Annie Swan Coburn

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Annie Swan Coburn , also Mrs. LL Coburn , (born April 16, 1856 in Fremont Center ( Lake County ), Illinois , † May 31, 1932 in Chicago , Illinois) was an American art collector and patron . Their significant art collection, with predominantly Impressionist works, is now spread across several museums.

Life

Little is known about the life of Annie Swan Coburn. She was born Annie Swan in 1856 in Fremont, a small town about 44 miles northwest of Chicago. Her family moved to Chicago when she was a child. In 1880 she married Lewis Larned Coburn and subsequently appeared frequently as Mrs. LL Coburn . Her husband had studied at Harvard Law School and worked as a patent attorney in Chicago . He was a co-founder and president of the Union League Club of Chicago . The couple belonged to the wealthy upper class of the city and lived on posh South Michigan Avenue. After her husband's death in 1910, Annie Swan Coburn moved into the Blackstone Hotel, which had opened a few months earlier, in the center of town. There she lived in a suite for more than 20 years until her death.

During the last years of her life at the hotel, Annie Swan Coburn amassed an important art collection, most of which she obtained through New York art dealers. Her art collection was not only used to decorate the inhabited rooms. Since there was not enough space, she put the paintings on armchairs and on the floor, as photographs show. Based on works by American contemporary artists, she focused on works by French impressionist artists . She was not a pioneer like the Chicago art collectors Bertha Honoré Palmer and Martin Antoine Ryerson , who had been collecting these works in large numbers since the 1890s. Nevertheless, she managed to combine a collection with important works. Although Annie Swan Coburn lived relatively withdrawn, word of the quality of her collection got around in professional circles and she gave art historians, journalists and other interested parties access to the works of art. A wider public was only able to get to know the collection a few weeks before her death, when a selection of the works was shown in an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago from April 6, 1932 . Annie Swan Coburn died on May 31, 1932 at the age of 76 in Chicago and was later buried in Graceland Cemetery .

After her death, several institutions received donations from Annie Swan Coburn's fortune. The art collection was spread across three museums, with the majority going to the Art Institute of Chicago. The Smith College Museum of Art in Northampton (Massachusetts) and the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge (Massachusetts) received additional parts . In addition, these and other institutions received large amounts of money. These included the Field Museum of Natural History and Northwestern University in Chicago, the Brainerd Memorial Library in Haddam, Connecticut, and the Hampton Institute in Hampton (Virginia) .

Collection and foundation of Annie Swan Coburn

When she began collecting, Annie Swan Coburn bought pictures from American painters. Ten of these paintings were donated to the Smith College Museum of Art after her death. These include the two cityscapes Cab Stand at Night, Madison Square and Street Scene, Christmas Morn by Childe Hassam , the sea motif Beach Scene by Samuel S. Carr , the landscape landscape in Lyme, Connecticut from Wilson Irvine , the genre picture A Cobbler of Old Paris by Theodore Robinson and the portraits Little Chinese Girls of Leon Gaspard , A Cup of Tea by Charles Sprague Pearce and Lady with Cello by Thomas Dewing . Other works by American artists, especially watercolors and works on paper, came to the Art Institute of Chicago in memory of her mother as the Olivia Shaler Swan Memorial Collection . These include works by Frank Weston Benson , Edward Hopper , Frederick Carl Frieseke , Charles Demuth , Julian Alden Weir and John Singer Sargent . This foundation also included works by British artists such as Laura Knight and William Orpen .

