November 10, 2003

VMFA'S PURCHASE OF RARE, EARLY SILVER FROM INDIA MAKES ITS COLLECTION THE FINEST IN NORTH AMERICA
Other Acquisitions Include Paul Sample and Robert Henri Oil Paintings; Chinese Jades and Sculptures; Prints by Canaletto, Delacroix and Géricault

In India, almost every piece of pre-19th-century silver was later melted down to make something else. “Almost” is the key word.

What pre-19th-century silver that does remain today offers a rare and remarkable look at the techniques, ornaments and shapes employed by silversmiths who worked for India’s great royal houses during the 17th and 18th centuries.

With its purchase recently of 21 such works, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts collection of early Indian silver has been catapulted into the top position in North America.

“The rarity and importance of this collection cannot be overestimated. Apart from expanding the breadth of our Indian collection, it will also provide a strong link to our Jerome and Rita Gans collection of English silver,” says Dr. Michael Brand, director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

“Just as the objects in our Fabergé collection transport visitors back to the time of Old Russia, so does this silver from princely India carry us back to the visually dazzling world of the maharajahs, the Mughals and the Taj Mahal,” says Dr. Joseph M. Dye III, the museum’s E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Curator of Islamic and South Asian Art.

The objects range from a whimsical yet elegant container for rose-scented water to be sprinkled on guests after an elaborate meal, and a spectacular scabbard for a dagger, to two opulent flywhisks emblematic of monarchical authority, and striking examples of court jewelry worn to indicate status.

The objects were purchased by the board of trustees through the museum’s Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund.

The trustees also approved the purchase of a 1938 painting, Spring Song, by American artist Paul Sample (1896-1974) - “a Depression-era allegory of the senses,” according to Brand.

Sample, who was a member of the American Scene movement, used his friend, Boston Herald columnist Bill Cunningham, as the model for the pianist in the oil on canvas, which depicts him and a bartender in the intensely masculine setting of a small-town bar.

“The evocative scene evokes the American isolationist and populist mindset of the time,” says Dr. David Park Curry, the museum’s curator of American arts.

Sample has ties to the early history of VMFA. In 1938, two years after VMFA first opened, he was selected by a jury led by artist Edward Hopper to participate in the museum’s First Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting.

Spring Song was purchased by the trustees through two museum endowments, the John Barton Payne Fund and the Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Fund.

In Robert Henri’s 1924 painting Her Sunday Shawl, young Sarah Burke peeks out of a voluminous shawl with impish eyes. With characteristic economy, Henri (American, 1865-1929) defined her wrap with bravura brushstrokes.

Henri, an American Realist and the intellectual and spiritual leader of The Eight, found Burke on Achill Island, off the west coast of Ireland, where he created a number of depictions of modest Irish farmers and fisher folk.

Curry calls the painting “intimate” and “gentle.” The Henri painting was given to the museum by Charles G. Thalhimer of Richmond in memory of his wife, Rhoda, who was also honored by a gift from American artist Will Barnet (b. 1911) of one of his drawings.

The museum’s trustees accepted a significant collection of Asian art, including Chinese jades, as a gift from long-time supporters John C. Maxwell Jr. and Adrienne L. Maxwell of Richmond. The 31 jades cover a historical period reaching as far back as five millennia.

One of the earliest is a Neolithic nephrite carving, known as a bi, that would have been used in burials and may date to 3300-2250 B.C. Also in the Maxwell collection are a small, delicate ceremonial blade from the Shang Dynasty (ca. 1500-1050 B.C.) and an ornament depicting a bird reminiscent of Chinese patterns found in the Western Zhou era (ca. 1100-770 B.C.). Two later stone carvings from the Song Dynasty (960-1279), fragments of Buddhist sculpture, depict the heads of monks, and a tradition of idealized portraiture is reflected in a small silver burial mask from the Liao Dynasty (916-1125). Rounding out the gift are a variety of implements used in the raising of fighting crickets, all from the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

Using funds bequeathed by Kathleen Leigh Williams Harwell of Danville, the trustees purchased five 18th- and 19th-century prints - two by Théodore Géricault (French, 1791-1824) and one each by Giovanni Antonio Canal (called Canaletto) (Italian, 1697-1768), Eugène Delacroix (French, 1798-1863) and Odilon Redon (French, 1840-1916).

“These works will add strength and richness to our collection of European works on paper,” says Kathleen Morris, the museum’s associate curator of European sculpture, decorative arts and prints.

Three black-and-white photographs by social-welfare photographer Lewis Hine (American, 1874-1940) were accepted as gifts from Betty Stuart Goldsmith Halberstadt and Jon Halberstadt of Christiansburg. Hine was known for hisdignified and respectful portraits of newly arrived immigrants at Ellis Island, for his seminal work in documenting injustices of child labor practices in the early 20th century, and for documenting the construction of the Empire State Building.

The two earliest photographs, Oyster Shuckers (1911) and Laundry Worker (1913), belong to his child labor effort, and Rural Laundry Nurse, although undated, probably represents his work for the Works Progress Administration in the early 1930s.

Vegetables, a 1938 hand-colored lithograph by American Scene artist Grant Wood (American, 1891-1942), was accepted as a gift from Virginia Brown of Waynesboro in memory of her husband, Charles L. Brown Jr. Wood created this “quintessential regionalist fare” after coming to national prominence as the painter of American Gothic (1930). His sister, Nan - who was the model for the farmwife in American Gothic - was his studio assistant and carefully tinted each print with a delicate wash.

The trustees also approved the acquisition of several works purchased by the museum’s director using his discretionary funds:

Kalki Confronted, a 2003 painting by Gulammohammed Sheikh (Indian, b. 1937), widely regarded as one of India’s most senior artists and as a respected teacher and writer;
The Last Saffron (2) and The Last Saffron (3), two tempera-on-paper works by Nilima Sheikh (Indian, born 1945) that characterize her merging of contemporary social and political realities with mythological allusions;
And a ca.-1925 platter made of New Mexico clay fired black-on-black by Maria Martinez (1885-1980) and Julian Martinez (1887-1943), both Tewa Indians of San Idelfonso Pueblo who are among the most widely recognized 20th-century potters.

VMFA'S PURCHASE OF RARE, EARLY SILVER FROM INDIA MAKES ITS COLLECTION THE FINEST IN NORTH AMERICA Other Acquisitions Include Paul Sample and Robert Henri Oil Paintings; Chinese Jades and Sculptures; Prints by Canaletto, Delacroix and Géricault

VMFA'S PURCHASE OF RARE, EARLY SILVER FROM INDIA MAKES ITS COLLECTION THE FINEST IN NORTH AMERICA
Other Acquisitions Include Paul Sample and Robert Henri Oil Paintings; Chinese Jades and Sculptures; Prints by Canaletto, Delacroix and Géricault