After Europe descended into war in August 1914, the market for Italian Renaissance paintings, like the market for European art in general, initially came to a standstill. Any interest in buying art when the world was at war seemed frivolous if not incomprehensible. The American stock market fell precipitously, and money was not readily available to purchase luxuries. Dealers, such as Duveen Brothers, promptly closed their galleries on the European mainland and moved their inventories to safer locations. The company instituted a moratorium on its sale of art and temporarily halted any payments to Berenson for paintings that were previously sold based on Berenson’s imprimatur. Without the support of Duveen, Berenson fell heavily into debt and begged Duveen for money to pay his bills.
In a letter to Henry Duveen dated September 23, 1914, Berenson implored:
Much as I dislike troubling you I must beg you to be ready to let me have 10,000 . . . It will take every penny of that to meet my engagements, and even then I shall be obliged, unless you will give me more, to live on next to nothing at all. The truth is that due to your monopolizing my services, and to your delay in paying me, I have been reduced to borrowing from my bankers. They not only refuse to advance me more money, but insist on being paid the considerable sums I owe them already. Unless therefore you give me 10,000 directly . . . , I shall be threatened with bankruptcy.1
On October 2, 1914, Berenson again pleaded to Duveen that he was in desperate need of money and that he was “half dead with worry and anxiety.” And he threatened that if he did not receive a payment immediately, “I shall have to let very important people know that my financial difficulties are due to your failure to pay but a part of what you owe me.2 On October 10, 1914, Berenson, writing from England, informed Duveen that unless he received some money by November 5, he would be in “ruin” and could not return to Italy.3
Although Berenson was able to obtain enough money from Duveen to return to Italy in 1915, the market for art remained equally stagnant that year. After the sinking of the Lusitania by a German submarine and the loss of 1,198 passengers and crew on May 7, 1915, very few collectors were willing to hazard transatlantic shipments of art. Wartime travel within Italy also became increasingly difficult, especially after Italy declared war on Austria on May 23, 1915 and fighting ensued along the Italian frontier with Austria. When Berenson attempted to scout for art that month in an area around Urbino, he was arrested and briefly imprisoned on suspicion of being a German spy.4 Towards the end of 1915, Berenson, looking back on the effects of the war, wrote, “For a year I have lived an all but cloistered life.”5
The war and its initial economic consequences likewise brought Walters’s interest in acquiring Italian Renaissance art to a temporary halt. On September 14, 1914, just one month after the war began, Walters wrote to Berenson expressing his anxiety over the capacity of Germany to destroy England’s commerce, his sympathy for Berenson’s situation in Italy and his concern about the economic conditions in the United States, especially the financial plight of his railroad. With regard to Berenson, he wrote, “I feel deeply for your situation in connection with your home in Florence and the temporary stagnation of everything in connection with the arts and sciences.” He described the economic conditions in the United States as being in “a desperate state.” And he informed Berenson that in light of the war, “I am not inclined to buy any works of art at all.”6 On December 31, 1914, Walters wrote to Berenson that the income of his railroad had fallen almost fifty percent during the year, and he could “spend no money on luxuries.” In this letter, Walters rejected the opportunity to purchase a painting by Caravaggio, and he repeated that, “it is utterly impossible for me to entertain the purchase of any works of art during the present condition of despair in business in America.”7 Two months later, on February 25, 1915, Walters restated his unwillingness to purchase more paintings, stating, “I am sorry to say that I cannot see any chance of buying any art objects for some time soon.”8 True to his word, Walters purchased no paintings from Berenson that year.
As a result of the rupture in the market for Italian Renaissance art caused by the war, Berenson by necessity reduced the time he spent as a merchant of art and returned to the more satisfying and cerebral work of a scholar. Walters expected Berenson to use this time to finally undertake the writing of his catalogue. Duveen Brothers, however, had other plans for Berenson. In December 1914, Henry Duveen requested Berenson to write a series articles for Art in America, a relatively new journal that was financially backed by Duveen Brothers and used by that firm for marketing its services and advertising that paintings that it had available for sale.9 Berenson frowned upon this initially, but recognizing the need to remain on good terms with Henry Duveen, agreed to “do you [Duveen] a favor” and write the articles.10
In January 1915, the publisher of Art in America contacted Walters and requested photographs of the paintings in his collection which were to be discussed in Berenson’s upcoming articles. Walters declined to cooperate. Walters was annoyed that Berenson had again tabled any work on his catalogue. It was very unusual for Walters to overtly express any sense of outrage, but in this case he could not bite his tongue. He promptly wrote to Berenson objecting to the publication of magazine articles discussing his paintings before his own catalogue was completed. He stated:
I was called up by the publisher of Art in America in regard to your article, which he had received. It is essential that I should not take any affirmative action in the matter as I have declined so many applications from magazines and other papers to supply them with photographs, upon the ground that I was myself preparing a catalogue and did not wish to sanction publications with photographic reproductions until my catalogue came out.
