John Quinn, Art Advocate

Introduction

Today I’m going to talk briefly about John Quinn (fig. 1), a New York lawyer who, in his spare time and with income derived from a highly-successful law practice, became “the twentieth century’s most important patron of living literature and art.”1

Nicknamed “The Noble Buyer” for his solicitude for artists as much as for the depth of his pocketbook, Quinn would amass an unsurpassed collection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American and European art. At its zenith, the collection con-tained more than 2,500 works of art, including works by Con-stantin Brancusi, Paul Cézanne, André Derain, Marcel Du-champ, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Paul Gaugin, Juan Gris, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Georges Rouault, Henri Rousseau, Georges Seurat, and Vincent van Gogh.2

More than a collector, Quinn represented artists and art associa-tions in all types of legal matters. The most far-reaching of these en-gagements was Quinn’s successful fight for repeal of a tariff on im-

1 ALINE B. SAARINEN, THE PROUD POSSESSORS: THE LIVES, TIMES AND TASTES OF SOME ADVENTUROUS AMERICAN ART COLLECTORS 206 (1958) [hereinafter PROUD POSSESSORS].

2 Avis Berman, “Creating a New Epoch”: American Collectors and Dealers and the Armory Show [hereinafter American Collectors], in THE ARMORY SHOW AT 100: MODERNISM AND REVOLUTION 413, 415 (Marilyn Satin Kushner & Kimberly Orcutt eds., 2013) [hereinafter KUSHNER & ORCUTT, ARMORY SHOW] (footnote omitted).

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ported contemporary art3 – an accomplishment that resulted in him being elected an Honorary Fellow for Life by the Metropolitan Mu-seum of Art.4 This work, like much Quinn did for the arts, was un-dertaken pro bono.5

Quinn was also instrumental in organizing two groundbreaking art exhibitions: the May 1921 Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition of “Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Paintings” (that museum’s first exhibition of modern art),6 and the landmark 1913 “International Exhibition of Modern Art”7 – otherwise known as the Armory Show. The Armory Show was the most important American art exhibition ever mounted, and exerts an influence on American art that lasts to this day – an influence in which the city of Milwaukee played a sur-prisingly pivotal role.

3 See generally B.L. REID, THE MAN FROM NEW YORK: JOHN QUINN AND HIS FRIENDS 157-160 (1968) [hereinafter MAN FROM NEW YORK].

4 Accessions and Notes, 10 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM ART BULL. 56, 57 (1915) (Quinn elected “[i]n recognition of his services to Art through his efforts in advancing the recently enacted Tariff Bill”).

5 Art Society Muddle, AM. ART NEWS, June 13, 1914, at 1, 1 (“Mr. Quinn took no fee, and gave his own time and that of his office, to the cause, which he had at heart as a collector of modern art. His campaign, conduct-ed single-handed, was completely successful, although a similar one, when prosecuted years before by the combined art bodies of the country, was a complete failure.”).

6 Judith Zilczer, John Quinn and Modern Art Collectors in America, 1913-1924, 15 AM. ART J. 57, 65 (1982) [hereinafter Quinn and Collectors]; see generally MAN FROM NEW YORK at 498-99; see also Hamilton Easter Field, The Metro-politan French Show, THE ARTS, May 1921, at 2 (reproducing seven works Quinn lent to the exhibition – a Derain, a Gauguin, a Picasso, and four by Odilon Redon).

7 American Collectors at 414-15; see generally MAN FROM NEW YORK at 142-52; JUDITH ZILCZER, “THE NOBLE BUYER:” JOHN QUINN, PATRON OF THE AVANT-GARDE 25-27 (1978) [hereinafter AVANT-GARDE].

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Quinn died in 1924 at the early age of fifty-five (fig. 2).8 Fittingly, his death resulted in a final, perhaps permanent, impact on American art and artists. Quinn directed in his will that his artwork be liquidat-ed, and fellow patrons of the arts considered the resulting dispersal of the Quinn collection a tragedy. Unease over the breakup of Quinn’s collection prompted founding of the Museum of Modern Art,9 and lead to formation of many of America’s public modern art collec-tions10 – collections often counting as part of their most treasured holdings works bearing the label “ex-Quinn Collection.”11

A Practicing Attorney

Quinn grew up in Fostoria, Ohio, the son of a well-to-do baker.12 He graduated from high school in 1887, and spent a year at the Uni-versity of Michigan.13 When Charles Foster (former Governor of Ohio and close friend of the Quinn family) was appointed Secretary of the Treasury, Quinn left Ann Arbor to serve as Foster’s private secretary.14

Quinn studied law at night, graduating in 1893 from Georgetown University.15 He then studied international law at Harvard, obtaining a second law degree in 1895.16 Quinn passed the New York bar in 8 Obituary, ART NEWS, Aug. 16, 1924, at 4.

9 PROUD POSSESSORS at 364-366.

10 American Collectors at 425.

11 PROUD POSSESSORS at 237.

12 MAN FROM NEW YORK at 4; AVANT-GARDE at 15.

13 MAN FROM NEW YORK at 5; AVANT-GARDE at 15.

14 MAN FROM NEW YORK at 5-6; AVANT-GARDE at 15; Richard Camp-bell, Memorial of John Quinn, in ASSOCIATION OF THE BAR OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK, YEAR BOOK 513 (1925), reprinted in 72 BULL. N.Y. PUB. LIBR. 584, 584 (1968) [hereinafter Quinn Memorial].

