Mercedes Santamarina

Mercedes Santamarina Gastañaga (born June 18, 1896 in Buenos Aires ; † May 23, 1972 ibid) was an Argentine art collector and patron . Much of her collection of 19th century paintings, furniture and handicrafts, which she gathered in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century, was donated to museums in Buenos Aires and Tandil while she was still alive .

family

The Santamarina family originally came from Spain, where Mercedes Santamarina's grandfather, Ramón Santamarina, was born in Ourense , Galicia, in 1827 . He lost his parents at an early age and came to Argentina at the age of 16 and settled in Tandil . Here he first worked as a cattle dealer and breeder. As an entrepreneur, he later belonged to the large landowners in the region and founded the company Santamarina e Hijos ( Santamarina and Sons ), which still exists today, in 1890 , which operates in the real estate business and to which industrial companies and banks belong. His son Ramón Santamarina Alduncin (1861-1909) later became president of the Banco de la Nación Argentina , the largest bank in Argentina. His marriage to María Sebastiana de Gastañaga Alduncin resulted in ten children, of which Mercedes Santamarina was born in 1896 as the sixth. The uncles of Mercedes Santamarina include Enrique Santamarina (1870-1937), who was Vice President of Argentina under José Evaristo Uriburu , and Jorge Alejandro Santamarina (1891-1953), who was also president of the Banco de la Nación Argentina and later Finance Minister of Argentina became. Another uncle, Antonio Santamarina Irasusta (1880–1974), was a senador (senator) in the Argentine National Congress and, like Mercedes Santamarina, an important art collector.

Collector and patron

As usual in the upper social class of Argentina at the beginning of the 20th century, Mercedes Santamarina learned the French language and visited France regularly. In Paris, in line with contemporary tastes, she acquired 18th century French furniture in the Louis-quinze and Louis-seize styles , European and Asian handicrafts and sculptures. She acquired French painting of the 19th century mostly through advice from Georges Viau in the art dealer Georges Petit . Together with her uncle Antonio Santamarina, she was one of the earliest collectors of Impressionist and Late Impressionist artists in South America and built up an important collection of sculptures by Auguste Rodin .

Auguste Rodin:
Head bust Honoré de Balzac

After most of the collection was acquired in Paris, Mercedes Santamarina later also bought individual pieces in the United States. During the Second World War in New York she acquired a picture by Edgar Degas with the motif of two dancers. In 1946, Mercedes Santamarina had part of their collection auctioned in Buenos Aires. The pieces up for auction included Les rosiers dans le jardin de Montgeron by Claude Monet and La Croix-blanche àm Saint Mammès by Alfred Sisley . In 1959 she presented her art collection to the public in an exhibition at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires, to which she donated parts of her collection for the first time in 1960. A second donation to this museum took place in 1970, which today shows the foundation in four halls as Colección Mercedes Santamarina in the permanent exhibition. On display here are the paintings Last Rays of the Sun by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot , Juliette Courbet at the age of 10 by Gustave Courbet , Still Life with Peaches and Cherries and a Portrait of a Woman by Pierre-Auguste Renoir , Le Pont de Argenteuil by Claude Monet, Effet de neige a Louveciennes by Alfred Sisley, one by Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Preparatifs de Ballet by Edgar Degas, of which the pastel paintings Danseuse en blanc and Deux danseuses jaunes et roses are also in the collection. There are also drawings, gouaches and watercolors by Paul Cézanne ( son of the artist , The fork in the road ), Eugène Delacroix ( Oriental characters ), Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec ( La Goulue et Paul Lescau ), Édouard Manet ( Annabel Lee on the beach ), Paul Gauguin ( The conversation ) and Marc Chagall ( The lovers ). Also on display are eleven sculptures by Auguste Rodin, including a head bust by Honoré de Balzac and a sculpture of a standing man from the group of figures The Citizens of Calais .

In 1971 Mercedes Santamarina, which had no descendants of her own, bequeathed further pieces from her collection to the Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes in Tandil. A hall named after her was inaugurated in 1973, one year after her death, in the Tandil Museum. The paintings she donated include a male portrait by Augustin Théodule Ribot , The Sleep and Head of a Child by Eugène Carrière , a Venice view by Félix Ziem , landscape with a cow and meadow by the sea by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot , dancers in blue by Jean- Louis Forain , fountain in Versailles by Gaston La Touche , carnival procession by Jean-François Raffaëlli , rocks in the forest of Fontainebleau by Narcisso Virgilio Díaz de la Peña and a portrait of the collector Mercedes Santamarina by Philip Alexius de László . In addition to French paintings and lithographs, you can see ancient Egyptian statuettes, Chinese porcelain from the Ming Dynasty , Qing Dynasty and Song Dynasty , valuable carpets, furniture and handicrafts from the 17th and 18th centuries.

literature

• Without author: Colección Mercedes Santamarina (exhibition catalog). Asociación Amigos del Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires 1959.
• Julio E. Payro: El Impresionismo Frances En Las Colecciones Argentinas . Lorenzo & Cia, Buenos Aires 1962.
• C. Lopez: Colecciones del Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes . Asociación Amigos del Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires 1971.
• Eduardo Guiborg: Tesoros del Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes . Grupo Julio Moyano Comunicaciones, Lima 2000, ISBN 987-985180-3 .

Web links

• Mercedes Santamarina collection in the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes
• Mercedes Santamarina collection in the Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes de Tandil