Collection of Dr. Arthur M. Sackler
Dr. Arthur M. Sackler was one of America’s most important philanthropists and ardent art collectors. His passion for objects transcended any one category or time period, describing his own interest in art as “a long journey, a spiritual pilgrimage from my roots in the Western arts, a hegira which carried me to the aesthetics of the East.” In a collection that spanned genres from European terracotta and bronze sculpture to Impressionist and Modern paintings to Chinese hardwood furniture, Dr. Sackler sought, with each purchase, to “experience as close as one can, the creative impulse which moves a master.”
In the 1970s Dr. Sackler began to form a collection of European terracotta and bronze sculpture which would become one of the finest of its kind. From sculptor’s sketches in terracotta to highly refined bronze figures, the objects offered here span the 15th to the 20th centuries. The great centers of production in France and Italy are well-represented by artists such as Agostino and Giovanni de Fondulis, Tiziano Aspetti, Alessandro Algardi, Giuseppe Piamontini, Massimiliano Soldani-Benzi, Franceso Bertos, Clodion, Joseph Chinard, and Aime-Jules Dalou. The terracottas were the subject of an illuminating series of exhibitions held from 1979 to 1982 at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University in Cambridge.
Many of the works have since been extensively published and loaned to exhibitions around the world. Also in the collection is an important group of drawings related to sculpture, including an extensive group of sketches by the English artist Joseph Nollekens.
Beginning in the 1960s, he was advised by the New York Chinese furniture dealer William Drummond, who was previously based in Beijing. It was through this association that Dr. Sackler acquired the majority of the pieces in his storied collection of Chinese furniture. In fact, in 1965 alone, more than 130 pieces of furniture received acquisition numbers. A further group of furniture is also on view at The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
courtesy of Sotheby’s, October 2009 and January 2010.