In 1976, Irma H. (Asiel) Bloomingdale gave to Columbia University the two terracotta statuettes that are at the heart of this exhibition. Titled Nymph and Two Satyrs and Satyr and Two Nymphs, the sculptures entered the Columbia collection as works by the French sculptor Claude Michel, called Clodion (1738-1814). According to Columbia’s curatorial file, Mrs. Bloomingdale and her husband, Lewis, were given these statuettes in 1909 as a wedding gift1 from the prominent American collector George Blumenthal (1858-1941) (Fig. 1).2 This paper examines Mr. Blumenthal’s collecting history in order to situate the phenomenon of “Clodion mania,” which first emerged in nineteenth-century France, in a broader historical and geographic context.

A Golden Age of Acquisition

Mr. Blumenthal was born in 1858 in Frankfort-on-Maine, Germany, immigrated to the United States in 1882, worked his way up in the banking industry, and became a senior partner at Lazard Frères in 1904.3 A significant figure in the world of global finance during the late nineteenth and early twentieth-centuries, Blumenthal married twice. In 1889, he married Florence Meyer (1870-1930), who played a critical role in stimulating his taste for art, an interest that lasted past Florence’s death in 1930.4 In 1935, he married Mary Ann Payne (1889-1973).5 Blumenthal was known for his philanthropic work and served on the board of Mount Sinai Hospital for 46 years, 27 as President. From his retirement in 1925 until his death in 1941, he dedicated the majority of his time to philanthropy,6 becoming a trustee of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) in 19097 and serving as president from 1934 to 1941.8

Mr. Blumenthal stepped onto the collecting scene during an age of great American collectors. Funded by the country’s rapid industrialization and expanding financial sector, individuals such as J.P. Morgan (1837-1919),9 Isabella Stewart Gardener (1840- 1924),10 and Henry Clay Frick11 (1849- 1919) amassed some of the finest collections in the world. Such collections were made possible by a newly globalized art market, flooded with art from every country and era.12 The political revolutions of the eighteenth-century led to the dissolution of many aristocratic and ecclesiastical collections, and the looting that accompanied colonial conquest brought masterpieces from around the world to the European and American art markets. 13 For the right price, everything was for sale.

Blumenthal was part of a generation of American collectors who sought to collect the treasures of the European past, thus preserving what it saw, in a euro-centric fashion, as a cultural heritage shared between Europe and the United States. As Anne Higonnet states in her book A Museum of One’s Own: Private Collecting, Public Gift, “the institution of the museum justified America’s acquisition of the world’s cultural heritage; indeed, it transformed a right into an obligation. From this perspective, the United States was inheriting domination from Europe because its political and economic system was ethically superior because it gave equal opportunity to all its citizens. Equal opportunity to art was public access to the institution of the museum”.14 Blumenthal’s collection of European art was justified by his numerous gifts to The Met.

