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All those who circulate the Luther W. Brady Art Gallery, located within the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design’s Flagg Building, are struck by the Salon Doré. This 18th-century French period room was originally part of the hôtel de Clermont in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, an old aristocratic quarter of Paris. The room’s paneling was purchased by William A. Clark and installed in his mansion on Fifth Avenue then, after his death, was moved again to the Corcoran.

I have been fortunate enough to experience the afternoon sun transform into heavenly light as it permeates the space and reflects off the magnificent gold. I sat down with Dare Hartwell, former Head Conservator of the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the conservator who oversaw the recent restoration of the Salon Doré, and Olivia Kohler-Maga, Assistant Director of the Luther W. Brady Art Gallery, on March 27, 2024 to discuss the Salon Doré’s past, present, and future.

Maximus Vogt (MV): What restoration is specifically being done in the Salon Doré? 

Dare Hartwell (DH): It was the restoration of the paneling. The room began its life in the forest, trees were cut down and then the wood went to the workshop of a cutter who followed the design of an architect. When the woodcutter was done, it probably went to the workshop of the gilder, which is totally separate. 

The French pride themselves on burnished gilding – which is shiny – and contrasting that with matte gilding. In order to burnish the gilding, the substrate must become more pliable so they put layer and layer and layer of gesso on the wood. Traditional gesso is heated white pigment and rabbit-skin glue combined to form a liquid that is brushed onto the wood, then it dries and turns solid. They generally do about 10-12 layers, once you have these layers built up, you have lost the detail from the woodcutting underneath, so the most skilled person in the workshop recuts the gesso to get the detail back. 

All the fine detail in the paneling of the Salon Doré has been recut into the gesso. Once gesso recutting is done, there is an added layer of clay which can be various colors of red, it can also be blue, black and yellow. They pick any color of clay they want to show through the gold. They also used different colors of gold: primary features are yellow gold and secondary features are silver gold. It’s okay to have leaves that are silver gold, it’s not okay to have flowers that are silver gold. Some of the gilding is burnished, some of it is left matte. These conventions are very strong and this is why we bought over an atelier of French gilders in the previous restoration in 1992 who knew these things that we did not. It’s little known in the U.S. because we don’t have this kind of thing, but in France there are plenty of workshops who continue the 18th-century gilding traditions. 

Olivia Kohler-Maga (OKM): How are these French artisans trained?

DH: Pretty early on, you don’t finish high school and you go into an apprentice program, maybe age 16. I think it’s good. Maybe it’s putting you on a track a little too young but it is considered an honorable thing to do, every gilder I had was under the age of 30, except for the recutter. There is a strong apprentice program that keeps churning people out. We have no tradition of this at all [in the United States], we can’t make anything in an 18th-century manner, we don’t have an artisan tradition, which is too bad because there are many people that would like to. 

In one sense, the gold is very stable, the problem is the wood and the gesso which respond rapidly to relative changes in the relative humidity and temperature. As the wood expands and contracts under the gesso, the gesso just flakes off, the main problem in the Salon Doré is controlling the relative temperature and humidity. For the future: because we don’t know how well the climate control will work and because it is difficult to control the air vents we will have to watch for the lifting of the gesso. It will be our recommendation to come back in eighteen months and conduct another condition survey. 

Maintaining the space is so much better than trying to do everything at once. Hopefully, if we can get on top of the climate control and get everything in good condition then it can stay that way. The tables are an issue too because they are in the corners right next to the air vents. The tables were made for this room, because of the French Revolution they were separated but we were able to buy them about 2006. When we bought them, we initially covered up the vents and it was fine but at some point after GW acquired it, the vents were opened so they became seriously damaged. 

MV: Did the tables undergo the same process as the paneling when they were created? 

DH: They are the same thing, you’ll notice below the chair rail in the room, there is less decoration because they made the furniture to go up against the wall and continue the decoration from above. This furniture was never re-arranged and you also didn’t sit on the chairs because they were part of the decor. When they received guests, they brought in other chairs for them to sit on. The tables themselves are made of three colors of gold: the yellow gold, silver gold, then a pinkish gold at the bottom. In this restoration we had to reattach the garland motifs that had previously come apart from the tables. 

MV: How did you track down the tables that were separated?