15 AVANT-GARDE at 15; MAN FROM NEW YORK at 6.

16 AVANT-GARDE at 15; MAN FROM NEW YORK at 6.

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1896, and joined the firm of General Benjamin F. Tracy.17 Tracy’s firm “enjoyed a lucrative practice,” and it clients “included many of the prominent figures of that time in finance and industry.”18 In 1900, Quinn moved to the firm of Alexander & Colby, coming on as a junior partner.19

While at Alexander & Colby, Quinn took on a matter that made his career – the battle for control of the Equitable Life Assurance Society (at the time one of the three largest insurance companies in the world, with a valuation of $400 million).20 Fought in 1905, this battle had its roots in 1899, when the company’s founder died, leav-ing his controlling stake in the company (502 of the company’s 1,000 shares) to his 23-year old son, James Hazen Hyde, but placing the shares in trust until James turned thirty in 1907.21 On January 31, 1905, James held a Versailles-themed costume party (fig. 3).22 This private event became a matter of public scandal when other Equita-ble shareholders circulated untrue rumors James that had paid for the party with $200,000 of company money.23 The rumors had a tre-mendous impact on the insurance industry:

The squabble which had begun quietly ended in a noisy scandal of earthquake proportions, shaking open the devious passages of manipulative high finance. Public demand for investigation of the Equitable’s affairs, which was bound to involve scrutiny of insurance company financing generally and thereby draw in the

17 MAN FROM NEW YORK at 6; AVANT-GARDE at 15.

18 Quinn Memorial at 584.

19 Id.; MAN FROM NEW YORK at 7.

20 See generally MAN FROM NEW YORK at 33-35.

21 Id. at 33.

22 PATRICIA BEARD, AFTER THE BALL: GILDED AGE SECRETS, BOARD-ROOM BETRAYALS, AND THE PARTY THAT IGNITED THE GREAT WALL STREET SCANDAL OF 1905 169-178 (2003) [hereinafter AFTER THE BALL].

23 Id. at 4.

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country’s greatest money men and the largest investment trusts and syndicates, forced Governor Higgins of New York to ap-point a legislative investigating committee, the Armstrong Committee. The Committee’s examining lawyer, Charles Evans Hughes, by his incisive, scrupulous, and implacable conduct of fifty-seven public hearings in the four months at the end of 1905, established his own reputation, ruined a good many other reputations that needed ruining, and prepared the way for a thorough reformation of insurance practice by legislative action in the first months of the following year.24

The rumors also resulted in James eventually selling his 502 shares (for only $2.5 million) to Thomas Fortune Ryan, “one of the more private Gilded Age tycoons,” who made much of his money through “developing urban transit systems” and would die “with nearly dou-ble the fortune of J.P. Morgan.”25 Quinn was Ryan’s counsel in the fight for control of the Equitable,26 and “Quinn’s performance during the legal battle for control of the Equitable Life Assurance Society in 1905 established his reputation as a brilliant financial lawyer.”27

Alexander & Colby dissolved in 1906, and Quinn opened his own firm at 31 Nassau Street.28 He was sole counsel for the National Bank of Commerce (then the country’s second-largest bank), “whose adviser he remained until his death.”29 He eventually became tax counsel to the New York Stock Exchange.30 Quinn was known as

24 MAN FROM NEW YORK at 34-35.

25 MAN FROM NEW YORK at 34; AFTER THE BALL at 96, 259; see generally id. at 261-63.

26 MAN FROM NEW YORK at 34.

27 AVANT-GARDE at 15 (footnote omitted).

28 PROUD POSSESSORS at 209; MAN FROM NEW YORK at 45.

29 Quinn Memorial at 584; AVANT-GARDE at 15; PROUD POSSESSORS at 210.

30 MAN FROM NEW YORK at 156.

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“cool-headed, astute and respected by the respectable in corporation and financial law,”31 and his practice grew accordingly:

In the years intervening between 1906 and the time of his death, he built up a great practice and his advice and counsel were sought by many of the leaders in finance and industry. Year by year his success at the Bar grew and long before his death he had attained a place of the first eminence. He was not only regarded as a man who had made a signal success, but he was recognized and known as a lawyer who held rigidly to the best and highest traditions of the profession. He cared nothing for fame and still less for great wealth. He labored incessantly to keep his clients out of court, chiefly on the old Spanish principle that he who wins lawsuits loses. As a trial lawyer he made no attempt to in-dulge in flights of oratory, but he was a master of that real elo-quence which consists in presenting facts and ideas in the ters-est, clearest, most convincing way. He was often heard to say that he considered oratory the lowest of the arts, but he was none the less a formidable opponent.32

The high point in Quinn’s career was his defense of the Trading with the Enemy Act.33 Quinn had lobbied for enactment of the stat- 31 PROUD POSSESSORS at 210.

32 Quinn Memorial at 584-85. For all his accomplishments, Quinn was dif-ficult to work for, reputedly discharging a law clerk once a month, and oc-casionally leaving a secretary in tears. PROUD POSSESSORS at 207, 213; see also MAN FROM NEW YORK at 153 (“He was reluctant to delegate labor or trust, and almost never satisfied with the way a job was done by anyone but himself. Whenever he left his office he left the most minute instructions for his subordinates’ tasks in his absence; while he was away, he felt, noth-ing was done, or done well; when he returned he had all their work to do over, with rage and vituperation.”).

