Rubens and the old masters at the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota

The interior sculpture garden at the Ringling Museum of Art

This art museum junkie paused in his recent tour of major league baseball stadiums in the South (see this post) to visit what was a brand-new museum for him: the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida.  This was, in fact, the first time we had ever been to Florida at all. 

We were delighted to learn that the man after whom the museum is named owned the Ringling Bros. Circus.   Sarasota was the circus’s winter home, which is why John Ringling built his home there.  He called his mansion “Ca d’Zan,” which of course reminded us of Citizen Kane and “Xanadu”. It was included with our admission, but we didn’t have time to see it.

The Ringling Museum of Art is only one of several fine structures on a large campus, all of which is (we were told by the loquacious ticket-seller) now owned by the State of Florida and managed by Florida State University.  Several buildings are devoted to circus history and circus artifacts, including Ringling’s private railway car, which is currently being restored in full view of visitors. (The railway car (above) is in the building pictured to the right; a friendly restorer working on the trim in the observation room seemed happy to talk to us about it when we stuck in our heads.) This is surely the only place in the world where one can view masterpieces of art in proximity to circus memorabilia.

The side of the art museum building is visible across the bridge.

A lot of retirees in Sarasota seem to have volunteered at the Ringling Museum.  At any rate, we ran into them everywhere — smiling, cordial, and helpful, usually without waiting to be asked. After seeing the circus memorabilia, we found our way through the gardens and across the pond to the art museum building, which, we learned, was designed to resemble the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. It’s been open since 1931.

At the left in this gallery are portraits of Austrian Emperor Francis I and his wife, the Empress Maria-Theresa, painted around 1750 by the Swedish artist Martin van Meytens II

This building holds John Ringling’s personal art collection, as bequeathed to the museum, with a few additions over the years. We couldn’t help wondering whether Ringling personally sought out and selected works of art for his collection, or whether he relied on art advisors. In any case, he assembled a remarkably large collection.

We couldn’t help drawing a contrast with the Frick Collection, in New York City, which contains the art collection of the late Pittsburgh industrialist, and with which we are on intimate terms. Like Mr. Ringling, Mr. Frick concentrated almost entirely on the old masters. Our understanding is that Mr. Frick was very much a hands-on collector with definite tastes and affinities, who acquired new paintings very deliberately and did not keep works that did not give him lasting pleasure and satisfaction.  A regular visitor to the Frick Collection feels that he has come to know Mr. Frick through his tastes in art.

But one doesn’t get the same sense at the Ringling Museum. The collection is much larger, of course. But it also seems more indiscriminate, as if Mr. Ringling had simply commissioned someone to collect as many of the old masters as possible. For us, Mr. Ringling’s personality didn’t emerge from his collection.

Still, the Ringling has a great deal of marvelous art that is well worth going out of one’s way to see. Among the most striking are a number of major works by Peter Paul Rubens.  The Ringling Museum not only has several very fine paintings of normal size by Rubens, like “The Departure of Lot and His Family from Sodom” (above), but also, in a large special gallery, a set of half a dozen enormous canvases on Biblical themes collectively entitled “The Triumph of the Eucharist.”  These deserved much more time than we had to spend.

Mr. Frick did not collect Rubens at all — in fact, he and Mr. Ringling didn’t collect many of the same artists.  Both collectors acquired notable portraits of King Philip IV of Spain by Velasquez, but while Mr. Frick never obtained a Poussin, Mr. Ringling acquired two. The collection includes quite a few paintings by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French and Italian artists that we did not know, not all of which seemed especially interesting. But we enjoyed first-rate works by Cranach the Elder, El Greco, Murillo, Veronese, Henry Raeburn, and Joseph Wright of Derby, and we especially liked a painting by Anton Raphael Mengs entitled “The Dream of Joseph.”

The Ringling Museum has a few European and American paintings from the nineteenth century and the first part of the twentieth. Mr. Ringling clearly had no interest in abstract art or in art of his own country.  But the Ringling Museum does have a major early work by one of our favorite American artists, the regionalist Reginald Marsh, entitled “Wonderland Circus, Sideshow Coney Island 1930.”  No doubt Mr. Ringling the circus man was attracted by the painting’s theme.

After coming home, we found an article on the internet in the St. Petersburg Times suggesting that the Ringling Museum is experiencing funding difficulties because of the State of Florida (and FSU’s) financial problems.  The museum seems to be well managed, well attended, and well supported by the locals; it’s absurd that anyone should think of closing it.

Some modest suggestions for Rochester’s Memorial Art Gallery

When you visit an art museum, do you ever find yourselves mentally relocating one of its Cezannes or Rembrandts to the walls of your own home? This weekend in New York City, Emsworth was thinking, instead, that certain paintings might improve the galleries of his hometown art museum, Rochester’s Memorial Art Galley.

Money permitting, of course. In New York City for the weekend, we found ourselves vainly resisting the vices of envy and covetousness at Sotheby’s, the formidable art auction house. It is one of the great tragedies of Emsworth’s life that he was blessed with the ability to appreciate fine art, but denied the wealth to acquire it.

Sotheby’s occupies a ten-story building in Manhattan’s upper West Side, at the corner of York Avenue and East 72nd Street. It is unfortunately many blocks from any subway station — but, we suppose, people with enough money to be serious art collectors would never take the subway anyway. We took the elevator up to the 7th floor and wandered into a live auction of antique furniture.

We were fascinated. Instead of having assistants bring the pieces out and hold them high while they’re hammered down, Sotheby’s displays the lots on a large videoscreen. The auctions go quickly. Banks of drones sat at phones putting in bids for customers in London and Dubai, we imagined. Occasionally somebody in the crowd (several hundred people) would hold up his sign to bid. We arrived just in time to see an antique chest of drawers go for $1.5 million.

