LACMA Receives Sisley Painting in Dispersal of Sara Lee Collection

Joining two dozen other museums that have benefited from the dispersal of art valued at $100 million from the Sara Lee Corp.’s collection, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has received a French Impressionist landscape by Alfred Sisley. The painting, “Saintes-Mammes--Morning,” depicting a woodworking yard in a village near Fontainebleau, will go on view today at the museum.

The donation is part of Sara Lee’s “Millennium Gift to America,” announced in June. Unlike many companies that have cashed in on their art collections--including Reader’s Digest, which in November sold 33 Impressionist and Modern works for $86.6 million at Sotheby’s New York--Sara Lee has given 40 artworks to 20 American museums and five European institutions in regions where the corporation conducts a major part of its business. An additional 12 works will be donated to museums yet to be designated.

In announcing the program, John H. Bryan, chairman of Sara Lee, said the corporation never intended to establish a permanent collection. The works have been displayed at the company’s headquarters in Chicago, but as they became more valuable, officials decided to give them to public arts institutions where they can be seen by a much larger audience.

“It’s an amazing thing to do,” said Graham W.J. Beal, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. “I wish other corporations would take this as a precedent, but there aren’t many other collections as good as this one.”

Beal, like other museum directors across the country, selected the gift for his institution. “I chose the Sisley because it is such a fine work by a major Impressionist painter,” he said. French Impressionism is immensely popular, but “it is not our strongest area,” he said, so the donation is particularly welcome.

Measuring 24 by 34 1/4 inches and painted around 1884, the landscape is one of Sisley’s largest paintings. It will complement the museum’s holdings of 19th century French art, including works by Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin and Paul Cezanne. LACMA also owns a smaller painting by Sisley, “Train Station at Sevres,” a gift of the late B. Gerald Cantor.

Sisley was born in 1839 in Paris and painted in an Impressionist style until his death in 1899. Although he is known as a relatively conservative artist, Beal described “Saintes Mammes--Morning” as “a gutsy painting” because of its vigorous workmanship and unconventional composition, combining a village scene with industrial activity in adjacent fields.

The Sara Lee collection--composed of about 1,000 pieces of Impressionist and Modern art made from 1870 to 1950--was formed by the company’s founder, Nathan Cummings, who began buying art in 1945 and died in 1985. Only “the top tier” of the holding is being given away, a Sara Lee spokeswoman said. Less valuable pieces will continue to decorate corporate offices.

Taking advantage of a healthy art market, other corporations have chosen to sell their collections in recent years, as IBM, CBS, Alcoa, U.S. Steel, Times-Warner and Times Mirror, the parent company of the Los Angeles Times, have done in the past few years. But the cost to Sara Lee is merely the difference between the after-tax value of artworks sold and the tax deduction the company can take from the gifts, estimated at $35 million.

While some corporations sell their collections under financial duress, Sara Lee is a prosperous international consumer goods company with about $20 billion in annual revenues. Along with Sara Lee foodstuffs, its leading products include Hillshire Farm foods, Hanes hosiery, Coach leather goods and Playtex underwear.

The Art Institute of Chicago has received 12 works from the corporate collection, with other museums getting one work apiece. Recipients include the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

LACMA’s gift will be displayed until the end of year, when it will join 51 other works from the “Sara Lee Millennium Gift” for an international touring exhibition that will culminate at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2000.