David Amott and Dr. Mark Magelby, Visual Arts
Throughout history, art has often been closely tied to politics, although not all governments and politicians have given art equal consideration. This fact is illustrated through the provenance of Sir Anthony Van Dyck’s portrait of Phillip, Lord Wharton (1632, National Gallery of Art). Since its completion, this portrait has traveled between the collections of politicians representing four major forms of government: parliamentary monarchy, autocratic monarchy, communism, and capitalism, and has acquired a history that illustrates how the visual arts have often been regarded by these forms of government. Additionally, the history of Phillip, Lord Wharton is important because it reveals the collecting habits of several nations and chronicles the foundation of two national collections as well.
Phillip, Lord Wharton (1613-1696) was born the eldest son of Philadelphia Carey and Sir Thomas Wharton. In 1632 when Phillip was nineteen, he married his first wife Elizabeth Wandesford and to commemorate the occasion, Sir Anthony Van Dyck received as one of his first English commissions an order to paint a portrait of Phillip. Before his marriage, Phillip had been called to the court of Charles I where, during the 1630s, he grew in prominence – eventually becoming a close personal friend of the king. As Phillip’s prominence increased at court, his fortunes increased as well, and as a result he was able to acquire a collection which was large enough to fill a gallery constructed to display his art.
When Phillip’s son, the First Marquis of Wharton, inherited this art collection the Marquis sold twenty-one of these paintings in 1725 to the first Prime Minister of England, Sir Robert Walpole (1676-1745). Included in this sale was the Van Dyck portrait of Phillip, Lord Wharton which Walpole brought to his palatial country estate, Houghton Hall. Although Lord Wharton’s collection was perhaps Robert Walpole’s most important acquisition, it was only one of many collections he purchased over a thirty year period in an effort to improve Houghton Hall.
Sir Robert Walpole was a typical English patron of the arts in the eighteenth century in that he enjoyed ostentation and collected to enhance his status, power, and prestige. Art was an especially important commodity in eighteenth century England, because it enabled powerful and wealthy individuals such as Walpole to boldly – but tastefully – broadcast their status and nobility to friends and acquaintances. By the end of his life, Walpole succeed in making Houghton Hall celebrated throughout England as a treasure house of paintings and objects d’art, but his intense collecting created an enormous debt. When Walpole’s eldest son Robert, the Second Earl of Orford, inherited Houghton Hall, he also inherited nearly £50,000 of unpaid bills and levies.
When Robert Walpole, the 2nd Earl of Orford died in 1751, his son George, the 3rd Earl of Orford inherited Houghton along with the unpaid bills. In 1778, Horace Walpole, who had taken over as head of the family finances, finally renounced his claim to the inheritance of Houghton after many years of struggling to maintain the estate on behalf of his nephew. Not long after, George Walpole, now desperately in need of funds, began preparations to sell pieces from Houghton’s art collection. When Aleksei Semonovich Musin-Pushkin, the Russian Ambassador to the Court of St. James, heard about the impending sale, he immediately became interested in purchasing several of the paintings in the Walpole collection, including the portrait of Phillip, Lord Wharton on behalf of Catherine the Great (1729-1796).
During her reign, Empress Catherine, advised by a number of European intellectuals, succeeded in securing for herself some of the most important art available at that time in Europe. Catherine usually bought art in bulk, rarely examining it personally before purchasing it, which caused many to criticize her for enjoying the pursuit of the masterpiece more than the masterpiece itself. While her love of art was debatable, Catherine delighted in the attention she received when she successfully imported a major art collection to Russia. Recognizing that importing art advertised her wealth and power to the rest of Europe, she also realized that art could help her continue Peter the Great’s campaign to westernize Russia. By continuing this campaign Catherine could not only enlighten her court but legitimize her claim to the Russian throne as well. Therefore she aggressively pursued masterpieces by using her European contacts as agents who informed her when major collections became available.7
When news of the approaching sale of the Walpole collection to Catherine the Great came to the attention of the general public, John Wilkes, a representative for Middlesex in the British House of Commons submitted in a session of Parliament that the Houghton collection “…not be disbursed but purchased by parliament… [and] a noble gallery ought to be built in the spacious garden of the British museum for the reception of that invaluable treasure.8” Horace Walpole supported this measure and appealed to the King for a government purchase. Notwithstanding the efforts of John Wilkes and Horace Walpole, the British Parliament was not interested in using public funds to finance the purchase of the Houghton collection and the king, whose finances were largely controlled by parliament, could do nothing. As a result the Walpole collection was officially sold to Catherine in the late summer of 1779 for a total of approximately £40,000, much to the dissatisfaction of the English public. In this collection were twelve Van Dyck’s, including the portrait of Phillip, Lord Wharton.
