Master class

With the Stoddard collection, WAM showcases the generosity of Worcester's first family

by Leon Nigrosh

PISSARRO AND OTHER MASTERS: THE STODDARD LEGACY
At the Worcester Art Museum, 55 Salisbury Street, Worcester,through April 17.

You might be eager to see the Worcester Art Museum's latest exhibit, if only for the bizarre circumstances surrounding the theft and eventual recovery, 20 years later, of a singular painting included in the display.

Yet "Pissarro and Other Masters: The Stoddard Legacy" has far more significance than the mere cops-and-robbers aspect that's being touted. The exhibition serves to showcase more than 80 diverse and important works from around the world, and from different artistic epochs, all of which are part of WAM's permanent collection. The museum acquired the objects with the help of Robert and Helen Stoddard, husband and wife, as well as WAM benefactors, for 50-plus years. Despite their well-known conservative politics and their influence in Worcester, the Stoddards performed an act quite rare here -- or in any city. They took a part of the riches they had garnered from Worcester and gave them back, through WAM.

The exhibition's artistic significance is best measured by the individual works, and by WAM's mission to preserve and protect objects that might otherwise have been lost. Take the small, bronze statue of Daniel Webster, cast by Thomas Bell in 1853, which not only immortalizes one of America's most revered 19th-century lawyers, but also heralds the change from stone-cutting to bronze-casting as a way of creating art through cutting-edge industrial techniques. Likewise, the portrait of Frans Post, painted by Frans Hals in 1655, exemplifies the Dutch master at his best: it was one of Hals's first relaxed, intimate portraits, despite the stiff, formal sittings so prevalent then.

Several exhibition works had graced the walls of the Stoddard's secluded mansion before being transferred to WAM's perpetual custody in recent years. One painting, Landscape with Travelers, by 18th-century French artist Nicolas-Antoine Taunay, was a gift to Helen from Robert for her 80th birthday. Another work, which hung for years over the Stoddard mantel, L'Ille Lacroix a Rouen, is a more accomplished painting by Pissarro than the infamous one it "replaced." With this painting, he deftly captures the ideas of growth and change in the Industrial Revolution. Sailboats and smokestacks compete for prominent attention in this silvery, Impressionist river scene. For years, the Stoddards also enjoyed a work by the 17th-century Flemish painter, Antoine Mirou, which was called Return from Hunt. This oil-on-copper panel is a marvel of landscape perspective, as well as an accurate representation of the era's indigenous birds and animals. An avid sportsman, Stoddard particularly appreciated the accuracy of the depicted deer-hunter's shot. These canvases, along with six others, are now part of WAM's permanent collection.

But the Stoddards' commitment to WAM began anonymously decades earlier. Through the 1950s and '60s, WAM director Daniel Catton Rich would casually discuss with the Stoddards an object he'd like to add to the museum's collection. Soon a check for the appropriate amount would arrive. In 1971, Helen became one of the first museum docents, a volunteer position she maintained until she was more than 80 years old. In 1979, the couple set up a fund doubling the acquisition endowment.

The first work the Stoddards helped the museum obtain, back in 1964, is the fascinating marble bust of a two-year-old Claudine Houdon sculpted by her loving father, Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741-1828). This flawlessly carved likeness exudes the charm of its subject largely because of Houdon's treatment of the child's eyes. Using the same technique as the great 17th-century Italian sculptor Gianlorenzo Bernini, Houdon carved deep into the stone to bring about actual eye color, and left some marble on each eye's edge to give the impression of limpidity. The bust, moved from its traditional place in WAM's upstairs European galleries, has become the current exhibit's visual centerpiece.

Aside from historic European art, the Stoddards also appreciated certain contemporary American artists. They purchased works from their friends Georgia O'Keeffe and Andrew Wyeth, eventually giving the museum O'Keeffe's pale-blue and off-white oil painting Blue Sky and Wyeth's representational watercolor The Rope.

With the Stoddard Acquisition Fund, WAM has purchased a variety of works, from a red, sandstone sculpture of a sensuous 6th-century Indian goddess to a revealing painting, Portrait of a Boy, by Chaim Soutine (1893-1943), to the museum's latest addition, an early painting by Belgian Surrealist Ren Magritte (1898-1967). The more you look at Magritte's haunting image of two rooms, one in light, the other in darkness, the more eerie it becomes.

More than 40 other works, purchased with Stoddard funds, are scattered throughout the museum, each identified by a tiny, green emblem decorated with laurel -- a symbol of unfailing memory, and Helen's favorite greenery. Included among these is the highly theatrical 1826-27 Electra Receiving the Ashes of Her Brother, Orestes, painted by Jean-Baptiste Joseph Wicar for the French ambassador to Rome.

With the Stoddards' approval, WAM curators have acquired seminal works by 20th-century American painters like Stuart Davis, Arthur Dove, and Andy Warhol. In an ever-increasing effort to build up art and craft collections by indigenous people, WAM has used Stoddard funds to purchase local Penobscot woven baskets. And a new display of delicate Vietnamese and Thai ceramics helps to round out the collection.

WAM publicists like to say that the Stoddard collection spans more than 5000 years and holds more than 35,000 objects, including photography, sculpture, Impressionist paintings, and contemporary art. "Pissarro and Other Masters: The Stoddard Legacy" embraces this philosophy in its succinct, literate, and easily approachable works of art -- and should be seen and admired for its worldwide, historic, and cultural importance.

The museum is open Wednesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Call 799-4406.