I did a double-take when this Christie’s press release hit my inbox yesterday morning, seeming to indicate (until I rubbed my eyes, read further and cut through the auction-house hyperbole) that the Metropolitan Museum was about to offload one of its signature works of American art. The painting being auctioned next month is not the Leutze that comes to mind when we think of a “Painting of Transcendent Historical Impact,” as described here:
No, art-lings, this is not the 21-foot-wide crowd-magnet that lures visitors to the far reaches of the Metropolitan Museum’s American Wing:
Photo by Lee Rosenbaum
What’s being sold is the 68-inch-wide “other version” of the famous Emanuel Leutze painting (both dating from 1851), which was commissioned by the original purchaser of the Metropolitan’s painting—the art dealers Goupil, Vibert & Co., who “wanted a smaller version that could be more easily reproduced by the engraver, Paul Girardet, as a print,” according to Christie’s press release.
This image gives you a sense of its small size, relative to the Met’s renowned version, above:
That said, the painting about to be sold hasn’t been languishing unseen or unappreciated: As reported by art critic Mary Abbe in a Mar. 24, 2015 article (behind a paywall) in Minnesota’s Star Tribune (titled: “‘Washington Crossing the Delaware’ lands in Winona museum”), a private collector had, “for the past 35 years, loaned it to the White House.”
There it is, on the right, as installed in 2005 (when George W. Bush was in office) in the White House’s West Wing Reception Room, in a photo from Christie’s lot essay (which also shows images from two other White House installations):
(as published in Christie’s lot essay)
Christie’s lists the seller of this work, estimated to bring $15-20 million, as a “Prominent Private Collection.” But clues about its owners, past and present, can be found in previous articles about the painting: Mary Abbe, in her above-linked 2015 Star Tribune article, mentioned that it had then been “recently acquired by [Minnesota Marine Art] Museum founders Mary Burrichter and her husband, Bob Kierlin, founder of Fastenal, a Winona-based hardware-supply company,” who bought it from the unnamed private collector who had loaned it to the White House for display and safe-keeping.
Christie’s provenance listing for the painting in the catalogue entry for the upcoming sale reveals the likely identity of that “private collector”—Richard Manoogian, a mega-collector of American art, from whose collection the “present owner” acquired “Washington Crossing the Delaware” in 2014. The Winona-based Minnesota Marine Art Museum [MMAM], which had it on loan from March 2015 until last month, would not confirm that Burrichter and Kierlin were the unnamed consigners to the upcoming auction. (It’s up to us to connect the dots.)
According to Christie’s, this work had set a record for any American painting at auction when it brought $260,000 on Oct. 25, 1973 at Sotheby Parke-Bernet, New York (later just “Sotheby’s”). It was sold not as a Leutze, but as a work by Eastman Johnson, who had worked in Leutze’s studio. The same painting also set an auction record for an American historical painting on Apr. 20, 1979, when it sold (again at SPB) for $370,000 (again as by Eastman Johnson, not Leutze).
Other reference sources cited under “Literature” in Christie’s catalogue listing—most notably “Eastman Johnson: Painting America,” the catalogue by Teresa Carbone and Patricia Hills for the artist’s 1999 traveling retrospective—also ascribe the work to Johnson. Christie’s current press release (linked at the top of this post) states that the work being offered next month “was painted by Leutze with Johnson’s assistance,” which a spokesperson for the auction house, whom I questioned yesterday, said reflects the current curatorial consensus about authorship.
In response to my questions about the painting’s attribution, in light of the inconsistencies, Paige Kestenman, Christie’s vice president and specialist in American Art, told me this:
Christie’s consulted the recognized scholars in this field and their assessment is that Leutze created this painting with help from a studio assistant, just as Leutze did on the Metropolitan Museum version. The painting at Christie’s is signed by Leutze, was exhibited and sold under his name during his lifetime, and is correctly characterized as such.
The Met’s monumental version was actually the second iteration of this subject. As related in Washington Crossing the Delaware: Restoring an American Masterpiece (2011) by American-art expert Carrie Rebora Barratt (who was the Met’s then associate director for collections and administration), “Leutze lost his first canvas in a fire that swept through his studio on Nov. 5, 1850.” It was claimed by an insurance company, restored, sold to the Kunsthalle, Breman, and then was destroyed during World War II (“in a bombing raid” in 1942, as the Met’s online description of the painting informs us).
Despite previous press reports to the contrary, Scott Pollock, MMAM’s director, told me yesterday that the Minnesota institution’s temporarily exhibited version of “Washington Crossing the Delaware” was “never formally promised or intended to be acquired into the museum’s permanent collection, only to be used for exhibition purposes.”
Bolstering that statement, MMAM emailed me a .pdf press release yesterday (which I could not find on its public website), stating that “the painting was not intended to be permanently added to the MMAM’s collection, despite it being reported otherwise in a 2015 article that was published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune” [that article linked by me, above, was cited by me in my email to MMAM].
The Star Tribune’s estimable, reliable (and now retired) Mary Abbe wrote the following in 2015:
Burrichter and Kierlin have loaned the painting to the museum, intending that it eventually join the museum’s permanent collection [emphasis added].
Similarly, Dave Casey, the museum’s own assistant curator, had called the Leutze (near the bottom of his Mar. 24, 2020 “March Madness” commentary), “the marquee piece in MMAM’s collection [emphasis added].”
Not exactly: A long-term loan is not the same as a donation. And an unwritten understanding is not an ironclad commitment.
For consolation (and comic relief), maybe MMAM would like to borrow the Met’s other riff on Washington’s perilous journey, as reimagined by the gender-bending Cree artist Kent Monkman, playing the role of Washington:
Photo by Lee Rosenbaum
A NOTE TO MY READERS: If you appreciate my coverage, please consider supporting CultureGrrl via PayPal by clicking the “Donate” button in the righthand column of the desktop version or by scrolling down to the “DONATE” link in the mobile version. Contributors of $15 or more are added to my email blast for immediate notification of new posts.