The Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection is an art collection held by the Art Institute of Chicago. [1] It is based on a collection assembled by Helen Louise Birch and her husband, Frederic Clay Bartlett. [2]
Helen Louise Birch married Frederic Clay Bartlett in on January 22, 1919, in Boston Massachusetts at a private ceremony attended only by Senator Albert Beveridge and his wife Catherine Eddy Beveridge, Catherine was Helen's second cousin and close friend. Also in attendance was Mrs. Marshall Field, Sr., the former Delia Spencer, who was Catherine's aunt and Helen's cousin. [3] The Bartletts were a dynamic couple, both from like upbringings, they had similar interests and played off each other's strengths. They were a fixture of Chicago’s civic-minded elite during the early 1900s. Prior to their marriage, Frederic's art collection focused on a variety of sources, including antique, Renaissance, and 19th-century fine and decorative arts. Bartlett was himself a talented artist and muralist. [4] [5]
In the early 1920s, their collecting activities became more focused. Leading a cosmopolitan lifestyle, the couple traveled regularly to Europe, where they acquired a collection of modern art. Concentrating on the contemporary French avant-garde, they purchased works by André Derain, André Dunoyer de Segonzac, André Lhôte, and Amedeo Modigliani.
In the spring of 1923, they acquired Henri Matisse’s, Woman Before an Aquarium . The following year, less than one year after Frederic succeeded his father, Adolphus Clay Bartlett, as a trustee of the Art Institute of Chicago, they acquired Georges Seurat’s, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte . This purchase was made specifically with the museum in mind, at a time when the Seurat was not yet represented in any American or French public collection. Over the next several years, with the intention of placing La Grande Jatte in an appropriate artistic context, the Bartletts purchased major paintings by key Post-Impressionist artists Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, as well as important works by other modern masters, such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Rousseau. [6]
After only six-and-one-half years of marriage, Helen Birch Bartlett died of cancer on October 24, 1925. To honor his wife, Frederic presented their unique art collection to the Art Institute of Chicago in May 1926. The Helen Birch Memorial Collection has been permanently displayed in the museum continuously since the donation. During the 1920s and 30s, Bartlett would swap-out paintings in order to add pieces that would be a better representation or example of the work displayed. The twenty-five paintings in the collection are still in the public gallery as well as other works from the same historical time-frame. [1]
Works of art in the collection include:
Image | Title | Year | Artist | Medium |
---|---|---|---|---|
![]() | The Basket of Apples | c. 1893 | Paul Cézanne | Oil on canvas |
| Flowers (Cyclamen) | 1920 | Charles Demuth | Watercolor on off-white wove paper |
Fountain | early 1920s | André Derain | Oil on portrate | |
Grapes | early 1920s | André Derain | Oil on canvas | |
Landscape | c. 1920/25 | André Derain | Oil on panel | |
Still Life | c. 1920/24 | André Dunoyer de Segonzac | Oil on panel | |
![]() | Day of the God (Mahana no Atua) | 1894 | Paul Gauguin | Oil on canvas |
![]() | Polynesian Woman with Children | 1901 | Paul Gauguin | Oil on canvas |
![]() | Madame Roulin Rocking the Cradle (La berceuse) | 1889 | Vincent van Gogh | Oil on canvas |
![]() | Terrace and Observation Deck at the Moulin de Blute-Fin, Montmartre | 1887 | Vincent van Gogh | Oil on canvas, mounted on pressboard |
![]() | The Bedroom | 1887 | Vincent van Gogh | Oil on canvas, mounted on pressboard |
| Head of a Soldier | 1917 | Ferdinand Hodler | Oil on canvas |
![]() | James Vibert, Sculptor | 1907 | Ferdinand Hodler | Oil on canvas |
![]() | Le Grand Muveran | 1912 | Ferdinand Hodler | Oil on canvas |
The Ladies of Avignon | 1923 | André Lhote | Oil on canvas | |
The Brook | 1923 | John Marin | Watercolor on wove paper | |
Woman Before an Aquarium | 1926 | Henri Matisse | Oil on canvas | |
Woman on Rose Divan | 1921 | Henri Matisse | Oil on canvas | |
![]() | Jacques and Berthe Lipchitz | 1916 | Amedeo Modigliani | Oil on canvas |
![]() | The Old Guitarist | late 1903 - early 1904 | Pablo Picasso | Oil on panel |
| The Waterfall | 1910 | Henri Rousseau | Oil on canvas |
![]() | A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte | 1884/86 | Georges Seurat | Oil on canvas |
![]() | At the Moulin Rouge | 1892/95 | Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec | Oil on canvas |
| Ballet Dancers | 1885/86 | Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec | Oil on plaster, transferred to canvas |
Street in Paris | 1914 | Maurice Utrillo | Oil on canvas | |
The Musée d'Orsay is a museum in Paris, France, on the Left Bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900. The museum holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1914, including paintings, sculptures, furniture, and photography. It houses the largest collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist masterpieces in the world, by painters including Berthe Morisot, Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, Seurat, Sisley, Gauguin, and Van Gogh. Many of these works were held at the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume prior to the museum's opening in 1986. It is one of the largest art museums in Europe.
Georges Pierre Seurat was a French post-Impressionist artist. He is best known for devising the painting techniques known as chromoluminarism and pointillism. While less famous than his paintings, Seurat's conté crayon drawings have also garnered a great deal of critical appreciation.
Pointillism is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of color are applied in patterns to form an image.