The Origins of a Collection

Florence Blumenthal’s entry into the globalized world of collecting began fairly casually, with a fashionable collection of Barbizon school paintings, but it became her life’s work after a personal tragedy. In 1909, the Blumenthals lost their only son, George Blumenthal Jr., at the age of eleven and remained childless until Mrs. Blumenthal’s death in 1930.15 According to contemporary accounts, the Blumenthals traveled to Europe in response to their grief, and Mr. Blumenthal encouraged his wife to study art history in the hopes that a new interest would alleviate her suffering. 16 Mrs. Blumenthal studied under the prominent American art historian and connoisseur Bernard Berenson (1865- 1959),17 who specialized in Italian art, particularly that of the late Gothic and Renaissance periods,18 and advised many of the United States’ most prominent collectors.19 Under his tutelage, Mrs. Blumenthal spent the next two decades creating a grand collection of Medieval European, Italian Renaissance, and eighteenth-century French art. By 1919, Mrs. Blumenthal was considered “one of the best known and most fastidious of collectors of art objects and a recognized connoisseur of French Gothic Art.”20 Mrs. Blumenthal was known as a major collector and supporter of the arts and became a favored sitter of the Italian artist Giovanni Boldini (1842-1931).21 Boldini’s portrait of Mrs. Blumenthal, entitled “Portrait of a Lady” (Fig. 2), now hangs in the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Museum’s website highlights Mrs. Blumenthal’s importance to the artistic scenes of the United States and France at the beginning of the twentieth-century.22 Mr. Blumenthal soon followed Mrs. Blumenthal’s example, becoming a great collector in his own right. Unlike his wife, who undertook the study of art history in earnest, he showed little interest in this academic discipline. In the introduction to the catalogue Masterpieces in the Collection of George Blumenthal that accompanied the exhibition held at The Met in 1943, W.M. Ivins Jr., the Museum’s first Curator of Drawings and Prints, writes that Blumenthal was no “reader and no scholar in the academic sense, even a hater of scholarship in many of its more familiar manifestations.” 23 Unlike many great collectors, who employed experts to collect on their behalf, Blumenthal collected himself.24 Ivins writes that Blumenthal “enjoyed each step in the chase, from discovery, through bargaining, to eventual possession. In his capacity for taking pains, in his contentment with the very chores of this activity, George Blumenthal showed his genius for it.”25 Unfortunately, little documentation of his collecting history remains, due to his destruction of his records. In a statement made on May 11, 1965, James Rorimer, Curator and later President of The Met, recalls: “One day I arrived at Mr. B.’s desk in his library at his home and he was destroying the documentation referring to his years of collecting. I asked him if they could not be saved and he said ‘Your business is securing the objects for the Museum, and it is my business to destroy the records.’ Protests were to no avail.”26 We must, therefore, rely largely on anecdotal evidence and donation records, both of which are preserved in The Met’s archives, to illuminate Blumenthal’s collecting practices. When Mr. Blumenthal decided to purchase a work of art, price was no object. Germain Seligman (1893-1978), a French-born American art dealer specializing in French art and based in Paris and New York, sold various works to Blumenthal.27 When recalling his years of presenting works to Blumenthal for purchase, Seligman said: “There was to be no bargaining. I would name a price at once, whether he had evinced an interest or not; should he be tempted and find the price justified, he would purchase it. I cannot recall a single instance in which there was a discussion about price.”28 Blumenthal’s understanding of the objects that he purchased was largely tactile and, according to Ivins, “he once laughingly said that he knew little about things he could not touch and that he got scant pleasure from them.”29 Blumenthal was known to treasure small, delicately carved objects, including ivories (Fig. 3), bronzes, enamels, jewels, and wood carvings (Fig. 4), and showed a marked preference for sculpture over painting.30 All of these objects would have been pleasing to the touch as well as to the eye.

The Blumenthal Collection was wide-ranging and included works from various periods and cultures, from Ancient Egyptian gold earrings31 to twentieth-century American wooden furniture.32 However, late Gothic and Renaissance art remained Blumenthal’s primary passion and he expanded the collection established by Florence Blumenthal into one of the greatest in these areas in the United States. Blumenthal’s interest in Gothic and Renaissance art was encouraged by his professional and personal relationship with J.P. Morgan. In many ways, the Blumenthal collection mirrored the Morgan collection. Like the Blumenthal Collection, the Morgan Collection largely focused on Medieval and Gothic sculpture and Morgan sought works that were rare, intricately carved, and made of sumptuous materials. This practice was repeated by Blumenthal, as can be seen in his gifts now located in The Met’s Medieval galleries.33 Both men tended to collect works that were of high quality, made of costly materials, and displayed a high level of craftsmanship. Appreciation for these objects required no context, which served the two collectors’ limited art historical knowledge.

The Blumenthals and the French Eighteenth Century

Around 1920, the Blumenthals bought a house in Paris.34 It was relatively small compared to their mansion located at 70^th street and Park Avenue in Manhattan and was meant to have a more intimate air.35 According to Seligman “it recalls the charming folies built about 18^th century Paris by ladies and gentlemen of the court.”36 This association with the eighteenth century was by design, as Mrs. Blumenthal dedicated this house to eighteenth-century French art. As mentioned, she died in 1930 and on December 2, 1932, Mr. Blumenthal put the entire collection of the house up for sale.37 The accompanying catalogue provides an inventory of the treasures that filled it, advertising a wide variety of French eighteenth-century porcelains, bronzes, furniture, carpets, drawings, paintings, and sculptures.38 Artists on display included some of the most celebrated French painters of the eighteenth century, such as François Boucher, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, and Jean-Antoine Watteau.39

In replicating an eighteenth-century aristocratic home, both intimate and refined, the Paris house echoed the type of environment for which the small-scale terracottas of Clodion were created. According to an article announcing the sale, “the principal piece of sculpture offered is the terra cotta group by Clodion entitled ‘La Surprise.’ This represents a nymph playing with a child while a serpent watches.”40 The Surprise (Fig. 5) sold for 10,000 Francs, the equivalent of $1,724, a significant sum at the height of the Great Depression, proving that, in 1932, Clodion remained a premier sculptor associated with the eighteenth-century French interior.41 The Blumenthals valued Clodion’s art and when their collection was catalogued in 1924, they owned two additional works by him besides The Surprise: a vase in marble representing a woman performing a sacrifice (Fig. 6) and a statuette in terracotta representing a bacchante.

