Audrey Jones Beck
Audrey Jones Beck (born March 27, 1924 in Houston , † August 22, 2003 in Houston) was an American art collector and patron . She financially supported various cultural institutions in her hometown for several decades. She donated her art collection with works by artists from Claude Monet to Wassily Kandinsky to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston , where they are shown in a building named after the collector.
Life
Audrey Jones was born in Houston in 1924 to Audrey and Tilford Jones. The family belonged to the wealthy upper class of the city. Her grandfather was the newspaper publisher Jesse H. Jones . He owned the Houston Chronicle and several Texas properties. He also held various positions in Washington, DC and was Secretary of Commerce of the United States under President Franklin D. Roosevelt . She spent part of her childhood with her grandparents in Washington and accompanied them on visits to the White House .
Until 1939 she attended the private school The Kinkaid School in Piney Point Village , then the Mount Vernon College for Women in Washington, DC and in 1940 moved to the University of Texas at Austin . A year later she met the navy pilot John Beck, whom she married in 1942. After the Second World War, the couple settled in Houston, where John Beck ran a trading company for construction machinery. Audrey Jones Beck was involved in a variety of social and cultural matters. She ran the Houston Endowment charity founded by her grandparents Jesse H. and Mary Gibbs Jones . She has also served on the boards of the Houston Grand Opera , the Houston Ballet , the Houston Symphony Orchestra and the Museum of Fine Arts.
Audrey Jones Beck, herself a hobby painter, began building up an art collection in the 1960s. She concentrated on works of impressionism and post-impressionism . In 1971 she donated a first painting to the Museum of Fine Arts, The Seine in Paris by Armand Guillaumin . Together with her husband, she started the John A. and Audrey Jones Beck Fund (since 1987 Audrey Jones Beck Fund ). With this foundation, the Museum of Fine Arts has a purchase budget specifically for Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings. The museum's acquisitions from this budget include, for example, the painting Terrace in the Garden at Wannsee to the Northwest by Max Liebermann . After the death of John A. Beck in 1973, the collector donated nine paintings to the Museum of Fine Arts and made further works on permanent loan. The constantly expanding collection has been on display in the museum as the John A. and Audrey Jones Beck Collection since 1974 and was later donated to the museum. It has been located in the Audrey Jones Beck Building , an extension of the museum built according to plans by the architect Rafael Moneo , since 2000 . The building, named after the collector and donor, was financed, among other things, by a donation of $ 20 million from the Houston Endowment organization, which she manages. Audrey Jones Beck died in her hometown of Houston in 2003.
Art collection
Audrey Jones Beck bought her first painting at the age of 16. During a stay in Paris in 1938 she acquired a landscape painting by Jean-Honoré Fragonard . When her collection focus changed after the Second World War, she gave this picture to a friend as a gift. The main focus of their collection, which was established mainly in the 1960s and 1970s, extends to works by mostly French artists from the period between 1860 and 1930.
One of the earliest works in the Beck Collection, shown today at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, is the painting Réunion d'avocats by Honoré Daumier . The painting from 1860 depicts a small group of lawyers in a manner typical of the artist. The forerunners of impressionism include works by Johan Barthold Jongkind , Eugène Boudin and Frédéric Bazille . The collector owned a Paysage Hollandaise from Jongkind, the beach scene Femmes de pêcheurs au board de la mer from Boudin and the garden painting Le petit jardinier from Bazille . The collection focuses on works of impressionism. Here you can find the landscape paintings La gardeuse d'oies à Montfoucault, gelée blanche by Camille Pissarro and L'inondation - Route de Saint-Germain by Alfred Sisley , the city view of La Seine à Paris by Armand Guillaumin and the illustration of Russian dancers in a landscape, Danseuses Russes by Edgar Degas . The collector owned one of his maritime motifs from Édouard Manet: Fisherman on the Sea . Water also plays a role in the two paintings by Claude Monet in the collection: Le moulin de l'Onbekende Gracht, Amsterdam from 1871 shows a typical canal view of the Dutch capital, while Le pont japonais à Giverny, from around 1922, shows the garden Monet's theme with the lily pond. In addition, there is the interior picture Mademoiselle Boissière tricotant by Gustave Caillebotte and the park view The Orange Trees . Further impressionistic pictures in the collection are the mother-child picture Susan consolant l'enfant by Mary Cassatt , the portrait of a reading girl La lecture by Pierre-Auguste Renoir and the garden view with the daughter of the artist La hotte by Berthe Morisot .
