Annie Swan Coburn—Mystery Collector

Gloria Groom—

Institutional Archives, Art Institute of Chicago

In April 1932, the Art Institute of Chicago, under the auspices of the Antiquarian Society, showed some thirty-nine Impressionist and modern paintings, plus works on paper by American, British and French artists, belonging to the collection of Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn. The Antiquarians (the oldest support group for the museum, dating from 1877) were invited in to see her collection before the selections were brought to the museum. And her “home” was only a few blocks away on south Michigan Avenue in the Blackstone Hotel. She died just seven weeks after the opening, and in 1933 her bequest of paintings by Cezanne, Degas, and especially Monet and Renoir, became cornerstones of the Impressionist collections.  

What makes Annie Swan Coburn so interesting to me is that she remains a relative outlier. In his introduction to the 1932 Coburn catalog, Art Institute Director Daniel Catton Rich seems to have not been able to find the words that would connect her to the museum, instead referring only to the enviable collection she was forming in Chicago with purchases made in New York:  “More than once in a New York gallery the salesman has pointed out some particularly important work by Cézanne or Degas and remarked, ‘Mrs. Coburn has just bought that,’ and occasionally a fine van Gogh or a Manet has found its way into an exhibition labeled, ‘Lent from the Coburn Collection’.” But she is no less important for the way the collection has evolved.

The Mrs. L. L. Coburn Collection Exhibition catalogue, Art Institute of Chicago, 1932

Although eight of the nine-page introduction to the catalogue addresses specific works and their art historical significance, nowhere does he mention the eccentric and highly personal way she displayed her collection, plopping paintings on footstools and against windows or framing prints and drawings symmetrically as seen in the following photographs.  

Interior of Mrs. Lewis Larned (Annie Swan) Coburn’s Blackstone Hotel apartment in Chicago, Institutional Archives, Art Institute of Chicago. Displayed works include (1) Redon, Bouquet of Flowers, 1905, Oil on panel, 26 ½ x 21 in. Private collection (2) Monet, The Water Lily Pond, 1900. Oil on canvas, 89.8 x 101 cm (35 3/8 x 39 ¾ in.). Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection, 1933.441 (3) Manet, Woman Reading, 1880–81. Oil on canvas, 61.2 x 50.7 cm (24 1/16 x 19 7/8 in.). Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection, 1933.435 
Interior of Mrs. Lewis Larned (Annie Swan) Coburn’s Blackstone Hotel apartment in Chicago, Institutional Archives, Art Institute of Chicago. Displayed works include (1) Monet, The Beach at Sainte-Adresse, 1867. Oil on canvas; 75.8 × 102.5 cm. Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection, 1933.439. (2) Monet, Venice, Palazzo Dario, 1908. Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection, 1933.446, (3) Picasso, On the Upper Deck, 1901. Oil on cardboard, 50 x 65 cm (19 1/8 x 25 3/8 in.). Private collection (4) Renoir, Picking Flowers, 1875. Oil on canvas, 54.3 x 65.2 cm (21 3/8 x 25 11/16 in.). National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Alisa Mellon Bruce Collection, 1970.17.61 (5) André Derain, Head, location unknown (6) André Derain, Flowers, location unknown
Interior of Annie Swan’s Coburn’s Blackstone Hotel apartment in Chicago, Institutional Archives, Art Institute of Chicago. Displayed works include (1) Renoir, Alfred Sisley, 1876. Oil on canvas; 66.24 × 54.8 cm. Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection, 1933.453. (2) Monet, Cliff Walk at Pourville, 1882. Oil on canvas, 66.5 × 82.3 cm. Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection, 1933.443. (3) Renoir, Apples in a Dish, 1883. Oil on canvas, 54.1 x 65.3 cm (21 5/16 x 25 11/16 in.) The Clark, 1955.599.
 

As the photographs show, the challenge was finding surfaces in which to place or hang so many two-dimensional objects. The photographs were probably professional and likely staged (note the piano throw moved to accommodate the painting). Some of these, which we are still trying to identify, served dual purposes, such as Degas’ Uncle and Niece which served as a fire screen (fig. 7, no. 9). 

