REDISCOVERED: OLINSKY,BRACHT, VOLK

REDISCOVERED: OLINSKY, BRACHT, VOLK

by Joan K. Yanni

The 1913 retrospective exhibit, which ended in November, brought memorable experiences for the curatorial staff and was the source of three paintings newly-hung in the Gallery.

Ivan Olinsky's A New Arrangement came to us through exhibition organizer Marie Via's contact with the Olinsky family.  Since a work by Olinsky had been in the original 1913 exhibition, Marie looked for a work by the artist for her retrospective.  She finally decided to borrow an Olinsky from the Detroit Institute of Art, but the daughter and son of the artist had become interested in having one of their father’s works in the Gallery’s permanent collection. Also, the daughter’s grandson just happened to be graduating from the University of Rochester!  The curator of American Art Patti Junker was invited to look over five of Olinsky’s works and choose one.  A New Arrangement, the painting she chose, is an excellent Olinsky, and typical of portraits painted at the time.  Its subject is a model with a 1920s hair-do and an eye-catching red dress. The picture was documented by a grandson of the painter who is a professor at the City University of New York.

A New Arrangement

The painting Morning Star by Eugen Bracht, a gift of Mrs. James Sibley Watson, had been in the original 1913 exhibit but was badly in need of cleaning.  Mr. and Mrs. Michael Watson donated funds for its conservation and it appeared in the 1913 retrospective.  It was also chosen for use as UR President and Mrs. Dennis O'Brien's 1988 Christmas card.

Morning Star

The third "1913 connection" is the Douglas Volk painting of his daughter Marian Douglas Volk Bridge.  Though there was a Volk painting of Marian in the original 1913 exhibit, it was not this Volk.  Our painting was bought at a 1915 Gallery exhibit and presented to the Gallery by Mrs. George Dickman, a friend of Mrs. Watson.  Coincidentally, Marian's painting arrived in Rochester ten years before she herself moved here—in 1926 when her husband, Dr. Ezra Bridge, became director of Rochester's Iola Sanitarium. 

Mrs. Bridge was not the typical society matron that the painting conjures up.  She was introspective, loved gardening, music and reading, and, despite the fur stole she wears in the portrait, had become an animal activist and a vegetarian long before these stands were popular.  The painting had been in Registrar Sandra Markham's "missing" file, but since everything has to be somewhere, and since it was needed for the 1913 retrospective, Sandra contacted Gertrude Herdle Moore and Isabel Herdle, who remembered that it had been lent to the Eastman School of Music—probably in the '20s, a time when many paintings were lent to University buildings.  Sandra went to examine the Eastman dorms - and found the picture in the South Lounge, very dirty and with several considerable tears in it.  Don Manfredi of West Bloomfield did the conservation in record time—in time for the 1913 retrospective.

The Artist's Daughter, Marion 

Batavia by Esteban Vicente, was brought back from City Hall where the Gallery once had paintings on loan.  Vicente is an abstract impressionist still working today; since he is Spanish, the locale is probably NOT our local Batavia.   (See article dated May 2007.)

Batavia

Charles Gruppé's Harbor Scene is a painting of Gloucester, Mass., given to the Gallery by St. Paul's United Church of Christ in Irondequoit.  Since the church in which it was hanging was about to be torn down, its pastor decided it should be preserved in our Gallery.  Other paintings by Gruppé, one of the leading landscape painters of his day and a member of the Rochester Art Club, can be seen in Oak Hill Country Club—and in some private homes in the area
.