Eugene V. Thaw was born in Manhattan in 1927 and named after the Socialist icon, Eugene V. Debs. As the child of a heating contractor and schoolteacher, there was little in his early years to indicate or encourage an interest in art. But with classes at the Art Students League while a teenager, and trips to museums in Washington, D.C. when he was a student at nearby St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, a spark was lit that would not only transform his life, but also the lives of so many collectors, and museums with which he worked.Thaw’s ascendency occurred before art fairs littered the calendar, before gallery districts in every city were the norm, before artists exhibited their works on Instagram. Thaw had a commercial space at the start of his career. At the Algonquin he exhibited mostly living artists – he had the first exhibition of works by Joan Mitchell, and other Abstract Expressionist artists – but Thaw’s attention, and true passion, kept turning back to the Old Masters. A few years later, Thaw moved the gallery to Madison Avenue between 57th and 58th, and began trading in the secondary market for 20th Century artists, while making finds in the Old Masters field. In the 1960s, he moved to a new space at 50 East 78th while continuing to find Old Masters, often in partnership with other dealers to buy and sell, and saw clients only by appointment.By the time the Thaws moved to 726 Park Avenue – which became both their home and professional space for the rest of their lives, Thaw had stopped producing exhibitions, and was dealing almost exclusively and privately with museums and private collectors. The space, like every previous one, was put together by the Thaws for the most part without the help of an interior designer. Visitors would have been enveloped in an interior that was inviting, eclectic and deeply personal, for in addition to being an art dealer, Thaw was becoming a collector as well. As Thaw’s business grew so did his interest in varied categories of collecting. Encouraged by his wife Clare, who was his former gallery assistant, Thaw has been acquiring works that he particularly liked.Thaw’s activities in the art world were divided into three categories – works he acquired (often in partnership with other dealers) and sold to private and institutional clients; works acquired for his own collections; and works from his own collection that he donated to several U.S. museums. The Thaws’ personal collections were extraordinarily varied. In addition to the over 400 drawings from Old Masters to the 20th Century that were donated to the Morgan Library beginning in 1968 and through to 2018, Thaw collected in depth 18th Century French faience, bronzes from the ancient Eurasian steppes, medieval European ornaments, Native American art, 19th Century European oil sketches, and architectural models. Their collecting activities were inextricably intertwined with his philanthropy. Many of these collections were amassed with an eye towards filling gaps in public collections to which they were later donated. In addition to the Morgan Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cooper Hewitt in New York City, and the Fenimore Museum in Cooperstown, New York (near his country retreat in Cherry Valley) were all beneficiaries of the Thaws’ largesse. An additional aspect of the Thaws’ philanthropy was the establishment of two Trusts to support various causes. In 1981 the Thaws established the Eugene V. and Clare E. Charitable Trust in order to support the arts, ecology and the environment, and animal rights and protection. The Thaw Charitable Trust continues to award grants, including to many of the same institutions that the Thaws made donations to in the form of works of art from their personal collection. For example, the Trust endowed curatorial positions at the Morgan Library and Fenimore Art Museum, museums which received the Thaws’ Old Master Drawings, and Native American art collection, respectively. As the executor of the estate of Lee Krasner, the Abstract Expressionist artist and widow of Jackson Pollock, Thaw helped establish the Pollock-Krasner Foundation a year after Krasner’s death in 1984, in order to support living artists. Thaw, who was co-author of the Pollock catalogue raisonné and a neighbour of Krasner’s in East Hampton, created the foundation to carry out Krasner’s wishes. The Foundation has awarded over 4,400 grants totalling over $71 million to artists in 77 countries.As the art world changed in the final decades of Thaw’s life, he, for the most part, ceased his dealing activities. His decision to not exhibit publically or advertise, to keep little inventory and instead placing great works with targeted precision in public and private collections, to focus on an artist or period in depth was, he felt, taken over by a high-speed commercialism that did not suit him. Having achieved great financial success thanks to his activities as an art dealer, he turned almost full-time to philanthropy. Thaw’s legacy continues in the many museums throughout the United States which include works that passed through his hands – both as a dealer or from his personal collection, as well as through the generosity of the Eugene V. and Clare E. Charitable Trust.Christie’s sale of Property from the Estate of Eugene V. Thaw offers a glimpse into the Thaws’ very personal way of living, insight into a way of art dealing which hardly exists anymore today, and the indelible mark a confident and informed eye can make on both.By Jennifer Wright Eugene Victor ThawThe first time I met Gene was in London in the late 1960s, instructed to show him some choice Old Master pictures ahead of a summer sale in what Christie’s called the Special Viewing Room. He would have been only in his early forties, but had already established an eminent reputation as a picture dealer, beginning with contemporary and modern works but expanding his range into distinguished