DH: Around [19]92 when we were getting ready to open the room, we got a huge long fax from Sotheby’s or Christie’s – I can’t remember – saying they had these tables. We were less sure at the time but we were later convinced. We actually missed buying them at the time. We didn’t get them until 2006, the person who bought them from Christie’s or Sotheby’s was an art historian and an expert in 18th-century boiserie, and bought them with the idea of restoring them and making a fortune off the Corcoran. We did not buy them from him because he sold them to somebody else. But I’m very very happy to have them now. 

OKM: Do you know where the other pieces of furniture are? 

DH: There was an inventory made after the room was initially completed, there were the four corner tables and two console tables made just like them that went up against the wall. There were also chairs and two sofas. One of the console tables disappeared and we don’t know where the other furniture went. 

MV: What is the composition of the gold leaf and are present-day conservators using the same adhesive as they would in the 18th-century? 

DH: In 1992, I was convinced I would always use rabbit-skin glue to stay within the traditional method. I was convinced by other people after that that there is a synthetic that is easier to use, wicks in more and consolidates it better. Some of the restoration is done in gold leaf, repairing where it flaked off. If the damage was tiny, then the conservators retouch with paint and around the vents, they retouch with paint because expensive gold leaf is not worth the potential of it flaking off. 

MV: Was the process of restoration in 1992 the same process that is being done now? 

DH: No, because it was a mess then. It was a mess because they had done several other restorations, after the gold leaf flaked off they previously used gold paint which actually did not consist of gold but bronze which turns brown, black and green as it ages. So there would be big spots of black and some of the flowers had turned silvery, so there was a lot to be corrected. 

MV: Did the painted frescoes on the ceiling ever have to be restored? 

DH: I did the ceiling. It is not a fresco, it’s on canvas, and it’s three pieces of fabric and we worked on it for quite a while – about seven months or so. It’s not the original ceiling of the Salon Doré but it is the same artist. When the Salon Doré came to New York, Senator William A. Clark, the American millionaire on Fifth Avenue wanted a big room so he added some pilasters and a door to make a room that suited him more. Americans did not have a sense of authenticity at all in that period and it’s particularly noticeable in pastiches of the period. Now Senator Clark’s expansion of the room is a part of its story and this space was built for it; you can’t put it back to the way it originally was. 

MV: Are the mirrors original to the room? 

DH: The mirror glass is not because you could not get a piece of glass that big at the time. The original pieces where the new glass is now were probably thrown out as Senator Clark thought it was much nicer to have a big piece of glass there. 

OKM: Obviously the room itself is a piece of art, but would there have been other pieces of art shown in the room, sculpture or anything?

DH: Little sculptures and bronzes on tables but nothing big, it was the receiving room of Count d’Orsay’s wife. 

OKM: I remember there being a very interesting Yinka Shonibare piece shown in the center of the room and I thought it was an interesting juxtaposition. 

DH: I’ve seen contemporary and I’ve liked it, we had Jackie [Kennedy Onassis]’s ball gowns here. But I have absolutely liked contemporary things in here too because in its day this room was avant-garde. It’s one of the earliest examples in Paris of the neoclassical style, so on the cusp of 18th-century Rococo, the room has clearly gone towards neoclassical. Count d’Orsay would have been building an avant-garde room for the time. 

MV: Are these the original curtains and drapes?

DH: No, silk does not last that long. These curtains were designed by the same architect of the Salon Doré. We knew from the inventory that they were crimson damask drapes, I always thought of damask as one solid color. After we got the money to get the curtains – I went to Paris and visited a silk manufacturer that dated back to the 18th-century that still had their original patterns. At that point they told me in the 18th-century damask was not a solid color it was two or three colors, so my first thought was to be totally horrified, but now I realize it was completely right, that one solid color would have been way too heavy, that breaking up the colors is completely correct. They wove the pattern for us and dyed the threads and gave them to the people who do the trim so it matches completely. The person who made the curtains brought them to the U.S. Each curtain had a crate that was the length of the curtain so that they would not get wrinkled up, we are probably never gonna take them down. A textile conservator came in a few weeks ago to vacuum them and said not to take them down as well. 

MV: What year did the room come to the Corcoran?: 

DH: Clark bought it in the late 19th/early 20th-century, then he died in [19]25 and it came after that. The room is configured exactly as it was in his house. 

OKM: So Senator Clark brought the room over and changed it to suit him but why was it possible to be sold at all? 