Authenticity and the Blumenthal Collection

The Surprise and the statuette representing a bacchante present some similarities with the sculptures featured in this exhibition. Indeed, they take their inspiration from the classical world while at the same time resonating with the playfully erotic quality of Rococo art. However, as discussed by Sarah Jane Kim in Clodion and the Question of Authorship: A Closer Look at "Nymph and Two Satyrs" and "Satyr and Two Nymphs" in the Columbia University Art Collection, differences in composition and technique suggest that Nymph and Two Satyrs and Satyr and Two Nymphs are in fact high quality nineteenth-century forgeries, that is, examples of “Clodion mania.”42 There is no record of these two statuettes in the 1924 inventory. Indeed, as evidenced by the provenance provided by Irma Bloomingdale, they left the collection in 1909.43 As mentioned, Nymph and Two Satyrs and Satyr and Two Nymphs entered the Columbia collection as works by Clodion and there is no indication that they were considered inauthentic before this point.

Nymph and Two Satyrs and Satyr and Two Nymphs were not the only misattributed works in the Blumenthal collection. A letter dated April 11, 1954, written by Charles Sterling, Curator at The Met, to James Rorimer, President of The Met, discusses a bust of Bernard Palissy (Fig. 7) donated to The Met as part of Mr. Blumenthal’s bequest in 1941. In the Blumenthal collection, this terracotta bust was attributed to the sixteenth-century French artist Germain Pilon44 but Rorimer questioned this attribution and therefore asked Mr. Sterling to visit a similar faience bust at a museum in Saintes, Charente-Inférieure, France, in an attempt to clarify the attribution.45 In the letter, Mr. Sterling explains that the bust at the museum in Saintes “corresponds – safe minor changes in collar and in the basis – to the Blumenthal terracotta. The bust is signed I. Devers, that is Joseph (Giuseppe) Devers, the well-known Italian ceramist and imitator of the Renaissance art, quite famous in his days.”46 Mr. Sterling notes that the Saintes bust is dated 1866 and the similarities in modeling make it likely that the Blumenthal bust and the Saintes bust were made by the same artist. However, he asserts that the Saintes bust is not a copy of the Blumenthal bust and that both are original works by Devers.47 He adds that Devers was not known to copy directly from Renaissance pieces but instead “made up new compositions on the basis of original engravings, paintings etc. […] I do not believe that Devers would simply copy a Renaissance original and sign it fecit – he was too well known for such a cheap procedure.”48 Sterling concludes: “I see little in favor of the [Blumenthal] terracotta’s authenticity.” 49 It is unclear whether the Blumenthal bust was created to be sold as a Renaissance work, but the Blumenthals considered it to be one. In the gift receipt created by The Met for Mr. Blumenthal’s 1941 bequest, it is listed as “Portrait of Bernard Palisay (?), terracotta, attributed to Germain Pilon, French, sixteenth Century.”50

Similarly, Nymph and Two Satyrs and Satyr and Two Nymphs were intended to be sold as authentic works by Clodion, as evidenced by the presence of the artist’s signature and date on each sculpture, and there is no evidence that they were made after existing works by Clodion. Like the Bernard Palissy busts, the Columbia sculptures are nineteenth-century reinterpretations of an earlier style.

These three misattributed works likely made it into the Blumenthal collection because they are fine pieces in and of themselves and as mentioned, Mr. Blumenthal was more interested in the tactile nature of each work than in its history. This lack of enthusiasm is made clear in an anecdote recounted by Calvin Tomkins in his book Merchants and Masterpieces, in which he describes a meeting of The Met’s Purchasing Committee held in 1934.51 At the meeting, the curator Preston Remington presented Sampson Slaying the Philistine by Giovanni Bologna for purchase, describing the illustrious history of the sculpture, as it was transferred from one prominent collection to another. “When Remington had finished, the President sniffed and said, dryly, ‘They all seemed to want to get rid of it, didn’t they?’”52