Old Masters. His style was unobtrusive, but authoritative. He was accompanied by Rudolf Heinemann, a famous connoisseur in this field, many years his senior, just one of several experienced dealers with whom Gene established cordial relations and was happy to work with. Gene was a man who preferred others to find the pictures which he then was a master at selling, counting the leading collectors of the day, such as Norton Simon and Paul Mellon, and many of the major museums among his customers. He was persuasive, honest and where necessary tough.Heinemann was devoted to the Morgan Library and with Janos Scholz played an important role in fostering Gene’s early interest in Old Master Drawings and in that venerable institution. Shortly before his death, Heinemann announced that the beautiful collection of Tiepolo drawings he had assembled with his wife Lore would go to the Morgan Library, and again in 1974 Gene’s great friend and drawings mentor, Janos Scholz, revealed his own plan to give his very different collection of some 1500 largely 16th Century Italian sheets to the Morgan. These acts of munificence seem to have inspired Gene and his wife Clare, who from the start had encouraged him in collecting drawings, to make the Morgan likewise their beneficiary, and in effect their partner in this lifelong pursuit. As a result the Morgan’s collection has been enriched by more than four hundred sheets of remarkable quality extending in date from the late 15th to the 20th Centuries, as commemorated by the spectacular exhibition which opened in October of last year, and happily Gene lived to see. In addition the study and care and public exhibition of the entire drawings collection have been greatly facilitated by the gifts of the Clare Eddy Thaw Gallery and the superbly equipped Thaw Conservation Gallery.It seems likely that Gene Thaw will be most remembered not so much for his brilliant success as a dealer but for the flair and taste with which he and Clare assembled their various collections, extending from drawings to Native American art, to romantic oil sketches, to bronzes from the Eurasian Steppes, to early medieval personal ornament, to staircase models, and then proceeded to present them to different museums and an appreciative public. They would surely have preferred it that way.There was nothing ostentatious about their generosity. They rather shunned the limelight. Gene’s occasional writings, mostly about the ‘art world’ and its vagaries, and his approach to collecting, should be sought out and savoured. I particularly remember an ironic article in the London Times hailing the opening of the greatly extended shop in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, which he claimed was offering so extended a range of artefacts as to spare the visitor the effort of penetrating the museum itself.I also remember visits to the elegant premises on Park Avenue, week-ends at Sante Fe, scene of their beloved opera, and encounters in London, on one of which I could show him the ravishing Samuel Palmer watercolour of Trees in Lullingstone Park: he had to buy it and he did. That was in 2000. In 1980 in the Hatvany sale I had knocked down to him the Mantegna Three Saints of c. 1450, probably the earliest drawing in the collection, and my personal favourite, but saw him frustrated at the 1984 Chatsworth sale when he underbid Holbein’s Portrait of a Scholar, and the Rembrandt landscapes also eluded him. He was able to catch one of the finest of these a few years later.Gene’s integrity led to frequent appointments as Executor for important estates. One of them was that of our mutual friend Lore Heinemann, widow of Rudolf, and it was a pleasure to work with him on the quite complicated ramifications of her Will which included bequests to several museums. There were plenty of opportunities for him to deploy his quiet humour and shrewd common sense. And having always admired Philip Koninck’s ‘flat landscapes’ in the spirit of Rembrandt, he bought Lore’s own fine drawing at the subsequent auction.Like all true collectors, Gene had his preferences. He was attracted to finished drawings more than to the rapid sketch and he had little interest in the heavier manifestations of Italian baroque, while the Italian Renaissance is only lightly represented. Indeed his is the opposite of a representative collection. He liked assembling groups of drawings by his favourite artists. If an artist did not appeal to him, or he was not offered a fine example, he abstained. The resulting assembly was designed to transform the holdings at the Morgan, and it has.For a much more detailed account of Gene’s life as dealer and collector and philanthropist I should refer the reader to Jennifer Tonkovich’s admirable introduction to the recent Morgan catalogue.The sale which we are honoured to present here will, of course, be of great interest, and not only to Gene and Clare’s legion of friends and admirers, but will also serve to illuminate the long life they spent together, extraordinary for its variety of shared enthusiasms and achievements.It has been a pleasure and a privilege to know them.By Noël Annesley

AN AMERICAN MAHOGANY, WALNUT AND MAPLE ARCHITECTURAL MODEL

CIRCA 1896

Details

AN AMERICAN MAHOGANY, WALNUT AND MAPLE ARCHITECTURAL MODEL
CIRCA 1896
In a contemporary glass case, dated 1896 to the fretwork
31 in. (79 cm.) high, overall

Provenance

Acquired from Cove Landing, New York, 2014.

Lot Essay

This lot and the following lots are the remaining parts of an extraordinary collection of historic staircase models assembled by Mr. and Mrs. Thaw and gifted to The Cooper Hewitt museum in 2007. Originally created to test design theory, these models now serve as compelling examples of architectural design and craftsmanship.
By repute, this example was made by Andrew Dawes of Marlborough, Massachusetts and descended through his family.

More from Property from the Estate of Eugene V. Thaw

View All