About the Macbeth Gallery records

Although some of the gallery's earliest exhibitions were of work by European artists, the business soon became the only gallery in continuous operation to keep American art permanently on display. In the January 1917 issue of Art Notes, Macbeth recounts those early days remembering that "The opening of my gallery......was a rash venture under the existing conditions, and disaster was freely predicted." Nevertheless, he struggled through the financial crisis of 1893 and persisted with his devotion to American art; slowly the market for his pictures grew more amenable.

Macbeth moved to more spacious quarters at 450 Fifth Avenue in 1906 and two years later undertook what was to become the major event in the gallery's early history: the 1908 exhibition of "The Eight," featuring work by Arthur B. Davies, Willam J. Glackens, Robert Henri, Ernest Lawson, George Luks, Maurice Prendergast, Everett Shinn, and John Sloan. "The Eight" were an unlikely combination of social realists, visionaries and impressionists eager to challenge the dominating influence of the National Academy. The exhibition received an immense amount of publicity and instantly entered into art history as a successful assault on tradition.

Despite the splash that the exhibition made and its implications for the future of American art, nothing that the gallery did subsequently indicated that Macbeth intended to capitalize on its significance. It is true that Macbeth supported many artists later considered leaders in American art when the public would pay no attention to them because of their modernist tendencies; Arthur B. Davies, Paul Dougherty, Maurice Prendergast, Theodore Robinson, and F. Ballard Williams all held their first exhibitions at his gallery. Nevertheless, neither Macbeth nor the gallery's two successive proprietors, Robert G. McIntyre (William's nephew) and Robert Macbeth (William's son), who joined the gallery in 1903 and 1906 respectively, ever developed a true interest in modern art. The November 1930 issue of Art Notes summarizes their collective disdain for modernism, stating: "We believe that, by and large, modern art is amusing. We are heretical enough to believe that much of it was started for the amusement of its creators and that no one was more surprised than they when it was taken seriously by a certain audience to whom the bizarre and the unintelligible always makes an appeal." So while the Macbeths and McIntyre cetainly championed American artists and insisted they deserved as much recognition as the Europeans, their deepest and most abiding interest was undoubtedly the established artists of the 18th and 19th-centuries and those of the early 20th-century who continued in a more conservative style. Artists such as Emil Carlsen, Charles Harold Davis, Frederick C. Frieseke, Robert Henri, Winslow Homer, Chauncey F. Ryder, Abbot Handerson Thayer, J. Francis Murphy, A. H. Wyant were the gallery's bread and butter.

When William Macbeth died in 1917 Robert Macbeth took up the reins with the assistance of Robert G. McIntyre . Although they incorporated the business as William Macbeth, Inc., in 1918 the gallery continued to be known, as it always would be, simply as Macbeth Gallery. Macbeth and McIntyre continued to show work in the same vein as the elder Macbeth. They concentrated primarily on oil paintings at this time, having found by the 1920s that "oils are all that our gallery owners will buy," though they also exhibited an occasional group of watercolors and pastels in addition to bronzes and other sculpture by contemporary American artists such as Chester Beach and Janet Scudder.

Of the early American painters the Macbeths and McIntyre were particularly interested in colonial portraits and miniatures, especially those painted by prominent artists in the latter part of the eighteenth century such as John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart, Thomas Sully and John Trumbull. In its early years the gallery also handled the work of a few prominent American etchers including Frank W. Benson, Emil Fuchs, Daniel Garber, Childe Hassam and Chauncey F. Ryder. The print department was generally discontinued, however, in the late 1930s although the gallery continued to show prints by contemporaries such as Stow Wengenroth.

In 1924 relative prosperity allowed the gallery to move uptown to 15 East Fifty-seventh Street. When the 1930s brought new financial hardship for the gallery Macbeth and McIntyre took a variety of approaches to boosting sales. In 1930 they decided to hold only group exhibitions throughout the season to the exclusion of one-man shows, and also held some special exhibitions of paintings priced at a hundred dollars each in the hope that they could tempt those "willing to take advantage of a rare chance to secure representative examples of good art at a most attractive price." A move to smaller quarters at 15 East Fifty-seventh Street in 1935 was made with the intention of concentrating their efforts on the work of fewer contemporary artists, while continuing to handle the work of the older Americans they had long supported.

When Macbeth died suddenly and unexpectedly in August 1940 following an operation for appendicitis, McIntyre continued to run the gallery with the assistance of Hazel Lewis. During the 1940s McIntyre and Lewis showed primarily contemporary art in a wide range of media including oil, watercolor, pastel, drawing and sculpture, while continuing, as always, to show the occasional group of 19th-century Americans. The great success of the gallery's later years was undeniably Andrew Wyeth whose first exhibition, held at Macbeth Gallery in 1937, resulted in the sale of all twenty-two paintings cataloged.

