The Art Collection of Marshall Owen Roberts was a collection of sculptures, antiques and paintings owned by New York industrialist
Marshall Owen Roberts. The collection, which featured many prominent American artists and works, including
Emanuel Leutze's Washington Crossing the Delaware, remained intact following his 1880 death until it was auctioned off in 1897.
History
Roberts was a noted art collector and staunch supporter of American artists who never sold or exchanged a painting after he bought it.[1] He was considered the prototypical New York patron, like
Gilpin in Philadelphia and
Harrison Gray Otis in Boston.[2][3] He "made no pretensions to connoisseurship, but was guided in his purchases simply by fancy, or with a view to assisting some needy artist."[1] Roberts served on the
Metropolitan Museum of Art's Board of Trustees in 1870 and 1871,[1] and lent some of his paintings to the Metropolitan Fair Picture Gallery in 1864 held at the Fourteenth Street Armory.[4]
Roberts formed his collection of 335 paintings[5] at a time when the
Düsseldorf School of German genre paintings were the fashion and the canvases which told human stories were most worthy of attention.[6]
Roberts died on September 11, 1880, while in
Saratoga Springs, New York. The entire collection was left to his widow, the former Sarah Lawrence "Susan" Endicott. At the time of his death, it was reported that he had spent $600,000 (equivalent to $18,943,000 in 2023) on the collection which was then worth over $750,000 (equivalent to $23,679,000 in 2023).[1] In 1892, Susan remarried
Ralph Vivian of
Claverton Manor[25][26][27] They moved to London and the collection remained in the Fifth Avenue home, which remained unoccupied other than during the winter of 1893 to 1894 when
Cornelius and
Alice Gwynne Vanderbilt leased the mansion while they were expanded their
chateau at Fifth Avenue and
57th Street.[6]
In 1897, Susan hired Messrs. Ortgies & Co. of the Fifth Avenue Art Galleries, under the management of Samuel P. Avery, Jr., to auction off the entire collection.[6] The auction of the paintings took place at
Chickering Hall on the evenings of January 19, 20, and 21, 1897. The statuary, art objects, and other furnishings were auctioned off from the Fifth Avenue home on January 18 and 22.[6]
In total, $41,754 (equivalent to $1,529,000 in 2023) was received for the sale of 172 pictures, $8,764 during the first night's sale and $32,990 the following night at Chickering Hall.[7] The Roberts home on Fifth Avenue was sold and in July 1901, architect
Robert Maynicke filed plans for a new eleven-story building to be erected by Henry Corn on the site of the home.[28] The new building, extant today at 105 Fifth Avenue, was the original location of the
Barnes & Noble chain of bookstores from 1932 to 2014.[29]
^Roberts kept
Emanuel Leutze's Washington Crossing the Delaware, which he acquired the early 1860s, in a fixed frame which occupied the entire eastern wall of the gallery. It was noted in the catalog of the sale that the purchaser of the painting "will be obliged to remove it from its position in the gallery at his own risk and expense."[5] It was purchased by
John Stewart Kennedy for $16,100 (equivalent to $590,000 in 2023) who donated it to the
Metropolitan Museum of Art.[7]
^Frederick Stuart Church's Rainy Season in the Tropics sold for $1,550 (equivalent to $57,000 in 2023) to S.O. Wright & Co., presumably for a customer.[7]
^Régis François Gignoux's Hawk's Nest, West Virginia was considered by The New York Times in 1897 to be "the best landscape that Gignoux ever painted, and which, even with its defects and its indices of an art school long dead, can be studied with pleasure for its lovely light, good distance, and soft color."[5]
^John Frederick Kensett's 1863 Noon by the Sea Shore was a scene of the
cliff walk at
Newport, painted long before that walk had become the formal and aristocratic path that it became.[5] It was later owned by Samuel P. Avery, Jr.[14]