Brooks exhibit remembers scandal of 1943

Courtesy Memphis Brooks Museum of Art

Winslow Homer’s “Reading by the Brook” is among highly the regarded paintings that the City of Memphis purchased for Brooks Memorial Art Gallery in 1943.

Did the Brooks get fleeced in 1943?

That year, Brooks Memorial Art Gallery -- now Memphis Brooks Museum of Art -- was 27 years old. It owned a small collection of paintings housed in a compact and beautiful white marble neoclassical building -- often referred to as the jewel box of Overton Park -- designed by New York architect James Gamble Rogers, who also designed the Shelby County Courthouse.

Mayor Walter Chandler (1887-1967), a former state legislator and U.S. representative, was a supporter of the Brooks, and he and Park Commission chairman John B. Vesey saw an opportunity to expand the museum's scope and its reputation when the collection of Warner S. McCall of St. Louis came up for sale. McCall (1873-1961), a public utilities developer, was former president of the Central Power and Light Co. of St. Louis and a man accustomed to the finer things in life; he and his wife collected in a wide range of fields, including tapestries and jewelry, and their home was well-appointed with treasures, primarily European.

Anthony van Dyck's "Portrait of Queen Henrietta Maria" is among works featured in "Art and Scandal: The McCall Purchase."

Peter Paul Rubens' "Portrait of a Lady" (c. 1600) is among paintings in the McCall Purchase that are considered authentic.

Chandler and Vesey spent $25,000 of public money on McCall's collection of 38 "Old Master" paintings. While $25,000 might buy a square-inch of a famous painting that came to auction today, in 1943, especially when the country was at war, it was considered an outlandish sum.

All of the works, in one form or another, can be seen in "Art and Scandal: The McCall Purchase," on view at the Brooks through May 13. The exhibition was organized by Stanton Thomas, the museum's curator of European and decorative art.

"When I came to the Brooks seven years ago," Thomas said, "I kept noticing these labels that said, 'Memphis Park Commission Purchase, 1943,' and I thought it was odd. When I learned about the McCall collection, I thought it would be interesting to show the works together, though the idea came to fruition only last year because of other priorities."

Unfortunately, the McCall collection came to Memphis bearing heavy baggage, though the purchase brought to the Brooks such highly regarded paintings as Anthony van Dyck's "Portrait of Queen Henrietta Maria" (c. 1690-1700); Peter Lely's "Portrait of Ann Popham, Lady Ashe" (c. 1675); Winslow Homer's charming and tranquil "Reading by the Brook" (1879); Rubens' "Portrait of a Lady" (c. 1600); Ralph Blakelock's "Indian Encampment" (c. 1890); "The Roman Campagna" (c. 1870-72) by George Inness; and Henry Raeburn's "Portrait of Charles Gordon, Fourth Earl of Aboyne" (c. 1785). The museum justly displays these works proudly as part of its permanent collection.

On the other hand, of the 38 paintings in the McCall Purchase, 22 now carry, instead of an authentic artist's name, such rubrics as "unknown," "imitator of," "follower of," "attributed to," "studio of" and "possibly by." In addition, a significant number of the works were either in bad shape, woefully conserved or outright damaged. Because of these condition issues, the Brooks "deaccessioned" -- sold -- 15 of the McCall pieces in the 1950s and '60s and again in the 1980s. According to the guidelines of the American Association of Museums, funds raised by deaccessioning may be used only to purchase other works of art and must not go into an institution's operating fund.

Even the connection between Memphis and St. Louis seemed rather suspect. Vesey and Chandler were told that the McCall collection had become available by local wrestling promoter Charlie Rentrop, who had business in both cities. The fact that McCall had previously tried to sell the collection in New York and was practically laughed out of town by critics, scholars and journalists, who asserted that many of the works were not only misattributed but fake, also cast a taint on the transaction.

All of these factors were gleefully jumped on by the press in Memphis and elsewhere.

Time magazine, in a brief story dated March 6, 1944, said, "The city of Memphis has been stung." In an editorial titled "The Wrong Pictures, Even If Good" (Feb. 14, 1944), the Memphis Press-Scimitar intoned: "(We) would question the judgment of the City Administration in purchasing that kind of collection, even if the pieces were both authentic and valuable." And the Press-Scimitar's reporter Helen Warden, in a story published on April 21, 1944, quoted unnamed "connoisseurs" as saying that the McCall Purchase was "the most notorious lot of second-hand art ever unloaded on a museum."

"Art and Scandal" doesn't neglect any of the controversial or negative aspects of the McCall Purchase; rather it examines the works -- deaccessioned pieces represented by photographs -- from the standpoint of the museum's history, the nature of authenticating and affirming the authorship of works of art, the value that even second-tier (or worse) works of art can have for scholarship, and the way in which the acquisition of the genuine masterpieces in the purchase opened the doors for the eventual donation of 32 works from the magnificent collection of Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque paintings assembled by S. H. Kress, who established his first department store in Memphis in 1896.

"That sense of legitimacy was important for a young institution," Thomas said. "There were dividends. People came to see these paintings, and the purchase set up a pattern of buying."

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'Art and Scandal: The McCall Purchase'

At Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, 1934 Poplar in Overton Park, through May 13. Call (901) 544-6200, or visit brooksmuseum.org

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