33 MAN FROM NEW YORK at 458 (describing the case as “perhaps the most important of his career”); Quinn Memorial at 585 (“It is universally acknowledged that his conduct of the case up to the Supreme Court of the United States in the controversy involving rights over enemy property un-der the ‘Trading with the Enemy Act’ was one of the great achievements of his life.”).

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ute, and “much of the language of the Act came directly from his brief arguing for its adoption.”34 When the Alien Property Custodian seized “about two-thirds of the capital stock of the Botany Worsted Mills, a ‘thirty million concern’ based in Passaic, New Jersey,”35 the former owners sued, and the seized company retained Quinn to de-fend the constitutionality of the Act.36

Quinn and his staff put in months of solid work preparing their case in the winter of 1919-20, and he went to court in the first days of March with a printed brief of 179 pages with 51 pages of appendices. Mrs. Foster read the brief to him twice before the trial, held before Judge Learned Hand . . ., and Quinn then ar-gued his case without further reference to the brief. He spoke for five hours one day and four hours the next. He was able to prove to Judge Hand’s satisfaction that the transfer of the Ger-man-owned shares in the company to ostensible American own-ership on February 15, 1915, had been a fabrication . . . con-trived to forestall what had actually occurred, the seizure of the property of an enemy alien.37

After Judge Learned Hand ruled in favor of the Custodian,38 Quinn was retained on the appeal to the Supreme Court.39 The Supreme Court affirmed, explicitly upholding the statute’s constitutionality.40

34 MAN FROM NEW YORK at 322, 459.

35 Id. (footnote omitted).

36 Id. at 376.

37 Id. at 459.

38 Stohr v. Wallace, 269 F. 827 (S.D.N.Y. 1920), aff’d sub nom. Stoehr v. Wal-lace, 255 U.S. 239 (1921).

39 MAN FROM NEW YORK at 479.

40 Stoehr v. Wallace, 255 U.S. 239 (1921).

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The Armory Show

There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. . . .41

The Armory Show was not the first American exhibition of mod-ern art. Precursors included the 1908 exhibition of Ashcan School artists, and the “Exhibition of Independent Artists” held in 1910.42 In addition, Alfred Stieglitz displayed cutting edge art at his Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession (also known as 291, after its address on 291 Fifth Avenue).43 But the Armory Show was the exhibition that occurred at the right place at the right time,44 with the result that it is “now considered one of the important art exhibitions ever mounted in the United States.”45

The genesis of the Armory Show can be traced back to Henry Fitch Taylor, a New York art gallery director who on December 19, 1911 invited a dozen area artists “to meet here this evening to take active steps toward the formation of a national association of painters

41 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, JULIUS CAESAR, act 4, sc. 3.

42 Barbara Haskell, The Legacy of the Armory Show: Fiasco or Transformation? [hereinafter Legacy], in KUSHNER & ORCUTT, ARMORY SHOW 395, 395-96.

43 American Collectors at 413-14.

44 AVANT-GARDE at 25 (“On the eve of the Armory Show indigenous and foreign forces had begun to transform the American art world.”).

45 Marilyn Satin Kushner, A Century of the Armory Show: Modernism and Myth [hereinafter Century of the Armory Show], in KUSHNER & ORCUTT, ARMORY SHOW 13, 13; see also MILTON W. BROWN, THE STORY OF THE ARMORY SHOW 9 (2d ed. 1988) [hereinafter BROWN, ARMORY SHOW] (the Armory Show was “[p]robably the most important art exhibition in our history”); PROUD POSSESSORS at 206 (“the Armory Show, the exhibition of modern art which jolted the American public as no other artistic event has before or since”); MAN FROM NEW YORK at 142 (“the Armory Show was the Conti-nental Divide of American art, beyond question the most important event in the history of American taste in painting and sculpture”).

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and sculptors – an association of live and progressive men and wom-en who shall lead the public taste in art rather than follow it.”46 This group took the name Association of American Painters and Sculptors (A.A.P.S.).47 On July 1, 1912, A.A.P.S. was incorporated by “the group’s pro bono legal advisor and most avid supporter, self-made lawyer and collector John Quinn.”48

Quinn did more than just incorporate A.A.P.S. He “agreed to take over all legal matters” involving the Armory Show.49 Quinn “was an honorary member of the Association, acted often as its front, and delivered the welcoming address at the opening of the Show.”50 He escorted President Roosevelt through the exhibition.51 Quinn wrote an article52 for a special Armory Show issue of Arts & Decoration, “re-leased in time for the Armory Show’s February 17 opening in New York and available at the exhibition.”53

Quinn also worked with the Press, and a photograph (fig. 4) shows him at the head table of an “all you can eat and drink” beefsteak din-ner thrown at Healy’s Restaurant on March 8, 1913 for “our Friends and Enemies of the Press.”54 Finally, Quinn “stopped by the show

46 BROWN, ARMORY SHOW at 49 (quoting minutes of the meeting).

47 American Collectors at 414-15.

48 Id. at 416; MAN FROM NEW YORK at 142.

49 WALT KUHN, THE STORY OF THE ARMORY SHOW 7 (1938) [hereinaf-ter KUHN, ARMORY SHOW]; see also MAN FROM NEW YORK at 142, 146.

