Maxim Karolik

Maxim Karolik (* 1893 in Akkerman , Bessarabia (today Bilhorod-Dnistrowskyj, Ukraine ), † December 20, 1963 in Newport , Rhode Island ) was a tenor , actor and well-known art collector . The art collections he and his wife brought together for the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston made a significant contribution to the understanding of 19th century American art.

Building the collection

Maxim Karolik trained as a tenor and actor in Odessa and emigrated to America in 1922, where he married Martha Codman in Boston in 1928 . Martha Codman was the heiress of the businessman Elias Hasket Derby (1739–1799) from Salem , who is considered the patron of the architect and woodcutter Samuel McIntire . As early as 1923 she had begun taking family items to the Museum of Fine Artsin Boston and based on this the couple began to build up a collection of American portrait paintings, furniture and decorative art from the late 18th century, which they donated to the museum in 1939. The collection included eight portraits and 19 drawings by John Singleton Copley and furniture by Edmund Townsend from Newport , Benjamin Randolph from Philadelphia and Derby furniture by Samuel McIntire and siblings John and Thomas Seymour from Boston.

In a subsequent second collection for the museum, the couple concentrated on American art from 1815 to 1865. Karolik also concentrated on relatively unknown artists such as Martin Johnson Heade and Fitz Hugh Lane , which made him known as a collector. He recognized the quality of artists such as James Goodwyn Clonney , Charles Deas , David Gilmour Blythe and George Cochran Lambdin , with whom he added to the collection of masterpieces by renowned and well-known artists such as Thomas Cole , Albert Bierstadt , Jasper Francis Cropsey and Asher Brown Durand . The complete collection comprised 232 paintings by 85 different artists and was donated to the museum in 1949, one year after Martha Karolik's death.

Karolik's third collection again focused on artists of the 19th century, but this time it was primarily intended to include drawings from academic art to folk art . In 1962 he also donated this collection to the Museum of Fine Arts.

Web links

• Richard H. Randall: Karolik, Maxim. Grove Art Online. Oxford University Press; http://www.groveart.com/ (registration required)

literature

• EJ Hipkiss: Eighteenth Century American Arts: The M. and M. Karolik Collections. Cambridge 1941.
• J. Baur: M. and M. Karolik Collection of American Paintings, 1815-1865, intro. Boston 1949.
• HP Rossiter: M. and M. Karolik Collection of American Water Colors and Drawings, 1800-1875. Boston 1962.
• JR Lane: Maxim Karolik: Benefactor to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston , Amer. A. Rev., ii / 1 (1975), pp. 103-113.