James and Frances McGlothlin
01/01/2006
James and Frances McGlothlin recently made a contrarian move by bestowing their collection of late 19th- and early 20th-century American art on the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. The collection comprises 35 paintings, watercolors and other works by artists such as Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent, George Bellows and Winslow Homer. While recent years have seen many such private collections go to the auction block—the McGlothlins’ art is valued at $100 million—the couple not only gifted their works, but also promised financial support for the collection’s maintenance and a capital campaign for a new wing. The works were exhibited at the museum in Richmond last year. Selected paintings will be on display in coming years until the entire collection is transferred to the museum upon the McGlothlins’ deaths.
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| ART COLLECTORS James and Frances McGlothlin have bequeathed their American art collection and continue to give financial support, now valued at well above $100 million, to the museum. The couple wanted to give their art to a facility “where it would really be appreciated by the general public.” (2004 Photograph by Annie Leibovitz.) |
Fran found a painting there that she loved. Jim bought it as a Christmas present, and was as intrigued by the bidding and the deal making as he was by the picture itself. However, after living with the piece, the aesthetics become more interesting than the bidding. We decided to focus on American art because we are American; we love our country. We think art portrays its history as well as anything, so this seems very right for us. Plus, it’s a small field, so you can be more of a player, more involved than you could if you were to focus on French Impressionist art or something in which so many people are involved.
| This is really just our passion. Since we made the gift, it has made us feel so great, because we have gotten so much wonderful feedback. |
We get to know the people who collect. It’s a small group, and that’s part of the fun. We are dealers as well as collectors, so we buy and sell with other dealers around the country, particularly in New York and with the auction houses. We couldn’t be such involved players if we weren’t in a limited field like this one.
Most of the collectors and dealers that we know don’t have any plan for what’s going to happen to their art when they pass away. We don’t know why. Even dealers, whose family must know something about the process, can’t tell you what’s going to happen to their business, and their business is just those paintings. We had thought about it for some time, and we’d talked about it with others. Some of them do have paintings they plan to leave to the Metropolitan [in New York] or the National Gallery or whatever. We decided we wanted to do something different. We wanted to put it all somewhere where it would really be appreciated by the general public.
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| MOONLIGHT, 1907, by Childe Hassam (1859–1935), is from Capturing Beauty: American Impressionist and Realist Paintings from the McGlothlin Collection at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. (Photograph courtesy the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.) |
The trend in recent years has been toward selling collections at auctions; certainly the Rita and Daniel Fraad collection was the big sale of 2004. We both feel very strongly that we are incredibly lucky to have the wherewithal to do what we love, which is collecting this art, and at some point we feel a real obligation to share it with other people. We have three children between us, and if we sold it, they would just be getting the money. We think they’ll be OK financially, so we don’t need to do it. We talked to our kids about it. They went to the dinner where we made the gift, and we jokingly said, “You know we are not really giving this, our children are giving it.”
Each of
our kids has his or her own lifestyle. Taking care of and maintaining a
collection such as the one we have and will continue to build upon is a huge
responsibility. Our kids like art, but they move more toward modern art; they
are a younger generation. In a way, it would be unfair to leave the collection
to our kids. If it did the same thing for them that it does for us, that would
be another thing. This is really just our passion. Since we made the gift, it
has made us feel so great, because we have gotten so much wonderful feedback
from people we don’t know but who have been to see the work and know about the
gift.
Price and Value
TWO MAGNOLIAS and a Bud on Teal Velvet, circa 1885–95, by Martin Johnson Heade,
was originally discovered in Wisconsin for $20. It is now valued at more
than $1 million. (© 2005 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.)
We competed against the auction houses to purchase the
Fraad collection. We would have sold much of it, of course. There were maybe
10 paintings that we would have kept. We met the heirs. It was funny to learn,
for example, that on Saturdays, for entertainment, they would go around to art
galleries. Afterward, the two of them would have lunch and decide what they were
going to buy. That is sort of what we do. It just seemed very touching. But the
heirs were completely focused on what they could get for it. We don’t want to be
negative toward the heirs; they just did not have the passion. So for them, it
was an inheritance question.
There are many collectors around today whom we
admire. To begin with, there is Dick Manoogian, based in Detroit, who has a
wonderful collection that’s always changing. He does the same kinds of things we
do—buys and sells. Alice Walton, who recently purchased Kindred Spirits [Asher
B. Durand’s Hudson River School landscape], is said to have a wonderful
collection, as do our good friends Ted and Barbara Alfond in Massachusetts.
Almost everybody in this group is a businessperson; there is just something
about that competitive spirit that has to come through in the bidding and
acquiring.
Hamilton Smiles
MADAME ERRAZURIZ was painted by John Singer Sargent, circa 1883–84. Both are
from Capturing Beauty: American Impressionist and Realist Paintings from the
McGlothlin Collection. (Photograph by Katherine Wetzel.)
Art can be a phenomenal investment. One of the pieces
in our collection, Two Magnolias and a Bud on Teal Velvet by Martin Johnson
Heade, was first found at a Wisconsin tag sale for $20, and it is now worth
millions. That’s very atypical, but if you’re buying A or A+ paintings, the
appreciation is going to be better than the stock market. If you’re buying
below-A paintings, you had better get a deal because you can’t sell those as
readily. They are not hard currency like the A+ paintings are. With an A+
painting, you can just walk out the door and say you want to sell it, and in a
week or two someone will probably buy it.
We’ve sold about half of what we
have bought, and we’ve never taken a loss on a painting. What we have
principally sold are the first paintings we bought. We are now onto the second
trunk, and we think we’ll do much better now that we know what we are doing. In
the last eight years, the value at auction of A+ paintings has multiplied by
between five and eight times.
We have many pieces of art now that aren’t
hanging; they are in the inventory for sale. That’s part of it: knowing that we
made good selections. Now we are moving on to a collection that we hope is
better and more diversified, and we hope that people appreciate what we’ve
bought in the past.