Arthur Jerome Eddy (November 5, 1859 – July 21, 1920, inNew York City,New York) was anAmerican lawyer, author, art collector, and a prominent member of the first generation of AmericanModern art collectors. His bookCubists and Post-Impressionism was the first American book promoting these new art movements and the work ofWassily Kandinsky.[1] Eddy's collection was distinguished by the inclusion ofGerman expressionists and Wassily Kandinsky.
Eddy was known for his support of theArmory Show, purchasing work from the show in New York and Chicago and lecturing on the art during the Chicago show.[2] In 1931, a portion of Eddy's collection was donated by his widow and son to theArt Institute of Chicago as the "Arthur Jerome Eddy Memorial Collection" which is an important core of the museum's collection of Modern art.[3]
Eddy was born inFlint,Michigan, toJerome Eddy, the city's mayor. His father purchased the Flint Michigan paper, theGenesee Democrat. After running the paper himself, Jerome Eddy turned over management of the paper to Arthur Jerome Eddy.[4][when?]
One source says that Eddy graduated from the "literary department" of Harvard University.[4] A second source indicates that he "entered Harvard Law School in 1877 but in 1879 returned to be publisher of the Genesee Democrat newspaper. He continued studying law with a local expert. In 1888 he moved to Chicago to begin his legal career, passing the Illinois Bar in 1890."[1]
Arthur J. Eddy married Lulu Crapo Orrell, a granddaughter of Michigan governorHenry H. Crapo[4] and cousin of the founder of General Motors,William Crapo Durant.[5] His son, Jerome Orrell Eddy, was born May 12, 1891, and died December 28, 1951.[6]
Eddy practiced corporate law with Wetten, Matthews & Pegler,[1] which later became the firm of Eddy, Wetten & Pegler.[7] Mr. Eddy was one of the driving forces in creating theNational Carbon Company which combined multiple carbon companies into one company that controlled approximately 75% of the US carbon market in the world.[8] Carbon was used to make numerous products related to the use of electricity.[9] He helped organize American Steel Foundry Corporation, National Turbine Company, and American Linseed Oil Company.[10] He helped established the Bridge Builder's Society.[11]
Eddy wrote on a variety of subjects and in various formats. These included2000 Miles on an Automobile (travelog),Law of Combinations (economics),Tales of a Small Town (short stories),Ganton & Co. (a novel) andThe Warning (a play).[10] He wrote several very important books on art, includingDelight, the Soul of Art,Recollections of James McNeill Whistler, andCubists and Post Impressionism.
He wrote an article on tile roofs that appeared inGustav Stickley's magazine,The Craftsman. He contributed poetry and edited a Chicago literary magazine,Contributors' Magazine, which was the self-published work of the Contributor's Club. Members of the club includedEugene Field,Harriet Monroe, George P. Upton,Potter Palmer, and John J. Glessner.[12]
Eddy resided in Chicago but maintained a second home, designed byFrederick Roehrig in Pasadena. The house was cited as "the most complete example of the California (Southern Californian!) interpretation of Arts and Crafts principles."[13]William Le Baron Jenney wrote an article, "A Remarkable Dwelling," about the Eddy House in the May 1906Inland Architect and News Record.[13] An article about the house was published inThe Craftsman magazine.[14] The house was "one of the most important bungalow designs of the period, strongly influencing later ranch style houses throughout California and later the United States."[15] The Pasadena house was torn down in 1973.[16]
Michigan roads are all bad, but some are worse than others.
Mr. Eddy was an early automobile enthusiast.The New York Times reported that he set a record in automobile travel by traveling 2900 miles in two months. The trip started in Chicago on August 1, 1901. He traveled to Boston and returned to Chicago on September 30, 1901.[18] He wrote about this trip in his 1902 bookTwo Thousand Miles on an Automobile; Being a Desultory Narrative of a Trip Through New England, New York, Canada, and the West,[19] under the pseudonym of "A. Chauffeur." He drove aWinton Motor Carriage Company automobile in the 1901 trip. In 1902, he drove aPanhard to Flint Michigan to visit family and gave Margery Durant, the daughter ofWilliam Crapo Durant, her first automobile ride.[20] Her father, the future founder of General Motors, responded: "Margery, how could you, how could you, be so foolish as to risk your life in one of those things."[21]
His interest in art did not awaken until he saw theWorld Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where he was most taken with the work ofJames McNeill Whistler andAuguste Rodin. Eddy, who traveled to Paris in the middle of the 1890s, was portrayed by Whistler in the paintingArrangement in Flesh Color and Brown: Portrait of Arthur Jerome Eddy. Around the same time Rodin also sculpted a portrait bust of Eddy, bronze casts of which are in the Musée Rodin in Paris, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History. In 1902 his first book about art, titledDelight, the Soul of Art, was published. In the following year he publishedRecollections and impressions of James A. McNeill Whistler. Thus through 1912 he focused on the art of the late 19th century.
For Eddy, as for many Americans, the 1913Armory Show proved a revelation ofmodern art. Fascinated by the efforts of these artists, he immediately began his collection ofavant-garde art with the purchase of aBrâncuși sculpture and 25 paintings. "In New York, Eddy purchased 15 of the most radical works on display, includingMarcel Duchamp'sPortrait of Chess Players (1911) andThe King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes (1912),Albert Gleizes'sMan on a Balcony (1912), andFrancis Picabia'sDances at the Spring (1912). In Chicago, he purchased three additional paintings by the Portuguese artistAmadeo de Souza Cardoso, as well as three lithographs byMaurice Denis and four byÉdouard Vuillard." On two occasions during the show, Mr. Eddy lectured on "Cubism" at theArt Institute of Chicago.[22]
On trips to London and Germany he came to know of Wassily Kandinsky and by 1920 had bought four of his paintings. Kandinsky introduced Eddy to another artist in working in Munich at the time,Albert Bloch. Eddy would become Bloch's most important collector, owning over forty paintings and etchings.[23] Eddy's collection in modern art would grow to over 100 works of art.
The year 1914 saw the publication of perhaps his most important writing,Cubists and Post-Impressionism,[24] a large portion of which was based on information that Eddy obtained from the artists themselves. It is considered to be the first work published in the United States in which Modern Art was presented and explained sympathetically. Additionally it was the first adequate account of Kandinsky in America; the artist had been represented by only one painting in the Armory Show the year before.
In his last years of life Eddy shifted the focus of his collecting to theAmerican moderns, including some paintings by artists such asArthur Dove.
He died after surgery for acute appendicitis at Post Graduate Hospital in New York City.[10]
In 1921,Louis Sullivan designed a "family memorial enclosure" with the "Dimensions: ca: 51' (diameter)" in Glenwood Cemetery in Flint Michigan which was not built.[25]
After his death in 1920, some of the collection was dispersed. The Art Institute of Chicago exhibited his collection September 19 to October 22, 1922. In 1931, his widow and son donated 20 paintings and 3 sculptures to theArt Institute of Chicago to form theArthur Jerome Eddy Memorial Collection. as described below.[3]
The collection includes 19th-century works:
The collection is noted for containing members of the GermanDer Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) movement:
Further artists represented in the Art Institute's Eddy collection:
The sculpture in the collection are:
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