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| Dancer Making Points by Edgar Degas Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art |
The Stolen Degas
Historical commentary by Gregory E. Larson
Over the years, I have enjoyed looking at the pastel by Edgar Degas in the Impressionist collection at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. The fairy-like pose of the ballerina, with her tutu and body shimmering in the stage lights, gives no hint to the strange provenance and journey this piece of art has taken over the past few decades. Even the official information on the Nelson-Atkins website gives us no clue to its curious past that includes a time when the whereabouts of the art was unknown. . . no clue to who stole the art (estimated value of $10 million) or who owned it before it was stolen:
Artist:
Edgar Degas, French, 1834-1917
Title:
Dancer Making Points
Object
Date: ca. 1874-1876
Medium:
Pastel and gouache on paper mounted on board
Dimensions (Unframed): 19 ¼” x 14 ½” (48.9 cm x 36.8 cm)
Signature:
Signed lower left: Degas
Credit Line: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Gift of Henry W. and Marion H. Bloch, 2008.53
The vast majority of the public is unaware the credit line is technically incorrect. It was not gifted by the Bloch’s, but by a woman named Huguette Clark. Henry Bloch, the “H” of H&R Block tax preparation firm, and a major benefactor to the Nelson-Atkins, purchased the pastel in 2005, not knowing that it had been stolen and had been missing for thirteen years.
Confused? Curious? You should know the rest of the story. Grab another cup of coffee and read on.
To understand the full story, one has
to know more about Huguette (French pronunciation: ou-get) Clark
(1906-2011). She was a daughter of the second wife, Anna Eugenia Clark
(1878-1963) and copper magnate William Andrews Clark (1839-1925). Huguette
lived a storybook childhood, spending summers in France, and winters in the
largest single-family house ever constructed in Manhattan, New York. Her
father, William, was one of the wealthiest Americans at the time, living a rags-to-riches
story of a hardscrabble miner in the Western U.S. who finally struck it rich
and parlayed his wealth from mining copper to a level that competed with the
Carnegies and the Vanderbilts.
The 121-room house on 5th Avenue was completed in 1912 after 13 years of design and construction. Five of the largest rooms were designated as galleries for W.C. Clark’s extensive art collection. When he died in 1925, the majority of the art was given to the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. After her father’s death, Huguette and her mother moved out of the house (which was to be demolished) and into a large apartment on 5th Avenue, overlooking Central Park. On November 11th, 1929, just two weeks after the stock market crash, Huguette and her mother purchased three pieces of art:
Chrysanthemums by Pierre-Auguste
Renoir
Landscape by Camille Pissarro
Dancer Making Points by Edgar Degas
Huguette had a brief marriage in 1928,
but then moved back to her mother’s apartment where she remained for decades.
Her mother died in 1963, and Huguette continued to live alone in the same expansive
apartment which included space on several floors.
Huguette lived a very private life.
She had taken private art and violin lessons in her young adult years and was
well-versed in art and music. She owned several Stradivarius violins, jewelry
and artwork worth millions. Her $50 million inheritance after her father’s
death grew to $300 million by 1990. She inherited or purchased several houses
from Connecticut to California, although she had not travelled out of New York
since the 1950s. The last known public photo of Huguette was taken in 1931. Her
attorneys rarely, if ever, saw her, and communicated with her by phone.
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| Huguette Clark - 1931 |
She was relatively healthy, but by
1991, several skin cancers were eating away her right eyelid, cheek and lip,
and she was dehydrated. The small circle of people she communicated with
convinced her to go to Doctors Hospital, which eventually became part of the
Beth-Israel Hospital System in New York. The doctors operated and removed the
skin cancers. Self-conscious of her appearance and wanting her privacy,
Huguette became more reclusive, and would not leave the hospital. Although the
hospital tried to convince her to leave, they eventually decided to quietly
allow her to stay after she agreed to donate some money. The directors of
Beth-Israel were going to play the “long game,” and work with Huguette in hopes
of getting a $100 million gift. The big-payoff never occurred. She continued to
give relatively small amounts to the hospital, and a small amount upon her
death.
