Charles Demuth, Incense of a New Church, 1921, oil on canvas, Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio: Gift of Ferdinand Howald.
Dealers have the passion of collectors themselves. Jim, in selecting Charles Demuth’s Incense for a Modern Church (1921, oil on canvas, 26” by 20”), lauds the Columbus Museum of Art for leading the world in its collection of American Modernist artists, who were active from 1900 to the 1940s. This painting is one of the most significant works for Demuth (1883-1935).
The heart of the collection comes from Ferdinand Howald (1856-1934). Howald was a Columbus businessman who was able to retire in 1906 and began collecting art, often traveling between New York and Paris.
In 1916, at age 60, Howald began to collect in earnest, and he continued right up to his death in 1934. Eventually, his unprecedented collection included important groups of works by Demuth, Preston Dickinson, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Man Ray and Charles Sheeler. It also represented the work of Arthur Dove and other artists from the Alfred Stieglitz circle, William Glackens and George Luks of The Eight, independent modernists such as Samuel Halpert and William Zorach, and progressive realists, including Charles Burchfield, Rockwell Kent and Raphael Soyer.
“Howald collected contemporary artists who now are regarded as masters, and it was through his relationship with Columbus artist – and next door neighbor, in fact – Alice Schille that connections may have been made with such artists both here and abroad,” Jim says. “Just as Mary Cassatt advised the Havermeyers, whose collection would become one the highlights of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, and James Abbott McNeil Whistler’s relationship with Charles Lang Freer led to the Freer Gallery of Art on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., Howald’s collection and generous donation of funds helped the Columbus Museum of Art come to life.”
Rural America: Town and Country and The Paintings of Alan Gough and Willard Reader are on exhibit at Keny Galleries through July 30.
Nationally renowned local artist Michael McEwan teaches painting and drawing classes at his Clintonville area studio.