Interior of Annie Swan Coburn’s Blackstone Hotel apartment in Chicago, Institutional Archives, Art Institute of Chicago. Displayed works include (1) Paul Gauguin, Incantation, 1902. Oil on canvas, 66.04 x 76.2 cm. Private collection (2) van Gogh, The Poet’s Garden, 1888. Oil on canvas, 73 x 92.1 cm (28 ¾ x 36 ¼ in.). Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection, 1933.433 (3) Cezanne, Vase of Tulips, c. 1890. Oil on canvas, 59.6 x 42.3 cm (23 ½ x 16 5/8 in.). Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection, 1933.423 (4) Helleu, John Singer Sargent, c. 1880. Pastel on brown wove paper, 49 x 43.9 cm (19 5/16 x 17 5/16 in.). Harvard Art Museums/ Fogg Museum, Bequest of Mrs. Annie Swan Coburn, 1933 (5) Redon, Flowers, pastel? (6) ? (7) Manet, Dahlias, 1881. Oil on paper, 22 x 48 cm. Private collection (8) Guys, Woman with a Muff, c. 1860–1864 (?). Pen and brown ink with brush and watercolor, over traces of graphite, on cream wove card, 23 x 17 cm. Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection, 1933.523 9:Edgar Degas, Henri Degas and His Niece Lucie Degas (The Artist’s Uncle and Cousin), 1875–76. Oil on canvas, 99.8 x 119.9 cm (39 ¼ x 47 3/16 in.). The Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection, 1933.429
Interior of Annie Swan Coburn’s Blackstone Hotel apartment in Chicago, Institutional Archives, Art Institute of Chicago. Displayed works include (1) Renoir, Two Sisters (On the Terrace), 1881. Oil on canvas; 100.4 × 80.9 cm. Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection, 1933.455. (2) Renoir, Pivoines (Peonies) The Clark, 1955.585 (3) Honoré-Victorin Daumier, Two Lawyers, c. 1860. Oil on panel, 13.3 x 14.6 cm (5 ¼ x 5 ¾ in.). Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial, 1933.425 (4) Cezanne, Auvers, Panoramic View, 1873–75. Oil on canvas, 65.2 x 81.3 cm (25 5/8 x 32 in Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection, 1933.42 (5) Monet, The Church at Varengeville, Grey Weather, 1882. Oil on canvas, 65.1 x 81.3 cm (25 5/8 x 32 in.). Speed Art Museum, Bequest of Mrs. Blakemore Wheeler, 1964.31.20 (6) Manet, Portrait of a Man, c. 1880. Pastel on canvas, 55.3 x 35.2 cm (21 ¾ x 13 7/8 in.). Harvard Art Museums/ Fogg Museum, Bequest of Annie Swan Coburn, 1934.36

Yet Annie Swan Coburn’s story remains a curiosity. Described as quiet and withdrawn, she was also vain enough to lob off four years of her life. In the census of 1930, she put her birth year at 1860 rather than 1856 (listing herself as 70, not 74). The only child of Olivia and Albert Swan, who died when she was 4, she married a Harvard-educated and hugely successful lawyer and businessman twenty years her senior (Lewis Larned Coburn), who died in 1910, leaving her the home and furnishings at 1819 S. Michigan Avenue where she lived with her mother until the latter’s death (at 93) in 1920. Then she moved into the smaller quarters of the Blackstone Hotel, and went on an art buying spree which lasted until her death in 1932.

Her passion for art was first for the Americans, then for the French Impressionists beginning in 1921, when she bought her first painting by Monet, The Church at Varangeville, from Durand-Ruel’s gallery in New York, to her final purchases (Manet’s Woman Reading and Degas’ Millinery Shop, both now in the Art Institute’s collection)  in 1932. As far as we know, she made no trips abroad after her husband’s death and her collecting was largely through the New York branch of Durand-Ruel and the dealer, Howard Young, both of whose galleries were in the Pierre Hotel on Fifth Avenue. In one short decade, she had purchased over 35 Impressionist paintings. We know that she was modest about her collection and easy going, or at least that’s how Paul Sachs, former Director of the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard, remembers her, recalling a trip to her Chicago “apartment” where his enthusiastic response to her Degas paintings and pastels seems to have resulted in her bequest of ten French Impressionist works to his museum (along with Persian potteries and Tibetan rugs and a few American paintings), credited under her name rather than her husband’s—a decision that is all the more surprising given that it was Lewis who was the Harvard alum.

Mrs. Lewis Larned (Annie Swan) Coburn (1856–1932) seated in her Blackstone Hotel apartment in Chicago, Institutional Archives, Art Institute of Chicago. Displayed works include Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841–1919). Young Woman Sewing, 1879. Oil on canvas; 61.4 × 50.5 cm. The Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection, 1933.45.

The opening for the 1932 exhibition was by all accounts a lavish event.  Was Annie surprised at the sudden attention given by the Art Institute Director and the Antiquarian Society? In the photograph (first in this article) of her walking with two of the society’s members, does she look fondly or apprehensively away from the camera towards the first Impressionist painting she purchased? I wonder whether she’s gratified or fatigued by the fuss. Thankfully, the museum made the right overture, and the timing was impeccable. Annie was willing not only to lend her collection, but give it, and the paintings she bequeathed include many of our destination pieces.

My thanks to Kathryn Kremnitzer, Research Associate and collaborator for Monet and Chicago exhibition, for her invaluable help in identifying and mapping the artworks in Annie Swan Coburn’s collection.


Gloria Groom is chair of European Painting and Sculpture and the David and Mary Winton Green Curator at the Art Institute of Chicago.


Further Reading:

Featured Image: Photo by G. Starke on Unsplash

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