Incollect Magazine - Issue 3

Issue 3 118 www.incollect.com Leaving a Lasting Impression The story of Shelburne Museum’s Impressionist paintings collection is a generational one that ties the museum’s past to its present. In 1929, Mrs. Webb inherited many of her parents’ Impressionist paintings, including works by Claude Monet (Fig. 4), Edgar Degas, and Édouard Manet. Years later, Mrs. Webb was determined to bring her parents’ Impressionist collection to Shelburne Museum and planned to construct a new building to house the paintings and share them with others. One of her sons, James Watson Webb Jr., fulfilled his mother’s wish in a way that linked three generations of his family to their shared heritage of collecting and recognized its significance to the museum’s story. Following Mrs. Webb’s death in 1960, James became the museum’s president and oversaw construction of the new Electra Havemeyer Webb Memorial Building to display the Impressionist paintings. Watson recommended modeling the building’s interior after the rooms in his childhood home in New York City, where he and his four siblings — like their mother before them — had grown up surrounded by art. The Electra Havemeyer Webb Memorial Building is the only place in Vermont where visitors can find world-class Impressionist art on public display. Collecting with Purpose Just as Electra Havemeyer Webb’s parents collected French Impressionist paintings at a time when the works were not highly sought after on this side of the Atlantic, Mrs. Webb turned her attention to collecting 19th-century American paintings late in life at a time when few others were (Fig. 5). In the late 1950s, most collectors were investing in European modernism or abstract paintings. left Fig. 4: Claude Monet, Le pont, Amsterdam (The Drawbridge, Amsterdam), 1870–71. Oil on canvas, 21 x 25 in. Gift of the Electra Havemeyer Webb (Fund, Inc., 1972-69.5). below Fig. 5: John Frederick Peto, Ordinary Objects in the Artist’s Creative Mind, 1887. Oil on canvas, 56⅜ x 33¼ in. Museum purchase, acquired from Maxim Karolik.1959-265.33. Photography by Bruce Schwarz. facing page Fig. 6: Unidentified maker, Harvard Chest, 1700–25. Painted pine and brass, 44 x 38½ x 21 in. Gift of Katharine Prentis Murphy and Edmund Astley Prentis (1956-694.8). Photograph by J. David Bohl.