50 BROWN, ARMORY SHOW at 121.

51 PROUD POSSESSORS at 216; MAN FROM NEW YORK at 148.

52 John Quinn, Modern Art from a Layman’s Point of View, 3 ARTS & DECO-RATION 155 (1913).

53 Kimberly Orcutt, “Public Verdict”: Debating Modernism at the Armory Show [hereinafter Debating Modernism], in KUSHNER & ORCUTT, ARMORY SHOW 327, 337.

54 BROWN, ARMORY SHOW at 151 (quoting menu).

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almost daily,”55 and was “the single biggest lender to and buyer from the Armory Show.”56

Four thousand people attended on opening day.57 Attendance then dwindled – but picked up when:

critics began lambasting the show and cartoons deriding its van-guard inclusion began appearing regularly on the front pages of newspapers. . . . Who would not have wanted to see “faces that look as if their owners were dying of strangulation, bodies whose knees are larger than their torsos, soulful young women with the mouths stuck in the middle of their cheeks, landscapes that look like stacks of dried-kindling wood, portraits that have no human resemblance, paint smeared on canvases in rectangles and wedges and circles”? The very outlandishness of the pic-tures compelled attention, one critic remarked. Coverage of the show’s “psychopathic ward,” where Cubist and Fauvist works were located, became a daily item in the press. As reports on the new art multiplied, so too did interest. “Everybody it seems is talking about post-Impression and Cubism,” observed the New-York Tribune.58

Ultimately, the Armory Show proved “hugely successful in terms of attendance. Approximately 87,000 people saw the Armory Show in New York, another 188,650 saw it in Chicago, and almost 14,400 people visited the Boston venue.”59

55 American Collectors at 416.

56 AVANT-GARDE at 27; see also Legacy at 399 (“New York lawyer and Amory Show spokesperson John Quinn spent more money in the show than any other collector.”); MAN FROM NEW YORK at 144 (“Quinn’s loan would be by far the largest to the show”).

57 Legacy at 396.

58 Id. (footnotes and citations omitted).

59 Century of the Armory Show at 16.

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The Impact of the Armory Show

The Armory Show holds a recognized place in American culture (figs. 5-6). One reason for this status is because the Armory Show intentionally invited “broad public observation of, and even involve-ment in, debates that were formerly conducted largely in specialized journals among an educated elite.”60 For this reason, the Armory Show is credited with “changing overnight the American art market and the public’s awareness of modern art.”61

The Armory Show also effected a shift in what art was considered “modern.” Comparison of two works – Robert Henri’s Figure in Mo-tion (fig. 7)62 and Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2) (fig. 8) – highlight this aspect of the exhibition. Figure in Motion was finished “just weeks before the exhibition opened.”63 Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2) was prepared a year earlier, in 1912.64 Both are acknowledged great works of art, but Henri’s work fared the worst from their inclusion in the same exhibition. Even though “a com-manding artistic statement,” Figure in Motion was “greeted with bewil-derment” because of its “counterrevolutionary impulse” that some “would have considered painfully retardataire.”65 In short, while “the independent realists in Henri’s circle had been considered America’s

60 Debating Modernism at 336 (citing The Mob as Art Critic, 46 LITERARY DIG. 708 (1913).

61 Legacy at 395.

62 I wish to thank the Terra Foundation For American Art for granting permission to reproduce this work.

63 Kimberly Orcutt, Robert Henri’s Manifesto [hereinafter Henri], in KUSH-NER & ORCUTT, ARMORY SHOW 267, 270.

64 Francis M. Naumann, “An Explosion in a Shingle Factory”: Marcel Du-champ’s Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2), in KUSHNER & ORCUTT, AR-MORY SHOW 203, 205.

65 Henri at 272 (footnote omitted).

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aesthetic vanguard,” the Armory Show changed that “by unwittingly casting realism as antiquated.”66

For the public, the arrangement of the exhibition would have rein-forced this slighting of realism. One of the organizers, Arthur B. Davies, intended the Armory Show to be “didactic.”67 The Armory Show issue of Arts & Decoration contained a “Chronological Chart Made by Arthur B. Davies Showing the Growth of Modern Art” (fig. 9),68 and the exhibition layout (fig. 10) was designed to carry “the viewer through a history of modern art.”69 Taken together, however, these educational efforts erroneously suggested artwork nearer the entrance was more “advanced” than those farther in.70 Such a sug-gestion further hurt Henri, as Figure in Motion was shown in Gallery N (adjacent to the entrance), while Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2) was shown in Gallery I (at the rear of exhibition hall).71

The Milwaukee Exhibitions

There is a well-developed contrary school of thought rejecting the view that the Armory Show made Americans more conscious of modern art (much less altered their perception of what was “mod-ern”), and relegating the Armory Show to the status of “a stunt” – a view summed up with venom in the following comments made in 1963 by Amherst Professor Frank Anderson Trapp:

66 Legacy at 401.

67 Kimberly Orcutt, Arthur B. Davies – Hero or Villain? [hereinafter Davies], in KUSHNER & ORCUTT, ARMORY SHOW 29, 36.

68 3 ARTS & DECORATION 150 (1913).

