On January 18, 2015, the San Diego Union Tribune (
visit link) ran the following story:
"At SDMA, answer to art prayers
With donations from Prebys, Turner and Legler Benbough Foundation, S.D. Museum of Art acquires two Spanish masterworks for centennial presentations
By James Chute | 6 a.m. Jan. 18, 2015
Conrad Prebys — whose name is on numerous buildings in San Diego, from the zoo to SDSU — does not consider himself an art collector.
But the San Diego Museum of Art’s director Roxana Velásquez had somehow convinced him to give her one hour to show him around the museum.
“I went over there and it was the most exciting hour that I can remember,” Prebys said. “I’ll never forget it. She took me to every painting. She pointed out what art was. …
“Since that time, I’ve thought, ‘I’ve got to increase my horizons.’”
Not long after that 2012 meeting, Prebys and Debbie Turner agreed to give the museum $1.5 million to support its presentations during the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Panama-California Exposition at Balboa Park.
Now, in consultation with Velásquez and the museum’s trustees, Prebys and Turner have purchased a masterpiece from the “golden age” of Spanish art for the museum: Zurbarán’s 1655 “St. Francis in Prayer in a Grotto,” which will go on display Thursday.
Zurbarán is one of three artists — with Velázquez and Murillo — whose likeness is carved into the museum’s 1925 facade, and he is considered by most historians to be second only to Velázquez, the godfather of Spanish art.
As the museum is increasingly making Spanish art a point of emphasis, it also purchased Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida’s 1908 “By the Seashore” with a grant from the Legler Benbough Foundation, a longtime supporter of Balboa Park institutions.
The two works — acquired in commemoration of the 2015 Balboa Park Centennial — were purchased in Spain at a total cost of approximately 3 million euros (about $3.5 million).
“You have to dream about something, and to get both of these paintings at the same time is a dream come true,” Velásquez said. ?“I believe in building upon our strengths, and one of our biggest strengths is the Spanish collection. This is a core of paintings that will give us important international stature.”
Reputation enhancement
Velásquez stressed that the significance of the acquisitions is not necessarily reflected in their cost, particularly in an art market where contemporary artists like Andy Warhol or Jeff Koons are inflated to prices in the tens of millions. With Old Masters — but also with Sorolla, who was considered among the world’s great artists in the early 20th century and is quietly regaining that high regard — the issue is availability as much as price.
Relatively few Old Masters of exceptional quality come onto the market. But with the Spanish economy in turmoil, some Spanish paintings that wouldn’t normally be available are being sold by private owners in Spain looking to raise cash.
“It took two things,” Prebys said in an interview in his Pacific Beach office. “I loved it and there’s a chance we could get it, thanks to Roxana knowing the background. It’s like any kind of sale: You have to have both parts, willing seller and willing buyer.
“I’m the willing buyer and thank God it was available. It’s not easy.”
Velásquez, whose specialty is Spanish art, had been following the Zurbarán for years. It had been in the possession of the Counts of Ibangrande for more than three centuries before being sold at auction in Spain in 2001. The private owner eventually placed the painting with Caylus Anticuario, a distinguished gallery in Madrid that specializes in Old Masters.
When Prebys and Turner offered to purchase a piece for the museum, Velásquez was ready and suggested the Zurbarán.
“I don’t want to knock other areas, but I’m not into so-called installation art,” Prebys said. “I’ve checked it out. I went to the Tate Modern in London, and I just scratched my head. But this is real art and it turns me on. That’s the bottom line — it just turns me on.
“So I’m delighted to do this and I plan to continue to be a big supporter of the San Diego Museum of Art.”
Community resources
Since Velásquez arrived at the museum in 2010, the museum has also acquired paintings by Raphael Mengs (“Don Luis de Borbón”) and Juan de Valdes Leal (“The Visitation”) and a sculpture by Pedro de Mena (“San Diego de Alcalá”) to enhance its Spanish holdings, which include significant works by Juan Sánchez Cotán, El Greco and Goya, among others.
In all, the museum has approximately 17,600 objects in its permanent collection, with the art of India (anchored by the renowned Binney Collection) and Spanish works as its strongest areas. Items from the Binney Collection are now on display at the Musee National Des Beaux-Arts du Quebec while two of the museum’s three other Zurbaráns were recently part of exhibitions in Ferrara and Brussels.
The museum’s other Zurbaráns (“St. Jerome,” “Agnus Dei” and the “Virgin and Child”) were donated relatively early in the museum’s 90-year history by the Putnam sisters, whose collection is also the foundation of the Timken Museum.
The painting Prebys and Turner purchased for the museum — “St. Francis in Prayer in a Grotto” — was produced between 1650 and 1655, making it a late work, which in Zurbarán’s case, also made it more affordable. It reveals not only Zurbarán’s technical mastery and his dedication to the ideals of the Counter Reformation but also his humanity. Unlike many of Zurbarán’s earlier works, in this painting, St. Francis is looking at you.
“This painting has a soul,” Velásquez said. “You can see the life. You can almost see his breathing.”
Museums in Madrid and Berlin have already asked to borrow the painting for exhibitions in late 2015 and 2016.
“It’s important that while these paintings are gifts to the San Diego community for San Diegans, at the same time these are assets that can be used by the museum in connection with doing trades,” said Peter Ellsworth, president of the Legler Benbough Foundation. “That’s how we’ve done some amazing things in the past.”
Regional resonance
The San Diego Museum of Art — with the Meadows Museum, Southern Methodist University and the Fundación MAPFRE — recently presented an encyclopedic exhibition of Sorolla’s art produced in America primarily from borrowed work. One notable exception was the museum’s other Sorolla, “Maria at the Granja.”
“Maria at the Granja,” the first painting acquired by the San Diego Museum of Art, was donated to the institution in 1925 by Archer Huntington, who brought Sorolla to the United States in 1909 for an exhibition at New York’s Hispanic Society.
“By the Seashore” was produced for the 1909 Hispanic Society exhibition, although it later returned to a private collection in Spain, where the museum — with the Legler Benbough Foundation’s backing — bought it.
“We had been looking for something appropriate to add to the collection of the San Diego Museum of Art for years,” Ellsworth said. “We were trying to find something that would be significant to the collection, but would also work with Legler’s historical presence in the community.
“Also, the art market is overinflated and we didn’t want to buy something that was terribly overpriced and throw away a bunch of money.”
Ellsworth and the foundation engaged Derrick Cartwright as a consultant to travel to Spain and examine the work.
“It’s a terrific example of Sorolla’s work and it happens to be a part of his output that isn’t otherwise represented in San Diego,” said Cartwright, a professor at the University of San Diego and the former director of the San Diego Museum of Art. “The museum already has this wonderful portrait (“Maria at the Granja”) … but portraiture is probably the less well-known side of what Sorolla did. He’s most beloved for these beach scenes, and this happens to be that, and a really good example of it.”
Velásquez pointed to the obvious resonance both paintings have with San Diego, whether the beach scene or the depiction of St. Francis, whose order, the Franciscans, established the Spanish missions in California.
“Why do we want to have these kinds of paintings here in San Diego?” Velásquez said. “They tell the story of us, who were are and why we are here, and they can help us teach the students.
“Conrad knows my dream of freeing the entrance to the museum to the people and allowing the children who have never seen this kind of painting to just step in front of it and allow it to speak.
“It’s such a great opportunity.”