YALE’S STERLING COLLECTIONS OPEN TRUST’S SILVER ANNIVERSARY

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The Trust’s decision to convene the first of its 25th-Anniversary symposiums at Yale University wasn’t made casually. In addition to being an historic academic institution, Yale has libraries and museums that hold some of the great intellectual and artistic achievements of the Anglo-American world.

There is no denying the psychological strength of an academic community. Even a brief visit is invigorating. And when the visit aims to study the great collections and the region’s great history, that effect is magnified. Chris Wigren, from the New Haven Preservation Trust, opened our symposium with a synoptic view from Then to Now. We saw the city begin on the late-renaissance urban model of a grid with a center square, that Wigren called America’s “largest, most precise and best preserved” Puritan town plan. “It worked well, it looked handsome, it was big enough for the city to grow into..., and it does express the Puritan ideals of community and hierarchy and faith.”

He discussed the city’s and university’s 19th century growth: James Hillhouse’s abortive 1790’s development completed by his son; the small residential neighborhoods that have not only survived but been renewed; and - perhaps most significant - the establishment at Yale of an architectural style compounded of neo-Colonial and pseudo-Gothic that influenced academic institutions around the country.

The depredations of 20th century urban renewal looked as grim here as in other cities. But, Yale’s post-WWII decision to forego hoary academicism and hire prominent architects working in modern idioms altered the face of city and university alike. Wigren concluded by re-stating his conviction that the single most significant part of New Haven is still its town square, which he called “the outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual truth that is New Haven...”

Pat Kane, Curator of American Decorative Arts, Yale University Art Gallery, descibing silver plate during the extraordinary silver workshop she held for Trust members.

Scott Wilson, Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Mellon Center for British Art, drew a vivid and engaging portrait of Paul Mellon as a collector. He called Mellon “a self-styled galloping anglophile,” who spent his childhood summers in England, studied at Cambridge’s Clare College, and felt that British art was neglected, even in Britain. His first painting purchase was a Stubbs portrait of the horse, “Pumpkin,” and sporting art remained a passion, but he developed great fondness for the studied informality of Georgian “conversation pieces” that open the door ever so slightly on the private lives of the British gentry. Also an avid and intelligent book collector, Mellon acquired volumes one at a time or by the collection; his American collections are now divided among Yale, UVA, and the Virginia Historical Society.

When he conceived the idea of founding a Center for British Art at Yale, he began to collect differently - driven to acquire systematically with the notion of “filling holes” in his art collections, and to buy great works with the intent of providing the Center with examples of “the best.” He bought entire collections to keep them together for posterity. And he began acquiring a range of superb 18thcentury British portraits.

Similar foresight marked bequests revealed on his death: gifts of glorious beauty and staggering importance, like the complete publications of William Morris’ Kelmscott Press, 328 volumes of sporting books, a set of 158 William Blake watercolors. Our afternoon’s opportunity to view many of his gifts at the Center made us appreciate Mellon’s benevolence even more.

Teresa Fairbanks, Chief Conservator of the Center, described the making and conserving of portrait miniatures on copper. A lecture by a master conservator is particularly valuable in describing and illustrating artistic techniques and processes. John Singleton Copley’s portrait miniatures on copper provided the vehicle for Fairbanks’ instruction on the mezzotint process, and its use in the making of miniature portraits in general. She explained the distinctions between miniatures on metal and on ivory, and showed how the layer of gold leaf visible under magnification on copperplate miniatures gives a lustrous, lifelike glow to the face of the beloved image.

Allan Breed, carver, presented a demonstration lecture for Trust members on Sunday morning, carving a Philadelphia style claw and ball foot.

The “furniture lobby” among Trust members wasn’t left out. Lectures ranged from Brock Jobe’s survey of the Rococo style in New England to Alan Breed’s demonstration of the technique of carving a claw and ball foot. Patricia Kane, Curator of the American Decorative Arts Collections of the Yale University Art Gallery, took us on a virtual tour of the collections that left us breathless but enthusiastic. She talked about the great Garvan gift of 1930 - over ten thousand pieces of furniture, paintings, silver, ceramics and other American decorative arts - in honor of his wife, Mabel Brady Garvan. And she showed us the way in which each generation from the 30’s to today has re-thought the presentation.