The majority of the painting collection with works by European artists of the 19th century also came to the Art Institute of Chicago as the Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection . The focus of this collection is primarily on pictures from French Impressionism and Late Impressionism . The oldest picture of this group is the double portrait Two Lawyers by Honoré Daumier . There are two portraits of women by Édouard Manet , The Reading and Woman with Black Fichu . Manet's child portrait Le petit Lange , which is also part of the foundation , remained in the museum's possession for only a few years and was then sold. A short time later, the Art Institute of Chicago acquired Manet's Still Life with Fishes with funds from the Coburn Foundation . Three pictures by Edgar Degas came to the museum with the Coburn estate. In addition to the family portrait of Henri Degas and his niece Lucie Degas and the scene in a hat shop at the milliner , this includes the oil study Four Studies by a Jockey . The group with six landscapes by Claude Monet is also significant : Vétheuil , Walk over the Rocks of Pourville , Grainstack , The Beach at Sainte-Adresse , Venice, Palazzo Dario and the Japanese Bridge over the Water Lily Pond . By Pierre-Auguste Renoir portraits came with the COBRUN Collection Alfred Sisley , on the terrace and Young Woman sewing to the museum. From Renoir's late work, the painting Bathers could later be acquired with funds from the Coburn estate. Other important works from the collection of Annie Swan Coburn are the still life vase with tulips and the landscape painting View of Auvers-sur-Oise by Paul Cézanne , the painting The poet's garden by Vincent van Gogh and the urban motif Moulin de la Galette by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec . The portrait of Jeanne Wenz von Toulouse-Lautrec was later acquired for the Art Institute with funds from the Coburn Foundation.

  • Childe Hassam:
    Cab Stand at Night, Madison Square , 1891, Smith College Museum of Art

  • Édouard Manet:
    The Reading , 1878–79, Art Institute of Chicago

  • Claude Monet:
    The Beach at Sainte-Adresse , 1867

  • Pierre-Auguste Renoir:
    On the Terrace , 1881

  • Vincent van Gogh:
    The Poet's Garden , 1888

  • Paul Cézanne:
    Still Life, Tulips and Apples , 1890–1894, Art Institute of Chicago

The Art Institute of Chicago has occasionally sold works from the Coburn Foundation. This included, for example, the oil sketch Sur l'impériale traversant la Seine by Pablo Picasso from 1901, which was auctioned in 2011 at Christie's auction house. In contrast, there are numerous purchases made with funds from the Coburn Foundation. In addition to the works already mentioned, these include older paintings such as The Synagogue by Alessandro Magnasco , The White Tablecloth by Jean Siméon Chardin and La Rêveuse by Antoine Watteau . There are also works from the 19th century such as the two portraits of Dr. Joseph Klapp and Mrs. Klapp by Thomas Sully , Monte Pincio, Rome by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot , The Kitchen Boy by Théodule Ribot , The Bird Catcher by Thomas Couture or the beach scene Gathering Storm by Eugène Boudin . With funds from the Coburn Foundation, the museum also bought Impressionist paintings such as the Snowy landscapes near Louveciennes and The Banks of the Maren Marne in Winter by Camille Pissarro , the Portrait of a Girl with Cherries by Eva Gonzalès and the Mediterranean Arlésiennes by Paul Gauguin . A self-portrait by Lovis Corinth and the surrealist work The Plow and the Song by Arshile Gorky dates back to the 20th century . In addition, paintings by Gerhard Richter were acquired from the Coburn Foundation's purchase budget .

A small group of works by French painters was donated to the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge. These include the landscape painting Small Houses in Pontoise by Paul Cézanne , the portrait L'Homme Blond by Édouard Manet , the painting Customs House near Varengeville by Claude Monet , Chez la Modiste by Pierre-Auguste Renoir and the racetrack theme Aux Courses, Le Départ by Edgar Degas . There is also a drawing with the circus motif Trapeze Artist at the Medrano Circus by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec . A self-portrait with a bandaged ear in the style of Vincent van Gogh is no longer ascribed to the artist today.

literature

Web links

Commons : Annie Swan Coburn  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The exhibition was shown from April 6 to October 9, 1932 at the Art Institute of Chicago. See exhibition catalog.
personal data
SURNAME Coburn, Annie Swan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Coburn, Mrs. Lewis Larned
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American art collector and patron
DATE OF BIRTH April 16, 1856
PLACE OF BIRTH Fremont
DATE OF DEATH May 31, 1932
Place of death Chicago