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Adaline Havemeyer Frelinghuysen

Adaline Havemeyer Frelinghuysen from the Class of 1905 Bryn Mawr College Yearbook
Adaline Havemeyer Frelinghuysen
from the Class of 1905
Bryn Mawr College Yearbook

The Southern Vermont Artist Association Inc.


The Southern Vermont Artist Association held their annual members art exhibit at the Equinox Pavillion in Manchester, Vermont at a time when it was popular for New York's elite to summer in Vermont. Woodward join the association sometime around 1927 and his participation would prove to be a quite profitable relationship over his career. It is through this affiliation that Woodward would come to find some of his most ardent supporters and patrons.

The Arkell Canjoharie Museum
The Arkell Canjoharie Museum

One of those patrons would be industrialist, philathropist and art connoisseur Bartlett Arkell. Founder of the Beech-Nut Packaging Company and the Arkell Canjoharie (NY) Museum, he and Woodward would become pretty close friends over the years often exchanging letters. Arkell would commission Woodward to paint, Mr Arkell's Picture Window, and is know to have purchased as many as 8 paintings from Woodward over the years with 6 of them remaining in the permanant collection of the Arkell Canjoharie (NY) Museum.


The other was Adaline Havemeyer Frelinghuysen who in the end surpassed any other patrons of Woodward's in the number of paintings purchased, 17 in all... exceeding Arkell and another supporter of Woodward, Mrs. Ada Moore who purchased 9 paintings, later bequething them to both the Pasadena Museum of Art and the San Diego Museum of Fine Arts in California. There is no record of Mrs. Frelinghuysen having any personal relationship with Woodward. We do not even have any record of them ever meeting. It does not mean it never happened. Mt. Equinox was painted numerous times throughout Woodward's career and so we know he had spent some time in the area. Whether it was to attend the Vermont Artist Association exhibitions is not known.


Adaline: the Havemeyers and the Frelingerhuysens


Father Henry Osborne Havemeyer
Father Henry Osborne Havemeyer

Mother Louisine Havemeyer
Mother Louisine Havemeyer

Adaline Havemeyer (1884-1963) is the daughter of controversial sugar magnet and renown art collector, Henry Osborne Havemeyer and art collector, sufferage advocate and feminist Louisine Waldon Elder Havemeyer. She had a brother, Horace and sister, Electra.1 She attended Bryn Mawr College graduating in 1905 having made captain of the field hockey team all 4 years year she played.2 According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art website, the Havemeyers and their children Adaline, Horace and Electra, "have become know as two generations of great art collectors who figure among the major donors to the Met," more than 4,500 works of art in all.3 The Havemeyers are also credited with being one of the earliest collectors to have bought a Monet.4 Adaline's sister Electra is the founder of the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont.5

In February of 1907 she married banker Peter Hood Ballentine Frelinghuysen Sr. a former law school classmate of not-yet-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt who served as an usher at their wedding.6 The Frelingerhuysens are one of New Jersey's oldest and most prominant families with political, theological and historical ties going back to 1720.7 She is mother to a U.S. Congressman Peter H.B. Frelingerhuysen Jr. and grandmother to current New Jersey Congressman and Chairman of the House Appropiations Committee Rodney Procter Frelinghuysen.8


Portrait of Adaline Havemeyer by Mary Cassatt - 1890's
A pastal portrait of Adaline
Havemeyer by Mary Cassatt - 1890's

Gothic Revival- Shelburne Falls
A pastel portrait of mother Louisine & Electra
Havemeyer by artist Mary Cassatt sometime in the 1890's

Gothic Revival- New Bedford
A pastel portrait of Louisine
Havemeyer by Mary Cassatt - 1890's

For all of her pedigree, being from a prominant family and marrying into another, there is so little known about her or her husband Peter. However, here is this wonder story told by this website's creator, Woodward beneficiary and once a trusted Woodward employee, Dr. Mark Puriton, about traveling to Manchester to deliver paintings for the annual exhibition held there, Adaline Havemeyer Frelingerhuysen and the painting The Geranium and The Mountain,


Adaline Havemeyer Frelinghuysen from the Class of 1905 Bryn Mawr College Yearbook
A young Mark Purinton with
Woodward in the Packard

"It was a proud teenager who in those days drove the big Packard phaeton up to Manchester each year to deliver several RSW paintings to the exhibition. On two different occasions when the "summer people" saw the big car arrive they lined up along the walk into the hall to watch me carry paintings in. Twice it happened that someone in the line called out "I want to buy that one, mark it PAID." This painting was one of those occasions. So, as soon as I had it hung in its assigned place on the wall I put up a sign "Purchased, not for sale." On this occasion the lady also purchased Snowing Outside as well."