69 Davies at 36.

70 Legacy at 401.

71 KUSHNER & ORCUTT, ARMORY SHOW at 467, 469 (“Appendix B: List of Works in the 1913 Armory Show by Gallery”).

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It seems fair to say that the Armory Show was at best a mixed success. For the general public and for most of the press it was an entertaining but ephemeral event. It was regarded as a kind of circus who freakish exhibits had nothing to do with the reali-ties of their lives. Their curiosity was alerted, but not their love or understanding. Any supposition that the exhibition would dent – far less penetrate – the armor of entrenched “bourgeois” philistinism was very vain indeed. The net effect was, if any-thing, contrary to such expectation. Those already distrustful of artists and convinced of the traditional values (as they under-stood them) found all their prejudices confirmed or even inten-sified by what they say there. . . . As a result, most people left the exhibition the more convinced of their own superior sanity and comfortably released from any sense of further obligation towards an activity they found unintelligible and unrewarding: In its failure to elicit a groundswell of popular interest in “mod-ern” art the Armory Show was a conspicuous failure. . . . Those who criticized the Armory Show as a stunt were not altogether off the mark. There was more than a little adolescent bravado in the minds of some, if not all, of its organizers.72

But a dismissive view of the Armory Show is erroneous, as it over-looks the immediate adoption by American business of the exhibition’s cubist and futurist motifs. Walt Kuhn, Armory Show organizer and one of Quinn’s favorite painters,73 recognized this in his short (yet flowery) volume on the exhibition:

Business caught on immediately, even if the artists did not at once do so. The outer appearance of industry absorbed the les-son like a sponge. Drabness, awkwardness began to disappear from American life, and color and grace stepped in. Industry certainly took notice. The decorative elements of Matisse and the cubists were immediately taken on as models for the creation of a brighter, more lively America. The decorative side of Bran-cusi went into everything from milliners’ dummies to streamliner

72 Frank Anderson Trapp, The Armory Show: A Review, 23 ART J. 2, 4-5 (1963).

73 PROUD POSSESSORS at 212.

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trains. The exhibition affected every phase of American life – the apparel of men and women, the stage, automobiles, air-planes, furniture, interior decorations, beauty parlors, advertising and printing in its various departments, plumbing, hardware – everything from the modernistic designs of gas pumps and add-ed color of beach umbrellas and bathing suits, down to the mer-chandise of the dime store.

In spite of the number of admittedly first class pieces of “fine art” in the Armory Show, the thing that “took” was the element of decoration. American business, perhaps unconsciously, ab-sorbed this needed quality and reached with it, into every home and industry and pastime.74

Interestingly, this adoption/adsorption started in Milwaukee:

In May, 1913, an exhibition of ten major cubist paintings was brought from Paris to Milwaukee to be exhibited as a small ver-sion of the Armory Show. The sponsor of the exhibition was Gimbel Brothers, the department store chain headquartered in Milwaukee. That summer the exhibition traveled to Cleveland, Pittsburgh, New York and Philadelphia where it was shown in Gimbels’ branches and other department stores. Finally, in April, 1914, the exhibition was again shown in Milwaukee along with a group of over a hundred pictures by local modernists.75

Gimbel Brothers announced the exhibit in the Milwaukee Sentinel on May 11, 1913 (fig. 11),76 a date on which the Armory Show was still showing in Boston.77 The Gimbel Brothers exhibition “was orga-

74 KUHN, ARMORY SHOW 24-25.

75 Aasron Sheon, 1913: Forgotten Cubist Exhibitions in America, 57 ARTS MAGAZINE 93, 93 (1983) [hereinafter Forgotten Cubist Exhibitions] (footnote omitted).

76 First Exhibit of “Cubist” Paintings, MILWAUKEE SENTINEL, May 11, 1913, at 8.

77 Century of the Armory Show at 15 (“the Armory Show closed in Boston on May 19”).

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nized to capitalize on the Armory Show’s notoriety and to gain favor-able publicity for the store.”78 As an advertising effort (rather than an attempt to create a private collection), “little more than a thousand dollars was spent on the project.”79 Notwithstanding the modest out-lay, the exhibition “may . . . be the first one to have been sponsored by an American department store, thus setting a precedent for later corporate sponsorship of exhibitions.”80

Use of the avant-garde to promote store sales was a shrewd busi-ness decision, premised on a simple truth about such art:

While the popular press was flooding the country’s front pages with diatribes against the vanguard art in the Armory Show, a host of other writers were broadcasting a simple, accessible mes-sage about it: far from being the products of madmen, the new art was a legitimate effort to convey emotions without represen-tation. The explanation was so reasonable – so aligned with the country’s nascent fascination with the unconscious – that ac-cepting it became a mark of sophistication. . . . Soon, business began to exploit the implied link between vanguard art and cul-tural sophistication.81

And perhaps because the show was sponsored by a department store (rather than some artists group), and the paintings displayed in the store itself (and not in an armory or museum), “[i]nstead of the out-right hostility that the Armory Show caused, there was . . . a greater willingness to look at modern pictures, not to treat them as a joke.”82 In any event, “[b]y the time the show reached Gimbel Brothers’ New

78 Forgotten Cubist Exhibitions at 94.

79 Id. (footnote omitted); see also id. (“A flat fee of $100, or about 500 francs, was paid for each work.”).

80 Id. at 93 (footnote omitted).

81 Legacy at 396-97 (footnote omitted).

82 Forgotten Cubist Exhibitions at 105.

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York branch in July, modern art’s position seemed secure.”83 On this point, the art critic for The New York Globe predicted:

