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Leaving an “Impression” on Art in America The Havemeyers of Greenwich By Anne W. Semmes / Images courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Greenwich Historical Society from artist friend, Mary Cassatt that she purchase the Edgar Degas pastel the “Ballet Rehearsal.” The year was 1877.
Louisine Waldron Elder Havemeyer and Henry Osborne Havemeyer in Paris
“It was so new and strange to me! I scarcely knew how to appreciate it, or whether I liked it or not,” is how 22-year-old Louisine Elder, destined to marry the Sugar King, Harry O. Havemeyer, reacted to the recommendation
Louisine’s purchase was made in Paris for $100, with a loan from her two sisters, making Louisine Degas’s first American patron. With the death of Louisine Havemeyer, age 74, (her husband died in 1907), came her bequest to the Metropolitan Museum of Art of the astounding 2,000 objects of art in the H. O. Havemeyer Collection. “One of the most magnificent gifts of works of art ever made to a museum by a single individual,” is how Laura Corey, a specialist in Impressionism, related the reaction of the director of the Met at that time. Corey, Research Associate in European Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, spoke recently before a Greenwich Art Society audience in Greenwich, former hometown of
the Havemeyers, to tell the story of “The Extraordinary Havemeyer Collection: from the Occident to the Orient and from Clouet to Cezanne.” “There are now over 4,000 objects in nearly every Department of the Metropolitan from the H.O. Havemeyer Collection,” said Corey, but what resonated was, “The Havemeyer Collection is known best for its Impressionist paintings.” That pioneer collection of French Impressionist paintings with Louisine’s early enthusiasm, mentored as she was by Paris-based Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt, would continue through the years Louisine and Harry Havemeyer lived in “Hilltop,”a house they built in 1890 atop Palmer Hill in Greenwich. The family divided their time between “Hilltop” and their New York home at 1 East 66th Street.
Edgar Degas, “Rehearsal of the Ballet” 1876 - The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York., H.O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929