DH: There’s so much here we don’t know, we used to joke about ‘can we do a seance?’ My final thought was that the room had been taken out before Senator Clark bought it and transported it to New York and that he did not see the Salon in the original house. Here’s the really interesting thing: they sold the wood paneling and replaced it with a plaster copy which is not even remotely attractive, it looks like a knockoff. They also did not gild in the same way. When I first saw the reproduction Salon Doré room in Paris I wasn’t sure if I would be able to tell but it was obvious. I’m also told the plaster copy would have been extremely expensive so it wasn’t like they were making money. 

OKM: Where do you think Senator Clark got the idea for additional plaster trophy panels depicting sports and theater?

DH: He had grown children and I think they were interested in sports and theater. 

OKM: That is more touching than what I imagined initially. Instead of being this person who just ripped art out of France and rebuilt it in its own marrer, he has this tribute to his children. 

DH: After the “War of the Copper Kings” in Montana he walks away with a bad reputation. I always thought he did not pay enough attention to his PR and that he let people say things about him and that he did have a really decent side to him too. He was proud of the fact that he started out as a miner and when he went back to Montana he hung out with his old mining buddies, he didn’t forget about where he came from. 

OKM: This room has hosted many events, What was your favorite of these events? 

DH: I mean the [annual Corcoran] Balls were always very beautiful, however we feel about having balls here, it always looked gorgeous. 

OKM: Of all the mysteries that still remain from this room, if you could wave a magic wand and find one, what would it be? 

DH: The sale, assuming it was a sale, of the paneling. We know that during the French Revolution, the house got really messed up. They used the residence for offices and gymnasium so I’m sure it was pretty wrecked. There was another restoration in the 1830’s when it went back into private hands so why they decided to do what they did I don’t know. I would also like to know if Senator Clark knew where it came from as the information his daughter gave was incorrect. There’s one weekend in September in Paris where private residences that are now owned by the government are open to the public so you can go and visit the room. In the reproduction Salon Doré in Paris they give you a handout that tells you about the room, except the fact that it is not the original room. 

OKM: What would you hope students take away from this room?

DH: The technique and the beauty of the room, the art history inherent in the room and that it actually is a work of art. The trophy panels too, they go back to ancient times, after battles the Romans would gather up the enemies weapons and they would hang them on trees as a victory sign, this evolves into a decorative pattern. In the trophy panels round the room there are arts and sciences, music, military victories and love. From Senator Clark you have two more, they are the most robust and less refined. But the four originals are as much of a work of art as anything. When I would talk to students and little kids I would explain to them that this is craftsmanship and somebody made something beautiful. 

This interview has been edited for length and consistency. Thank you to Dare Hartwell!

By: Maximus Vogt, Art History and Fine Arts, ’26

In honor of Woman’s History Month, the Luther W. Brady Art Gallery shines on a spotlight on artist Alice Neel. This post was originally published on the former Luther W. Brady Art Gallery “Found in Collection” Blog in May 2016.

Life & Career

Alice Neel (1900-1984) was one of the most prolific American portrait painters of the twentieth century. Although abstraction was popular during the 1940s and 50s, she continued to paint in a style that depicted real people from celebrities of the art world like Andy Warhol to her neighbors in Spanish Harlem. Her gift was being able to reveal something of her sitters’ inner selves through depictions of their outer appearance.[1]

Neel was born in Merion Square, Pennsylvania and began her art education at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (now known as Moore College of Art and Design), enrolling from 1921-25. Her early life was turbulent and her marriage to the artist Carlos Enriquez took her from Pennsylvania to Cuba to New York. With the death of a child and a disintegrating marriage, she suffered from anxiety and depression, which led to several suicide attempts. By 1932 she had returned to painting and to New York, where she participated in the First Washington Square Outdoor Art Exhibit that year. Like many artists living in New York during the 1930s, Neel joined the Public Works of Art Project (which would later become the Works Progress Administration, WPA), a government-funded program run under the Whitney Museum of American Art; she worked with the program on and off again until its termination in 1943.[2]

While she was included in a number group shows and small exhibitions during the 1940s and 50s, Neel only began to see increased recognition in the 1960s. By 1974 the Whitney Museum of American Art was holding a retrospective of her work, which many considered to be ‘too little, too late’ although she considered it a triumph. In 1984, the year of her death, she appeared twice on “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson, offering to paint his portrait.[3]

Activism

Neel was an activist throughout her life. She was investigated in 1955 by the FBI who had been looking into her activities with the Communist Party since 1951. Their file described her as a “romantic Bohemian type communist.” [4] In 1959, she appeared in the Beat film Pull My Daisy with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky, among others. In 1968 she participated in a protest of the Whitney Museum of American Art over the exhibition 1930s Painting and Sculpture in America, because of its lack of women and African American artists, and again over the exhibition, Contemporary Black Artists in America, which was accused of being hastily organized by its curator, Robert Doty. 