Now that the new art movement has found its way to a depart-ment store there ought to be no further doubt of its establish-ment as part of our American daily life, and its ultimate ac-ceptance must be considered only a question of time. The latest examples to reach these shores are shown at the art gallery in the store of Gimbel Brothers. . . The show is open to the public, and truth to tell, attracts a large attendance.84

Two final points. Before the Gimbel Brothers exhibition returned to Milwaukee in 1914, the Milwaukee Art Society hired a new direc-tor, Dudley Crafts Waston.85 Watson had been a member of the fac-ulty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and was “sympa-thetic to the modernists.”86 Watson expanded the number of pic-tures exhibited to over 100, and held the exhibition at the Milwaukee Art Society’s Jefferson Street gallery.87 An April 11, 1914 article from the Milwaukee Free Press reported on the show (fig. 12), including statements from Watson.88 So much for Professor Trapp’s supposi-tion that the Armory Show failed to “dent – far less penetrate” the American mainstream (though to be fair to the eminent Professor

83 Legacy at 398.

84 Forgotten Cubist Exhibitions at 101 (quoting Arthur Hoeber, Arts and Art-ists, THE GLOBE & COMMERCIAL ADVERTISER, July 25, 1913 at 6) (ellipsis in Forgotten Cubist Exhibitions); see also Legacy at 398 (discussing Hoeber).

85 Andrew Martinez, A Mixed Reception for Modernism: The 1913 Armory Show at The Art Institute of Chicago, 19 ART INST. CHI. MUSEUM STUD. 31, 104 n.72 (1993).

86 Id.

87 Forgotten Cubist Exhibitions at 101; Milwaukee Art Notes, MILWAUKEE FREE PRESS, April 19, 1914, at 18.

88 Art’s Latest Fads Will Be Exhibited, MILWAUKEE FREE PRESS, April 11, 1914, at 5.

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Trapp, by 1963 the Gimbel Brothers exhibition appears to have been largely forgotten).

Finally, two of the original cubist paintings are owned by the Mil-waukee Art Museum: Pierre Dumont’s Rouen Cathedral and Fernand Léger, Study for Three Portraits (Essai Pour Trois Portraits) (figs. 13-14).89

Quinn’s Estate

Quinn died in 1924. His estate included “more than 2,500 paint-ings, prints, drawings and sculpture”90 of unsurpassed quality. Brit-ish art critic C. Lewis Hind wrote in 1921 that Quinn “possesses the best collection of modernist pictures in America, perhaps in the world.”91 In 1926, American art critic Forbes Watson commented that “many of the artists of his day considered Quinn the most in-trepid American collector.”92

Quinn provided in his will that nearly all of his artworks were to be sold.93 (The principal exception was his gift of Seurat’s Circus to the Louvre, which at that time owned no works of that artist.94) Quinn decided to dispose of his collection in this manner in part because he thought no American museum “would accept, much less appreciate, a bequest of contemporary art.”95

89 I wish to thank the Milwaukee Art Museum for granting permission to reproduce these works.

90 Judith Zilczer, The Dispersal of the John Quinn Collection, 19 ARCHIVES AM. ART J. 15, 15 (1979) [hereinafter Dispersal].

91 C. LEWIS HIND, ART AND I 158 (1921).

92 Forbes Watson, Forward to PIDGEON HILL PRESS, JOHN QUINN 1870-1925: COLLECTION OF PAINTINGS, WATER COLORS, DRAWINGS & SCULPTURE 5-6 (1926).

93 Dispersal at 15.

94 PROUD POSSESSORS at 233.

95 Dispersal at 15.

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The estate was liquidated over a three year period through a series of private sales and auctions, culminating in a New York auction in 1927.96 Unloading such a large amount of art in such a short time resulted in some works being sold for less than what Quinn paid originally; nonetheless, the 1927 auction “represented the most im-portant and financially lucrative public auction of modern art to be held in the United States before 1930.”97

The auction was important because it enriched collections that lat-er found their way into museums across the country:

[T]he dispersal of Quinn’s collection enabled other pioneering American collectors to build and enlarge their own modern art collections with Quinn’s riches. Many of these “second genera-tion” modern art collections would form the nuclei of Museum collections. The Arensberg collection of the Philadelphia Muse-um of Art, the Goodyear Collection of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, and the Howald Collection of the Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts are among the notable public collections which owe part of their fame to masterpieces originally acquired by John Quinn. Other major works from the Quinn collection eventual-ly entered such important institutions as the Museum of Modern Art which now owns two dozen works from the Quinn collec-tion. Another two dozen items are distributed among the Met-ropolitan Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Fogg Art Museum each of whose holdings include eight works from the Quinn collection.98

And while not listed, the Art Institute of Chicago likewise owns eight works from Quinn’s collection (figs. 15-22).99

96 See generally id. at 16-19.

97 Id. at 19.

98 Id. (footnote omitted).

99 I wish to thank Ms. Marie Kroeger, AIC Archives Volunteer, who iden-tified these works for me.

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More importantly, dissatisfaction over dispersal of such a great col-lection all lead to the formation of many of America’s public modern art collections. “In January 1926, American art critic Forbes Watson published an editorial in his magazine The Arts deploring the breakup of the Quinn collection and regretting that no individual had stepped forward to purchase everything for a new museum of modern art.”100 A few years later, certain New York collectors, “fretting since the dispersal of the Quinn collection,”101 met to establish the Museum of Modern Art.102 And while not every collector would establish a mu-seum, many would give their collections to the public rather than place them up for auction:

Arensberg, Dreier, and Bliss bought significantly from the Quinn estate. So did Ferdinand Howald, A. Conger Goodyear, and Mary and Cornelius Sullivan. These four became prominent as collectors in the 1920s and were committed to donating art to public institutions. Doubtless, the sad fate of the Quinn collec-tion further influenced the first wave of collectors to keep their collections more or less intact by memorializing them through gifts to art institutions.103

100 American Collectors at 425; see also BROWN, ARMORY SHOW at 239 (“It is one of the tragedies of American art history that the Quinn collection . . . was ultimately dispersed.”).

