The american collectors Marlene and Spencer Hays must confirm the first step of a donation ever seen in the musée d’orsay, which has 187 paintings, including gems of painters Nabis.
” A French passion “. When the Orsay museum was dedicated in 2013 an exhibition in the collection of Marlene and Spencer Hays, its title pointed out with correctness the love that binds the couple of american collectors in France. Today, this condition should be reflected by a first donation of 187 paintings and, in the long term, 600 pieces (drawings, objects and sculptures), which will be made to the foreign donations the more important for a national museum since the Post-war period. Its value is estimated at 150 million euros (187 tables) and about 350 for the whole batch. The first step of this Christmas gift early should be recorded Saturday evening at the Elysee : on this occasion, the insignia of commander of the Legion of Honor will be awarded to two Americans, ” for their life spent in the service of art and of the beautiful “, stressed the ministry.
The donation includes jewels signed Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard and Paul-Elie Ranson, prominent members of the movement of the Nabis : The woman watering a geranium (1895), Coffee in the wood (1896), or Young woman brushing (to 1896) are three of the twenty-four pieces of Bonnard (1867-1947) given at Orsay. There is also the gorgeous Screen with three leaves – duck, heron, and pheasant (1889), a sublime work of a fiery red influenced, at the time, by the mode japanese. One of the other pieces mistress of the collection is the seventh panel of the public Gardens of Vuillard, a decoration that was commissioned in 1894 by the director of a literary review for his mansion in paris. Title The First it comes as well be added to the five other panels that already has the museum, the three remaining being divided between the Texas, Ohio and Belgium.
A coherent collection
Holders of a selection of sharp and consistent, the Hays are a couple like no other, coming from modest families from Texas, that nothing predestined to become collectors recognized at the international level. To decorate their home, they are primarily interested in american painting of the late 19th century and early 20th, before discovering France, its museums, galleries and mansions, that they were assiduous patrons. They have the passion for the Nabis, painters of the avant-garde, which is located to the origins of modern art at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Marked by an acute sense of décor and influence, often japanese-style, their painting reflects the Paris of the 19th and of the Belle Epoque, the one that love to the Hays, who find their memory of their walks and the time spent in the cafés and the theatres.
Recognized on the international level, the couple has a relationship very much alive to its collection : the Marlene and Spencer Hays live in the middle of their tables, exposed with care in the home of Nashville that they have built on the model of a particular hotel of the rue de Grenelle in Paris. This is why the donation at the musée d’orsay will not actually be effective after their death. The museum is also committed to providing to the works setting for the height of their value : they will not be dispersed, and presented in a dedicated space, in the place of the library and documentation of the museum.
“The feeling of duty accomplished”
The choice to offer their collection at Orsay is the culmination of a longtime project, says one to the ministry. France is the second homeland of Hays, and this museum is their favorite. But their decision is also the consecration of their friendship of over fifteen years with another passionate lover of the Nabis : Guy Cogeval, president of Orsay museum, met for the first time in New York in 2001 while he was the director of the musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, and was preparing an exhibition of Vuillard in Paris for 2003, as well as the catalogue raisonné of the painter, the fruit of several years of work.
Often maligned but renewed in march last at the head of the Orsay for a single year (instead of three), Cogeval did not hide his emotion, and his pride at the confirmation of the donation. the ” I have the feeling of ” mission accomplished “, he confided, pointing with malice that the Americans will be more likely to admire these paintings at the Orsay in north american museums. Then, that God bless Marlene and Spencer Hays.
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