connections, or on behalf of a museum they were patrons of. The personalities involved, the selections they made, and the significance of their collections to the American public are surprisingly compelling. If you are interested in art this is a great book to put on your list.
September 9, 2009
A nice overview of the personalities involved in starting up America's collections of great paintings. The narrative jumps around a bit but the writing is smooth enough that it isn't jarring. Despite a broad topic like this she also did a nice job of keeping everything feeling linear.
Really my only complaint is it's hard not to want books like this to have more of the paintings reproduced and to have them all be bigger, so that you can really view the detail and see everything the author talks about, but I sympathize with the publishers about costs and they did have clear (if tiny) color photos of all the major ones.
Really my only complaint is it's hard not to want books like this to have more of the paintings reproduced and to have them all be bigger, so that you can really view the detail and see everything the author talks about, but I sympathize with the publishers about costs and they did have clear (if tiny) color photos of all the major ones.
April 13, 2010
While the voracious collecting of Old Masters (and then some - apparently there was a Grand Manner phase at one point that I highly disapprove of) by wealthy Americans during the 19th and early 20th centuries bordered on obscene, some aspects of this book are fascinating.
Saltzman focuses on some of the more fantastic collectors, and hence we can watch the growth Henry Clay Frick's collection, as well as marvel at the breadth of Andrew Carnegie's behemoth bequest to the Met.
Oh, and my dear Mrs. Gardner gets her fifteen minutes, although she was priced out of the market in later years (Mrs. Gardner's Titian, "The Rape of Europa," is considered the finest in the States.)
Saltzman focuses on some of the more fantastic collectors, and hence we can watch the growth Henry Clay Frick's collection, as well as marvel at the breadth of Andrew Carnegie's behemoth bequest to the Met.
Oh, and my dear Mrs. Gardner gets her fifteen minutes, although she was priced out of the market in later years (Mrs. Gardner's Titian, "The Rape of Europa," is considered the finest in the States.)
February 25, 2010
I thoroughly enjoyed Saltzman's "Portrait of Dr. Gachet" so i was excited to read her follow-up. The history behind the Gilded Age market boom in Old Masters and how so many important objects came to this country is a fascinating story. The incredibly informative work details how pioneering tycoons such as Henry Clay Frick and J. Pierpont Morgan, among others shaped the market and how dealers such as Knoedler and Duveen supplied them. It is a great read about how many of the most important paintings in the world have changed hands over time. How Renaissance art came to America.
September 11, 2011
Art dealers were the driving force behind this country's first great art boom, namely, late 19th century millionares buying up old master paintings. This book tells of the art dealers and the millionares and the complex relationships between them. It is interesting to note that in the currency of those times these people were spending just as much as rich folk do today on art. Were it not for these sales the USA would be far poorer in culture today. They and their heirs built the foundations of all our great museums, thank God for the robber barons.
February 16, 2009
Although I like shopping and love art, a book about other people shopping for art has a limited appeal to me and probably most other readers. It wasn't a bad book- I just couldn't work up a fascination with the subject. On a more positive note Old Masters, New World has definitely increased my interest in visiting a few of the collections mentioned in the book- the Morgan Library, the Frick Collection and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
December 8, 2015
A very informative and interesting read about the art rush during the gilded age and after in America. I appreciated the intimate, if brief, look into each of the collector's personal lives and motivations. Some of the transaction details did get a bit tedious but having the prices gave an idea of just how important art was to these collectors. The writing style was smooth and there were a few humorous quips about collectors. More illustrations of pieces would have been appreciated.
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