While expressing his displeasure and reluctance to provide photographs of his paintings, Walters informed Berenson that he would not stand in the way of the publication.11 The first three articles appeared in February, April, and June 1915 issues of the magazine. Walters read these articles and was not happy with the manner in which Berenson described his paintings. On August 18, 1915, he expressed his dismay in a terse letter that referred to the articles without offering a single complimentary word about them. His displeasure was expressed in one icy sentence which stated: “I have read your articles and noted what you have to say about some of my pictures.”12
Thereafter, several of the letters sent by Walters to Berenson began to carry a tone of contention. For example, in Walters’s letter of February 29, 1916, he cautioned Berenson not to disappoint him. The specific issue involved a painting by Mantagna that Berenson had sold to Walters based on a photograph. “I shall be dreadfully disappointed,” wrote Walters, “if the picture does not come up to the promise of the photograph.”13 While this statement in isolation might not sound very adversarial, in comparison to the warm and friendly tone of the earlier letters, it likely was intended as a proverbial shot across the bow.
Berenson’s articles in Art in America were collected and expanded upon in a volume entitled Venetian Painting in America published in 1916.14 Walters received a copy of this book, which contained additional references to Walters’s paintings, on December 27, 1916.15 At first glance, Walters was probably proud that his collection of Venetian paintings commanded more attention in Berenson’s book than any other collection. Berenson referred to twenty-seven Venetian paintings that were in Walters’s collection. In contrast, Berenson referred to only eight Venetian paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, three in the collection of J. P. Morgan, three in the collection of Henry Frick, three in the collection of Philip Lehman, and two in the collection of Joseph Widener. In sheer numbers of Venetian paintings, it appeared that among the New York millionaires, Walters was king of the hill.
Whatever satisfaction Walters obtained from Berenson’s attention must have turned quickly into embarrassment after carefully reading Berenson’s description and analysis of his paintings. Among the twenty-seven paintings, seventeen were purchased by Walters as part of the Massarenti collection or from dealers other than Berenson and seven were purchased directly from Berenson. Berenson, as expected, praised the paintings he sold to Walters. On the other hand, Berenson dismissed many of the paintings which Walters had purchased from Massarenti and other dealers, sometimes referring to their artists as “tenth rate.” More specifically, he described a painting in Walters’s collection by Antonello Da Serravalle of The Madonna and Child as “a very poor thing indeed . . . by a tenth-rater painter.” He similarly characterized a painting by Speranza of The Savior Blessing as an “imitation” by another “tenth-rate artist.” He described an early triptych of the Venetian School as “mediocre.” In describing a painting by the Studio of Antonio Vivarini, he opined that the faces of the women were “ugly . . . without alleviation or excuse,” and the drawing was too “poor” to be ascribed to Vivarini. He characterized a painting by Alvice Vivarini of The Madonna and Child as “only a quite average achievement.” And he wrote that a Madonna and Four Saints by Catena was “the crudest, driest, and most timid” of his paintings and “an inadequate representation of Catena’s evolution.” 16
Having experienced Berenson’s purge of his Italian paintings in 1914 and read Berenson’s articles in Art in America, Walters could not have been surprised that Berenson remained critical of many of his paintings. What must have surprised Walters were the particular paintings that Berenson selected for criticism. The paintings by Serravalle, Speranza, and Catena, which Berenson criticized, had been placed in Walters’s 1915 catalogue and hung in his gallery with Berenson’s knowledge and tacit approval. If Berenson did not approve of these paintings, why did he not propose their removal from Walters’s collection along with the many other paintings which he viewed as inferior?
Walters had even stronger grounds to be annoyed by Berenson’s book. It represented not only a lack of discretion on Berenson’s part but more importantly a breach of trust. It was one thing for Berenson to privately convey to Walters his critical opinion about the quality of his paintings; it was quite another thing for him to tell the whole world. Having entrusted Berenson with photographs of all of the paintings in his collection, having sought his private advice regarding which paintings to retain or discard and having engaged him to write a catalogue of these paintings which would trumpet their virtues, Walters could not have been pleased that his trust in Berenson had come back to bite him.
