ARTstor and the Kress Foundation

The Samuel H. Kress Foundation and ARTstor are pleased to announce
that they have reached an agreement to collaborate on the digitization
and distribution through ARTstor of approximately 1,200 art works
formerly belonging to the Kress Collection but, through a singular act
of philanthropy, presently distributed among ninety institutions in
thirty states around the country.

From the mid-1920s to the end of the 1950s, Samuel Henry Kress
(1863-1955) and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation (est. 1929) amassed one
of the most astonishing collections of European Old Master paintings,
sculpture, and decorative arts ever assembled through the efforts of a
private individual. Even more remarkable was the manner in which the
Kress Collection was shared with the American people. In the largest
single donation of European art from the Kress Collection, 1,800 works
of art were donated to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
The National Gallery of Art's Kress Collection contains 376 Old Master
paintings, 94 sculptures, 1,307 bronzes and 38 drawings. All of the
rest of the Kress Collection – another 1,300 pieces – was distributed
across the continent. 700 Old Masters were given to regional museums
in eighteen American cities, resulting in the Kress regional
collections of twenty to sixty Old Masters that brought the first
Italian paintings to many communities throughout the country. Another
200 paintings were divided into study collections for twenty-three
colleges and universities; these Kress study collections helped
introduce European art to institutions of higher learning. Major gifts
of special collections were also bestowed on the Metropolitan Museum
of Art (French porcelains and furniture, and a complete Robert Adam
room with Gobelins tapestries), the Pierpont Morgan Library (drawings
and illuminated manuscripts), and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (13
tapestries on designs by Rubens and Pietro da Cortona). Initiated by
Samuel Kress in the early 1930s, the distribution of art was
completed, under the guidance of his brother Rush Kress, by the Kress
Foundation between 1947 and 1961.

Through the present collaboration, the approximately 1,200 Old Master
paintings from the Kress Collection will be made available in digital
form through ARTstor. Encompassing European art of the principal
continental schools from the 13th to the early 19th centuries, the
Kress Collection’s greatest distinction resides in the extraordinary
abundance of its Italian pieces – more than 1,000 Italian paintings,
500 period frames, 1,300 small bronzes, medals, and plaquettes, and
representative sculpture, drawings, and furniture. “The world's most
encyclopaedic collection of Italian painting may be that formed by
Samuel H. Kress,” says Colin Eisler, Robert Lehman Professor of Fine
Arts at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts. “His original
plan was to include works by every artist mentioned by Vasari but the
grand design grew to include Italian artists' works through the late
eighteenth century. Had Kress' gathering remained intact, it would
have been the wonder of viewers and scholars alike for its unique,
dazzling comprehensiveness.” Many of the greatest Italian artists –
Cimabue, Duccio, Giotto, Botticelli, Fra Angelico, Filippo Lippi,
Verrocchio, Raphael, Andrea del Sarto, Pontormo, Correggio, Bellini,
Carpaccio, Giorgione, Titian, Lotto, Tintoretto, Veronese, Carracci,
Bernini, Strozzi, Tiepolo, Guardi, Canaletto, and Bellotto – appear in
the Kress Collection, as do numerous significant works by less
familiar masters. The French school from the early Renaissance to
Poussin, Claude, Watteau, Chardin, Boucher, Fragonard, Houdon, David,
and Ingres, is richly represented. Art of German-speaking lands comes
from the hand of Dűrer, Grunewald, Altdorfer, Holbein, and
Cranach. Flemish and Spanish tastes intermingle through Petrus
Christus, Bosch, Memling, El Greco, Rubens, Van Dyck, Zurbaran, and
Goya.

In reaching this agreement, Marilyn Perry, President of the Samuel H.
Kress Foundation, and Neil Rudenstine, ARTstor’s Chairman, expressed
their enthusiasm in collaborating to use digital technologies to make
the unique Kress Collection more broadly available for noncommercial
educational and scholarly purposes. “Sharing the artistic patrimony of
Europe with the people of America was the philanthropic vision of
Samuel Kress and the Kress Foundation," comments Dr. Marilyn Perry,
President of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. "We are deeply gratified
that the ARTstor initiative of the Mellon Foundation will make it
possible to share these treasures even more widely." Rudenstine adds,
“We at ARTstor are delighted to be working hand in hand with the Kress
Foundation – and with the scores of museums which, through Samuel and
Rush Kress’s generosity, now care for Kress paintings – to make these
extraordinary works of art more accessible to teachers, students and
scholars. This partnership is further evidence of ARTstor’s strong
commitment to engaging the museum community in our effort to build
cohesive digital collections based on the needs of scholars.”

Since its creation in 1929, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation (www.kressfoundation.org)
has devoted its resources almost exclusively to programs related to
European art. In consequence, the Foundation’s activities have been of
fundamental importance – and have established a record of philanthropy
without equal – in three primary and related areas: the collection and
distribution of works of European art to American museums, the
preservation of significant monuments of European art and
architecture, and the nurturing of professional expertise in art
history and art conservation.