Fig. 19 Albert Eugene Gallatin Untitled 1940
by Marcelle Polednik-Kammerman
Fig. 19 Albert Eugene Gallatin Untitled 1940
Albert Eugene Gallatin (1881—1952) was born in Villanova, Pennsylvania, the only son and future heir of Louise Belford Ewing and Albert Horatio Gallatin. Little is known about Gallatin's childhood, except that it was spent almost exclusively amidst family, at his grandmother's estate in Villanova. He left Pennsylvania only in the winter months, when he attended private school in New York City.1 Close contact with his family during his formative years made a deep impression on Gallatin's character. From an early age, he expressed great admiration for his great-grandfather and namesake, Albert Gallatin (1761—1849), a founder of the New-York Historical Society and New York University, who served as U.S. Secretary of the Treasury under Presidents Jefferson and Madison, as well as minister to France and England from 1816 to 1827.
Gallatin's fascination with art also began with his family. The first works he inherited or purchased were portraits of his great-grandfather.2 His initial interest in ancestral paintings evolved into a preference for nineteenth-century works, such as those found in his cousin R. Horace Gallatin's collection. Soon, Gallatin also began collecting works on paper, posters, and magazine covers by artists and illustrators such as Edward Penfield, Will H. Bradley, Aubrey Beardsley, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler.3
In Whistler's oeuvre Gallatin saw a reflection of the elegance and nobility he first admired in his family portraits. He prized the works for their fine draughtsmanship and their association with the Aesthetic Movement, whose ideals he embraced. In Gallatin's view, perfection of form was not only an artistic goal but also one that governed the self. Whistler's art, as he often noted, struck the balance between perfect form and persona: "In all of Whistler's works ... we are impressed by their distinction and elegance, for always was Whistler an aristocrat. Into an age dominated by commercialism, vulgarity, and the spirit to gain, came Whistler with his unflinching devotion to beauty and to the search for perfection."4 The qualities Gallatin prized in Whistler's art and character—poise, sophistication, and refinement—were also qualities he himself aspired to achieve. Living well was Gallatin's art form, a lifelong project whose outcome he cultivated with meticulous care.
Upon his father's death in 1902, twenty-one-year-old Gallatin became head of the family and heir to its diversified fortune. He took up residence on Park Avenue and carved out a prominent position in New York society. Widely regarded as one of the most eligible bachelors about town, Gallatin was a regular at the opera, a member of the Union Club, and a seasoned traveler. He was also cofounder of the Motor-Car Touring Society (established 1907), a club for fashionable pioneer motorists, the first of its kind. As host to the society's many functions, Gallatin organized balls at chic spots such as Sherrie's and the Ritz at which the principal orchestral motif was the sound of motor horns, engine trouble, and exploding tires.5 Despite such exploits, his well-manicured, dandified appearance and sedate demeanor continued to belie his patrician heritage. Alongside such modern affiliations, Gallatin also retained memberships in older, more prestigious clubs such as the Pilgrims, the Society of Colonial Wars, and the French branch of the Society of the Cincinnati, of which he was the only American member.
As the variety of his affiliations suggests, Gallatin's participation in contemporary life remained tempered by continual assertions of his august family tradition. Gallatin's pastimes were always driven by the desire to render them worthy of someone of his social stature. Never content to be a mere participant, Gallatin always took the lead, founding, organizing, and shaping his activities.
After twenty-five years of undertaking various projects in society life, Gallatin finally found a challenge worthy of his talents and expertise—the cause of abstract art in America. During the 1920s, New York art critics rallied around a perceived lack in the city's art institutions—the absence of a museum devoted strictly to contemporary art. In polemical essays written for The Arts, Forbes Watson, among others, declared "America's need for a museum of modern art" under the direction of "an ideal autocrat who is immune to favoritism."6 That same year (1927), Gallatin seized the opportunity; he presented New York University with a collection of works to be housed in the South Study Hall, on the ground floor of the university's Main Building. The collection was to remain there on permanent display, accessible to students and visitors seven days a week, free of charge. When it opened its doors on December 13, 1927, the Gallery of Living Art, as it was named, became the first museum of contemporary art in the United States, preceding the founding of the Museum of Modern Art by two years. The opening exhibition featured works from the permanent collection, including Pablo Picasso's Guitar and Bottle, 1913, and still lifes by Fernand Léger, Man Ray, Georges Braque, and Juan Gris, as well as works by Raoul Dufy, Marc Chagall, John Marin, and Jules Pascin (all now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art).
