TALES OF AN ART DEALER
Across 6 generations of Voses, and 184 years in the business, the gallery has accumulated an extensive history. Tales of an Art Dealer was originally produced in 1991 as a film honoring the gallery’s 150th anniversary in business. Airing on PBS and premiering at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the program included stories told by Robert C. Vose, Jr. (1912 – 1998), as well as his sons Terry and Bill Vose. The three Voses, with over a century of combined experience dealing in American paintings, spoke of eccentric collectors, fakes and forgeries, discovering masterpieces in unexpected places, and other colorful anecdotes of the art world. In 2016, to celebrate the gallery’s momentous 175th anniversary, we enhanced the original tales with new narratives from the 6th generation owner, Carey Vose, and Senior Vice President, Courtney Kopplin. Many of the included tales have been written as threads for all to enjoy reading.
Tales of an Art Dealer Videos
Tales of an Art Dealer was originally produced in 1991 to honor the gallery’s 150th anniversary, and was revitalized in 2016 to celebrate the 175th year in business…
Producing Tales of an Art Dealer
Back in 1989, we were discussing how to celebrate Vose Galleries’ 150th anniversary. I had recently seen a Ken Burns documentary/docudrama of the artist, Thomas Hart Benton, and was very impressed with the story telling and archival shots. Why couldn’t we make a similar documentary chronicling our 150-year history?
The Carrig – Rohane Frame Shop
Hermann Dudley Murphy, discouraged by the poor quality of frames he was able to obtain commercially, decided to buy materials and teach himself how to carve and gild…
Robert C. Vose’s Favorite Story: Travels of a Lady
While in Los Angeles for an appraisal, Robert C. Vose stumbled upon a rare Rembrandt, dated 1632. Robert acquired the painting and just before the stock market crash of 1929 sold it to a prominent Boston collector. The painting was loaned to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, where in 1975 two thieves stole the portrait at gunpoint…
The Governor, The Copley, and Miss Ima
In 1954 Robert C. Vose Jr. had secured permission from former Massachusetts Governor Alvan T. Fuller to see the impressionist paintings in the Fuller House in Little Boar’s Head, New Hampshire. We discovered a hidden gem, a Copley tucked away in the top floor closet! The next day I called Governor Fuller and asked if he might sell it as it wasn’t hung. I already had a potentail client in mind, Miss Ima Hogg from Houston…
Mickey Dowd and the White Elephant
One morning in New York City, Robert C. Vose Jr. rang the doorbell of Cecil “Mickey” Dowd, one of the more colorful members of the last generation of wholesale art dealers. As I gazed at the stacks of paintings in his small apartment, I noticed one huge work protruding some two feet above the others. When I commented that it looked like a [Thomas] Gainsborough, Mickey replied that it was, but what could one do with a “damned white elephant like that”…
The Blushing Blacksmith
Great grandfather Seth M. Vose never approved of nudes. In one shipment of paintings from France, he received a full-length front view of a nude blacksmith. It was a fine painting, and couldn’t be discarded! So, he cut the figure off at the hips and sold the upper half…
Is there a Market for Castles?
A young friend bought a house in the Adirondacks. While cleaning out the garage, he noticed a huge painting in a very heavy frame, so heavy that he could barely turn the picture to the light. He called Vose Galleries and inquired, “Is there any market for paintings of castles?” We asked him to look for a signature, and he said there was a large tablet on it that said “Cropsey”, one of the famous Hudson River School painters…
In search of Ernest Albert: Terry Vose’s Odyssey to Guatemala
A long-distance phone call from Guatemala piqued the curiosity of Robert C. Vose III. Did we have any interest in paintings by Ernest Albert? In 1981, Vose Galleries, along with the Albert Family, staged the first retrospective show of Ernest Albert since his death, and Terry was eager to find more…
How to Get an 8 Foot by 6 Foot Painting in the Back of a Car
In upstate New York during the early fifties, Robert C. Vose JR. found a wonderful early American painting, Pocahontas and John Smith by Victor Nehlig. I paid a local dealer $100 for the picture who then smiled as I tried in vain to stuff the 8 foot canvas into the back of my old wooden Ford wagon…
Old Man Stanley
Sanford Low, an artist and first director of the museum in New Britain, Connecticut, and an irreverent free spirit and completely independent soul wanted to interest the area’s wealthiest mogul in collecting art…
Robert Salmon’s View of Algiers
In 1967, Ann and Bob Vose visited the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, MA, to view an exhibition featuring Robert Salmon. As they admired an enormous rendering of The British Fleet Forming a Line Off Algiers, 1829, Ann exclaimed, “Remember that huge grubby old mural rolled up in the gallery attic? It must be a companion painting to this one!”…
Washington Must Stay Here!
In honor of the city’s 325th anniversary, Mayor John Hynes and 75 prominent citizens joined together to make a public appeal to raise money to purchase a mammoth oil painting by Emanuel Leutze depicting the most famous event of the Revolutionary War…
The Spanish Craze of the 1920s: Ignacio Zuloaga (1870-1945)
Few people today would recognize the name of Spanish painter Ignacio Zuloaga (1870-1945). Yet in his 1925 show at Vose Galleries, over 22,000 devotees viewed the exhibition…
The Con-Artist from Peekskill
In the fall of 1973 Terry Vose delivered and hung nearly $100,000 worth of paintings to a new clients home. After several months Robert C. Vose Jr. went to call on the client only to discover the house was absolutely and completely empty…
Cranberry Harvest, Nantucket Island: An American Masterpiece
Eastman Johnson’s The Cranberry Harvest, Nantucket Island was probably the most important American landscape we ever sold…
Una and the Red Cross Knight
In late 1950, I was sound asleep in an upper New York State motel when I received a call from a private dealer with an excellent eye…
Country Politicians
Mr. and Mrs. Smith of Tawanda, Pennsylvania (a young couple in their 20s) had bought a small brick house, including the furnishings, for $10,000. Mrs. Smith took down a small painting from the second floor hall and found an old label reading “George Caleb Bingham” on the back…
A Bingham for Boston
On December 24th, 1970, a client telephoned us from Marshfield, Massachusetts saying she had an old painting signed “Bingham” which she wanted to sell…
A Society Portrait
George de Forest Brush was commissioned to paint a society matron who had an elegant dress made for the occasion which Brush thought abominable. He dressed her as he thought more fitting, and when he finally allowed her to see the portrait, she stormed out of the studio…
Two for the Price of One
This pastel sold sight-unseen on the recommendation of someone at the MFA to an important Swiss collector in October, 1988, with the understanding that the piece would be removed from the frame only by the museum staff. When it came time to be removed, a remarkable discovery was made…
Long Jakes, the Rocky Mountain Man
In January of 1986 a lady in Minneapolis took this painting to the Beard Art Galleries. The canvas had been slashed and it was filthy, and she said it had been in her basement for many years…
A Bierstadt Sold with Regret
This spectacular painting was acquired in 1959 through one of the greatest trades Robert C. Vose Sr. ever engineered (and that is saying something)…
Frederick Remington: Vose’s Greatest Loss
In June 1969 a shipment of 61 Remington drawings was mailed to Vose Galleries. The works were packed and shipped from a New York City framing company. The address listed – 162 Newbury, instead of 238- was incorrect…
