Jan de Graaff collector and Mondrian

The project, which was completed around 1942, was extraordinarily modern and adhered more to the international style than to local traditions. However, Elder de Graaff did not have the financial means of his son, so Bailey had to strive to find cheaper building systems. The de Graaff SR house was published in Interiors magazine in March 1945. In a letter sent to the magazine on January 6, 1945, Bailey described the elderly Dutch couple: “definitely left wing in all their thinking” - as requiring “simplicity in appearance,” “quality in material things” and opposed to “any inclination to decorate or to design for the sake of design.” As late as 1952, Bailey worked on the project for an expansion of Peggy and Jan de Graaff’s home in Sandy, a county in the west just outside Portland. Again in 1955 Bailey designed the de Graaff beach house at Three Rocks on the Pacific coast about 90 miles from Portland. Jan de Graaff’s house is still considered today a cornerstone of Portland architecture, however over the years and with some changes of ownership, it has undergone various “modernization” interventions that have upset its compositional grammar. While remaining a beautiful and technological house, it has lost that characteristic of “uniqueness” that distinguished it from the others, canceling the international style of modernist architecture imprinted by Richard Neutra. In particular, the inclusion of the sloping roof is like wearing a “coppola” on a wedding dress (23, 24). A complete restoration carried out in 2003 when the house was sold to Andy and Laura Ford. It was recently put up for sale for $ 3,750,000. (see note for photo 24)

23 - image from Oregon Historical Quarterly, Winter 2011, Vol 112, No. 4

24 - image from WEB As a collector de Graaff has put together a fair number of works, such as to be counted among “The Bisnessman and Picasso” article published in Fortune magazine June 1950 (this is the only article tracked that talks about de Graaff as a collector - Annex 5). The author writes: “Jan de Graaff… was brought up in the Netherlands, surrounded not only by the flowers his family had raised for over two centuries but by works of art. lt was natural, then, that when he came to the U.S. he brought with him a love and knowledge of painting and sculpture. His collection, however, is not of Old Masters but mostly of semi-abstract and abstract modern artists, and it is hung in his modern Neutra-designed hause in Portland”. Indeed, given also his main occupation, one could imagine that he had more easily collected some of Mondrian’s flowers (who knows if Mondrian used some of the flowers from the de Graaff family’s company in Holland as a model for his works). Among the artists in the de Graaff collection, the article does not mention Mondrian. However, he reports that the previous year (1949) many of the works in the collection were exhibited at the Portland Art Museum. The research revealed that in December 1949 an exhibition entitled “A Portland Private Art Collection” took place. By consulting the catalog, the last work is listed “29 - Composition - Piet Mondrian - Oil on canvas 40x40” (25 - Annex 6) The link with the photos found and the size of the painting confirm that it is (B313) Composition No. 4, 1938-42, with Red and Blue.

In order to obtain further confirmation, more in-depth research is underway at the Portland Art Museum. Unfortunately, at the moment, the archive is temporarily closed.

25

24 - Note

The controversial issue of adding the pitched roof can be justified by Portland’s northern climate. Over the years, the flat roof could probably have created major maintenance problems, which have been radically remedied by sacrificing the architectural image.

The exhibition at PAM was a muscular performance for Jan de Graaff, in fact all the works (29) in the catalog come from his collection. “The Private Art Collection listed within is the reflection of a thoughtful Portland couple’s comprehension of the meaning and importance of certain contemporary directions in art, and is their selection of artists’ works which give them pleasure end stimulation in their home. The works in the Collection range from the precise logic of Mondrian, through the expressionistic symbolism of David Smith, to the quiet charm of the little head by Monticelli. Private collections are of inestimable value to a community; in supplementing public collections they give background and intimacy to art. Since public collections are the reflection of the more perceptive taste of the community, the private collections are symptomatic of tho directions and future of the public treasure.” So writes Thomas Clyde Colt Jr. when he was director of the Museum.

Some of the works in the catalog were then donated to the Museum, such as the work of Theo van Doesburg, “L’Arbre”, and those of George L. K. Morris, Alfred Maurer, Georg Kolbe (most likely). Other works, not shown in this exhibition, were also donated by de Graaff to PAM, such as those by Charles Heaney, Louis Bunce, Jacob Lawrence and Alexander Calder, all of which are in the Museum’s collection. Regarding the works of Fernand Léger, the one indicated at No. 26, “Esquisse pour les Plangeurs”, is currently located at the Es Baluard Museu d’Art Contemporani de Palma, but it seems that they are not aware of this provenance. At Archives of American Art, in Jacques Seligmann & Co. records, there is a photo of this work (even if upside down) where on the back is written: “De Graaff, 26”x33, Portland Oregon “ (A, B, C). It can therefore be assumed that at least until the date of the Portland exhibition (late 1949) this work was in the de Graaff collection. The one indicated at No. 27, “Study for the Divers”, seems to have been purchased by Jan de Graaff at the end of 1944 from Curt Valentin through Jacques Seligmann & Co. (Archives of American Art, Jacques Seligmann & Co. records, 1904-1978, bulk 1913 -1974 - Box 29, Folder 17, de Graaff Jan, 1944). From the first searches this work seems to have disappeared. However, it is not clear whether the work cited in the letter, “The Divers, on Yellow Background”, is the same listing in the catalog as “Study for the Divers”. Or if “The Divers, on Yellow Background”, is the same listing in the catalog as “Esquisse pour les Plangeurs”. A more detailed analysis of the entire de Graaff collection, not just of the works in the catalog, is underway. In the de Graaff collection there were many other works, not mentioned in this text, found in other catalogs of other exhibitions. From a first analysis it seems that de Gaaff got rid of the entire collection during the 1950s.

A, B - Archives of American Art, Jacques Seligmann & Co. records, 1904-1978, bulk 1913 -1974 - Box 182, Folder 5: de Graaff, Jan, undated