Hartford's Sound & Fury

On the walls of the Knoedler Galleries in Manhattan this week is a show built around periods of painting that until recently have been out of fashion. It is a choice Connecticut selection of 41 paintings from Hartford's Wadsworth Atheneum. While it ranges from Rembrandt to Andrew Wyeth and includes Hartford's latest bequest, Renoir's Monet Painting in His Garden, the show gets its impact from the sound and fury, anguish and ecstasy beloved by baroque and rococo artists of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Hartford has this unique kind of collection largely because in the art market it is outgunned by Boston and New York. Although it is the oldest incorporated U.S. public art museum (founded 1842), it had only provincial rating until J. Pierpont Morgan's bequest put it on the map in 1917 with handsome bronzes, silver and porcelain, including the largest collection of 18th century Meissen figurines in the U.S. A surprise $2,000,000 in 1927 from Hartford Banker Frank C. Sumner ("He used to drive out in a purple Rolls-Royce to see the Hartford Chiefs play baseball, but as far as we know he never walked into the museum in his life") gave the Atheneum the bank account it direly needed. Looking for an out-of-vogue period in which to buy first-class painting, the director, the late A. Everett ("Chick") Austin Jr., beelined for the then unwanted, melodramatic baroque and rococo canvases.

By continuing the policy, Atheneum Director Charles C. Cunningham, 47, Fogg-trained and onetime ('32) Harvard hockey captain, played up the collection's strength, has made Hartford today a showplace for baroque. Among the museum's bargain showpieces: Francisco Ribalta's Ecstasy of St. Francis (first by the 17th century Spanish master to enter a U.S. collection), Salvator Rosa's wild-haired portrait of his mistress, La Ricciardi (purchased for a mere $4,500), Francisco Zurbaran's dramatic St. Serapion, and the museum's latest acquisition, the powerful, full-bearded Philosopher by Spaniard Jusepe de Ribera, bought for $18,000.

Recalling Fogg Museum Mentor Paul Sachs's advice always to put quality first ("Buy the Czernin Vermeer"), Director Cunningham said with justifiable pride: "As far as I'm concerned, they're all Czernin Vermeers*--the Ribera would hang very comfortably in the Prado, and so would the Zurbar*#225;n."

* The Czernin Vermeer is "The Artist in His Studio," by Delft Painter Johannes Vermeer (1632-75), considered by many to be his greatest work. Hitler bought it from Count Czernin-Morzin in 1940 for more than $500,000; it now hangs in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum.

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