Although subsequent Wyeth exhibitions were also successful, McIntyre struggled financially throughout the 1940s and periodically considered liquidating the company. Although "vitally interested" in contemporary art by people such as Robert Brackman, Jay Connaway, Carl Gaertner, James Lechay, Herbert Meyer and Ogden M. Pleissner he found that, for the most part, it did not pay. McIntyre continued operations until 1953 when he decided that doing so for profit was not only a financial burden but also ran contrary to his desire to spend more time devoted to his first love, early American art. When the lease expired on 11 East Fifty-seventh Street in April 1953 McIntyre did not renew it. After closing the gallery's doors he sold art from his New York apartment and from his home in Dorset, Vermont. He officially dissolved William Macbeth, Inc., in 1957.

The history of the Macbeth Gallery is a long and distinguished one with each successive proprietor making a significant contribution to art in America. William Macbeth helped establish an audience and a market for American art when few were willing to give it serious consideration. Robert Macbeth continued to cement the gallery's reputation as one of the leading firms in New York and was instrumental in organizing the American Art Dealers Association. Robert G. McIntyre claimed in a letter to Lloyd Goodrich, dated 22 June 1945, that the thing of which he was most proud was "the share I have had in the formation of the collection of the Addison Gallery of American Art, at Andover, Massacusetts." McIntyre was widely respected in the art community as a dealer, as an adviser to curators, and as a scholar whose research and book on Martin Johnson Heade helped "rediscover" an important American artist. One of his most significant and lasting contributions to the history of art in America, however, was undoubtedly his gift of the gallery's historical records to the Archives of American Art. HIDE

The gallery's correspondence files form the core of the collection and illuminate most aspects of American art history: the creation and sale of works of art, the development of reputations, the rise of museums and art societies, change and resistance to change in the art market, and the evolution of taste. Ninety-five feet of correspondence house substantial and informative letters from dozens of important American painters and sculptors, including older artists and younger contemporaries of the gallery in its later years. There are also letters from collectors, curators, other galleries, and critics.

The financial files found in the collection offer insight into the changing economic climate in which the gallery operated. They include information ranging from the details of individual sales and the market for individual artists, to consignment activities and artist commissions, to overviews of annual sales. This information is augmented by the firm's inventory records and the photographs of artwork with their accompanying records of paintings sold. The inventory records provide details of all works of art handled by the gallery, both sold and unsold, and the buyers who purchased them; the photographs of artwork include images of artwork sold with accompanying sales information.

The highlight of the gallery's printed material is the publication Art Notes. Although published only until 1930, Art Notes provides an excellent and detailed view of the gallery's exhibition schedule and the relationship of the gallery owners with many of the artists whose work they handled. It was a house organ that also provided a running commentary on events in the art world. The gallery's fragile scrapbooks, maintained throughout the firm's history, provide further coverage of activities through exhibition catalogs and related news clippings. Printed material from other sources provides a frame of reference for activities in the art world from the mid-19th to the mid-20th-centuries and includes an almost complete run of the rare and important pre-Civil War art publication The Crayon.

Reference files record the interest which the gallery owners took in the work of early portrait painters and in later artists such as George Inness and Winslow Homer. Together with the immense volume of correspondence with buyers and sellers of paintings by the great portraitists and the Hudson River School found in the gallery's correspondence files, these records are still useful sources of information today and underscore the deep interest that the Macbeths and Robert McIntyre took in 18th and 19th-century American art.

The photographs of artists found here are a treasure trove of images of some of the major figures of the 19th and 20th-centuries. There are photographs of artists such as Chester Beach, Emil Carlsen, Charles Melville Dewey, Frederick Carl Frieseke, Childe Hassam, Winslow Homer, George Inness, Maurice Prendergast, and Julian Alden Weir, many of them original prints and the majority of them autographed.

With the exception of the "The Eight" and a few of their contemporaries, an important aspect of art history, the modernist movement, is generally represented in the Macbeth Gallery records only in a negative form as the three successive proprietors of the gallery showed very little interest in this area. Nevertheless, the collection is a highly significant source of information on many of the major and minor figures in American art in the period after 1890.

Of particular interest is the substantial body of correspondence with artists. From the late 19th to the early 20th-century period there is significant correspondence with artists such as Cecilia Beaux, Emil Carlsen, John F. Carlson, Charlotte Buell Coman, Arthur B. Davies, Charles Harold Davis, Charles W. Hawthorne, Charles Hazeltine, Robert Henri, Winslow Homer, Jonas Lie, J. Francis Murphy, Henry Rankin Poore, Chaucey F. Ryder, William Sartain and Abbot Handerson Thayer. From the early to mid-20th-century period correspondents include Jay Connaway, Carl Gaertner, Rockwell Kent, James Lechay, Herman Maril, Ivan G. Olinsky, Ogden M. Pleissner, Constance Richardson and Andrew Wyeth.

