New York Heralds John Quinn’s sculpture collection
One hundred years ago today … John Quinn’s collection of modern sculpture was celebrated in the Herald.
New York Herald, 5 March 1922, p. 49. Newspapers.com.
Art critic Henry McBride (whom we have seen before), writing of an upcoming exhibition of British sculpture owned by Quinn, lauded the lawyer and patron of the arts for his astute eye for important works. “Mr. Quinn has not only been one of the most courageous but one of the most indefatigable buyers of modern art in this country.” (read an excerpt below.)
According to McBride, the exhibition featured pieces by Wyndham Lewis, Augustus John, and Jacob Epstein, a native New Yorker who by 1922 had long since expatriated to England.
Mother and Child. Jacob Epstein, 1913. Museum of Modern Art.
John Quinn’s 1922 so far had been tragic and eventful. On February 3, his friend the artist John Butler Yeats had passed away. (We wrote of Quinn and Yeats’s friendship here and here.)
John Quinn and John Butler Yeats. Drawing by Jack Yeats. Courtesy Estate of Jack B. Yeats. All DACS London/IVARO Dublin 2016. Photograph courtesy the National Gallery of Ireland.
That same month saw the publication, in Paris, of James Joyce’s Ulysses; Quinn had played an active role in seeing the novel to light, as we mention in posts for December 9, 1920 and February 2, 1921.
– Jonathan Goldman, Mar 5, 2022
TAGS: art, sculpture, collecting, patronage, modernism, avant-garde, British