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"The Hays were in no way predestined to become collectors with a worldwide reputation. Both hail from humble Texan backgrounds, educated far from museums, and their knowledge of art history is self-taught. This is their strength. They began in the early 1970s buying paintings to decorate their house in Nashville. Back then, their choices followed social practice and, like many of their fellow Americans, they became interested in American art. Then their passion was stirred, a life-changer that goaded them on, turning the talented businessman into a hunter always on the lookout. The Hays found their treasures in France on their yearly visits to Paris, where they visited museums, art galleries and antique dealers. The admired the hotels particuliers of the Faubourg Saint-Germain and the rue de Grenelle, and their new Nashville home is a copy based on that model. French art became for them a home away from home. In the early 1980s. they made the acquaintance of art historians, museum curators, and gallery owners, encounters which radically transformed their collecting habits. They developed a preference for the more intellectual painting of the Nabis, full of mystery and dreaminess, and sometimes hard to decipher at first glance. Their Bonnards, Maurice Denis, Vuillards, and Maillols resonate perfectly with the Nabi paintings kept at the Musee d'Orday, and are sometimes even complements to them, as is the seventh panel of Vuillard's Public Gardens, a decoration commissioned by Alexandre Natanson in 1894 for his private mansion on the avenue du Bois in Paris, with five of the nine panels in the museum's possession. Another is the outstanding Japanese-style screen painted by Bonnard at the age of twenty-two, and the two imitation tapestry compositions, Spring and Autumn, designed by Maurice Denis for the leaves of a double door to the reception room at the home of Arthur Huc, editor-in-chief of the newspaper La Depeche de Toulouse. For over thirty years now, the Hays have been scouring the art market for masterpieces, accumulating paintings, drawings, sculptures, antique furniture, and illustrated books in their Park Avenue apartment in New York, and their house in Nashville, Tennessee, whose doors they kindly open to specialists." {Guy Cogeval}. This book has 205 pages and is profusely illustrated. Currently, this is the ONLY ENGLISH LANGUAGE copy available, for sale, on the Internet, thus EXTRAORDINARILY SCARCE. 4to - over 9¾" - 12" tall. Seller Inventory # 063585
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