She participated in a demonstration against the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition, Harlem on My Mind, in 1969; she, Raphael Soyer, John Dobbs, and Mel Roman were the only white artists to attend the demonstration, organized by the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition. She also stood with the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition and Artists and Writers Protest Against the War in Vietnam opposing Governor Nelson Rockefeller’s handling of the Attica prison riot in 1971. Her portrait of Kate Millet appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1970 in an issue dedicated to the “Politics of Sex.” Between 1973 and 1975 she participated in at least eight exhibitions exclusively devoted to the work of women artists.

Connections

As a major figure in the art world during the last decades of her life, she had connections to a number of other artists exhibited in The Other 90 Percent. In 1970 she painted a portrait of Andy Warhol, and Warhol attended and photographed a dinner held in honor of Neel by NYC Mayor Ed Koch at Gracie Mansion in 1982. [5] She protested with Raphael Soyer, and also painted a portrait of the artist and his twin brother, the artist Moses Soyer, in 1973. In 1972 she participated in the “Conference of Women in the Visual Arts,” held at the Corcoran School of Art, in Washington, D.C., taking the opportunity to present slides of her work.

Artistic Style

Although, she had numerous illustrations printed in the magazine Masses and Mainstream during the forties and fifties, Neel did not begin making prints, like the one shown here, until later in her career. She worked with Judith Solodkin at Rutgers University in 1977 to produce Nancy, a lithograph, and an etching, Young Man. [6] The lithograph in the GW Collection, Family (1982), is representative of her style of portraiture: strong outlines, bold brushstrokes, and tilted perspectives create a flatness against the picture plane and often suggests the uneasiness and personal struggles of many of her sitters.

[1] National Museum of Women in the Arts, “Alice Neel, 1900-1984,” <http://nmwa.org/explore/artist-profiles/alice-neel> Accessed 14 March, 2016.
[2] Sarah Powers, “Chronology,” in Alice Neel, exhibition catalog, June 29, 2000–December 30, 2001, Philadelphia Museum of Art and four other institutions, 159-176.
[3] Powers, 176.
[4] Powers, 169.
[5] Powers, 175.
[6] Powers, 174.

Last fall, Dr. Lisa Lipiniski’s students in her History of Exhibitions course, curated A Corcoran Homecoming: The Art of Carroll Sockwell, exhibiting twenty works on paper by Carroll Sockwell. The exhibition includes paintings, drawings, and collages, showing both his eccentric usage of mediums and the comfort with experimentation he utilized throughout his life. While the exhibition shows his talent in full range, cohesion still prevails in a style completely unique to Sockwell. Through March 9th, Sockwell’s works will be on display in the Luther W. Brady Gallery as the Corcoran proudly welcomes back an artist who made history in the D.C. art scene and beyond. 

In a sea of geometric forms and patterns of abstraction Sockwell picked up from his contemporaries, his work still stands independently. His exploration of abstraction spans across hard-edged and color field works to gestural and emotive pieces that are highly expressive. He exhibited this fearless exploration in 1981 with Untitled Collage (Walter Hopps). Hopps, a former director of the Corcoran Gallery of Art and renowned museum curator, took Sockwell under his wing and supported his art making throughout the 1970’s. In 1982, Hopps gifted Sockwell with an apartment across from the Washington Cathedral, all Sockwell had to do in return was paint.

This piece is composed of found imagery from magazines and branded paper that have been cut into geometric forms pasted on board. Sockwell also includes collaged pieces with gestural abstractions done in crayon. Among the most striking of the collaged pieces, Sockwell includes Man Ray’s Portrait of Pablo Picasso. As the photograph has been separated into two triangles and pasted one below the other, Picasso’s face is split in half. In doing so, Sockwell not only obscures the image, but transforms Picacco into one of his absurd cubist creations. In Sockwell’s reference, was he playing with the line between abstraction and representation using art history? 

