Winterthur Museum and Country Estate

The museum building in April 2007

Winterthur Museum and Country Estate an American museum and estate in Winterthur , near Greenville , Delaware , that houses one of the most important collections of Americana in the United States . It was the former home of Henry Francis du Pont (1880–1969), a famous antiques collector and gardener. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on February 24, 1971 and was known until recently as the "Henry Francis DuPont Winterthur Museum".

In the early 20th century, HF du Pont and his father, Henry Algernon du Pont , designed Winterthur in the style of the European country houses of the 18th and 19th centuries. HF du Pont then expanded the property several times. This gave him the opportunity to move into a smaller house on the property when the main house was converted into a public museum.

Winterthur has an area of 4 km², with a 0.2 km² naturalistic garden. When it was still used as a country house, the area was 10 km².

Originally, du Pont was a collector of European arts and crafts. He was Electra Havemeyer Webb , later founder of the Shelburne Museum in Vermont , interested by the paintings of Charles Louis Heyde for American Art and American antiques. In 1929 he attracted worldwide attention when he bought a “Tambour Desk”, made by the Boston carpenter John Seymor, at the Parke-Bernet auction house for the then record amount for Americana of over $ 30,000. He later became an extremely prominent collector of American handicrafts. He expanded Winterthur to accommodate his collection, the laboratory for conservation work and administration.

There are 175 Period Rooms with approximately 85,000 items on display in the museum. Most of the exhibitions are open to the public in small guided tours. The collection spans more than two centuries of American decorative arts, particularly from 1640 to 1860, and it contains some of the most important pieces of American furniture and art. The Winterthur Library and Research Center owns more than 87,000 books and approximately 500,000 manuscripts and pictures, mostly from the fields of American history, handicrafts and architecture. The facility is also home to extensive conservation, research, and educational facilities.

The museum is also home to the Winterthur Program of Early American Culture and the Winterthur / University Delaware Art Conservation Program .

The Winterthur site

Stone house on the site of the museum

Main Museum (Period Rooms and Offices) 8,970 m²
The country house (HF du Pont's house after the museum opened) 1.980 m²
The galleries (3,300 m², 2,000 m²) exhibition space
Research building 6.340 m²
Visitor center 1.742 m²

credentials

John AH Sweeney, The Treasure House of Early American Rooms , WW Norton & Co, New York, ISBN 0-393-01601-3 .

Cooper, Wendy A., An American vision: Henry Francis du Pont's Winterthur Museum, Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2002.

Fleming, E. McClung (Edward McClung), Accent on artist and artisan: the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture., University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970

Bruce, Harold., The gardens of Winterthur in all seasons. Photos. by Gottlieb and Hilda Hampfler. Foreword by Henry Francis du Pont., New York, Viking Press [1968]

Eversmann, Pauline K., Guide to Winterthur Museum & Country Estate, Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, 2005.