In the fall of 1917, seven years after Berenson proposed to write a grand catalogue for Walters, he finally turned to the task. Although it is not clear what triggered Berenson’s action, it is likely that he apprehended that his collector/dealer relationship with Walters was on the verge of collapse and that he needed to rejuvenate the relationship in order to recapture his business. There was good reason for such concern. Walters had not acquired a painting from Berenson in over a year. The last purchase was in April 1916, when Walters acquired Saint Jerome in the Wilderness which Berenson had attributed to Fiorenzo di Lorenzo (see plate 8). Meanwhile, Walters had acquired several Italian paintings from other sources, including an important fourteenth-century painting of The Massacre of the Innocents by the Sienese artist Bartolo di Fredi. Berenson was well aware that Walters had left his camp and was using other dealers to acquire Italian art.
When he finally began working on the catalogue, Berenson, with his wife Mary’s assistance, organized Walters’s collection of Italian paintings into six groups: Florentine, Sienese, Central Italian, Venetian, Northern Italian and Late Italian. Mary created a preliminary list of 156 paintings that were in Walters’s 1915, “provisional” catalogue and which were earmarked for inclusion in the catalogue Berenson was planning to write.17 Berenson’s analysis of the collection initially focused on the paintings by Venetian and Sienese artists. As reflected in fifty-six handwritten pages, Berenson carefully described the most important paintings in the Walters’s collection by these artists, comparing each painting to other works by the same artist and evaluating its quality and significance in art historical terms. He alluded to but did not replicate descriptions of some of these paintings that previously appeared in Venetian Paintings in America. Berenson did not inflate or deflate the quality of the paintings but described each analytically as truthfully and evenhandedly as Berenson saw them. The descriptions were decidedly more sober and scholarly than the manner in which Berenson described paintings to Walters when seeking to sell them. His writing was a reflection of Berenson at his best, as a scholar not a merchant. For example, in describing Carlo Crivelli’s Madonna with SS Francis and Bernardino (see plate 11), Berenson tempered his praise with criticism, writing that, “the Madonna is full of grace, but the Francis is over expressive in sentiment.” One of his favorite paintings was Bartolo di Fredi’s The Massacre of the Innocents, which he characterized as one of Bartolo’s most important paintings and, from the standpoint of color alone, one of the best to have been created during the late Middle Ages.18 (See plate 14.) Based on the fifty-six handwritten pages, Berenson clearly intended this catalogue to be comparable to, if not better than, the catalogues he previously prepared for Johnson and Widener. If Walters would have seen what Berenson had written, he likely would have been delighted with it. But as suddenly as Berenson began writing the catalogue, after the fifty-sixth page he stopped, never to return to the unfinished project.
What motivated Berenson in 1910 to propose the catalogue to Walters was what caused him in 1917 to abruptly stop: the prospect of Walters’s business. In early September 1917, Berenson sent a letter to Walters informing him that he finally had begun to write the catalogue and had completed the section on Venetian and Sienese art. He also expressed his intent to continue to work on the catalogue that winter while visiting Rome and to turn at that time to the “late” or Baroque paintings in Walters’s collection. Although Berenson probably expected this news to please Walters, it had a different effect. It served to exacerbate Walters’s frustration over the amount of time it was taking Berenson to finish the project. It made Walters realize that despite the passage of time, Berenson had barely begun to write his catalogue; that Berenson was progressing at a glacial pace; and that the catalogue remained more than a year away from completion. On September 25, 1917, Walters replied to Berenson’s news and expressed his exasperation over the interminable delays with a dash of cynicism. “Perhaps I may live to see that Catalogue completed, illustrated and published,” he wrote.19
In the same letter, Walters conveyed to Berenson that he did not envision any resumption of their commercial relationship, and he had cancelled on his books any financial obligations that they had to one another. Emphasizing this point, the letter stated, “So that today our money obligations to each other are ‘nil.’” Walters concluded his letter by stating that, “I am anxious to have this acceptable to you.”20 What Walters should have realized, but somewhat naively did not, was that the letter that served to extinguish their financial ties also served, like a wet blanket, to douse any interest by Berenson in completing the long awaited catalogue.
