Head of a Girl
- 122
Kansas City's Art Purchases, Kansas City Art Institute, October 1931, no cat., as Portrait of a Young Girl Looking Over her Shoulder.
Portraits from Four Centuries, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, February 1957, no cat.
Probably with [Baron] Nicolas (né Falsenburg, 1882-1952) and Paula (née Schaposchnikoff, d. after 1973) de Koenigsberg, Moscow and Paris [1];
With Bachstitz Gallery, New York, stock no. Ru-63, as Portrait of a Young Girl Looking Over her Shoulder, by January 26, 1931 [2];
Purchased from Bachstitz Gallery, through Harold Woodbury Parsons, by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1931.
NOTES:
[1] The Koenigsberg (Königsberg) collection is listed on Kurt Walter Bachstitz' invoice to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (see NAMA curatorial file). It is unclear whether they were acting as dealers or if they owned this painting personally. A "Koenigsberg, Paris" (along with Wildenstein and Co., New York) is listed in the provenance of Jean Baptiste Greuze's Portrait of a Young Woman, sold at Important Old Master Paintings and European Works of Art, Sotheby's, New York, January 25-26, 2007, lot 97. Wildenstein believes that this is a reference to the art dealers Nicolas and Paula (née Schaposchnikoff) de Koenigsberg, Russian-born émigrés who specialized in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French art. See email from Wildenstein and Co., Inc., New York, to Glynnis Stevenson, NAMA, October 26, 2020.
See also Larissa Murray and Anatol Shmelev, "Basily Treasures at the Hoover Institution," Slavic and East European Information Resources 17, no. 3 (2016), for more on the De Koenigsbergs and the myths surrounding Nicolas' claim to being a Russian land-owning baron. The authors also note that, during the window the De Koenigsberg's likely had the painting, they were selling art from Russian collections.
[2] According to a note in the Bachstitz Gallery Archive, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Box 15, folder 19, copy in NAMA curatorial file, the Bachstitz Gallery acquired the painting in New York in January 1931. Bachstitz Gallery began negotiating the painting's sale to the Nelson-Atkins by January 26, 1931. See letter from J. C. Nichols, NAMA, to Arthur M. Hyde, NAMA, January 26, 1931, NAMA curatorial file.
M[inna] K. P[owell], “Art: Large Crowd at Art Institute Sees Seven Canvases Under Consideration for the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and H. A. Botkin’s Ultra-Modern Water Colors; Pupils of Nora LaMar Moss in Recital,” Kansas City Times 94, no. 10 (January 12, 1931): 6.
Possibly “Half-Million for Art: A Rembrandt in New Purchases for Nelson Gallery; Works Acquired Should Not Be Judged Solely by Their Financial Value, Herbert V. Jones Points Out,” Kansas City Star 51, no. 156 (February 20, 1931): 3.
"Kansas City Gets $1,000,000 Art Here: William Rockhill Nelson Trust Buys Paintings by Rubens, Rembrandt and Others. Guelph Objects Included Treasures to Be Placed in New Structure Being Built by Publisher's Endowment," New York Times 80, no. 26,690 (February 20, 1931): 16.
“A Treasure Island of Art Masterpieces; From Kansas City’s Art Purchases: Now on Display at the Kansas City Art Institute,” [The Kansas City Visitor?] (October 1931): 6, (repro.), as Portrait of a Young Girl Looking Over Her Shoulder.
“Art Tangle for Others: Nelson Trustees Say They Are Not Involved in Dispute; “Old Parr” Was Bought in a Group and the Legal Differences Are for Agent and Dealer to Solve,” Kansas City Star 52, no. 100 (December 26, 1931): 12.
“What to See In Kansas City: A guide to principal Points of Interest Presented in the Style of A Baedeker,” Kansas City Star 52, no. 101 (December 27, 1931): 3C, as Portrait of a Young Girl.
“Treasure in Lore of Art: ‘Read,’ says Parsons to Those Who Would Appreciate Works; Kansas City Has the Finest Museum In the Country, Adviser for the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery Asserts,” Kansas City Times 95, no. 10 (January 12, 1932): 2.
“Frank Lauder’s Slides made by Color Photography are Something New in the Field of Art Education Here,” Kansas City Times 95, no. 54 (March 3, 1932): 6.
"Suit over 'Old Parr: Owner Asks $20,000 of Dealer Who Sold Canvas; The Trustees of the Nelson Gallery Are Not Involved in Action, as the Sale to Them Is Not Questioned,'" Kansas City Star, 53, no. 253 (May 28, 1933): 3A.
“Nelson Gallery of Art Special Number,” Art Digest 8, no. 5 (December 1, 1933): 13, 21, as Portrait of a Young Girl.
“The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City Special Number,” Art News 32, no. 10 (December 9, 1933): 28, 30, 45, (repro.), as Portrait of a Young Girl.
Minna K. Powell, “The First Exhibition of the Great Art Treasures: Paintings and Sculpture, Tapestries and Panels, Period Rooms and Beautiful Galleries Are Revealed in the Collections Now Housed in the Nelson-Atkins Museum—Some of the Rare Objects and Pictures Described,” Kansas City Star 54, no. 84 (December 10, 1933): 4C, as Portrait of a Girl.
Paul V. Beckley, “Art News,” Kansas City Journal-Post, no. 193 (December 17, 1933): 2C, as Portrait of a Young Girl.
The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Handbook of the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1933), 41, 45, 137, (repro.), as Portrait of a Young Girl.
A.
J. Philpott, “Kansas City Now in Art Center Class: Nelson Gallery, Just Opened,
Contains Remarkable Collection of Paintings, Both Foreign and American,” Boston Sunday Globe 125, no. 14 (January
14, 1934): 16.
The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine
Arts, The William Rockhill Nelson Collection, 2nd ed. (Kansas City, MO:
William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts,
1941), 168, as Head of a Girl.
“French Art is Topic: Sixth in Gallery Lecture Series to be Given Tomorrow; Rare Brocades and Silks Will Be Discussed by Paul Gardner in Session on Wednesday,” Kansas City Star 68, no. 61 (November 17, 1947): 16.
The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, The William Rockhill Nelson Collection, 3rd ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1949), 55.
“Mezzanine Galleries Portraits from Four Centuries,” Gallery News (The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts) 24, no. 5 (February 1957): unpaginated.
Winifred Shields, “The Inner-Self of Portrait Subjects Shown on Canvass [sic],” Kansas City Star 77, no. 134 (February 1, 1957): 6.
Ross E. Taggart, ed., Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 260, as Head of a Girl.
Ralph T. Coe, “The Baroque and Rococo in France and Italy,” Apollo 96, no. 130 (December 1972): 539 [repr., in Denys Sutton, ed., William Rockhill Nelson Gallery, Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City (London: Apollo Magazine, 1972), 71], as Head of a Girl.
Alte Meister, I. Teil; Old Master Paintings, Part I (Vienna: Dorotheum, October 6, 2009), 224.
Richard Rand, “Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Head of a Girl, ca. 1770 or
later,” catalogue entry, and Mary Schafer, “Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Head of a Girl, ca. 1770 or later,” technical entry in
French Paintings and Pastels, 1600–1945: The Collections of The
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of
Art, 2022),
https://doi.org/10.37764/78973.5.318.
