One Man's Fancy

His mother was related to the Ford clan and sister to J. L. Hudson, founder of Detroit's biggest department store. His mother helped to found Detroit's first art museum, and she took him East with her when she went to buy Early American furniture. Then Robert Tannahill became an art patron and collector himself. Every year he traveled abroad to the art centers of Europe. At home he helped struggling young artists educate themselves and find a market for their work. Under no pressure to work, under no need to meet a payroll, he gave where he found the giving useful, he bought when he found the value worth preserving, and he could afford to disregard the sureties of market taste. He did not feel compelled to buy the typical or the characteristic. He did on occasion--a great painting is irresistible at times, even to a millionaire of individualistic taste. "But his collection is completely his own," says Assistant Director Frederick Cummings of the Detroit Institute of Art. "He bought what he liked, and it was the best."

Cummings should know. For more than 40 years, Tannahill was active in the affairs of the Institute. He was a longtime member of its governing body and an honorary curator of American art. He made his first gift (an 18th century Hispano-Moorish vase valued at $25) in 1926, and remained a generous benefactor till his death in September at the age of 76. In his will Tannahill made his personal choices public by giving his favorite museum a last and most munificent gift: his multimillion-dollar private collection, including a life-size Renoir nude, seven Cezanne oils, five major Picassos and an important collection of African sculpture.

Worrisome Gap. The special quality of Collector Tannahill's taste was for the warmly intimate. He chose the sensuous over the coldly classical, and though he appreciated style, he did not care for the showy. Sometimes his predilections led him astray. He owned, for instance, ten works by the American painter John Carroll, whose wispy, willowy ladies were scarcely top quality even in their own time. Nevertheless, there are enough first-rate impressionist and post-impressionist paintings in the Tannahill collection to make any museum happy--especially the Detroit Institute. "One of our most worrisome gaps has been in the area of Impressionists and Post-Impressionists," says Director Willis F. Woods. Adds Assistant Director Cummings: "Now we can compete with Chicago."

Characteristic of Tannahill's personal choice is the late, atypical Rouault Head of a Girl--almost certainly a portrait of Josephine Baker, the girl from St. Louis who discovered early on that Parisians above all people realized black is beautiful. Rouault rarely did portraits of specific persons, and to Cummings this departure from his usual practice suggests "a special relationship" between artist and sitter.

Early Impressionism. The Manet On the Beach is also an unusual work: an important example of the artist's conversion, in midcareer, to the informal open-air painting now known as Impressionism. Painted during the summer of 1873 on the seacoast of Berck-sur-Mer, its lighter palette and sketchier treatment present a striking departure from the indoor lighting and carefully worked-up details of the earlier, sensational Le dejeuner sur I'herbe--an outdoor scene painted in the studio. Even the Rousseau is a little offbeat, though the famous Sunday painter of imaginary jungles and deserts did some similar scenes from life in the suburbs of Paris. This fine example has all the qualities that excited the admiration of Picasso and other masters of modernism: the naive perspective, the careful yet unrealistic drawing, the distinctive overall look that instantly proclaims its author an individual.

Tannahill's collection has never been well known outside his native Detroit, and even there only a few friends and museum officials have ever seen it as a whole. Tannahill kept it on the walls and tables of his elegant Grosse Pointe home, seldom lent or published anything from it. Next spring the entire collection will go on view at the Detroit Institute, and the public will be able to see how one man's fancy built a magnificent collection any museum can be proud to own.

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