In 1952, the Portland Art Museum was given a spectacular selection of European art by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation in New York. The department store magnate Samuel Kress, who had assembled a vast collection with the advice of noted scholars, decided to disperse his works among art museums in cities where his stores were located. Portland’s gift included many important early Italian works with religious subjects, which were not typically collected by US public museums at the time. This exhibition celebrates the generosity of a scholarly collector and donor, and represents the first time all of Kress’s gifts, including the works added by Kress before the gift was finalized in 1961, have ever been shown together.
The group was not assembled unilaterally, however. The Foundation invited the Museum to propose a theme around which a gift would be assembled. Museum staff focused on the Renaissance and selected six subthemes: Unity in Narration; The Rise of Landscape Painting; Revival of Classicism; Interest in Anatomy; From Symbolism to Naturalism in Religious Art; and Portraiture. The Kress team then offered additional works and even purchased some art to give the gift more impact.