Frédéric Bazille:
Le petit jardinier ,
around 1866–1867
Claude Monet:
Le moulin de l'Onbekende Gracht, Amsterdam , 1871
Édouard Manet:
Fisherman at Sea , 1873
Gustave Caillebotte:
The Orange Trees , 1878
Among the works of the late Impressionism heard Vincent van Gogh's painting Les Rochers showing a rocky landscape near Arles. The landscape painting Au fond du ravin by Paul Cézanne was also created in southern France . By contrast, the collector owned a scene from Tahiti that was typical of Paul Gauguin . His painting Arearea II is also noticeable due to the unusual fan format . By Émile Bernard is found in the collection with Jeune fille bretonne a portrait of a girl. The interior picture À table chez M. et Mme. Natanson , in which he captures a dinner with friends, is rather unusual for Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec . Suzanne Valadon , for a time the mistress of Toulouse-Lautrec, is represented in the collection with a self-portrait . By her son Maurice Utrillo there with La maison de Mimi Pinson - Montmartre a street view of Paris, as frequently found in the work of the painter. Another view of Paris in the collection is La Tour Eiffel by Henri Rousseau . The picture shows an imaginary view of the Eiffel Tower at sunset.
Among the works shown today from the Beck Collection in the Museum of Fine Arts is a group of works from Pointillism . These include the Mediterranean landscape Le pin de Bonaventure à Saint-Tropez by Paul Signac and the Venice view Soleil couchant sur la Lagune (Venise) by Henri Edmond Cross . The garden painting La terrasse fleurie by the same artist can also be seen. There is also the painting Jeune femme se poudrant from the Beck collection by Georges Seurat , a portrait of Madeleine Knobloch, which is a preliminary study for the well-known version of the picture in the Courtauld Institute of Art in London . The collection also includes the portrait of a woman Jeune femme blonde au chignon by Belgian Théo van Rysselberghe .
Paul Cézanne:
Au fond du ravin , around 1879
Vincent van Gogh:
Les Rochers , 1888
Paul Gauguin:
Arearea II , around 1892–1895
Henri Rousseau:
Tour Eiffel , around 1898
Alexej von Jawlensky:
Female head , 1910
Another focus of the Beck Collection are works of Fauvism . These include landscapes such as La route tournant l'Estaque by André Derain , the beach scene La pasarelle de Saint-Adresse by Albert Marquet , Paysage de Valmondois by Maurice de Vlaminck , the port views Port Saint-Tropez, le 14 Julliet by Henri Manguin , La régate à Anvers by Othon Friesz and Les trois ombrelles by Raoul Dufy . De Vlaminck also has the nude Grand nu au divan . There are also the portraits of women Le Coquelicot by Kees van Dongen , Le portrait de Madame Valtat by Louis Valtat and Femme au manteau violet by Henri Matisse . Jean-Louis Forain is represented with the ballet scene L'admirateur . Le Canal Saint Martin by Georges Braque is also in the style of the Fauves .
There is still the cubist image of Barques de pêches by Braque . From Amedeo Modigliani , as a representative of the École de Paris , the collector acquired the painting Portrait de Léopold Zborowski - one of the numerous portraits of his friend. There were also pictures by the Nabis group , such as the interior Madame Hessel chez elle by Édouard Vuillard and the two works Toilette au bouquet rouge et jaune and Dans l'atelier du peintre by Pierre Bonnard . Other works from the 20th century are Vase de fleurs and Deux jeunes filles en fleurs by the symbolist Odilon Redon , Le poulet and Jeune fille à la poupée by Chaim Soutine and Les trois juges by Georges Rouault . There are also works such as Female Head by Alexej von Jawlensky , Sketch 160 A by Wassily Kandinsky , Moonrise - Soldat and Girl by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Le femme et les roses by Marc Chagall .
literature
- Audrey Jones Beck: The Collection of John A. and Audrey Jones Beck . Museum of Fine Arts, Houston 1998, ISBN 0-89090-088-4 .
Web links
- Short biography of Audrey Jones Beck at www.businessweek.com
- Jeannie Kever: Houston philanthropist Audrey Jones Beck dies. Article in the Houston Chronicle, Aug. 25, 2003.
- The John A. and Audrey Jones Beck Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Beck, Audrey Jones |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Jones, Audrey (maiden name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American art collector and patron |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 27, 1924 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Houston |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 22, 2003 |
| Place of death | Houston |