The art of rivalry: The Jules S. Bache collection, its formation and its donation to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1919–44

Abstract

Abstract In the years just before the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the American banker and philanthropist Jules S. Bache (1861–1944) built a collection of European paintings and decorative art which, in the 1930s, was located at a crossroads in collecting practices and museum growth in the United States. His offer of the collection as a gift to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, made in 1936 on condition that it be separately named and housed, was at first rejected. He next opened his home to the public as a museum, burnishing his holdings with frequent exhibitions and publicity. In 1943 the Second World War forced Bache’s museum to close but brought the collection on loan to the Met, which had put its own masterworks into protective storage. Acquisition of Bache’s collection was now ‘imperative’, and the parties agreed on terms. At his death he contributed fifty-eight paintings together with items of sculpture, Georgian silver, enamel work, porcelain, tapestry, and furniture. Their transfer to the Met illustrates the competitive forces – personal, financial, institutional and geopolitical – that brought private collections to public museums in the USA before and during the years of global war.