FEATURES ARCHIVE

One cannot fully appreciate the Brody collection without first considering the tremendous legacy of collecting which informs it. When Albert and Mary Lasker acquired two oil paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir in 1944, a commitment to collecting the finest examples of European art from the 19th and 20th Centuries was born. The Lasker Collection was built in a short eight year span, demonstrating a dedication to collecting and building a family tradition which is the foundation of the Brody Collection as it appears today.

It was Albert and Mary who suggested Frances and Sidney collect art, but it was Frances’s work as an advocate for the arts that provided the impetus. While working for the UCLA Arts Council, which she helped found in the 1950s, she fell in love with a Henry Moore sculpture. “Sid put it under the Christmas tree. And well, by then I guess we were hooked,” she told The New York Times in 1969.

Frances and Sidney had an appreciation for masterpieces of the Impressionist period but were true Modernists at heart. Their all-consuming immersion in the world of art was expressed vividly in their tour de force Modernist home. Commissioned in 1949 from the architect A. Quincy Jones and the interior designer Billy Haines when Frances and Sidney were just a young couple in their early thirties newly arrived in Los Angeles, the house combined two fashionable contemporary styles: California mid-century Modernist architecture and sophisticated Hollywood Moderne décor. The house is as much a revelation today as it was when it was built. As Sarah Medford has observed: “Among the young princes of film and fashion there is no hotter acquisition right now than a flat-roofed, steel-framed house sheathed in glass, and while many buyers want to retrofit these austere light boxes with Fifties-era George Nelson sofas and Eames recliners, a growing number of people are seeking out the more luxurious, high-style furniture of that time, especially ‘cocktail modern’ pieces custom-designed for Hollywood projects by Billy Haines and his contemporaries” (S. Medford, “A Modern Classic: Frances Brody’s Los Angeles House Exemplifies 1950s Era Architecture,” in Town and Country Magazine, 1 October 1999, p. 200).

Shortly after the house was completed, the Brodys had an idea for how to put the perfect finishing touch to their courtyard. In 1952 they commissioned Matisse to execute a massive ceramic-tile wall mural, one of few the artist ever made, and in 1953 they traveled to France to review his preliminary maquette. The story of Frances’s polite resistance to Matisse’s first cut-out design and how she persuaded the artist to provide alternatives is now legend. Frances and Sidney were already at this young age self-directed and confident in their taste. The final result, twelve feet long and eight feet high, is a masterful late work—multi-hued palm fronds with organic contours playfully rise and splay out from the lower center against a stark white background. The Matisse mural signaled the Brodys’ greater affinity for the art of their own century which would come to distinguish their collection. Of particular interest in this regard are those artists first collected by the Brodys, such as Pierre Bonnard, Jean Metzinger, and James Ensor. More striking even is the Brody devotion to sculpture which extends from early figurative works by Honoré Daumier and Edgar Degas, to bronze masterpieces by Alberto Giacometti and table-top pieces by Alexander Calder.

The Brodys’ interest in Contemporary art went hand-in-hand with their dedicated work as patrons of the arts. They were founding benefactors of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which opened in 1965. Frances was also extremely active on the UCLA Arts Council, where she served as President and where the Brodys donated the final maquette for Matisse’s La Gerbe. Under her leadership, the council mounted an exceptional exhibition of Picasso works to celebrate his 80th birthday in 1961. On this occasion, the Brodys lent Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, which was the last time in the past half-century when the work was on public view. In 1966, Frances was instrumental in organizing a Matisse retrospective at UCLA with an unprecedented volume of loans from the artist’s family, lauded by Los Angeles Times critic Henry J. Seldis as “one of the most ambitious exhibitions ever organized locally.” Sidney was also deeply involved in the cultural life of Los Angeles; he served as Trustee, President and then Board Chairman of LACMA, as well as participating in various other arts and medical organizations, and was ultimately appointed to the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities by President Reagan. The Brodys were nationally recognized as civic leaders in the Los Angeles area as well as pioneering collectors of Modern art.

The sale of select works from the Brody collection in 1977 was a notable event, comprising twenty-one works, a representative grouping spanning Impressionist and Modern art of all media. The Collection today is defined by those works the Brodys chose to keep in 1977 and which Frances was then left after Sidney’s passing in 1983. This grouping is the most emphatically Modern of the three generational incarnations and, therefore, also the most internally coherent.

The collection is emblematic of Frances Brody’s indomitable vitality. In Sidney’s absence, the art itself became her abiding companion. Still the avid civil servant, she continued her work with arts organizations and became increasingly involved with the Huntington Library, Arts Collections and Gardens in San Marino, California, which, because of Frances' passion and generosity, will receive a portion of the proceeds from this sale. Right until the end of her life Frances was overseeing the Huntington’s multimillion-dollar campaign to build a new botanical complex.

Frances’ favorite work, the Matisse mural La Gerbe, remained the perennial backdrop on the Los Angeles social horizon as Frances continued cheerfully entertaining her community. This work has been gifted to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art where it will be prominently displayed as an homage to Frances and Sidney, honoring their contributions to the arts community for generations to come.