4 Major Artworks Donated to National Gallery

The National Gallery of Art Tuesday announced a major gift of four artworks worth an estimated $100 million, including two paintings and a sculpture from the collection of the late Taft B. and Rita Schreiber of Los Angeles.

The donations, which also included Van Gogh’s “Roses” from Pamela Harriman, constitute one of the richest additions to the prestigious Smithsonian museum since the original collection was presented to the nation in 1931 by Andrew Mellon.

The Schreibers’ estate donated Pablo Picasso’s “Harlequin Musician,” Henri Matisse’s “Woman Seated in an Armchair” and “Bird in Space,” a polished bronze sculpture by Constantin Brancusi.

They are “works by three of the greatest masters of European modernism,” said Gallery Director J. Carter Brown, who disclosed the donations in a speech at the National Press Club.

He said that the works would be “a significant addition to our collection, adding depth and providing a rich complement to the Gallery’s existing holdings,” which until recently were weighted toward classic art. “They also demonstrate the extraordinary quality of the collection put together by the late Rita and Taft Schreiber.”

New York art dealer Richard L. Feigen estimated the Picasso’s current worth at $22 million, the Matisse at $4 million and the Brancusi at $12 million.

The 1890 Van Gogh donated by Harriman, showing a bouquet of white roses against a green background, was “the most desirable and valuable painting in private hands in the world today,” Feigen said. He said that the work is rated superior to “Irises,” another late example of the Dutch artist’s work which brought $53.9 million in 1987 from a Japanese collector.

“Roses could bring as much as $65 million on today’s market,” Feigen said.

Brown said that the donations are especially appreciated because, as a result of the 1986 tax reforms, such contributions now provide fewer tax benefits to those who make them. Donors now can claim only the cost of purchase, not the current value in a soaring art market, and there has been a sharp decline in giving to museums in the last two years.

Harriman, widow of the New York governor and presidential confidant W. Averell Harriman, who died in 1986, gave a partial interest in the Van Gogh painting outright and pledged to give complete title on or before her death.

Taft Schreiber, who with his wife built one of Los Angeles’ finest contemporary art collections, was an executive of the MCA entertainment conglomerate until his death in 1976. Although the bulk of the Schreiber holdings of three dozen major works went to the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Rita Schreiber, who died earlier this year, bequeathed the two paintings and the sculpture to the National Gallery.