George Blumenthal and The Metropolitan Museum of Art

George Blumenthal gave works of art to The Met consistently from 1905 until his death in 1941,53 at which point he gave 494 objects spanning the historical breadth of his collection.54 Blumenthal came to The Met at the end of an era in which great collectors played a primary role in shaping the American cultural landscape by building up museum collections. By World War II, art markets had tightened, limiting access to national treasures, and American museums were increasingly run by professionals. This trend began during Blumenthal’s tenure as President of The Met, during which the power of the Museum’s Trustees waned. While the Trustees continued to set policy and approve purchases, they no longer asserted their personal tastes and tended to approve most works recommended by the Museum’s Curators or Director for purchase.55 Mr. Blumenthal placed “increasing confidence and responsibility in the professional staff, the people who should and did run the museum, from the director on down.”56 In this way, Blumenthal encouraged The Met to become a more professional, academic institution, even though his own collecting practice did not necessarily reflect the art historical rigor of the museum.

• 1“Lewis Morgan Bloomingdale,” New York Marriages, 1686-1980, FamilySearch, accessed April 27, 2019, https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:F6WK-6KV.
• 2Notes regarding the gift of two works attributed to Claude Michel (Clodion) by Irma Bloomingdale, Curatorial file for objects # 1976.12.006 and 1976.12.005, Columbia University Art Properties, Columbia University, New York, NY.
• 3Excerpt from The National Cyclopedia of American Biography (New York, NY: James T. White & Co., January 18, 1943), 1, Blumenthal, George- Arthur R. Blumenthal, George Blumenthal: Art Collector and Patron, 1965, Office of the Secretary Records, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Archives, New York, NY.
• 4“Florence Meyer Blumenthal,” Encyclopedia, Jewish Women’s Archive,” accessed July 19, 2019, https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/blumenthal-florence-meyer.
• 5“Blumenthal, Mary Ann Payne Clew,” Center for the History of Collecting, The Frick Collection, accessed July 19, 2019, http://research.frick.org/directoryweb/browserecord.php?-action=browse&-recid=6935.
• 6“Blumenthal, George,” in Marquis Who Was Who in America 1607-1984, ed. Marquis Who’s Who, Marquis Who’s Who LLC, 2009, http://ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fsearch.credoreference.com%2Fcontent%2Fentry%2Fmarqwas%2Fblumenthal_george%2F0%3FinstitutionId%3D1878.
• 7Factsheet of George Blumenthal, May 1941, 1, Blumenthal, Clippings, Biography, Obituary, etc. 1930-31, 1934-36, 1941, 1943, 1954, 1964-65, Office of the Secretary Records, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Archives, New York, NY.
• 8Olga Raggio, “The Vélez Blanco Patio: An Italian Renaissance Monument from Spain,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, 23, no. 4 (December, 1964): 141, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/metpublications/The_Velez_Blanco_Patio_An_Italian_Renaissance_Monument_From_Spain_The_Metropolitan_Museum_of_Art_Bulletin_v_23_no_4_December_1964.
• 9“Morgan, J. Pierpont (John Pierpont,) 1837-1913,” Center for the History of Collecting, The Frick Collection, accessed July 19, 2019, http://research.frick.org/directoryweb/browserecord.php?-action=browse&-recid=6792.
• 10“Gardner, Isabella Stewart, 1840-1924,” Center for the History of Collecting, The Frick Collection, accessed July 19, 2019, http://research.frick.org/directoryweb/browserecord.php?-action=browse&-recid=6271.
• 11“Frick, Henry Clay, 1849-1919,” Center for the History of Collecting, The Frick Collection, accessed July 19, 2019, http://research.frick.org/directoryweb/browserecord.php?-action=browse&-recid=6285.
• 12Anne Higonnet, A Museum of One’s Own (Pittsburgh, PA: Periscope Publishing, 2009), xii.
• 13Ibid.
• 14Higonnet, 113.
• 15Calvin Tomkins, Merchants and Masterpieces: The Story of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1970, updated 1989), 220.
• 16Ibid.
• 17“Berenson, Bernard, 1865-1959,” Center for the History of Collecting, The Frick Collection, accessed July 19, 2019, http://research.frick.org/directoryweb/browserecord.php?-action=browse&-recid=6270.
• 18Blumenthal, Arthur R., “George Blumenthal: Art Collector and Patron” (unpublished academic paper, New York University Institute of Fine Arts, 1965), 3, Blumenthal, George- Arthur R. Blumenthal, George Blumenthal: Art Collector and Patron, 1965, Office of the Secretary Records, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Archives, New York.