We had never visited Sotheby’s (or Christie’s) before, and an exhibition entitled “Important Old Master Paintings and Sculpture,” consisting of art to be auctioned off this Thursday, January 29, gave us a pretext. And we have good news! The collection of European art at our own Memorial Art Gallery could be dramatically improved with just a few successful bids on paintings at this auction! Herewith our urgent recommendations:

1. Joseph M. W. Turner, The Temple of Jupiter Panellenius Restored. Let’s cut to the chase: the MAG should go for broke and buy this Turner. It will be the focal point of the auction, and it won’t be cheap — Sotheby’s expects the bidding to go to at least $10 million.

But it’d be worth it. Turner is conspicuously missing from the MAG’s collection; the MAG has only a Turner watercolor (which we’ve hardly ever seen). This gracious classical scene, nearly six feet wide, is mercifully free of the oppressive orange that dominates so many Turner landscapes, and it’s in excellent condition. The Temple of Jupiter Panellenius Restored would instantly become the highlight of the MAG’s collection.

2. John Singleton Copley, John Wombwell with a Grey Hunter. My fellow Rochesterians, aren’t you tired of Copley’s unfinished portrait of Nathaniel Hurd? Don’t you feel sorry for the docents who have to explain why we have an unfinished painting in our museum? Don’t you resent the Cleveland Museum of Art for having the finished version of Hurd’s portrait?

The unfortunate Nathaniel Hurd

Let’s put Nathaniel Hurd out to pasture. The kids will find this portrait of a English gentlemen with his horse a lot more interesting. And the price for this Copley will be a relief, especially after the MAG (or some philanthropic angel) drops all that swag on the Turner. Sotheby’s doesn’t expect to get more than $30,000 for John Wombwell.

3. Cranach, Old Man Beguiled by Courtesans. There’s no Cranach at the MAG, a gaping hole in its collection. In fact, the MAG has precious little by any German artists. (See this post by Emsworth on the MAG’s fine painting by German expressionist George Grosz.)

Here we were indecisive. Should we recommend that the MAG bid on Old Man Beguiled by Courtesans, this lively genre painting? Or should it go for Lucretia, the striking Cranach painting toward the top of this post? (Sotheby’s estimates that both will go for about $1 million.) In favor of the suicidal, bare-breasted Lucretia is the fact that the MAG could kill two birds with one stone: Lucretia represents a collaboration between Lucas Cranach the Elder and Lucas Cranach the Younger. On balance, however, we think Old Man Beguiled by Courtesans, painted by Cranach the Younger in the early 1600s, has more narrative interest.

4. Jan Steen, A Village Wedding and The Doctor’s Visit. Yes, we know, the MAG already has a picture by Steen. But why not more? We love Dutch genre paintings, and these two, together with the MAG’s The Pancake Woman, would make for a nice group. The Doctor’s Visit, shown at the very top of this post, is full of double entendres and symbolism and is in prime condition. A Village Wedding has perhaps darkened over the years, but this large party scene is fraught with interest. Let’s get them both!

5. Maerten Ryckaert, River Landscape with Flight into Egypt. This marvelous picture just slays us. None of the Dutch painters ever went to Palestine, so their paintings of Biblical scenes show people with Dutch features in Dutch garb, and landscapes with Low Country topography.

Here, the Antwerp master Maerten Ryckaert, one of van Dyke’s colleagues, shows the Dutchman Joseph, his good wife Mary, baby Jesus, and their donkey being ferried down a Dutch canal, alongside of which we see a charming Dutch town and a castle featured in the landscape. The colors are precious. It’s a relatively large canvas (28 x 38 inches), and the MAG has nothing like it. Sotheby’s doesn’t expect the bidding to go beyond $500,000. If it were up to us, we’d snap it up.

Hals's most famous portrait, "The Laughing Cavalier," belongs to the Wallace Collection, in London, and is not a candidate for acquisition by the MAG

6. Franz Hals, Portrait of a Man and Portrait of a Woman. Heck, let’s blow the budget. Two of the sharpest pictures on the block at Sotheby’s are a pair of portraits by Franz Hals, being auctioned off together. If the MAG is the high bidder on all these Dutch masterpieces, we’ll will have the finest collection of old Dutch masters between New York and Chicago.

Unfortunately, we have no image of these Hals pictures to show. But take our word for it: they are highly polished, penetrating character studies of a man and his wife. Both are in formal dress, as in other Dutch portraits from the first part of the 17th century. Sotheby’s expects to get up to $20 million for the pair.

7. Guercino, St. Peter Penitent. The 17th-century Italian master Guercino has become a favorite of Emsworth’s over the last five years. Suffice it to say that he is not represented at the MAG. This may not be be one of Guercino’s major works, but the quality is high, and St. Peter’s tear is real.

8. Claude Lorrain, An Evening Landscape with Mercury and Battus. Over the past few years, our appreciation for the two great 17th-century French masters Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain has grown enormously. Regrettably, the MAG has nothing by either. This lyrical landscape by Claude, painted in 1654, would fill an enormous gap. If the MAG could acquire just one of the works that Sotheby’s will auction off on Thursday, this would be Emsworth’s choice.

We don’t mean to find fault with Tom Golisano; he’s been extremely generous to the Rochester community. But unless Sotheby’s has seriously underestimated the market, these impressive Old Masters could be had, and the MAG’s collection could be dramatically improved, for considerably under $50 million — which is a lot less than Golisano blew on his most recent, futile attempt to be elected governor!