Heade Sketches Sold Privately

by Daniel Grant

Another day, another deaccession controversy. The good news is that the endowment of the St. Augustine Historical Society in Florida is reported to be $1 million richer than it had been. The reason for that windfall strikes almost no one as good news. Back in late 2007, the historical society made an unpublicized sale of a collection of 24 oil sketches by artist Martin Johnson Heade (1819-1904), who is often associated with the Hudson River school, to art dealer George K. Arnold of Ormond Beach, Florida. The sketches were the basis for many of Heade's prized paintings.

The St. Augustine Historical Society's director, Susan Parker, would say no more than that the sale took place. In a telephone conversation, George Arnold confirmed the purchase but offered no further details as to the price or how the sale came about. He did not say whether any of the 24 sketches had been sold subsequently, noting that currently "they are not available for sale."

More collectors are interested in finished paintings by Heade than the sketches. "They are more of a scholarly item than a commercial item," Arnold said. "They are significant historically, since he made these sketches out in the field and then went back into his studio and constructed his paintings. The sketches help us see how he put his paintings together."

The historical society did not announce publicly its intention to sell the sketches and did not bring them to public sale, which is customary in the museum field. As a member of the American Association for State and Local History, the St. Augustine Historical Society is not obligated to use proceeds from deaccessioned items strictly for new purchases, as is required of members of the American Association of Museums.

Reaction to the sale, which only recently became known, has been largely negative. "They didn't violate any laws, as far as I can tell, but this certainly wasn't handled in a way that nonprofits are supposed to handle these kinds of things," said John Blades, director of the Henry Morrison Flagler Museum in Palm Beach, Florida. "They were works by probably the most important painter to work in Saint Augustine."

Another local museum director, who asked for anonymity ("Saint Augustine is a small town"), noted that he was "unhappy about it, because it's part of our cultural patrimony here." He would have been less unhappy had the historical society sold the collection in its entirety "to another institution or at a public venue."

Perhaps most upset was Timothy A. Eaton, former chief curator at the Boca Raton Museum of Art and currently a West Palm Beach art dealer, who had curated an exhibition of the collection that traveled to eight Florida museums between 1993 and 1995. "It seems so wrong on so many levels," he said. "It's a very special group of works that are very specific to the history of Florida. That they were sold without competitive bidding, to a private person instead of to another institution that would keep them in the public trust, and sold for a fifth of their value is outrageous."

The collection of 24 oil sketches, most created from the 1860's to the 1880's, had been donated to the historical society in 1944 by the Reverend Wilma E. Davis, a Methodist minister who had been given the sketches by Heade himself in 1903 or 1904. At the time, she was an art student at John B. Stetson University, Deland, Florida, and met Heade while he was visiting her parents. The artist invited her to his studio "and gave me some advice about my work," according to a letter Davis wrote in 1944 that accompanied her donation. "As I was leaving, he called me back, opened a chest, and took out these sketches, which he gave to me, saying that they might help me."

According to Theodore Stebbins Jr., curator of American art at the Fogg Museum, Harvard University, and an authority on Martin Johnson Heade, this collection of 24 works represents "the only substantial group of Heade's oil sketches in existence. Perhaps there may be a stray sketch around somewhere, but this is the main group."

Stebbins noted that the artist might have given these works to Davis because he was close to death and his art was not particularly in demand. "Back then, his paintings weren't considered valuable, and the sketches were worth less than the paintings." It would be another 40 or 50 years before interest in Heade as a major American artist of the 19th century developed.

In 1999 Stebbins, who was then curator of American art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which owns 30 paintings by the artist, organized an exhibition of works by Martin Johnson Heade that opened in Boston and traveled to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Stebbins noted that three oil sketches on loan from the St. Augustine Historical Society were included in the exhibition.

The St. Augustine Historical Society, which dates back to 1881, operates two colonial buildings as museums, the Tovar House and the González-Alvarez House—believed to be the oldest house in the United States—and maintains a collection of documents, maps, photographs, and other printed material about the history of St. Augustine (the oldest city in the U.S.) and early Florida.

Although Eaton claimed that the oil sketches may have been sold for "a fifth of their value," that is difficult to verify, since all of the paintings by the artist sold at public auction have been works on canvas. The highest public sale price to date is $2,760,000 for Sunny Day on the Marsh (Newburyport Meadows) (1871-75), which beat Sotheby's $800,000/1.2 million estimate in May 2005. Other top prices for Heade's oils on canvas include $1,925,000 (est. $700,000/1 million) for Two Fighting Hummingbirds with Two Orchids (1875) at Sotheby's in December 1987 and $1,650,000 (est. $1.5/2 million) for The Great Florida Sunset (1887) at Sotheby's in May 1988.

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