In the booklet accompanying the exhibition, Gallatin emphasized that the gallery had been founded "in order that the public might have an opportunity to study the work of progressive twentieth century painters" within the setting of a permanent collection.7 During the gallery's fifteen-year existence, Gallatin was solely responsible for all of its acquisitions and daily operations as well as the numerous exhibitions that took place within its walls. As a collector in public service, he was guided by a desire to spot and acquire those works that would withstand the test of time and one day become masterpieces. Rather than concentrating on already established artists, Gallatin collected mostly contemporary works, claiming that: "To buy pictures by men of established reputations requires money only. To find men whose work is unknown requires judgement and a willingness to take chances. Therein lies the sport of collecting."8
As a shrewd collector, Gallatin nevertheless acquired cautiously in an effort to minimize risks. As noted by Gail Stavitsky, Gallatin was at once a conservative and a progressive collector, who "proceeded slowly and carefully until he was convinced of an artist's merit. Often he would first
Plate i Charles G. Shaw Plastic Polygon 1937
Plate ii Charles G. Shaw Untitled 1937
Plate iii George L. K. Morris Stockbridge Church 1935
Plate iv George L. K. Morris New England Church 1935—46
Plate v Albert Eugene Gallatin May Composition 1936
Plate vi George L. K. Morris Nautical Composition 1937—42
Plate vii George L. K, Morris Indian Composition 1942—45
Plate viii Suzy Frelinghuysen Printemps 1938
Plate ix Albert Eugene Gallatin Collage No. 15 1940
Plate x Albert Eugene Gallatin Kenilworth Castle No. 2 1940
Plate xi Albert Eugene Gallatin Forms and Red 1949
Plate xii Suzy Frelmghuysen Still Life 1944
Plate xiii Suzy Frelinghuysen Composition 1943
Plate xiv Suzy Frelinghuysen Man in Café 1944
Plate xv Charles G. Shaw Wrigley's 1937
Plate xvi Charles G. Shaw Plastic Polygon 1938
Fig. 20 Albert Eugene Gallatin Kenilworth Castle—Aerial View 1940
Fig. 21 Albert Eugene Gallatin Forms, Black, Blue, Red—Composition No. 5 1949
commit himself to the cautious purchase of a small picture"9 and later, depending upon the development of the artist, either deaccession the work or obtain another, more monumental example. By this process Gallatin aimed to isolate those artists who would become modern masters, "the Leonardos and Michelangelos"10 of the twentieth century. For Gallatin's munificence and keen eye, New Yorker writer Geoffrey Hellman aptly dubbed him the "Medici on Washington Square" and the "Abstract King."11
By the end of its tenure at New York University, the Gallery (later renamed the Museum) of Living Art made Gallatin worthy of these noble comparisons. With the aid of advisors such as Jacques Mauny, Jean Hélion, and George L. K. Morris, the collection diverged drastically from its original state in 1927. Most of its painterly and figurative works had been deaccessioned to make room for more Cubist, Constructivist, and abstract images. Gallatin constructed the collection as a "severe selection," emphasizing the School of Paris and contemporary American artists. Early on, he conceived of Picasso, Gris, Léger, and Braque as the cornerstones of the gallery's holdings. This determination led Gallatin to purchase many notable works by these four artists, including Picasso's Self Portrait, 1907, and The Three Musicians, 1921, Gris's Harlequin, 1917, and Bottle and Fruit, 1923, Léger's The City, 1919, and Joan Miró's Dog Barking at the Moon, 1926, and Fratellini, 1927, all now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The unparalleled quality of Gallatin's collection as well as its accessibility made the Gallery of Living Art a valued resource for artists such as Richard Diebenkorn, Arshile Gorky, and Hans Hofmann, who often held classes in the study hall. Clement Greenberg, who frequented the gallery in the 1930s, described it as "an extraordinary collection, especially at that time, eye-opening.... Almost all the art-interested people I knew then visited it.... Of course the Pollocks, de Kooning, et al. frequented it— and frequented is the word."12
When New York University requested the removal of the works in December 1942 to make room for a book-processing facility, several institutions offered permanent refuge to the stranded collection. Ultimately, Gallatin bequeathed the works to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where they remain today as part of the Gallatin Collection. During the last decade of his life, Gallatin oversaw the installation of his collection in the museum's stately galleries, and he continued to enrich it with periodic acquisitions. Determined to build up the Philadelphia Museum's modern art department, Gallatin helped arrange the transfer of another major contemporary collection, that of Walter and Louise Arensberg.
Albert Eugene Gallatin died in 1952 at the age of seventy, having shaped two major contemporary art institutions during his lifetime. An unlikely pioneer, Gallatin nevertheless carved out his place in history by combining an enduring enthusiasm for the modern with an air of sophisticated respectability. His life and accomplishments underscore his belief that "to speak differently from the rest of the world—that is aristocracy."13
1. A. E. Gallatin attended several primary and secondary schools in New York City, including the Cutler School.
2. Gallatin acquired the two portraits prior to 1911, when he published the first edition of The Portraits of Albert Gallatin.
3. Gallatin's Aubrey Beardsley collection grew to become the largest archive of the artist's materials in the United States. It is now in the Princeton University Library. For more information, see A. E. Gallatin and Alexander D. Wainwright, The Gallatin Beardsley Collection in the Princeton University Library (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Library, 1952).
4. A. E. Gallatin, Whistler's Pastels, and Other Modern Profiles (New York: John Lane, 1913).
5. Geoffrey Hellman, "The Medici on Washington Square," New Yorker, January 18, 1941, 27.
6. Forbes Watson, "Editorial," The Arts 9 (January 1926), 4; and "The Ideal Autocrat," The Arts 12 (June 1927), 281.
7. New York University, Gallery of Living Art, exh. cat., Opening Exhibition, December 13, 1927—January 25, 1928, [l].
8. "Modern Art for New York University," Art News 26 (November 5, 1927), 1—2.
9. Gail Stavitsky, "The A. E. Gallatin Collection: An Early Adventure in Modern Art," Bulletin of the Philadelphia Museum of Art 89, nos. 379—80 (Winter/Spring 1994), 6.
10. Hellman, "The Medici on Washington Square," 28.
11. Geoffrey Hellman, "Abstract King," New Yorker, May 9, 1942.
12. Clement Greenberg's response to Gail Stavitsky's dissertation questionnaire, dated September 27, 1986.
13. A. E. Gallatin to Geoffrey Hellman, December 19, 1942, Correspondence of Prominent People, Arp—Whitney, Archives ol American Art, Smithsonian Institution.