• 19“Berenson, Bernard,” in The Columbia Encyclopedia, by Paul Lagasse, and Columbia University, 8th ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018), http://ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fsearch.credoref....
• 20“The American Foundation for French Thought and Art,” New York Times, October 24, 1920, page 8 (VI). Quoted in Blumenthal, Arthur R., “George Blumenthal: Art Collector and Patron” (unpublished academic paper, New York University Institute of Fine Arts, 1965), 5, Blumenthal, George- Arthur R. Blumenthal, George Blumenthal: Art Collector and Patron, 1965, Office of the Secretary Records, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Archives, New York.
• 21“Portrait of a Lady,” Brooklyn Museum, accessed July 20, 2019, https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/4729.
• 22Ibid.
• 23W.M. Ivins Jr., Masterpieces in the Collection of George Blumenthal: A Special Exhibition (New York, NY: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1943), 1.
• 24Ibid.
• 25Ibid.
• 26Statements of James J. Rorimer regarding George Blumenthal for Arthur R. Blumenthal, May 11, 1965, 2, Blumenthal, Clippings, Biography, Obituary, etc. 1930-31, 1934-36, 1941, 1943, 1954, 1964-65, Office of the Secretary Records, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Archives, New York, NY.
• 27"Germain Seligman," Contemporary Authors Online, Detroit, MI: Gale, 1998. Biography In Context, accessed July 23, 2019, https://link-galegroup-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/apps/doc/H1000089359/BIC?u=columbiau&sid=BIC&xid=3bb56532.
• 28Germain Seligman, Merchants of Art: Eighty Years of Professional Collecting: 1880-1960 (New York, NY: Appleton-Century Crofts, Inc, 1961), 147.
• 29Ivins, 1.
• 30Seligman, 13.
• 31Factsheet of George Blumenthal.
• 32Rubenstein-Bloch, Stella, Catalogue of the Collection of George and Florence Blumenthal New-York (Paris: Editions Albert Lévy, 1924), index.
• 33Blumenthal, Arthur, 13.
• 34Seligman, 144.
• 35James J. Rorimer, prefatory note to "The Vélez Blanco Patio: An Italian Renaissance Monument From Spain," The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 23, no. 4 (December, 1964).
• 36Ibid.
• 37Hôtel Drouott, Catalogue des objets d'art et d'ameublement (Paris: Hôtel Drouot, 1933), title page.
• 38Ibid.
• 39Ibid.
• 40"PARIS SALE," New York Times (1923-Current File), Nov 27, 1932, http://ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.ez....
• 41This is according to handwritten notes on page 64 of the Hôtel Drouot sales catalogue in the Watson Library, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
• 42Anne Poulet, “Connoisseurship/curatorship, Practices of Art History Colloquium” (lecture, Columbia University, New York, NY, March 13, 2019).
• 43The only existing catalogue of the Blumenthal collection was created in 1924. According to the provenance given to Columbia by the donor, Irma H. Bloomingdale, these works were given to her and her husband, Lewis Bloomingdale, as a wedding gift in 1909. This, combined with the fact that Mr. Blumenthal burned many of the records of his collection, means that we do not have a record of these works in the Blumenthal collection.
• 44Mr. Blumenthal gift receipt, May 28-June 25, 1941, 21, Folder 1, Blumenthal, George- Gifts-Art- (1905-41), 1941, 1944, 1948, 1954, 1959, 1972, Office of the Secretary Records, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Archives, New York, NY.
• 45 Correspondence from Charles Sterling to James J. Rorimer, April 11, 1954, 1, Folder 1, Blumenthal, George- Gifts-Art- (1905-41), 1941, 1944, 1948, 1954, 1959, 1972, Office of the Secretary Records, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Archives, New York, NY.
• 46Sterling, 1.
• 47Ibid.
• 48 Sterling, 2.
• 49Ibid.
• 50 Mr. Blumenthal gift receipt, 21.
• 51 Tomkins, 318.
• 52Tomkins, 224.
• 53List of objects brought to The Metropolitan Museum of Art from Mary Anne Blumenthal’s apartment located at 960 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY on March 22, 1943 as part of the bequest of George Blumenthal, March 22, 1943, Blumenthal, George-Bequest-Art Collection (1941),1941-1943, 1957, Office of the Secretary Records, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Archives, New York, NY.
• 54List of gifts of art by George Blumenthal 1905-1951, 1941, Blumenthal, George-Bequest-Art Collection (1941),1941-1943, 1957, Office of the Secretary Records, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Archives, New York, NY.
• 55Tomkins, 226.
• 56Ibid.