Collection
In addition to the Roman mosaic-laden Renaissance court and French chapter house, strengths of the permanent collection include collections of European and North American painting, prints, photographs, and drawings; Asian art; Greek and Roman sculpture and mosaics; and Contemporary art.
European paintings include some fine Flemish Renaissance paintings, an El Greco, a Rembrandt, and a room of Impressionist and 20th-century works by the likes of Monet, Matisse, Renoir, Gauguin, and Kandinsky. The American painting collection includes works by Thomas Cole, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, William Morris Hunt, Elizabeth Goodridge, among others. In the 20th-century gallery, the Museum displays works by Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock, and Joan Mitchell. Notable works include:
- El Greco, The Repentant Magdalene, about 1577
- Claude Monet, Water Lilies, 1908 and Waterloo Bridge, 1903
- Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, St. Bartholomew
- Paul Gauguin, The Brooding Woman, 1891
- Edward Hicks, The Peaceable Kingdom, about 1833
- Vincent van Gogh, Portrait of a Man in a Top Hat, 1882
- Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Coco Eating His Soup, 1905
- Paul Cézanne, Study for The Cardplayers, 1890–1892
- Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Fernande Olivier, 1906
In 1901, John Chandler Bancroft, a wealthy Bostonian, bequeathed more than 3,000 Japanese prints. The Bancroft collection spans the history of woodcut printmaking in Japan, with particular strength in rare, early images from the late 17th and 18th centuries. Salisbury's estate donation included many portraits commissioned by his family, as well as sculpture, furniture, and silver. These works, by artists such as Gilbert Stuart, Thomas Crawford, and Samuel F.B. Morse and the craftsmen Paul Revere, Edward Winslow, and Nathanial Hurd, constituted the nucleus of the American collections. Today, the museum’s $85 million endowment includes about $20 million reserved for acquisitions, providing about $1 million a year to spend.
In 2013, it was announced that the museum would be absorbing the collection of the Higgins Armory in spring of 2014.
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