There are letters from Arthur B. Davies in which he writes of his travels in Europe during the 1890s, letters from Robert Henri from Ireland in the 1920s, and a letter from John Sloan to William Macbeth (one of only two in the collection) dated March 4, 1908, thanking Macbeth in the name of the "noble eight" for "all of the innumerable courtesies and kindnesses you have shown us in the long to be remembered exhibition of Feb. 3-18 1908." There are lengthy, detailed epistles from William Sartain written prior to, and during, the outbreak of World War I in Paris, and eighteen letters from Winslow Homer (although the two dated 1861 and 1876 respectively are copies) including an illustrated letter, an undated price list and notes on Homer paintings. There are also details regarding the settling of the Homer estate, which designated the Macbeth Gallery as sole selling agents of Homer's pictures in 1937, found in correspondence with members of the Homer family.

Although there is no correspondence with Homer D. Martin in the collection there are letters from his widow, Elizabeth, which reveal something of the painter's relationship with the gallery and chart the rise in popularity of Martin's work after his death. Elizabeth Martin's letters also discuss the appreciation of her husband written by her after his death and published by William Macbeth.

Correspondence with Andrew Wyeth reveals Wyeth's original agreement with the Macbeth Gallery and charts the launching of his career and apparently effortless rise to fame. Wyeth's correspondence includes illustrated letters and the original manuscript of the foreword to the catalog for his first exhibition at Macbeth Gallery, written by his father, N. C. Wyeth.

This series also documents the gallery's hand in the development of some of the country's major public and private art collections including those established by the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Albright Art Gallery, Butler Art Institute, Carnegie Institute, the City Art Museum of St. Louis, Dallas Art Association, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Rhode Island School of Design.

Obviously, letters from the gallery's proprietors are found throughout the series, but there are also several named files for William Macbeth, Robert Macbeth and Robert G. McIntyre. William Macbeth's correspondence includes a copy of his opening announcement of 1892. A pencil sketch of two cows on the back of the announcement reminds us of his other love - the Macbeth Farm in Suffolk County, New York. Also found here are some letters of recommendation that William acquired prior to his emigrating to the United States from Ireland, and several letters regarding the sale of an Arthur B. Davies picture in which he refers to the need to let Davies know about the sale of the picture as quickly as possible. "You would understand why," writes Macbeth to James Quinlan on 1 February 1898, "if you knew this nervous impatient artist as well as I do."

Robert Macbeth's correspondence deals primarily with gallery business up to 1920 but from that point on relates primarily to personal and family business. His correspondence includes one folder of twenty-seven letters from artists written in response to an invitation to a dinner honoring William Macbeth in 1909. Most are addressed to Augustus Vincent Tack and include letters from Chester Beach, Charles H. Davis, Robert Henri, John La Farge, Jerome Myers, Chauncey F. Ryder and Carleton Wiggins. There is also a copy of a poem written by Albert Pinkham Ryder.

Correspondence with Jessie L. Macbeth and Phoebe K. Maccbeth deals with Robert Macbeth's estate and includes correspondence between Phoebe and Robert G. McIntyre discussing the gallery's finanical difficulties during the 1940s.

Robert G. McIntyre's correspondence generally relates directly to gallery business. Three of his letters (found in the files of correspondents to which the letters were addressed) are of particular note as they display his lucid and engaging style and reveal details of his friendships with some of the gallery's most important artists: a 1948 letter to Joseph J. Kwiat describes his memories of "The Eight" and recounts in particular his impressions of William J. Glackens, Robert Henri and George Luks; a 1956 letter to Bennard B. Perlman recalls "Tuesday evenings" at Robert Henri's studio; and a 1945 letter to Lloyd Goodrich of the Whitney Museum describes watching Childe Hassam paint and date a picture as if he were "writing a letter." "He was so emphatic that this was the proper procedure" writes McIntyre, "that one may take it for granted that a date on a Hassam is the date it was begun, not finished."

Records relating to McIntyre's research for, and writing of, his book on Martin Johnson Heade, published in 1948, can be found in his correspondence with Maxim Karolik.

Although it is not always possible to determine which gallery member is responsible for an outgoing letter as they are generally unsigned copies, each of the proprietors appeared to enjoy letter writing and discussing their views on art with gallery clients. A good example of this can be found in letters to William Winter Drew in January and May of 1925 which provide a lengthy and detailed discussion of whom the letter writer (probably Robert Macbeth) believes should be included in a representative collection of American art.

The dating and arrangement of undated incoming letters, particularly those written before 1913 which do not have an accompanying response from the gallery, is often based on pencil notations made by Robert G. McIntyre which, while assumed to be reliable, are not necessarily accurate.

While the series is primarily comprised of folders arranged alphabetically by name of correspondent, there are a few folders arranged by subject including several which relate to exhibitions at the gallery. These are interfiled alphabetically by folder title with the exhibition files, for example, being filed under "E."

Although the gallery's financial records are generally found in Series 2: Financial and Shipping records, Series 1: Correspondence does include substantial financial information in the form of correspondence with banks, insurance agents and accountants. Correspondence with Frederic B. Thomason, Inc., for example, consists of over two linear feet of records containing insurance information from 1895 to 1952.

Numbers appearing in parenthesis with the folder titles represent Archives of American Art microfilm reel and frame numbers compiled from previous inventories. Not all entries have the microfilm information; this may be due to inconsistencies with earler arrangements or incomplete information in the inventories. HIDE