Page 23 - Demo

During our Easter holiday in 1938, I joined Harvard friends for a trip down the Adriatic. We took all of the passenger accommodations on an Italian freighter sailing from Venice. The entire five-day voyage cost each ofus five pounds (then $25), everything included! We stayed foe a few hours each in Trieste, Zara, Split, Dubrovnik, Durazzo, and ended the trip in Bari. D. R.
David Rockefeller’s favourite photograph of himself and his wife Peggy aboard the Jack Tar, a 36ft racing sloop that John D Rockefeller bought for hs sons when they were boys.
Throughout his crowded working life, David made time to go sailing with Peggy as shipmate. ‘I enjoy it as much as anything I do’ he said. Sailing equalled solitude, freedom an peace,
and for Peggy and David these must have been rare and precious commodities indeed
John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) San Geremia oil on canvas 22 x 28 in. (55.9 x 71.1 cm.) Sargent’s infatuation with Venice spanned the majority of his life and came to reflect many of the dichotomies and contradictions inherent to the city. Sargent was undoubtedly influenced by the tastes and preoccupations of nineteenth-century French writers for whom the poetry of Venetian squalor and dilapidation defined her appeal. Executed in 1913, San Geremia is a dynamic example of the Venice Sargent painted on his final visit to the mysterious floating city. Provenance: Violet Sargent Ormond, sister of the artist, 1925. H.E. Conrad Ormond, son of the above, by descent, 1955. Private collection, by descent, 1979. Sotheby's, New York, 6 December 1984, lot 165, sold by the above. Acquired by the late owners from the above.
After that bachelor sailing tour, not only did Rockefeller would make return to Venice frequently but also his fascination with Italy and the city influenced some of his collecting choices, as witnessed by the above Corot’s oil and below painting by John Singer Sargent’s shown below.