The Stebbins Collection: A Gift for the Morse Museum

Regina Palm, PhD, is Curator of American Painting at The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art.

THE STEBBINS COLLECTION

Virginia M. G. Anderson, PhD, is Curator of American Art and Department Head of the American Painting & Sculpture and Decorative Arts department at the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Also available from GILES: BRITISH DRAWINGS The Cleveland Museum of Art Heather Lemonedes In association with the Cleveland Museum of Art

THE STEBBINS COLLECTION

A Gift for the Morse Museum Regina Palm With an essay by Virginia M. G. Anderson Foreword by Laurence J. Ruggiero The Stebbins Collection: A Gift for the Morse Museum introduces the formerly private collection of Dr. Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., and Susan Cragg Stebbins to the public, whilst simultaneously shining a light on The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art’s long-held collection of American art. Recently donated to the museum, the Stebbinses’ fascinating collection features 70 remarkable works of art by 53 American masters including Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Moran, Martin Johnson Heade, Thomas Eakins, Fidelia Bridges, and John La Farge. The works include paintings from the early nineteenth to the early twentieth century, works on paper, marble sculpture, and works in bronze.

Essays by Regina Palm and Virginia M. G. Anderson explore the life of Jeannette Genius McKean, who in 1942 founded the Morse Gallery of Art and played a considerable role as one of America’s great “matrons” of the arts, highlight the links between the Morse’s existing collection and the Stebbins gift, and discuss the Stebbinses’ significant contributions to art history and their role as collectors of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American art.

Palm

TAFT MUSEUM OF ART Highlights from the Collection Lynne D. Ambrosini Contributions by Ann M. Glasscock, Tamera Lenz Muente, and Angela Fuller In association with the Taft Museum of Art

THE STEBBINS COLLECTION

AMERICAN PAINTINGS IN THE BROOKLYN MUSEUM Artists Born by 1876 Teresa A. Carbone, Barbara Dayer Gallati, and Linda S. Ferber In association with the Brooklyn Museum

ISBN: 978-1-913875-04-6 Distributed in the USA and Canada by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution The Keg House 34 Thirteenth Avenue NE, Suite 101 Minneapolis, MN 55413-1007 USA www.cbsd.com GILES An imprint of D Giles Limited 66 High Street, Lewes BN7 1XG UK gilesltd.com

UK £45.00 / US $59.95 Front cover: George Cochran Lambdin (1830–96), Calla Lilies, 1874 (cat. 45, detail)

978-1-913875-04-6

A Gift for the Morse Museum

Back cover: Henry Roderick Newman (1843–1917), View of the Old Market, Florence, with the Campanile Behind, 1878 (cat. 48)

THE STEBBINS COLLECTION A Gift for the Morse Museum

Regina Palm With an essay by Virginia M. G. Anderson Foreword by Laurence J. Ruggiero

The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art in association with D Giles Limited

AN IMPORTANT COLLECTION ENRICHES THE MORSE Regina Palm

The collection of seventy works of American art formed by Susan Cragg and Theodore E. Stebbins adds significantly to The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art’s holdings, enriching key areas that were of interest to the Museum’s founder Jeannette Genius McKean (1909–89) and her husband, Hugh F. McKean (1908–95), while adding important new directions. Understandably, the focus of the Morse has been on the decorative arts and celebrating its definitive collection of the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848–1933): the extraordinary leaded-glass windows; the sumptuous lamps; the pottery, jewelry, and metalware; not to mention the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair Tiffany Chapel, a masterpiece by any standard—all contributing to the Morse’s preeminent strength in all things Tiffany. However, as the Museum’s benefactors, the McKeans, made clear, the Morse is “not just a Tiffany museum.”1 This declaration, which is at the heart of the Museum’s mission, is substantiated by the considerable collection of paintings and works on paper that the McKeans amassed during their lifetimes, and the gift of the Stebbins Collection enhances and builds upon that foundation.

While the McKeans together worked to establish what is now The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art, it was Jeannette Genius (fig. 1), prior to her marriage to Hugh F. McKean in 1945 (fig. 2), who founded the Morse Gallery of Art in 1942 on the campus of Rollins College in Winter Park (fig. 3).

Fig. 1 Jeannette Morse Genius McKean in 1959.

