ART DEALING IN THE GILDED AGE. Colnaghi Foundation Symposium.

The years between around 1880 and the outbreak of the Second World War were a golden age of international art dealing when, as a result of the break-up of the great collections of the European aristocracy and the rise of a new plutocracy with unprecedented buying power and a great appetite for art, extraordinary masterpieces came on to the art market in a way not seen since the Napoleonic era. Many of these found their way across the Atlantic into the hands of collectors such as Isabella Stewart Gardner, Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Mellon, and Arabella and Henry
Huntington, whose collections were turned into private museums, or, in the case of Andrew Mellon, P.A.B. Widener and Samuel Kress, laid the foundations of the great US public museums, passing through the hands of networks of dealers, decorators, advisers and other intermediaries.

Colnaghi’s two-day symposium in the gallery at 26 Bury Street will examine this extraordinary chapter in the history of the art market. Talks will draw upon the expertise of some of the most distinguished scholars in the field from the Getty Research Institute, the Warburg Institute, the Sorbonne and other leading academic institutions. Themes and topics to be explored will include the development of transatlantic art-dealing partnerships such as Knoedler and Colnaghi and the ways in which their businesses were financed through joint accounts; the role played by antique dealers Charles Duveen, Edouard Jonas and Jacques Seligmann, the architect Richard Morris Hunt and the furniture-making firm of Alfred Beurdeleys in supplying the furnishings for the plutocratic mansions of the Gilded Age; J. Pierpont Morgan as a collector of Italian gold-ground paintings; the taste for malachite in the Gilded Age; the career of William P. Moore as a dealer in Asian art and the influence on the contemporary silver produced by Tiffany’s; Kenneth Clark’s role as an adviser to Calouste Gulbenkian; Buenos Aires in the Gilded Age; and dealing in and collecting ‘classic’ modern French art in the interwar period.

PROGRAMME

DAY 1 (Friday, 4th NOVEMBER)

09:00-09:30 Registration

09:30-9:40 Welcome (Candida de Angelis Corvi, Director, Colnaghi Foundation)

09:40-09:50 Introduction to the Symposium (Professor Jeremy Howard, Head of Academic Projects, Colnaghi)

AM | The Gilded Age Art Market-Early Years

09:50-10:20 Sam Watters (independent author and columnist) - Richard Morris Hunt: Gilding the American Interior - William K Vanderbilt House, New York, its architecture, interiors, furnishings and art collections

10:25-10:55 Dr Elisa Camporeale (Istituto Lorenzo de’Medici) - ‘Against the mainstream’ - Morgan’s Primitives

10:55-11:15 Coffee

‘Gilded Interiors’: antique dealers, decorators, and architects in the Gilded Age

11:15-11:45 Adriana Turpin (IESA), Charles Duveen and the Furnishing of Coe Hall, Oyster Bay

11:50-12:20 Sam Watters (independent author and columnist) - Richard Morris Hunt: Gilding the American Interior – the role played by RMH in promoting sales of antiques and works of art to his architectural clients

12:25-13:00 Discussion

13:00-14:00 Lunch (not provided)

PM | Transatlantic partnerships and American Collecting

14:00-14:45 Dr Camille Mesdagh, Alfred Beurdeleys - the Transatlantic expansion of a Parisian furniture maker and dealership in the 1890s

14:50-15:20 Dr Barbara Lasic (Sothebys Institute) A transatlantic hybrid: Edouard Jonas (1883-1961), Art Dealer and Curator

15:25-15:55 Dr Rebecca Tilles - An Exceptional Transatlantic Partnership-Seligmann and Co and George and Florence Blumenthal

16:00-16:20 Tea Break

16:25-16:55 Dr Anne Helmreich (Associate Director, Getty Foundation) and Dr Sandra van Ginhoven (Head, Project for the Study of Collecting and Provenance, Getty Research Institute)-Unsettled Accounts: Joint ownership in the transatlantic art trade during the Gilded Age

17:00-17:45 Closing Discussion

Drinks

DAY 2 (Saturday, 5TH NOVEMBER)

09:00-09.30 Coffee and Registration

09:30-9:40 Welcome (Candida de Angelis Corvi, Director Colnaghi Foundation)

09:40-09:50 Introduction to the second day of the conference (Professor Jeremy Howard, Head of Academic Projects, Colnaghi)

AM | The Later Gilded Age

09:50-10:20 Dr Louise Arizzoli, A Gilded Age Collector: James Hazen Hyde (1876-1959) and the European Art Market (Paris, London, Rome)

10:25-10:55 Moira Ferguson (Tiffany Archives), William P. Moore, Tiffany’s and the New York Art Market

10:55-11:20 Coffee

Wider shores: The Gilded Age in Russia and Latin America

11:25-11:55 Dr Ludmilla Budrina, Demidoff malachites after the Demidoff era: Dealers, collectors, and the taste for malachites, in the Gilded Age art market

12:00-12:30 Florencia Rodríguez Giavarini (Universidad del Salvador, Buenos Aires)- Buenos Aires in the Gilded Age. A Modern Metropolis Clings to Remnants of the Past.

12:30-13:00 Discussion

13:00-14:00 Lunch (not provided)

PM | Young Scholars Research Forum

14:00-15:00 (Three current PhD students present short papers (15-20 mins each) based on their research).

Paper 1: Sarah Coviello (PhD Candidate, Warburg Institute) - The Art Market in the Gilded Age between London and Paris: Kenneth Clark as an Art Adviser to Calouste Gulbenkian

Paper 2: Susana Garcia (PhD candidate, Pantheon-Sorbonne) - Collecting art from the Ancient Americas. Dealers and collectors between Paris, London and the United States at the turn of the 20th century

Paper 3: Flaminia Ferito, (PhD Candidate, PhD Student in Analysis and Management of Cultural Heritage, IMT – School for Advanced Studies Lucca) - The dispersal of cultural property from the suppressed monasteries and convents in and near Rome: the case of the ciborium from the Church of Santo Stefano, Rome and its acquisition by the Metropolitan Museum, New York in 1909.

The Later Gilded Age and Beyond

15:05-15:35 Dr Elizabeth Pergam, William F Davidson and the Westward Expansion of M. Knoedler & Co.

15:40-16:10 Professor Robert Jensen (University of Kentucky) - Beyond the Gilded Age: The Market for “classic French modern” art during the Interwar Period

16:10-16:25 Tea Break

16:30-17:00 Closing Discussion

TICKETS
A limited number of tickets are available for in-person attendance, alongside online tickets. Both can be obtained through a donation to the Colnaghi Foundation. Drinks and light refreshments will be provided. Pricing and payment details are as follows:

Single-Day Ticket
£45 per in-person attendee
£35 per in-person concessionary rate
£25 online full fee ticket
£15 online concession ticket

Two-Day Ticket
£80 per in-person attendee
£65 in-person concessionary rate
£35 online ticket
£25 online concession ticket

PAYMENT DETAILS FOR A BANK TRANSFER DONATION TO THE COLNAGHI FOUNDATION

Payment from the UK:
Bank: HSBC
Account Name: Colnaghi Foundation
Sort Code: 40-06-02
Account Number: 94431685

Payment from Europe:
Bank: HSBC
Account Name: Colnaghi Foundation
SWIFT Code: HBUKGB4B
IBAN: GB04HBUK40127684410124

Payment from the USA:
IBAN: GB47 HBUK 40127684 4098 35
BANK IDENTIFIER CODE: HBUK GB4B

Payment reference: Gilded Age Symposium. If attending only a day, please specify which.

For more information: shortcoursecolnaghifoundation.org