Research Catalog

Title

William and Henry Walters, the reticent collectors / William R. Johnston.

Author

Johnston, William R.

Publication

Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press in association with the Walters Art Gallery, 1999.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

Walters Art Gallery (Baltimore, Md.)

Description

xvi, 309 p., [16] p. of plates : ill. (some col.), ports.; 24 cm.

Summary

• "In the Mid-Nineteenth Century, Baltimore businessman William Thompson Walters began to patronize the artists of Maryland. Today, the museum that bears his name - Baltimore's Walters Art Gallery - excels in fields as diverse as Egyptian bronzes, Byzantine silver, illuminated manuscripts, medieval carved ivories, early Renaissance paintings, Sevres porcelains, Islamic metalwork, and Chinese ceramics. Surprisingly, the story of how William Walters and his son Henry created one of the finest privately assembled museums in the United States has not been told."--Jacket.
• "With this new book, William Johnston, the Walters's curator of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art, restores William and Henry Walters to their rightful place among America's great art collectors. Drawing upon the knowledge of the early museum staff and gathering valuable information from the few other available sources, Johnston has painstakingly recreated the life and world of the Walterses."--Jacket.
• "Their personal collection differs from those of other, more familiar collectors, such as J.P. Morgan and Henry Clay Frick, in that Henry Walters intended from the very first that the collection form a museum to serve the public. When the museum first opened its doors in 1934, Johnston relates, many visitors were surprised by the collection's size and by its comprehensive representation of the history of art from the third millennium B.C. to the early twentieth century."--Jacket.

Subject

• Walters, W. T. 1820-1894
• Walters, Henry, 1848-1931
• Walters Art Museum
• Baltimore (Md.) > Walters Art Museum
• Art > Collectors and collecting > United States > Biography

Genre/Form

Biographies

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

The Early Years, 1819-1861 -- The Years Abroad, 1861-1865 -- The Postwar Recovery, 1866-1884 -- The Years of Fruition, 1884-1894 -- The Son Succeeds His Father, 1894-1909 -- The Walters Gallery, 1909-1919 -- The Final Years, 1919-1931.

ISBN

0801860407 (alk. paper)

LCCN

^^^99010315^

OCLC

• 40631646
• SCSB-10251767

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library