While the Russian monarchy remained in power, Phillip, Lord Wharton retained its value as a symbol of wealth and power. However, after the Russian Revolution of 1917, objects that were prized by the Russian aristocrats and nobility lost much of their relevance in the new communistic society. Quickly, the ostentation of the Hermitage and the royal collection began to represent the evils and excesses of tsarist autocracy. Nevertheless, the Hermitage survived the communist overthrow largely unscathed and even benefited from the takeover. Many important private collections were given to the Hermitage, and many of the previously restricted galleries were opened so that the masses could see first hand the decadence of the Romanov regime.
The period of Hermitage expansion brought about by the revolution abruptly ended when the Russian Communist government began the series of five-year economic plans first implemented in 1928. The Russia that the Communists had usurped from their Tsarist predecessors was largely undeveloped. In order to help boost the lagging economy and to help modernize the country, Soviet leaders such as Joseph Stalin proposed grandiose projects that were intended to make up for decades of retrogressive policy in just a few years. To finance such ventures, Communist officials turned to the Hermitage collection as a source of easy funding for these programs.
This sale of Russian art was significant for a number of reasons. The Soviets had initially refused to sell pieces from the Russian National collection to interested millionaires, but the Communists were aware of the value of their art holdings and warmed to the idea of doing business with buyers who were willing to pay high prices for their art. Having been alerted to this fact, the London based art firm of Knoedler and Company began to write proposals for several purchases of Hermitage art on behalf of Andrew Mellon, the US Secretary of the Treasury and a vigorous art collector.
In April 1930, the Knoedler gallery sent a letter to Mellon explaining the singular opportunity he had to buy a number of masterpieces from the Hermitage. Mellon agreed to fund the venture, and soon purchased for $250,000 his first Hermitage painting the portrait of Phillip, Lord Wharton. From June of 1930 until April of 1931 Andrew Mellon was able to acquire 20 more Hermitage paintings for a total of $6,654,000 – a bargain even in the economy of the 1930s.
As a dedicated art collector, Mellon continued to buy masterpieces throughout his life, eventually amassing a collection which was astounding in both the quality and quantity of art it contained. During his tenure as the American Ambassador to England, he regularly visited the English National Gallery and lamented that America did not have a similar institution. While several plans had been made to build a U.S. National Gallery, these plans never materialized largely due to a lack of government interest and funding for the project. These facts, along with his desire to connect his name with an permanent institution, impressed Mellon to use his own money and collection to establish a national art museum in Washington DC for the benefit of the American people. In 1937, Mellon donated his art as well as the necessary money to build the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC – a gallery which would not have been possible without this endowment. Soon after the National Gallery was completed, the portrait of Phillip, Lord Wharton was installed in the museum’s Van Dyck room, where it can be seen today.
As the portrait of Phillip, Lord Wharton changed ownership, the value and significance of the painting changed as well. The leaders of the English parliamentary monarchy could only appreciate Phillip, Lord Wharton as a private symbol of wealth and power, while the centralized power of the Russian autocracy permitted the purchase of the painting as well as a more aggressive cultural policy. In contrast, the Russian Communist government based the painting’s worth solely on its market price, while the American government owns the painting today, not because it is particularly culturally minded, but because its capitalistic system allows certain citizens to acquire the wealth and nationalistic pride necessary to make such donations possible. While Phillip, Lord Wharton is one of a myriad of masterpieces found in national collections, it is especially significant because it represents the regard generally given to the visual arts by four major forms of government.
References
- Moore, Andrew. Houghton Hall, The Prime Minister, The Empress and The Heritage. London: Phillip Wilson Publishers Ltd, 1996.
- Roberts, Helene. Encyclopedia of Comparative Iconography Volume II. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers,1998.
- Walker, John. Self Portrait with Donors. Boston: Little Brown & Company,1973
- Williams, Robert. Russian Art and American Money. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980.