Photo: Jay Te Winburn

Cat. 59 (detail)

15

Cat. 26 (detail)

PLATES

JAMES H. CAFFERT Y (1819–69)

10 Citrus Fruits c. 1850s Oil on canvas 14 × 16 in. (35.6 × 40.6 cm) Signed lower right: “JHC” (monogram) Provenance: Hirschl & Adler, New York; Stebbins Collection, 1980 (2019-009:2)

James Cafferty was born in Albany, New York, one of seven children of a tailor and his wife. New York City directories for 1839–40 and 1840–41 list Cafferty as a sign painter, a common occupation taken up by budding artists seeking to earn a living. Records indicate that he enrolled at the National Academy of Design for the academic years 1841 and 1842.1 Starting in 1843, he exhibited at the National Academy every year until his death, with the exception of 1867, earning his status as a full academician in 1853.2 Cafferty’s early career was wide-ranging, from landscapes and genre scenes to portraiture and illustration. Although he established his reputation as a portrait painter, in his later years he began to devote himself to still lifes—a risky departure, as still lifes did not command the same lucrative prices as portraits. The crisp, confident rendering of Citrus Fruits along with its high-toned light and shadow presage the modernist still lifes of artists such as Charles Sheeler (1883–1965). The modelling of the rounded grapefruit, lemons, and yellowed limes is subtle but nuanced, the rise and fall of their undulating skins acutely captured through the light at left that envelops them until it is met at right by shadow.

The halved tangerine reveals internal segments held together by the fruit’s white pith, which the artist carefully recorded. In 1858, Cafferty exhibited a still life of a similar subject at the National Academy, a work simply titled Fruit.

While it was possible to acquire citrus in New York during Cafferty’s lifetime, much of the fruit that made its way to the eastern United States came from foreign locales like the Mediterranean and West Indies; the growing of citrus on a large commercial scale did not flourish in states such as Florida until the turn of the twentieth century.3 Thus, the citrus fruits seen here 60

would almost certainly have traveled across oceans and seas, making the likelihood of them arriving in such perfect, unblemished condition rare if not impossible. It is likely that Cafferty has taken artistic license in his rendering of the fruits in order to achieve a heightened realism.

Cafferty died at only fifty years old of what was described in his obituary as “dropsy,” more commonly known today as edema. No mention is made of his work in still life, but he is noted as having left behind “hundreds of portraits.”4 David Stewart Hull, James Henry Cafferty, N.A. (1819–1869) (New York: New-York Historical Society, 1986), 11.

2. Ibid., 12.

3. Louis W. Ziegler, Citrus Growing in Florida (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1975), 6.

4. “Obituary. James Henry Cafferty, N.A.,” New York Herald, September 8, 1869, 4.

1.

Cat. 10

James H. Cafferty (1819–69)

61

Cat. 36

Cat. 35 (detail)

John William Hill (1812–79)

113

Cat. 48

Cat. 48 (detail)

Henry Roderick Newman (1843–1917)

137

Regina Palm, PhD, is Curator of American Painting at The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art.

THE STEBBINS COLLECTION

Virginia M. G. Anderson, PhD, is Curator of American Art and Department Head of the American Painting & Sculpture and Decorative Arts department at the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Also available from GILES: BRITISH DRAWINGS The Cleveland Museum of Art Heather Lemonedes In association with the Cleveland Museum of Art

THE STEBBINS COLLECTION

A Gift for the Morse Museum Regina Palm With an essay by Virginia M. G. Anderson Foreword by Laurence J. Ruggiero The Stebbins Collection: A Gift for the Morse Museum introduces the formerly private collection of Dr. Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., and Susan Cragg Stebbins to the public, whilst simultaneously shining a light on The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art’s long-held collection of American art. Recently donated to the museum, the Stebbinses’ fascinating collection features 70 remarkable works of art by 53 American masters including Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Moran, Martin Johnson Heade, Thomas Eakins, Fidelia Bridges, and John La Farge. The works include paintings from the early nineteenth to the early twentieth century, works on paper, marble sculpture, and works in bronze.

Essays by Regina Palm and Virginia M. G. Anderson explore the life of Jeannette Genius McKean, who in 1942 founded the Morse Gallery of Art and played a considerable role as one of America’s great “matrons” of the arts, highlight the links between the Morse’s existing collection and the Stebbins gift, and discuss the Stebbinses’ significant contributions to art history and their role as collectors of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American art.

Palm

TAFT MUSEUM OF ART Highlights from the Collection Lynne D. Ambrosini Contributions by Ann M. Glasscock, Tamera Lenz Muente, and Angela Fuller In association with the Taft Museum of Art

THE STEBBINS COLLECTION

AMERICAN PAINTINGS IN THE BROOKLYN MUSEUM Artists Born by 1876 Teresa A. Carbone, Barbara Dayer Gallati, and Linda S. Ferber In association with the Brooklyn Museum

ISBN: 978-1-913875-04-6 Distributed in the USA and Canada by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution The Keg House 34 Thirteenth Avenue NE, Suite 101 Minneapolis, MN 55413-1007 USA www.cbsd.com GILES An imprint of D Giles Limited 66 High Street, Lewes BN7 1XG UK gilesltd.com

UK £45.00 / US $59.95 Front cover: George Cochran Lambdin (1830–96), Calla Lilies, 1874 (cat. 45, detail)

978-1-913875-04-6

A Gift for the Morse Museum

Back cover: Henry Roderick Newman (1843–1917), View of the Old Market, Florence, with the Campanile Behind, 1878 (cat. 48)