Art: The Bache Collection

Jules Semon Bache, broker and bon vivant, laid away his millions so thriftily that when he died last fortnight (TIME, April 3), U.S. art lovers found themselves beneficiaries of a superb art collection. Last week the 63 Bache (rhymes with aitch) paintings were still hanging in the Bache Manhattan mansion, which the collector had donated (1937) to house them, where they were on view upon application. When the war ends, Manhattan’s Metropolitan Museum will house the approximately $12 million worth of Bache paintings where everybody can see them.

And 25 years of canny buying, with expert prompting from Britain’s No. 1 merchant of art, Lord Duveen of Millbank, made the Bache collection eminently worth seeing. Every great European art period from the Renaissance through the 18th Century is represented. Included are: three Bellinis, a Botticelli, a Fra Filippo Lippi, three Titians, Diirer’s Portrait of a Lady, a half-dozen Holbeins and Halses, three Rembrandts, two Vermeers, a scattering of 18th-Century Frenchmen and Britons. Outstanding are:

¶Raphael’s famed portrait of the powerful, crafty Florentine ruler, Giuliano de’ Medici. This somber classic Italian Renaissance masterpiece disappeared for three centuries, was rediscovered in Florence in 1867, was sold to the Russian Imperial family, cost Collector Bache $600,000 in 1929.

¶Goya’s brilliant Don Manuel Osorio de Zuniga, stylistically the most modern, of all the Bache pictures, and one of the world’s most popular paintings. (Value: an estimated $300,000.)

¶Petrus Christus’ Dionysius the Carthusian. This small, serene, meticulous portrait of a monk (on wood panel) is often considered the gem of the Bache collection.

Collector Bache’s favorite painters were Raphael, Holbein, Goya, Fragonard. But he seldom ventured to buy paintings without the advice of Britain’s No. 1 art dealer, Lord Duveen, whose merchandising motto was: “Nothing but recognized masterpieces.” The result is a popular quip: “The Bache collection—too, too Duveen !”, and a group of paintings unmarred by any of the second-and third-rate art that usually creeps into such galleries.

But if, in esthetic matters. Collector Bache lent a willing ear to Lord Duveen, he handled the business end of his collection with the same care that he watched ticker tapes. In 1937, by an arrangement with New York State, he formed the Jules Bache Foundation. This enabled him to live on the third floor of his Manhattan Museum, enjoy his pictures, pay no taxes on the property. (In 1936, so many Bache holdings were outside the U.S. that Art-Lover Bache was unable to pay any Federal income tax at all that year.) But before he died, Jules Bache changed his mind about a projected Bache Museum, which was to resemble Manhattan’s Frick Collection. In the huge Metropolitan Museum, he decided, the Bache pictures would forever receive expert care, would be enjoyed by more art lovers. But the Bache bequest binds the Metropolitan to keep the collection together, labeled with the name of the collector.