An American in Medieval Paris. The Impact of Europe on Early American Collectors of Medieval Art

Sammendrag

The title of this article refers specifically to the time spent in Paris by early American collectors of medieval art, but it is also meant to evoke the American response to the medieval antiquities of Paris, to those of France, and to those of Europe in general. Focusing on seven Americans, whose sojourns in Europe – some brief, some extended – roughly span the entire course of the 19th century, this article seeks to understand what made these men turn towards medieval art at a time when most Americans were barely aware of its existence and didn’t care for it if they were. Proceeding chronologically from the earliest collector to the latest, it reexamines the available evidence, using first-hand testimony where possible, in the hope of gleaning some new insights into the impact of Europe on their collecting. Beginning with William Poyntell, who acquired stained glass from the Sainte-Chapelle while in Paris in 1803, it continues with Robert Gilmor, who in 1807 purchased a Book of Hours from the Workshop of the Boucicaut Master; it then turns to two collectors of Italian “Primitices”, Thomas Jefferson Bryan and James Jackson Jarves; to J. Pierpoint Morgan and Henry Walters, the two greatest American collectors of medieval art; and concludes with the sculptor George Grey Barnard, whose precocious appreciation of Romanesque architectural sculpture started a major trend in both collecting and museum design. Although hard evidence for the direct impact of a European experience on the collecting psyche of these men is slight, they all spent “quality time” in Europe, and in all of them, to varying degrees, we can observe reflections of “medieval Paris”. Henry Adams describes the powerful effect of his first taste of Antwerp in 1858 as “education only sensual”. But since it is a sensual appreciation that must underlie the impulse to collect works of art, then we can be permitted to see the direct experience of Europe as having provided these early American collectors with a sense of the reality of the Middle Ages.