AN AMERICAN ODYSSEY; THE WARNER COLLECTION OF AMERICAN FINE AND DECORATIVE ARTS. GULF STATES PAPER CORPORATION, TUSCALOOSA, ALABAMA.

Armstrong, Tom, 1932-2011. Amy Coes; Ella Foshay; Wendell Garrett (essays). Lynn Diane DeMarco; Bonnie Morrison; Paul Rocheleau (photographers). [Jonathan "Jack" Warner, 1917-2017; Gulf States Paper Corporation; Westervelt Warner Museum of American Art.]

ISBN 10: 1580930980 / ISBN 13: 9781580930987

Published by New York: The Monacelli Press, Inc. in association with Sotheby's, 2007., 2002

Second edition (per special statement upon page 6). 224 pages. Hardcover: H 28.75cm x L 28.75cm. Dust jacket rubbed; light bumping along top edge; short 1cm closed tear at spine head. Blue boards with vibrant gilt stamping to spine. Patch of surface peeling and some residue from removed gift sticker on front free endpaper; non-authorial green ink Christmas gift inscription on title page. Interior pages are otherwise clean. Binding is firm. A very good- copy in a very good- dust jacket. Catalogue of the Jack Warner-Gulf States Paper Corporation-The Westervelt Company collection exhibited at the Westervelt-Warner Museum of American Art in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. As ownership of the paintings and other objects was split among Gulf States/Westervelt and The Warner Foundation as well as some being the direct property of retired CEO and chairman Jack Warner, a power struggle regarding the museum's future ensued between the retired chairman and the corporate board as art prices soared in the late-2000s. Thus, as it played out, in 2011 The Westervelt Company consigned 33 of the museum's paintings to Christie's so that masterworks including Asher B. Durand's "Progress-The Advance of Civilization," Childe Hassam's "Celia Thaxter's Garden," Frederick Carl Frieseke's "Sunspots," Albert Bierstadt's "Seal Rock, California," Andrew Wyeth's "Silver Cove," Frederic Edwin Church's "Above the Clouds at Sunrise" (which illustrates the book's dust jacket), and Thomas Hart Benton's "Shipping Out" were sold via private sale or auction. The financial impact of the artwork was immediate; Durand's "Progress" allegedly sold for $40 million (the painting was anonymously gifted to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in December 2018); the Benton painting sold for twice the high estimate at $1,025,000. The corporate holdings that survived the museum dissolution were either exhibited at its successive institution, the short-lived Tuscaloosa Museum of Art (closed in 2018) or retired to Gulf States offices. The book is a testimony to Jack Warner's legendry discerning eye and prescient recognition American fine and decorative arts highpoints most of them slyly acquired relatively cheaply from the 1950s through the 1980s when the market still strongly favored European objects. Please note that this large book has an approximate shipping weight of 5 pounds (2.26 kg) and will require additional postage for any postal class other than domestic Media Mail. {ArtShelf_#1} ISBN 9781580930987. Seller Inventory # PXZP-13527

Synopsis:

An American Odyssey is the story of Jonathan Westervelt Warner, entrepreneur, art collector, and philanthropist. The grandson of Herbert Westervelt, inventor of the EZ Opener brown-paper grocery bag and founder of Gulf States Paper Corporation in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and the son of Mildred Westervelt Warner, former president of Gulf States and prominent American businesswomen, Jack Warner has kept alive his family's practices of business management and of good works and has also initiated a new tradition: since 1970 he has assembled an exceptional collection of American fine and decorative arts from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. Warner's is a personal collection, and the various works respond to his special interests and obsessions, especially all aspects of America's history and heritage. The Mildred Warner House both pays tribute to his mother and houses a collection of furniture and other decorative arts by such noted craftspeople as Duncan Phyfe, Paul Revere, and Charles-Honoré Lannuier. George Washington, a personal hero of Warner's since his student days at Washington and Lee University, is honored in an assembly of painted and sculpted portraits. Yet it is the paintings, dating from the end of the eighteenth century to the end of the twentieth, that form the heart of the collection. Magnificent portrait, landscape, and history paintings from a roster of America's finest artists -- Albert Bierstadt, Mary Cassatt, William Merritt Chase, Frederic E. Church, Asher B. Durand, Thomas Cole, Sanford Gifford, Edward Hicks, Edward Hopper, Winslow Homer, William Sidney Mount, John Singer Sargent, and James McNeill Whistler -- tell a story not only of America but of American art. Likewise, this volume tells the story not only of an extraordinary collection of American art but of an equally extraordinary collector and his American odyssey.

About the Author: Tom Armstrong is the director emeritus of the Whitney Museum of American Art. He has also been the leader of the Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Andy Warhol Museum.

Amy Coes is a consultant in American decorative arts who has worked with Sotheby's, Leigh Keno American Antiques, and numerous other dealers and private collectors.

Ella Foshay is a scholar of American art. She teaches at Columbia University and was curator of the New-York Historical Society.

Wendell Garrett is senior vice president of American decorative arts at Sotheby's and editor-at-large of The Magazine Antiques. Author of American Colonial: Puritan Simplicity to Georgian Grace, Classic America: The Federal Period and Beyond, and Victorian America: Classical Romanticism to Gilded Opulence, he is a social historian of America as well as an expert on American decorative arts.

Bibliographic Details

Title: AN AMERICAN ODYSSEY; THE WARNER COLLECTION ...
Publisher: New York: The Monacelli Press, Inc. in association with Sotheby's, 2007.
Publication Date: 2002
Binding: Hardcover
Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included