The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (the Fine Arts Museums) has announced the promised gift of the Bernard and Barbro Osher Collection of American Art, one of the most transformative donations in the Fine Arts Museums’ distinguished history. The 61 artworks are historically broad and aesthetically significant, and include works by many of the United States’ foremost artists such as Georgia O’Keeffe, Winslow Homer, Thomas Moran, Thomas Eakins, William Merritt Chase, John Singer Sargent, Charles Sheeler, and Alexander Calder. The gift also introduces works by American Impressionist Edward Henry Potthast, multidisciplinary artist Robert Frederick Blum, influential teacher Frank Vincent DuMond, leading Boston School painter William McGregor Paxton, and “Giverny Luminists” Frederick Carl Frieseke and Richard Edward Miller into the collection. Together, these works illustrate the myriad ways American artists have long sought to define and declare American styles and sensibilities.
“We are profoundly grateful to Barney and Barbro for their enduring commitment to the Fine Arts Museums and the cultural life of San Francisco,” said Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. “Their generous donation of more than 60 works of such expansive historic scope is one of the most transformative contributions in the Museums’ history. The Oshers have enriched the Museums’ representation of American art — long considered to be one of the greatest survey collections in the United States — with a gift reflective of a dynamic period when the United States ascended to global prominence both culturally and artistically.”
“We are delighted that these works that we have relished collecting and displaying in our home will now be appreciated by visitors to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco,” stated Bernard and Barbro Osher. “As the largest public arts institution in our city, with the finest survey collection of American art, it is fitting that these artworks will join the collection here.”
A special exhibition introducing the Osher Collection will be presented at the de Young in the summer of 2024. To coincide with the exhibition opening, the Fine Arts Museums will publish American Beauty: The Osher Collection of American Art, in celebration of the bequest. Authored by Lauren Palmor, Associate Curator of American Art at the Fine Arts Museums, the catalogue will present scholarly essays, contextualizing each of the 61 collection works within the larger frames of American art and social history.
Distinguished Senior Curator and Ednah Root Curator in Charge of American Art Timothy Anglin Burgard, who shepherded the Osher gift, observed, “The Fine Arts Museums are honored to be a recipient of the Oshers’ extraordinary legacy gift. Their collection is distinguished by recurring themes including American artists abroad, American Impressionism, Japonisme, and Aestheticism, the Ashcan School, and the development of American art colonies.”
The Osher Collection at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco features 50 paintings, nine works on paper, and two sculptures by 39 artists. Anchored by Impressionist and Realist artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Osher Collection spans 1848 to 1960. Particular highlights from the Osher Collection include Winslow Homer’s masterful The Angler (Casting in the Falls), the first large-scale oil by the artist to enter the permanent collection. The de Young galleries will be further augmented by several significant “firsts” for its American art collection: the first genre picture by William Merritt Chase (Spanish Bric-à-Brac Shop), the first major George Bellows landscape (In Virginia), the first Georgia O’Keeffe Southwest subjects (Front of Ranchos Church, and The Patio), and the first Hiram Powers portrait bust (Frances Elliot Austin).
In addition, several Osher Collection works are closely related to works already in the Fine Arts Museums’ holdings, such as Thomas Eakins’s watercolor Spinning, which shares a subject with Eakins’s earlier spinning composition, The Courtship. Thomas Hovenden’s Portrait of Samuel Jones complements and contrasts with the artist’s Sunday Morning, which features the same model. Robert Henri’s bravura “O” in Persian Costume, a full-length portrait of his wife, artist Marjorie Organ, corresponds and contrasts with another portrait of her by Henri, Lady in Black with Spanish Scarf (“O” in Black with a Scarf).