Gerald Ward, author of the catalogue of Yale’s case furniture collections, won the hearts of his audience by responding to Jonathan’s introduction: “It’s always interesting to hear one’s life filtered through Jonathan’s memory. It all sounds so much better!”

Starting with boxes (“the building blocks of case furniture”), Ward guided us through some of Yale’s most significant objects: a small basswood box with great curly tree-of-life decoration and high turnip feet; a carved and joined panel chest from the Guilford area, and one from the Eastern Shore; an early Queen Anne dressing table (maybe New Jersey) with a lavishly contoured skirt. One of the pleasures of listening to him was anticipation of examining the objects in storage.

Ward said Meyric Rogers, curator in the late 1950’s, recalled from loan many pieces of furniture Yale’s galleries couldn’t accommodate. Rogers set up a vast furniture study area - an open storage facility - with conservation lab and library. He talked about its continued significance “where objects can come alive, where they are a working library of forms, and where curators spend years working their way through various aspects of their study,” giving exceptional vitality to Yale’s curatorial study. Brock Jobe took us out of storage and into “the state of mind that is rococo”: a style characterized by asymmetry, ornamental exaggeration, and an exotic sinuous line. Looking for it in New England means recognizing that we won’t find it in the forms but in the details. The embroidered waistcoat Copley painted onto his portrait of Theodore Atkinson, Jr., is “in full rococo.” The paired portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Winslow, he in casual reading dress and she in informal (astonishingly embroidered) gown is a New England rococo icon.

The forms of the chairs and beds remained essentially the same. But their ornament adopted the style. Printed, stamped or embroidered decoration on the fabrics with which beds were hung, or chairs were covered, turned a balanced and staid object into a rococo statement. Even in buildings, the classical structure survived as a framework for rococo ornament. Immigrating cabinetmakers and carvers brought the style; pattern books illustrated it. Looking glass frames, wallpaper, and interior woodwork established, solidified and retained the rococo, a style that was inherently foreign to New England sensibilities.

Bringing the past to the present, a painter (Jonathan Fairbanks) and a carver (Alan Breed) demonstrated their craft in the 18th century manner.

Seated at an easel, Jonathan measured off, sketched and created a head and shoulder portrait in oils, following the British schools of portraiture. Standing at a workbench, Alan measured off, carved out and brought to rough finish the claw and ball foot of a table in the Philadelphia style. Each man took an hour; each taught as he worked, explained his procedure and described his tools. And by means of a video camera, kindly provided by John Smiroldo of The Catalogue of Antiques and Fine Art, the audience was able to see their work at close range.

When we weren’t being given instruction or demonstrations, we were visiting sites in New Haven: the Yale center for British Art; the University’s extraordinary collection of Musical Instruments; the buildings on Hillhouse Avenue. Our meals, at the Union League Cafe and the legendary dining club, Mory’s, met the high standards of conviviality and discrimination the Trust sets. (Strains of “The Whiffenpoof Song” are said to have echoed far into the night.)

Opening and closing the weekend, field trips extended our study of the New England arts from the 17th century to the present. In bright and bracing weather we traveled to New London and Norwich on Thursday, visiting frame and stone homes of three generations of the Hempsted family, and the granite Georgian mansion of the Shaw and Perkins families. Each building was as much a treasure chest as the one said to be buried in New London sands by the legendary Captain Kidd. In New London’s Lyman Allyn Museum, where we fed our bodies and minds, curator Lance Mayer talked about the collection’s Connecticut furniture.

We discovered a different sort of treasure chest in the Slater Memorial Museum in Norwich: a monumental late 19th century building in the Romanesque style, part of the Norwich Free Academy. Its spaces were embracing and its collections were enthralling.

On Sunday, we bussed to Old Lyme, and cruised casually down the street of the historic district. Our guide was the best - Trust member Fytie Drayton, head of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s guides. Fytie grew up in Old Lyme, and gave us a neighbor’s-eye view of the tiny historic district. We disembarked at the Florence Griswold home, glowing quietly in the New England sunshine. The house in which Miss Griswold rented rooms to a coterie of American impressionist painters late in the 19th century has become another New England treasure chest, filled with their works. To conclude by saying that we found it difficult to leave would be giving the symposium even less than its due. We came away with visual and mental souvenirs for a memorable beginning of the Trust’s twenty- fifth year.

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