John Hay Whitney Collection Paperback, May 1, 1983 by John Rewald Book

Description

Authors: John Rewald. Publisher: Natl Gallery Of Art Keywords: collection, Whitney, john Pages: 176. Published: 1983-05.
Publisher ? : ? … more Authors: John Rewald. Publisher: Natl Gallery Of Art Keywords: collection, Whitney, john Pages: 176. Published: 1983-05.
Publisher ? : ? Natl Gallery of Art; Language ? : ? English
Paperback ? : ? 176 pages.
Washington, 1983. 1st. Edition
Softcover. Very Good / None. 176 pages, b&w and color illustrations.
This is a beautiful coffee table collectible hardcover book.
Overview: 73 paintings by 19th- and 20th-century European and American masters constituted almost the entire collection assembled by John Hay Whitney and Betsey Cushing Whitney. Mr. Whitney, who died in 1982, served as a National Gallery trustee from 1961 to 1979. Included in the exhibition were the recent gifts from his estate to the National Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art, and Yale University Art Gallery.
The last bequest of Betsey Cushing Roosevelt Whitney -- who died March 25 at the age of 89 -- ends one of the key chapters in American collecting.
With the reading of her will, the cream of the collection that she formed with her husband, the late John Hay Whitney (1904-1982), has now been dispersed to their favorite museums -- the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Washington's National Gallery of Art and the art gallery at Yale University.
What may be overlooked in the glare of that grand gift -- its current market value may exceed $300 million -- is the significance of the paintings that her estate retains.
Eight important pictures -- including works by van Gogh, Matisse and Toulouse-Lautrec -- were left by Mrs. Whitney to the National Gallery. Seven other comparable paintings -- among them a Cezanne, a self-portrait by Picasso, a van Gogh and a Matisse -- were bequeathed at the same time to the Museum of Modern Art. An 1870 Monet, "Camille on the Beach, Trouville," went to Yale. But these are only some of the School of Paris pictures that the Whitneys owned. less