101 PROUD POSSESSORS at 364. The “fretting” collectors were Mary Sulli-van and Lillie Bliss, id., both of whom were close friends of Quinn. Quinn and Collectors at 60.

102 See generally PROUD POSSESSORS at 364-366; American Collectors at 425.

103 American Collectors at 425.

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Conclusion

In 1954, Yale art historian George Heard Hamilton aptly captured the contribution to American art made by Quinn and his contempo-raries, describing them as:

the notable company of American artists and collectors who created the conditions for a serious and meaningful understand-ing of the modern movement in painting and sculpture. The names of these men and women are not many but they are im-portant: John Quinn, Arthur B. Davies, A. E. Gallatin, Walter C. Arensberg, and Katherine S. Dreier. Without them the en-thusiastic appreciation of modern art which now distinguishes American culture from that of other countries would have come much later and perhaps with less effect.104

Sixty-one years later, Professor Hamilton’s summary still holds true. A city’s ownership of modern art (either privately by its residents or publically in its museums) is still a measure of its cultural cachet. That Milwaukee hosted a Cubist art exhibit in 1913 and still owns two works from that exhibition is undeniably cool. And strange as it sounds, the country’s awareness of modern art, the availability of that art in public collections, and even the ability to import such art tax free all flow from the efforts of one attorney, John Quinn.

David A. Westrup

104 George Heard Hamilton, Katherine S. Dreier’s Library on Modern Art, 28 YALE U. LIBR. GAZETTE 129, 129 (1954).

Figure 1

John Quinn105

105 ALINE B. SAARINEN, THE PROUD POSSESSORS: THE LIVES, TIMES AND TASTES OF SOME ADVENTUROUS AMERICAN ART COLLECTORS (1958). Quinn’s niece provided this photograph to Ms. Saarinen. Id. at xv.

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Figure 2

John Quinn Obituary 106

106 Obituary, ART NEWS, Aug. 16, 1924, at 4.

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Figure 3

The Hyde Ball, January 31, 1905107

107 PATRICIA BEARD, AFTER THE BALL: GILDED AGE SECRETS, BOARD-ROOM BETRAYALS, AND THE PARTY THAT IGNITED THE GREAT WALL STREET SCANDAL OF 1905 170 (2003).

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Figure 4

Photograph from March 8, 1913 Healy’s Restaurant dinner for “our Friends and Enemies of the Press”108 (seated at the head table, left to right, are Walt Kuhn, Frederick James Gregg, Arthur B. Davies, John Quinn, Walt Pach, J. Mowbray-Clarke, and Royal Cortissoz109)

(Quinn )

108 Photograph by Percy Rainford, reprinted in Kimberly Orcutt, “Public Ver-dict”: Debating Modernism at the Armory Show, in THE ARMORY SHOW AT 100: MODERNISM AND REVOLUTION 327, 328 fig. 255 (Marilyn Satin Kushner & Kimberly Orcutt eds., 2013).

109 MILTON W. BROWN, THE STORY OF THE ARMORY SHOW 150 (2d ed. 1988).

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Figure 5

Armory Show postage stamp110

[Permission requested]

110 Celebrate The Century 1910s: 1913 Armory Show Stamp ©1998 Unit-ed States Postal Service, reprinted in Marilyn Satin Kushner, A Century of the Armory Show: Modernism and Myth, in THE ARMORY SHOW AT 100: MODERNISM AND REVOLUTION 13, 23 fig. 6 (Marilyn Satin Kushner & Kimberly Orcutt eds., 2013).

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Figure 6

New Yorker Armory Show cartoon111

[Permission requested]

111 Robert Censoni, I didn’t like it then and I don’t like it now!, NEW YORKER, Apr. 20, 1963, at 39, reprinted in Marilyn Satin Kushner, A Century of the Ar-mory Show: Modernism and Myth, in THE ARMORY SHOW AT 100: MODERN-ISM AND REVOLUTION 13, 21 fig. 5 (Marilyn Satin Kushner & Kimberly Orcutt eds., 2013).

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Figure 7

Robert Henri, Figure in Motion112

112 Robert Henri, Figure in Motion, 1913, Oil on canvas, Image: 77 1/4 x 37 1/4 in. (196.2 x 94.6 cm) Frame: 83 1/2 x 43 3/8 in. (212.1 x 110.2 cm), Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1999.69 Photography ©Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago.

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Figure 8

Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2) 113

[Permission requested]

113 Marcel Duchamp (French, worked in America, 1887-1968), Nude De-scending a Staircase (No. 2), 1912, Oil on canvas, 57 7/8 x 35 1/8 in (147 x 89.2 cm) Frame: 59 3/4 x 36 3/4 x 2 in. (151.8 x 93.3 x 5.1 cm), Philadelph-ia Museum of Art, The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950, 1950-134-59 © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/Estate of Marcel Duchamp.