Clark Fox, A fellow D.C. painter and friend of Sockwell’s described his work in collage, “that would be about as representational as he would get but basically it’s a framework of abstraction.” Fox describes a time when he and Sockwell were on Canal Street in New York City and were invited to Romare Bearden’s studio, Fox said Sockwell declined the invitation. Despite this, Sockwell’s Untitled Collage (Walter Hopps) brings to mind Bearden’s work in collage throughout the 1970’s, as he collaged images of jazz musicians in harmonic compositions. 

Growing up, Sockwell was first captured by music and theater before turning to painting. In a 1999 lecture on Sockwell given by fellow-artist Kevin MacDonald, the D.C.-based artist said, “Carroll himself insists he is as much motivated by music or his own emotions as he is knowledge of past works by modern masters.” While Sockwell’s work might be somewhat referential to other works of art, he still works in a style that is his own. Macdonald uses the analogy of reincarnation to describe what he terms ‘extraction’: 

Sockwell further personalized his gift for Hopps, adding collaged pieces of a brand of French cigarettes that Hopps would have been partial to and including an address in Paris where Hopps would stay. 

While it is easy to see chaos in Sockwell’s work as forms, lines and colors fight for our attention, it is just as harmonious when the viewer steps back and embraces the variety of collaged objects as one unified piece. As Sockwell used inspiration broadly from other artists, his exploration with material and process set him apart to pave his own place in history. 

By: Maximus Vogt, Art History, ’26. 

A Corcoran Homecoming: The Art of Carroll Sockwell is on view in the Luther W. Brady Art Gallery through March 9.  The gallery, located within the Corcoran Flagg Building at 500 17th Street, NW, is free and open to the public Wednesday – Saturday, 1-5 pm. Support for this exhibition is provided by the Cecile R. Hunt Fund for American Art and the Director’s Discretionary Fund.

As Punxsutawney Phil rose this morning and predicted the bliss of an early spring, this blog post from 2016 on Elizabeth Osborne’s colorful abstraction and colorful artist books from the Corcoran Collection of Artists’ Books, housed at Gelman Library, allows us to look forward to the spring colors that will soon enter our lives.

This post was originally published on the former Luther W. Brady Art Gallery “Found in Collection” Blog in February 2016.

Over a week ago, spectators gathered around a tree-trunk cage to watch Punxsutawney Phil emerge from his winter sleep. The groundhog, known famously for his shadow, forecasted an early spring. Although not scientifically supported, Punxsutawney Phil’s predictions offer hope for warmer temperatures during the dead of winter.  This winter has been especially difficult to endure given large snowfalls, freezing wind chills, and overcast skies. Yet, the colorful works of art currently on display at the Luther W. Brady Art Gallery offer much needed life to this despondent weather. In fact, broad brush strokes and vibrant colors emit from Elizabeth Osborne’s paintings, which are on display as part of Color Bloc: Paintings by Elizabeth Osborne. The exhibition showcases Osborne’s simultaneous explorations into the abstract and the specific. For example, paintings feature clear figures lost within expansive color. Ultimately, these explorations profoundly activate a viewer’s senses, allowing for powerful memories to emerge from resonating color fields.

Real Lush provides another visual narrative through design and movement. Real Lush is considered an interactive flip book because it lends itself to the act of flipping due to its tight, bolted binding. When a viewer flips the pages of Real Lush, brightly-colored images overlap and repeat in sections of the book, which results in compelling motion. Additionally, individual images reappear throughout the work; some sequences of images depict continuous movement: a man running from left to right, or a bird flying off the page. These numerous elements provide multiple narratives, which simultaneously craft a larger story about color. For example, one section of the book showcases a sweeping figure as it lunges towards its destination. The figure is depicted in red hues, which accentuates its movement throughout vast and contrasting background scenes. In addition to expansive color explorations, the author includes several details within the book in order to further stimulate the viewer’s perception. Specifically, small figures in the corner of each page vary to produce their own tiny scenes. These figures and larger scenes are shown in slow motion (see video), which allows for the book’s craft to be exhibited slowly and deliberately. It should also be noted that the book’s structure lends itself to be viewed diversely at different speeds. Thus, Real Lush reveals new meaning during each viewing.

Altogether, Coloring Pages: Works from the Corcoran Collection of Artists’ features a large collection of colorful books and stories. These stories offer a creative and lively refuge from wintry conditions and forecasts. So, until Punxsutawney Phil’s prediction becomes a reality, visit the Luther W. Brady Art Gallery exhibitions in order to delve into works featuring warm and enlivening colors.