MLP

She literally bought the paintings from the street before they were hung in the exhibit hall.


Adaline: A Long Over Due Tribute to RSW's Best Customer


This web page has been a long time coming, years in the making in fact. We only knew of Adaline as Mrs. P.H.B. Frelinghuysen. As was custom for the time, the wife's name was frequently noted by the name of their husband's with Mrs. before it. This was often how Woodward noted the buyer's in his painting diary, Mrs. Henry Everett... Mrs. William H. Moore... Mr. and Mrs. Wm. D. Vanderbilt, etc, etc... But as we continued to compile the new website pages listing all of the known buyers of each painting, Mrs. P.H.B. Frelinghuysen's (Fre - ling - huys- en) name coming up time and again, it was clear we needed to learn more and devote a page to Woodward's best customer and this great patron of the arts. It wasn't until Wikipedia caught up to our need within the past couple of years that we even learned her given name.


In recent years, a number of the pieces purchased by Mrs. Frelinghuysen have appeared at auctions throughout the country. Just last year alone 2 oil paintings from Bonham's in New York City and 2 chalk drawings from Bonham's in San Francisco were auctioned off. In 2007, Summer Barns was

Mother Louisine Havemeyer
Mother Louisine Havemeyer

sold by Martha Richardson Fine Art and sometime after that The Geranium and The Mountain was sold by a private seller. Of the 17 pieces she bought over the years, there are still 11 paintings we either have ONLY a sepia image or no image at all (the Old Yellow House, Dover below is the oil, not the chalk). We do not know of their whereabouts or what has become of them. Are they still in the family? Are they in a collection somewhere?


To the right: Until recently we knew of only 9 pieces of work owned by Mrs. Frelinghuysen from the painting diary kept by Woodward. Then we discovered a list in Woodward's handwriting of 14 pieces on the back of a type-written document noted as "Frelinghuysen." Add 3 more RSW ommitted from the list and you have 17 total.


It is really unfortunate that we do not know more about Adaline. It was near impossible to find even one picture of her. For all the noteriety of her parents, her siblings and later her kids and then her grandkids, we are certain she was fasinating in her own right. She obviously caught the art bug from her famed parents but even as a collector she is over shadowed by her sister Electra. It is very possible that she herself was, humble and modest and preferred to remain out of the spotlight. Even her husband Peter, a banker, "devoted himself to cattle breeding"9 rather than the battle fields of industry or politics. We, here at the website, simply could NOT let another year go by without offering something about this great patron of Woodward's work. We hope to learn more and will continue to pursue more information so until then... Stay tuned! And please: Scroll down for a gallery of the artwork Mrs. P.H.B. Frelingerhuysen purchased over Woodward's career.

BCM



Footnote Format: Return (↩) to footnote, footnote number, source and any related links of available.
1. Wikipedia; Wikipedia.com/Henry Osborne Havemeyer
2. Bryn Mawer College Yearbook. Class of 1905, Bryn Mawr Online Repository; Bryn Mawr Online Repository
3. Under profiles: Havemeyer; The Making of a Collection: Islamic Art at the Met
4. MetPublications, under the description for; Splendid Legacy: The Havemeyer Collection
5. Wikipedia; Wikipedia.com/Electra Havemeyer
6. Under "notes" at bottom of page; Wikipedia.com/Peter Frelinghuysen Jr.
7. Wikipedia; Wikipedia.com/Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen
8. Wikipedia; Wikipedia.com/Rodney Proctor Frelinghuysen
9. Under "notes" at bottom of page; Wikipedia.com/Peter Frelinghuysen Jr.

Adaline Havemeyer Frelinghuysen Paintings

Unavailable

  • The Halifax House
  • Over the Mountain Fence, chalk
  • Spring Tapestry, chalk
  • A White Day, chalk

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