A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte was painted from 1884 to 1886 and is Georges Seurat's most famous work. A leading example of pointillist technique, executed on a large canvas, it is a founding work of the neo-impressionist movement. Seurat's composition includes a number of Parisians at a park on the banks of the River Seine. It is in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Neo-Impressionism is a term coined by French art critic Félix Fénéon in 1886 to describe an art movement founded by Georges Seurat. Seurat's most renowned masterpiece, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, marked the beginning of this movement when it first made its appearance at an exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants in Paris. Around this time, the peak of France's modern era emerged and many painters were in search of new methods. Followers of Neo-Impressionism, in particular, were drawn to modern urban scenes as well as landscapes and seashores. Science-based interpretation of lines and colors influenced Neo-Impressionists' characterization of their own contemporary art. The Pointillist and Divisionist techniques are often mentioned in this context, because they were the dominant techniques in the beginning of the Neo-impressionist movement.
Asnières-sur-Seine is a commune in the Hauts-de-Seine department and Île-de-France region of north-central France. It lies on the left bank of the river Seine, some eight kilometres from the centre of Paris in the north-western suburbs of the French capital. The postal code of the city is 92600, and the inhabitants are called the "Asniérois" and the "Asniéroises".
The Société des Artistes Indépendants or Salon des Indépendants was formed in Paris on 29 July 1884. The association began with the organization of massive exhibitions in Paris, choosing the slogan "sans jury ni récompense". Albert Dubois-Pillet, Odilon Redon, Georges Seurat and Paul Signac were among its founders. For the following three decades their annual exhibitions set the trends in art of the early 20th century, along with the Salon d'Automne. This is where artworks were often first displayed and widely discussed. World War I brought a closure to the salon, though the Artistes Indépendants remained active. Since 1920, the headquarters has been located in the vast basements of the Grand Palais.
The year 1887 in art involved some significant events.
Events from the year 1886 in art.
At the Moulin Rouge is an oil-on-canvas painting by French artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. It was painted between 1892 and 1895. Included in the background is a self-portrait of the artist in profile. It is one of a number of works by Toulouse-Lautrec depicting the Moulin Rouge cabaret built in Paris in 1889.
Divisionism, also called chromoluminarism, was the characteristic style in Neo-Impressionist painting defined by the separation of colors into individual dots or patches which interacted optically.
The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 million people annually. Its collection, stewarded by 11 curatorial departments, is encyclopedic, and includes iconic works such as Georges Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, Pablo Picasso's The Old Guitarist, Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, and Grant Wood's American Gothic. Its permanent collection of nearly 300,000 works of art is augmented by more than 30 special exhibitions mounted yearly that illuminate aspects of the collection and present cutting-edge curatorial and scientific research.
Bathers at Asnières is an 1884 oil on canvas painting by French artist Georges Pierre Seurat, the first of his two masterpieces on the monumental scale. The canvas is of a suburban, placid Parisian riverside scene. Isolated figures, with their clothes piled sculpturally on the riverbank, together with trees, austere boundary walls and buildings, and the River Seine are presented in a formal layout. A combination of complex brushstroke techniques and a meticulous application of contemporary color theory bring to the composition a sense of gentle vibrancy and timelessness.
The Île de la Jatte or Île de la Grande Jatte is an island in the river Seine, located in the department of Hauts-de-Seine, and shared between the two communes of Neuilly-sur-Seine and Levallois. It is situated at the very gates of Paris, being 7 km distant from the towers of Notre Dame and 3 km from the Place de l'Étoile. The island, which has about 4,000 inhabitants, is nearly 2 km long and almost 200 m wide at its widest point. Its name translates as "Island of the Bowl" or "Island of the Big Bowl".
Félix Fénéon was a French art critic, gallery director, writer and anarchist during the late 19th century and early 20th century. He coined the term Neo-Impressionism in 1886 to identify a group of artists led by Georges Seurat, and ardently promoted them.
Lizzie Plummer Bliss, known as Lillie P. Bliss, was an American art collector and patron. At the beginning of the 20th century, she was one of the leading collectors of modern art in New York. One of the lenders to the landmark Armory Show in 1913, she also contributed to other exhibitions concerned with raising public awareness of modern art. In 1929, she played an essential role in the founding of the Museum of Modern Art. After her death, 150 works of art from her collection served as a foundation to the museum and formed the basis of the in-house collection. These included works by artists such as Paul Cézanne, Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Amedeo Modigliani.
Asnières, now named Asnières-sur-Seine, is the subject and location of paintings that Vincent van Gogh made in 1887. The works, which include parks, restaurants, riverside settings and factories, mark a breakthrough in van Gogh's artistic development. In the Netherlands his work was shaped by great Dutch masters as well as Anton Mauve a Dutch realist painter who was a leading member of the Hague School and a significant early influence on his cousin-in-law van Gogh. In Paris van Gogh was exposed to and influenced by Impressionism, Symbolism, Pointillism, and Japanese woodblock print genres.
Seine (paintings) is the subject and location of paintings that Vincent van Gogh made in 1887. The Seine has been an integral part of Parisian life for centuries for commerce, travel and entertainment. Here van Gogh primarily captures the respite and relief from city life found in nature.
Frederic Clay Bartlett was an American artist and art collector known for his collection of French Post-Impressionist and modernist art. Bartlett was committed to promoting the work of fellow contemporary artists and was a founding member of the Arts Club of Chicago, a pioneering organization dedicated to the advancement of modern art.
Models, also known as The Three Models and Les Poseuses, is a work by Georges Seurat, painted between 1886 and 1888 and held by the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. Models was exhibited at the fourth Salon des Indépendants in spring of 1888.