AFA Summer 2021

2021 Antiques & Fine Art 71 1. Thanks to funding provided by the Henry Luce Foundation, the gallery records can be accessed on the website of the Archives of American Art, at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/downtown-gallery-records-6293. 2. Deborah M. Child, “Samuel Jordan: Artist, Thief, Villain,” Antiques & Fine Art magazine, Summer/Autumn 2009 issue (vol. IX, issue 5) 146–153. 3. Lindsay Pollock, The Girl with the Gallery and the Making of the Modern Art Market (Location? Public Affairs, 2007), 135–136. 4. Downtown Gallery records, 1824–1974, bulk 1926–1969. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Reel 5558, frame 504, 868-869. 5. For more information on Early American Old Spice products including their face powder see https://www.cosmeticsandskin.com/companies/shulton.php. An other advertisement found in the gallery files featured Milton W. Hopkin’s portrait of Agnes Frazee and Child (Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch) promoting General Food’s egg custard. Downtown Gallery records, 1824–1974, bulk 1926–1969. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Reel 5559, frame 102. 6. Downtown Gallery records, 1824–1974, bulk 1926–1969. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Reel 5559, frame 855-857 & frame 1083-1085. Purchase slip dated Oct. 17, 1947 Mr. Bradford Kelleher paid $55 for watercolor Schooldays by Elizabeth Andrews dated 1826 found in Long Island. Downtown Gallery records, 1824–1974, bulk 1926–1969. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Reel 5615, frame 691. 7. The gallery records note: “According to the previous owner, the Van Name family was among the early settlers of Staten Island where the painting was found. Sold to Garbisch in 1959.” Downtown Gallery records, 1824–1974, bulk 1926–1969. Archives of American Art, Reel 5558, frame 313, 314, 315. 8. For details of this portrait #1010a and that of her brother Boy in Rose Garden #1010b see Downtown Gallery records, 1824–1974, bulk 1926–1969. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Reel 5558, frames 327–331, 510–512. The sales slip, dated January 7, 1947, lists Halpert as the seller (inventory number 315) to the gallery, for $189. These were shown in a gallery exhibit of American Folk Art in 1949. Sold to Edgar William Garbisch in 1956, their current location is unknown. Downtown Gallery Records Reel 5558, frame 327–328, 510–512. 9. In an exhibit of folk art held at her premises on 32 East 51st St., Halpert specified “Exhibits not for sale except to museums.” Downtown Gallery records, 1824–1974, bulk 1926–1969. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Reel 5640, frame 807. Fig. 12: Gallery catalogue sheet, Girl in Garden, ca. 1828. Downtown Gallery records 1824–1974, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Reel 5558, frame 344. The notebooks also feature unique signed and dated works, such as an 1831 fireboard by decorative artist Jonathan Poor, acquired from the Isabel Carleton Wilde collection of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a watercolor by Elizabeth Andrews of Long Island, which could easily have been mistaken for a Eunice Pinney composition. 6 In some cases, the notebook entries may provide key details of provenance concerning a particular work of art as well as alert one to other works by an artist that have escaped critical notice. For Joshua Johnson (1765–1865), the first professional Black artist to work in the United States, there is a catalogue sheet for his Portrait of Emma van Name , circa 1805 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016.116). 7 Subsequent catalog sheets of a brother and sister, both set in a rose garden with butterflies, similar to Johnson’s In the Garden, that suggests they, too, are probably by his hand (Figs. 9, 10). Halpert is listed as having acquired them from a distinguished private collection in NY before selling the pair to the gallery, a good example of how discreet she could be when it came to protecting her sources. 8 Other entries provide intriguing, but ultimately unfounded, leads to authorship such as Girl in Garden , described as “signed lower right Athony [sic] Drexel, 1828.” The painting had been purchased at a Parke-Bernet auction in New York City on Feb. 18, 1938, and sold to JDR [Abby Aldrich, wife of John D. Rockefeller Jr.] the next day (Figs. 11, 12). In 1955, during conservation it was discovered that the inscription was a later addition; it was then removed. This artist has yet to be identified. Details of the gallery’s inventory are especially edifying as so much of it is now in our public institutions, where it is considered an integral component of our cultural heritage. This had been the gallery’s goal from the outset and the records donated to the Archives of American Art reveal how this came about. 9 Such was the quality of the gallery’s stock that when works by artists they once carried, such as Edward Hicks, Joseph H. Davis, and William Schimmel, do appear on the marketplace, they command some of the steepest prices. What a remarkable legacy for the first folk art gallery established in this country by two immigrants in the midst of the Great Depression. Deborah M. Child is an independent scholar and lecturer with a particular interest in folk art of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Samples of her publications can be viewed at www.deborahmchild.com . Th e author would like to thank Marisa Bourgoin, Head of References Services, Archives of American Art, for her assistance throughout the preparation of this article.