Advance Information Sheet
American Collectors
of the Gilded Age
Introduction by ERIC HASKELL
Text to be confirmed
How is it that America has no shortage of great art? Paintings by Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Gainsborough, Goya and the French Impressionists, sculpture and architectural fragments dating from the ancient world, and all on public display? The answer lies in the American attitude to philanthropy. The desire “to increase the wealth of humanity, as evinced by charitable giving, is one of America’s great traits, albeit after great fortunes have been made”.
The men and women who collected great masterpieces and housed them in beautifully designed buildings, or bequeathed as collections to other museums were a very special breed.
This book is about those people. Their fascinating lives, both public and private, their successes and failures and of course their magnificent art collections which through their philanthropy have been an enormous gift to the American people.
Henry Clay Frick
Henry Huntingdon
J. P. MorganHenry Walters
Solomon Guggenheim
The Kreuss BrothersBertha Palmer
Isabella Stewart Gardner
Ailsa Vanderbilt Bruce
The Cone SistersThe Puttam Sisters
Ima HoggMillicent Rogers
Peggy Guggenheim
Sarah Campbell Blaffer
The RockefellersThe Casey Thayer
The Chrysler GarbischThe Hevermeyers
The RicesThe RinglingsThe Wallaces
The Wrightsmans
Walter AnnenbergWalter Chrysler
Dominique de Menil
William Randolph Hearst
Ailsa Mellon BrucePaul Mellon
J. Paul GettyArmand Hammer
Norton SimonAlbert Barnes
Amon CarterDr. Richard Fuller
Arthur M. SacklerDaniel J. Terra