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9.SAMUEL KRESS
INDUSTRIALIST, COLLECTOR AND PATRIARCH OF THE GETTY FAMILY
A considerable number of American Art Collections of Italian Old Masters have a specific focus on Venetian Art. This is also the case of The Samuel H. Kress Collection, which had its beginnings in the third decade of the last century when the man whose name it bears was becoming known as one his country’s great merchants. Partly for business reasons, partly for enjoyment of the fruits of its success, Mr Kress made frequent trips to Europe. Visiting the great museums again and again in the course of his travels, he developed a taster for art and had already become a collector on a small scale when, about 1920, he met Count Contini-Bonacossi in Rome and was fired with the idea of emulating the Count in the formation of a private collection. It was only some years later, with the establishment of a lasting friendship with Bernard Berenson in Florence, that he decided to concentrate his collecting in Italian painting and sculpture.
Very little of this art was to be seen in America in the 1920s and only few American travelled abroad. Mr Kress saw a challenge in this situation. With the same insight that had enabled him to recognize in 1896 the need in the Southern states for popular stores, he now recognised the need in America for more of the cultural advantages that art could afford and he set himself the goal of meeting that need in the domain of Italian art. He had a vision of forming a collection in which every important Italian artist would be represented, so that Americans unable to visit Europe could study and enjoy a comprehensive selection at home. How well he succeeded may be judged from the observation made by Mr. David K.E.Bruce, Presiden of the National Gallery of Art, at the time of the first Kress donation to the Gallery, in 1939: ‘Experts state that there is no private collection in the world, and few museum, which can illustrate in as complete a manner as the Kress Collection the development of the Italian school of painting and sculpture during the Renaissance period’.
Canaletto, Ascension Day Festival at Venice, 1765/1766, Pen and brown ink with gray wash over traces ofgraphite, tip ofthe brush with black wash, heightened with a few touches of white gouache (laid on thick eighteenth-century paper). Samuel H. Kress Collection
Collections’ Highlights: Venetian School
The latter part of the sixteenth century in Venice was as much dependent upon the prestige and example of Titian as was the first part upon Giorgione. Titian himself lived on until 1576, covered with glory and honours and so venerable that there was even then great uncertainty as to his birthdate. The field in Venice was then taken over by two men, principally. One was born in Verona, Paolo Caliari, called Paolo Veronese. Examples of his late period are to be seen in the Kress Collection in Washington. Both are illustrative of two contrasting aspects of his style. The Annunciation is light and brilliant in colour, alive with a golden illumination. The large Rebecca at the Well is a solemn decorative composition in which the figures seem to move slowly and with dignity in a frieze-like scheme against a mysterious and darkened background from which the bulky camels