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Figure 9

Armory Show modern art chart114

114 3 ARTS & DECORATION 150 (1913).

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Figure 10

Armory Show gallery plan115

115 ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN PAINTERS AND SCULPTORS, INC., IN-TERNATIONAL EXHIBITION OF MODERN ART CATALOGUE 70-71 (1913).

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Figure 11

Milwaukee Sentinel announcement of Cubist Exhibition116

116 First Exhibit of “Cubist” Paintings, MILWAUKEE SENTINEL, May 11, 1913, at 8.

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Figure 12

Milwaukee Free Press article regarding re-turn of Cubist Exhibition117

117 Art’s Latest Fads Will Be Exhibited, MIL-WAUKEE FREE PRESS, April 11, 1914, at 5.

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Figure 13

Pierre Dumont, Rouen Cathedral118

118 Pierre Dumont (French, 1884-1936), Rouen Cathedral, ca. 1912, Oil on canvas, 75 3/4 x 54 5/8 in. (192.41 x 138.75 cm), Milwaukee Art Museum, Anonymous Gift, MX.6 Photographer credit: Larry Sanders.

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Figure 14

Fernand Léger, Study for Three Portraits (Essai Pour Trois Portraits)119

119 Fernand Léger (French, 1881-1955), Study for Three Portraits (Essai Pour Trois Portraits), 1910-11, Oil on canvas, 76 3/4 x 45 7/8 in. (194.95 x 116.52 cm), Milwaukee Art Museum, Anonymous Gift, MX.5 Photographer credit: John R. Glembin, ©2008 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.

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Figure 15

Pablo Picasso, The Old Guitarist120

[Permission requested]

120 Pablo Picasso (Spanish, worked in France, 1881-1973), The Old Guitarist, late 1903–early 1904, Oil on panel, 48 3/8 x 32 1/2 in. (122.9 x 82.6 cm), signed, l.r.: “Picasso”, Art Institute of Chicago, Helen Birch Bartlett Me-morial Collection, 1926.253 ©2015 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

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Figure 16

Raoul Dufy, Pears in a Garden121

[Permission requested]

121 Raoul Dufy (French, 1877-1953), Pears in a Garden, n.d., Watercolor, with graphite on cream laid paper, 649 x 508 mm, signed recto, lower left, in graphite: “Raoul Dufy”, Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Robert Aller-ton, 1926.256 ©2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.

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Figure 17

Gino Severini, Guitarist and Spanish Dancer122

[Permission requested]

122 Gino Severini (Italian, 1883-1966), Guitarist and Spanish Dancer, n.d., Charcoal, with stumping and traces of red chalk on cream wove paper, 641 x 475 mm, signed recto, lower right, in graphite: “Severini”, Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Robert Allerton, 1926.257 ©2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.

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Figure 18

Henri Matisse, Apples123

[Permission requested]

123 Henri Matisse (French, 1869-1954), Apples, 1916, Oil on canvas, 46 x 35 in. (116.8 x 88.9 cm), Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Florene May Schoenborn and Samuel A. Marx, 1948.563 ©2015 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

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Figure 19

Pablo Picasso, Mother and Child124

[Permission requested]

124 Pablo Picasso (Spanish, worked in France, 1881-1973), Mother and Child, 1921, Oil on canvas, 56 1/4 x 68 in. (142.9 x 172.7 cm), signed and dated l.r.: “Picasso / 21”, Art Institute of Chicago, Restricted gift of Maymar Corporation, Mrs. Maurice L. Rothschild, and Mr. and Mrs. Chauncey McCormick; Mary and Leigh Block Fund; Ada Turnbull Hertle Endow-ment; through prior gift of Mr. and Mrs. Edwin E. Hokin, 1954.270 ©2015 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

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Figure 20

Juan Gris, Glass and Playing Cards125

[Permission requested]

125 Juan Gris (Spanish, 1887-1927), Glass and Playing Cards, 1915, Oil and sand on cardboard, 11 1/2 x 7 3/4 in. (29.2 x 19.7 cm), Signed, l.r.: “Juan Gris”, Art Institute of Chicago, Bequest of Mima de Manziarly Porter, 1989.51.2.

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Figure 21

Constantin Brâncusi, Golden Bird126

[Permission requested]

126 Constantin Brâncusi (French, born Romania, 1876-1957), Golden Bird, 1919/20 (base c. 1922), Bronze, stone, and wood, 86 x 11 3/4 x 11 3/4 in. (217.8 x 29.9 x 29.9 cm), Signed underneath: “C. Brancusi”, Art Institute of Chicago, Partial gift of The Arts Club of Chicago; restricted gift of various donors; through prior bequest of Arthur Rubloff; through prior restricted gift of William E. Hartmann; through prior gifts of Mr. and Mrs. Carter H. Harrison, Mr. and Mrs. Arnold H. Maremont through the Kate Maremont Foundation, Woodruff J. Parker, Mrs. Clive Runnells, Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson, and various donors, 1990.88 ©2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.

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Figure 22

Georges Seurat, Seated Woman with a Parasol (study for La Grande Jatte)127

[Permission requested]

127 Georges Seurat (French, 1859-1891), Seated Woman with a Parasol (study for La Grande Jatte), 1884/85, Black Conté crayon on ivory laid paper, 477 x 315 mm, Art Institute of Chicago, Bequest of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, 1999.7.