5

The Honey Trap

By mid-February 1989, the marching orders on the book from the National Gallery of Art’s editor-in-chief, Frances P. Smyth, were to marshal the disparate entries and essay writers into a cohesive production and push the project forward with the catalogue, meeting the schedule for the opening of the exhibition in spring 1990.

Smyth, who had flown with Charles Moffett to Zurich for the February 2 meeting with Hortense Anda-Bührle, Dieter’s son Christian Bührle, two others from the Emil G. Bührle Foundation, and three representatives from the Bührle Group’s publisher Artemis Verlag, wrote a detailed “memo for the file.” She noted what was discussed, what needed to get done, and who was in charge of the various tasks necessary to open the exhibition in fifteen months. The memorandum was copied to six museum executives, as well as J. Carter Brown and Maryann Stevens of the Royal Academy in London.

The two sides agreed on the title for the book and exhibit that included Frau Anda’s “enthusiastic” support for Director J. Carter Brown’s name of the show. The cover artwork to adorn the catalogue—which would be like a coffee-table book—was chosen: van Gogh’s Blossoming Chestnut Branches, painted long after the artist’s arrival at Auvers-sur-Oise, a farming commune northwest of Paris, after his yearlong stay at the asylum. Like Wheat Field with Cypresses, Blossoming Chestnut Branches had a complex history of ownership. Today, Wheat Field with Cypresses hangs in a gallery at the Met, and Blossoming Chestnut Branches resides in Switzerland as part of the Emil G. Bührle Foundation, never to tour again.

The meeting also addressed a number of more minor logistical issues. Frances Smyth stated that the “Foundation will prepare a brochure describing their work which they will put in the catalogue before shrink-wrapping it.”22 The National Gallery of Art would ask to see a mockup of the brochure’s “text and design” and state how many copies would be needed for the exhibit and gift shop. The group also chose the eight Bührle paintings to be used for reproductions; one of those would be Wheat Field with Cypresses.23

Smyth also listed “postcards, note folders, and posters” that NGA would choose with input from London and Montreal museums, the second and fourth legs of the tour.

The NGA’s editor-in-chief put emphasis on other items, the order of the artworks and the need to keep the Bührle name out of the spotlight:

Frau Anda wishes all works not in the Foundation collection to be simply credited as “Private Collection,” not as “Collection of Mrs. Hortense Anda-Bührle” or “Collection of Dieter Bührle.”

Works in the catalogue will be arranged chronologically in a sequence to be suggested by Charlie Moffett and sent to the Foundation.24

Director Brown wrote a thank-you note to Hortense: “Your collection, which is much broader in scope and so overwhelming in quality, will, of course, be ‘the news,’ as it has never been seen before in the US.” The director also mentioned that pictures from the Annenberg Collection, less than one-third of Emil G. Bührle’s, were “on view all summer in nearby Philadelphia just the year before,” something that seemed to suggest success for The Passionate Eye. Unbeknownst to Brown was the Bührles’ ulterior motive for setting up the exhibition—their plan to sell Wheat Field with Cypresses to the right billionaire art collector. Walter Annenberg, they would come to realize, fit that bill to a tee.

In June 1989, J. Carter Brown informed Hortense that the smaller, but “good quality,” Annenberg Collection of Impressionist art would be shown simultaneously with The Passionate Eye exhibition at the National Gallery of Art. From the point of view of the NGA, the reason was clear—to “double” or “triple” overall attendance. For a museum that had an annual budget of $51.4 million in 1990—79 percent of it funded by the US federal government—the decision was grounded in economic reality and made good business sense.25

In her response to Brown’s letter, Hortense played it cool, aloof; with a royal air, she stated she was a bit disappointed that the exhibit needed to be bigger to draw larger crowds, when the “artists names” alone should have been able to achieve the same end goal. Then, in a phone call with Hortense a week later before she boarded a train to Florence, Brown found her “fairly cheerful and resigned to the double showing.”26

While Brown focused on statistics about “overlapping artists” beyond the constellation of Gauguin, Monet, Cézanne, Pissarro, and van Gogh, and how well the two exhibits would play off each other side by side, Hortense, with Dieter behind the scenes, was preparing a honey trap for the big whale, Walter Annenberg.

Mr. Brown’s greatest attribute was being a dealmaker with a grand vision who got things done. In helping create the modern museum blockbusters at both the New York Metropolitan Museum and the National Gallery of Art, from the huge Treasures of Tutankhamun to the successful Treasure of Houses of Britain, J. Carter Brown could deliver shows better than P. T. Barnum. He saw that bringing in a fine art collector and media magnate with the well-known American name of Ambassador Walter Annenberg would help elevate the profile of the unknown Swiss family name of Bührle and guarantee a well-attended, moneymaking exhibition of the highest standards.

When Martin Marietta leveraged its sponsorship for the tour, it forced one minor change in the catalogue cover. Van Gogh’s colorful Blossoming Chestnut Branches was out, replaced with Camille Pissarro’s Road from Versailles to Louveciennes (1870).27 The substitution was fine with Dieter and Hortense as long as the face of the exhibit, Dieter’s painting Wheat Field with Cypresses, remained on the cover of the brochure.