clifford schorer winslow homer

JUDITH RICHARDS: Okay, rabbit-skin glue. And then I would see that they would bid up to a record price, and then the next week you'd see a very similar one. CLIFFORD SCHORER: commentarywe had a Reynolds and a Kehinde Wiley together, and we showed that, you know, basically, this portraitureyou know, the portraiture is not only of its time, but it also can be timeless. And just, you know, wander around and pull books. Schorer also describes his discovery of the Worcester Art Museum and his subsequent work there on the Museum's board and as president; his interest in paleontology and his current house by Walter Gropius in Provincetown, MA; his involvement with the purchase and support of Agnew's Gallery based in London, UK, and his work with its director, Anthony Crichton-Stuart; his thoughts on marketing at art shows and adapting Agnew's to the changing market for the collecting of Old Masters; the differences between galleries and auction houses in the art market today; and his expectations for his collection in the future. And heby the time I knew him, he had retired as, I think, the 50- or 60-year chief engineer of Grumman Aerospace, sofor their plants, not for their aircraft manufacturing. The reality was, it was cheap. And, you know, you have this big triangle already. So if there's something I need to learn, I will learn it, you know, if I have to. So I didn't want to ship it out on a common carrier, so I actually rented a truck and put it in the truck, and I drove 20 hours, with one quick stop for some junk food. I'mI went to the MFA, you know, maybe a year and a half ago, and I have a major picture on view in their Koch Gallery. And I said, "Well, I assume you do if you just bid me up to $47,000." I can't remember that. R-O. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yes. I mean, a real Reynolds. It's the same problem. Yes. And then I realized, you know, I'd read the name Worcester Art Museum, like, here and there, and I've always logged it in the back of my mind like, Oh, this must be some old collection from New England that, you know, has a few good things. JUDITH RICHARDS: You had no idea when you went to Plovdiv that there would be such a. So today I actually have two paintings from that same series. CLIFFORD SCHORER: No. We sold the real estate. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Even though they're Americans, through and through. The shareholders did very well by the real estate, but the business, by that point, was, I think, sort of put on the back burner after 2008, then when they didn't have a premises, they built themselves a new and rather expensive rental premises, and the rent and the costs there were quite high. CLIFFORD SCHORER: But, you know, I guess with minor things, you know, with less important artwork, it is what it is. JUDITH RICHARDS: And how does that manifest itself? [Laughs.]. JUDITH RICHARDS: Have there been anythis might be my last question. CLIFFORD SCHORER: So I like the fact that that we're talking more about an accumulation of scholarship, diverse scholarship, that contributes over centuries to an artist's reputation. And my mother was. I mean, the auction house generally won't give that information, because you're a client and they want, JUDITH RICHARDS: So it's up to you to reach out to the field. JUDITH RICHARDS: So it sounds like it was a very smooth transition from being a businessman and a collector to getting involved in the business of art through these interactions, these. And they didn't hire me as a senior programmer analyst, but they did hire me as a programmer analyst. They'reyou know, they're interesting folks to read about. But, yeah, and there was a certain part of ityou know, my world hadI had these warehouses full with things all the time. [Laughs.]. When Clifford Schorer was told about a Drer drawing, he didn't believe it because so few exist. ONE SIZE ONE SIZE 16.0cm10.8cm5.3cm ! . Anyway, I bought her lunch, and I got to go into the room. So, I mean, he wasby the latter point of that, his eyesight was failing, and you know, the collecting was something he sat and pretended to do. And, you know, the best Procaccini, when I was looking back in 2000, was 5 to 6 million. And I'm thinking, Who are these people? I brought an entire chair, a French chair, into the passenger cabin. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I wentI had a pretty bad high school experience. I would saysometimes I still go over to the Natural History Museum just to poke around. CLIFFORD SCHORER: and previously had been unassociated. That'syou know, those are all possibilities. I have the Coronation Halberd of the Archduke Albrecht, and it's in the museum at Worcester [laughs], and, no. CLIFFORD SCHORER: And so I was very happy to be there at the moment when they needed the business side to think about things like the real estate, the liability, the employees, you know, the human resource matters, the board relationship between their board and our board when they're being absorbed into our board, that sort of thing. CLIFFORD SCHORER: No, no, but you know what I mean. And then my junior year, after, I think, the second or third day, I quit high school. As a museum president, I saw that, you know, the risk that the curator's friend who happens to be an artist gets a monographic show. So, do something to tie it into the Old Masters, either LorraineClaude Lorraineor Poussin orand Cezanne. JUDITH RICHARDS: Because how you define a collection and the price point? [en] Vital records: Clifford J Schorer at +Archives + Follow. Had you started going to museums there? So, yes. I mean, the institutions usually insure when it's inside their building, and I insure it to get there and to get it back. Have there been important dealers that you've worked with that have influenced. And the focus was much more British 20th century. So I went to Spain, and I tried to buy both of the remaining paintings. It had been in dealer hands so long, and it had been sort of, shall we say, gussied up so many times by restorersanother layer of varnish, another layer of feeble retouching, another layer of varnish. Noortman was the gallery that was, you know, a very successful Dutch dealer, Robert Noortman. CLIFFORD SCHORER: I was a willful and independent child. Now, we have to be very responsive if that changes. [00:10:02]. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Johnny Van Haeften. Does it happen that a painting and a drawing will happen to hit the market at the same time? I mean, as a matter of fact, CLIFFORD SCHORER: There was a day when I all of sudden said, you know, I can collect paintings. JUDITH RICHARDS: When those things happen, are youbuyers at auction aren't identified. [Laughs.] JUDITH RICHARDS: What year would that be? CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yeah, living on my own. It's a segue into theyou know, what was going on at that time. What happened?" So, you know, we can talk endlessly about art, and, you know, he invites me to his house, and we look at art. I said, "You've got a great collection here." And being a sort of mariner and obsessed with the mariners of, you know, the 19th century. In her later years, Olive was described by one of her . JUDITH RICHARDS: Was that the firstso you said that was the first painting? You know, I've managed to find what is sort of seeded in the ground between Washington, D.C., and Boston, and Maine, you know, driving around like crazy every time there's an auction. Winslow Homer. JUDITH RICHARDS: So you're notit sounds like you're not sure you will go back to collecting for yourself. In their day, they weren't particularly valuable, which is why they're strewn all over Boston. So they were the cleanest book of business I've ever seen relative to the Holocaust. So that's a modern phenomenon, where you have this conflict between, you know, a museum, institutional curator and private collectors who may desire that their collection end up on view and the curator may have opposing views. JUDITH RICHARDS: Mm-hmm. I think that's fantastic. How long did you continue collecting in that field? I think we're right-sized for the moment for the market. [Laughs.] It was basicallythey didn't tell me who bought it, but they told me it was reserved, and then shortly thereafter I learned the National Gallery in Washington bought it. So, you know, in the stamp world, yes. My grandfather's collectionmy great-grandfather's collectionwas in the millions of stamps. And I remember finding that hysterical, that they would water this mud horse every day with a spray gun. This isto me, this is one of the great paintings of Procaccini. CLIFFORD SCHORER: No. It wasthank you for doing that." CLIFFORD SCHORER: by someone who possessed it. So, I was in Plovdiv and, you know, had a good time with wandering around, you know. JUDITH RICHARDS: Is there anything else you want to talk about in terms of future aspirations? They were phenomenal art collectors. CLIFFORD SCHORER: You know, that was an editorial that was written by John Humphries, I think it was, at the time that I had my specimen, and he was worried I was going to take it home. I mean, you know, literally, and these are Constable, Claude Lorrain, you know, Millais, you know. He'syou know, he sponsors museum events; he sponsors exhibitions. What we can do, though, is we can use the tools of taste-making to try toyou know, again, our market is so small that an expansion of one collector is a significant expansion. So they had had merger discussions in the '70s to merge the institutions, and the Higgins finally ran out of runway. Taste-making is a very difficult game, and, you know, obviously, we're outgunned by Vogue magazine, all the way down toyou know, Cond Nast Publications to, you know, you name itto Sotheby's. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yes, and theyyou know, in a sense, that's lovely, but that, that's not really me. Clear the way for the new. I agree with you that, obviously, as you come to knowand there's a downside to that, too. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Still living in Boston, yeah. So it wasn't that I had a great knowledge; it's just that I thought Boston was very beautiful. So, yes, I spent a lot of time with history in general, not art history, and was always interested in history. As most 25-year-old men marched off to war in 1861, artist Winslow Homer took a . CLIFFORD SCHORER: So one branch of the family were the owners of the Deed of Queens, New York, whenback when the Dutch were here. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Well, not gone through it; distributed it to the shareholders. You know, that was the biggest problem. You know, I never thought of it as a practical way to improve the quality of the collection until recently, like until the last 10 years. And, you know, hopefully not in my areas of expertise they were making discoveries. JUDITH RICHARDS: Where is the Gropius house? Clifford is related to Marianne T Schorer and Clifford J Schorer as well as 3 additional people. I mean, in the smaller Eastern European museums back in the early '80s, when they weren't making any money, and nobodyyou know, they were pretending to work, and they were pretending to pay them, and nobody cared. Those days are long over. This was something that you were aware of. CLIFFORD SCHORER: But anyway, I would say thatI would say that, you know, I was very happy when I arrived in Boston. [Laughs. I mean [00:02:00], JUDITH RICHARDS: Yeah. I walked in the office and I said, "Hi. CLIFFORD SCHORER: You can't lend to a private gallery. I'm projecting, you know, my sort of personal loves onto things that I'm helping the gallery find, and I'm not taking psychological possession. [00:45:59]. JUDITH RICHARDS: In those yearsso we're talking about your teens and maybe early 20s. Yeah, to me, and I was excited, so excited. CLIFFORD SCHORER: But anyway, I mean, noI mean, I knew of the name and the connection, but there's never been any. I've been invited to a few other things, but it's really a question of, you knowmy geography is such that I'm not usually in the neighborhood at the right moment. JUDITH RICHARDS: Okay, justI suddenly wasn't hearing the mic. But Iyou know, I think there was a book out that came out around that time that was local, by Carl Crossman, this sort of auctioneer up in New England. CLIFFORD SCHORER: have to reach out to the field, right. Movies. I'm done. And then I moved to Boston directly. I enjoy exhibitions at the Frick and at the Met. I mean, I think that right nowso what we did in the interim is, we did this portraiture show which brought in, CLIFFORD SCHORER: It brought in Kehinde Wiley, Lucien Freud, and, CLIFFORD SCHORER: you know, otheryou know, Kehinde Wiley's. In every house, there are 15 of them. Yeah. A long time ago. L-E-Y-S-E-N. And he's also involved with the Corpus Rubenianum; he's a great charitable giver. I said, "Okay.". JUDITH RICHARDS: Is this partly an interest in history? [00:50:00]. JUDITH RICHARDS: So you weren't in Virginia very long? But, yeah, I mean. Those people are notthey don't exist now, and they don't exist for a lot of reasons. It was one of those years where you go home completely dejected. JUDITH RICHARDS: Wasare those kinds of panels very useful to you as a collector, let's say, if you were in the audience? CLIFFORD SCHORER: Yeah, meaning that I would be a more serious financial player in the art market, not a face. CLIFFORD SCHORER: Well, we didn't get that far because they were literally setting it up when I arrived.
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