Collecting in the Gilded Age: Art Patronage in Pittsburgh, 1890-1910

by Gabriel P. Weisberg, DeCourcy E. McIntosh, Alison McQueen

Collection of Spectacular Art from the personal collections of Eli Whitney, Frick, and others exhibited at the Frick Museum of Art and History.

428 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Mike Staresinic · Rating 5 out of 5]

This great book lifts industrial age art collecting to a new level with detailed detective work into art collections and networks of influence between iron and steel families, social, business and other relationships. Collecting in the Gilded Age performs a broad service to art in the U.S. by reinvigorating interest in gilded age art collectors and collecting. Lockhart, Byers, Porter, and Thaw rivaled now better-known collectors Frick, Mellon and Carnegie for social prestige, art connoisseurship and competitiveness in industrial Pittsburgh.

The book sets an ambitious agenda for further research in the field, not limited to: the Woodwell role in catalyzing portrait commissions; the Knoedler Gallery's only US office besides New York; the fantastic collection of Lockhart; and the purpose-built art galleries in the homes of Lockhart and Porter. A section on portraitist Theobald Chartran informed a presentation I gave at the East Liberty Historical Society speaker series.