Chester Dale
Encyclopedia
Chester Dale was an American banker and patron of the arts
Patronage
Patronage is the support, encouragement, privilege, or financial aid that an organization or individual bestows to another. In the history of art, arts patronage refers to the support that kings or popes have provided to musicians, painters, and sculptors...

. Dale earned large sums from working for the New York Stock Exchange
New York Stock Exchange
The New York Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located at 11 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, USA. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed companies at 13.39 trillion as of Dec 2010...

, allowing him to collect a group of 19th and 20th-century French paintings. Although he considered establishing a private museum, he donated a part of his collection to the National Gallery of Art
National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden is a national art museum, located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW, in Washington, DC...

 in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

 in 1941. The rest of his collection was bequeathed to the National Gallery upon his death.

Career

Dale was born in 1883, and started his financial career at the age of fifteen, as a runner
Running
Running is a means of terrestrial locomotion allowing humans and other animals to move rapidly on foot. It is simply defined in athletics terms as a gait in which at regular points during the running cycle both feet are off the ground...

 for the New York Stock Exchange
New York Stock Exchange
The New York Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located at 11 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, USA. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed companies at 13.39 trillion as of Dec 2010...

. At the age of 27 he married Maud Murray, a painter and critic, who introduced him to the idea of collecting modern art. In time he acquired assets that included utilities, railroads, and municipal bonds in the USA and Canada. When the National Gallery of Art opened, Dale lent the gallery 22 American pictures, and within a few months, two rooms of French Impressionist
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...

 paintings were established. Upon the request of painter George Bellows
George Bellows
George Wesley Bellows was an American realist painter, known for his bold depictions of urban life in New York City, becoming, according to the Columbus Museum of Art, "the most acclaimed American artist of his generation".-Youth:Bellows was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio...

, Dale agreed to sit for an oil on canvas painting in 1922, depicting Dale holding a golf club. Both Dale and Bellows were semi-professional athletes in their younger years.

In 1962, the long term loans of major artists who worked in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 from the mid-19th century through the mid-20th century were left to the gallery at the bequest of Dale. Included in the works that Dale bequeathed to the gallery were works by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot was a French landscape painter and printmaker in etching. Corot was the leading painter of the Barbizon school of France in the mid-nineteenth century...

, Claude Monet
Claude Monet
Claude Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. . Retrieved 6 January 2007...

, Salvador Dali
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....

, Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...

 and Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

.

Legacy

The National Gallery of Art obtained 88 paintings from Dale's personal residence, an apartment in the Plaza Hotel in New York, upon his death. The paintings were added to his 152 items already on loan to the National Gallery of Art. There were 6 new galleries established on the main floor to house the additional acquisitions. The bequest included 240 paintings, 7 sculptures, 22 graphics, over 1200 sales catalogs, and more than 1500 books. Additionally as part of the bequest, there were 3 fellowships established with a $500,000 endowment. Dale's gifts are currently located on the main floor in galleries 86 through 91.
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