It was not long after she began her
permanent stay at the hospital that the Degas pastel disappeared from the walls
of her 5th Avenue apartment. The building manager notified the FBI,
and Huguette was told of the disappearance. She was distraught, but wanting her
privacy, she asked the FBI to drop the search, although they kept the
information about the pastel on their computer list of stolen art.
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| Henry Bloch - Kansas City Philanthropist |
Years passed. Henry Bloch was
amassing many Impressionist paintings, with the intent of bequeathing them to
the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, and the art would pass to the
museum once Henry and his wife had died. In 2005 he purchased the Degas pastel Dancer
Making Points from an art dealer in Manhattan. The information became
public and that is when the FBI became aware of the pastel again. The FBI
notified Huguette and her attorney. Huguette wanted the artwork back, but the
Bloch attorneys said the 13-year disappearance of the pastel made it unclaimed
property.
The dealer told the FBI he had
purchased it in the early 1990s from a well-dressed man with a European accent,
who said the pastel had been in the family for a long time. The dealer no
longer had any contact information regarding the seller (Author’s note: seems
a bit strange for a piece of art worth $10 million).
With no resolution on what to do with
the Degas pastel, the attorneys (Huguette’s, the Bloch’s, and the Nelson-Atkins’)
began discussions and deliberations. Huguette was convinced by her attorney that
she would benefit from a large tax write-off if she gifted the painting to the
Nelson-Atkins. The attorneys agreed that the Nelson-Atkins could “loan” the
painting to Henry and Marion to display at their house until the entire Impressionist collection was passed on to the museum.
A final agreement culminated in a
bizarre scene outside the Bloch’s home in toney Mission Hills, Kansas. In 2008,
attorneys for Huguette Clark, Henry Bloch, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
arrived in Henry’s driveway. The pastel was brought out of the Bloch’s home and
handed to Huguette’s attorney, in essence, giving the Degas art back to
Huguette. Huguette’s attorney then handed the pastel to the Nelson-Atkins
director, Marc Wilson, thus gifting the pastel to the museum. Finally, the
director carried Dancer Making Points into the Bloch residence, loaning it to the Bloch’s until it would be returned upon their deaths to the
museum with all of the donated Impressionist paintings. There was a flurry of
paperwork and signatures to finalize the legal settlement, including an
official statement signed by Huguette’s doctor that she was of sound mind at
102 years old, and that she agreed to donate the piece of artwork to the Nelson-Atkins
Museum of Art.
At her request, the Nelson-Atkins
gave Huguette a full-size photo print of the pastel.
That brings us back to the official
description of the Degas artwork being a gift from the Bloch’s. Obviously, that
is technically incorrect, but it is quite possible that in the fine print of
legal agreement, Huguette agreed to having Bloch’s name associated with the
gift since she fiercely protected her name from being shown in public.
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| The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art -Kansas City, Missouri photo by Gregory E. Larson |
Huguette, at 104 years old, passed
away peacefully in the Beth Israel Medical Center in New York in 2011. Her will
was contested by distant relatives, The Corcoran Gallery, Beth Israel Hospital
System, and numerous other entities, and was settled after several years by the
courts.
Henry Bloch, died in April of 2019 at the age of 96. His legacy is found throughout Kansas City from the fountain in front of Union Station to the Bloch School of Management at UMKC, and on galleries and a major wing at Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
(Author’s note: As of this blog posting, Dancer Making Points is not hanging in the small room in the Impressionist Gallery at the Nelson-Atkins. There is a display of miniature portraits in the room. A museum representative did not know when the Degas pastel would return to the Impressionist galleries. It is possible that the art is on temporary loan to another museum.)
Source
Material: Book; Empty Mansions, by Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell,
Jr. copyright 2013, Ballentine Books (subtitle: The Mysterious Life of Huguette
Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune).