While severing his financial ties with Berenson, Walters avoided any direct criticism of Berenson and claimed that the separation was due to superseding events. He told Berenson that his decision to end their financial relationship was due to the decision in April 1917 by the United States to enter the war. He conveyed to Berenson that he planned to contribute eighty percent of his income to the war effort.21 True to his word, Walters was no armchair patriot. In addition to his financial support, Walters began to actively serve on the staff of the Director of the U.S Railway Administration, which had taken possession of the railroads in the United States to coordinate their support of the war effort. He also loaned Narada, his sizable yacht, to the United States Navy to help safeguard the nation’s shores; he allowed a house he owned on Fifty First Street in New York City to be used by the White Cross Committee for the shelter and care of women who had become destitute as a result of the war; and he purchased an ambulance and gave it to the Red Cross for use in France.
On December 2, 1918, shortly after the armistice ending the war, Berenson made an abbreviated effort to recapture Walters as a client. He wrote to Walters seeking to entice him into buying some of the paintings he had collected during the war. On January 8, 1919, Walters replied to his letter declining Berenson’s invitation. The rationale advanced this time by Walters was that the “socialist tendencies” of some elements of American society and new taxes curtailed his ability to purchase art.22 Walters again conveyed to Berenson that while their relationship as merchant and collector had ended, he hoped that their friendship would continue. He concluded his letter with a friendly farewell that stated: “If I go abroad next year, I will hunt you up and worry you a bit.”23 It was the last known letter between the two.
Walters’s reasons for severing his collector/dealer relationship with Berenson were never candidly expressed to him in any clear, direct and coherent manner. Likewise, Berenson never informed Walters that he had placed his work on the catalogue aside and had no intention to return to it. Each kept the other in the dark about matters that were vital to their relationship. As a result, Walters for the rest of his life clung to the hope that Berenson one day would return to the original task of writing the illustrated catalogue of his collection of Italian paintings. In January 1927, ten years after Berenson ceased doing any work on the catalogue, Walters directed the gallery’s building superintendent, James Anderson, not to furnish any photographs of his Italian paintings to a visiting scholar and to inform him that, “I [Walters] am under obligations not to distribute photographs until my illustrated catalogue appears at some future date.”24 In 1929, just two years before Walters’s death, he likewise told a reporter for the Baltimore Sun that Berenson’s long awaited study of his collection, which would resolve any remaining questions about attributions, was in the process of completion.25 Like the principal characters in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, Walters waited endlessly for Berenson to deliver a catalogue that would never arrive.
When Berenson realized that Walters had permanently severed their dealer-collector relationship, he acted as if the reason for Walters’s action was some sort of a mystery.26 In an effort to rationalize Berenson’s loss of Walters as a client, Mary Berenson suggested that, “Walters did not dare [purchase any paintings] for fear of socialist outcry against spending on mere works of art.”27 A different rationale was offered by Edward Fowles, a long-term employee of Duveen and friend of Berenson. He claimed that Walters’s defection was due to the fact that the art dealer Seligman “concocted all sorts of stories against all of us.”28
Berenson, of course, knew better. He knew that the rupture in his business relationship with Walters was not due to any isolated incident or defamatory statement but instead due to a series of actions by him which in effect marginalized Walters and resulted in the forfeiture of Walters’s trust. The chain of events began with Berenson’s decision to contract with Duveen even though Walters had discouraged this union. It continued with Berenson’s effort to conceal the fact that his arrangement with Duveen effectively placed Walters behind other collectors in the market for first class Italian paintings. To this was added Berenson’s decision to delay his work on Walters’s catalogue for years, and to place this project at the bottom of his list of priorities. The chain of events concluded with Berenson’s publication of his book on Venetian paintings which was sharply critical of several paintings in Walters’s collection.
Mary Berenson once characterized Walters as a “jolly, good natured” bachelor, perhaps misreading his understated, affable nature as an absence of inner strength. In the same vein, Bernard Berenson’s treatment of Walters suggests that he viewed him as client who was easy to manipulate. It was this miscalculation which ultimately caused Berenson to lose Walters’s allegiance. Walters was not a man who was use to having his interests ignored or marginalized. He did not become one of the wealthiest and most powerful railroad magnates in the United States, rise to the level of vice presidency of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and earn a seat on the board of U.S. Steel because of any proclivity to subjugate his own interests to those of others. Although he rarely found any need to raise his voice or stamp his foot to get his point across, he was no shrinking violet. When Walters in 1917 informed Berenson that their obligations to each other were “nil” and later informed him that he would “hunt” him up when he returned to Europe, it was Walters’s gentlemanly way of saying that their relationship as collector and dealer was over.