The Collection of Robert Hatfield Ellsworth | Christie's

Legendary art dealer Robert Hatfield Ellsworth's personal collection of modern Chinese painting, Ming Dynasty furniture, archaic jade and Indian, Himalayan and Southeast Asian art is the embodiment of his expertise and his eye for beauty. Ellsworth's 22-room Manhattan apartment was a gathering place for clients, acquaintances and academics. It was a unique, glamorous world reflecting the collector's decades-long journey in fine art. He was, of course, a very elegant man, a man of great style in his dress, in his gestures, in his manner of self-presentation. Frank Sinatra, Claudette Colbert, he was of that era, that sort of movie star era. Ellsworth inherited charm and charisma from his mother, an opera singer, and his father, a dental surgeon. My father was the most famous dentist in New York and I spent a lot of time in his lab making things for him and I did conservation and restoration on Chinese objects in the same laboratory. His interest early on was in taking things apart, figuring out how they work, and of course this relates to his knowledge of connoisseurship as well. Ellsworth was mentored by the art advisor Alice Bonney, the doyen of Asian art, who recognized his natural eye and potential when he was still a teen. Alice Bonney, like Bob, dealt from her very graciously appointed Park Avenue apartment. Part of Bob's sense of the appropriate way to deal was not through a gallery but from a gracious living room. He bought the apartment at Fifth Avenue in 1975 and the public rooms were very grand, elegantly appointed, with Asian works of art, English furniture, English silver, but with a mixture of Chinese furniture, Chinese ceramics, Japanese screen on the wall, modern Chinese scrolls, but in with it there would also be Japanese sculpture, there would be Chinese sculpture, there would be Indian sculpture, Nepalese gilt bronze sculpture, and such. But he had such taste and such a sense of design that he was able to mix all of these seemingly very disparate elements and make a coherent, very elegant whole. Mr. Ellsworth went to Yale to study Mandarin Chinese with my father. They became lifelong friends. My father was raised in a family in Beijing that had a cultured kind of a background despite crossing borders. My father was a true Wenren, a true scholar, literati, and I think Mr. Ellsworth saw in my father that very traditional kind of a background. My father saw in Mr. Ellsworth someone who had a great appreciation of beauty, who was a strong connoisseur. With Wang Fengyu, Bob developed a real interest in modern and contemporary Chinese painting. He championed the beauty and minimalist design of Chinese furniture. His love of Chinese furniture culminated in his 1971 book, and in 1977, works from his collection became part of the Metropolitan Museum's new Astor Court. He wrote the book for Chinese furniture. That was the Bible. Ellsworth's career coincided with the opening of Relations Between China and the West in 1979, and he was the first American dealer to then visit mainland China, giving him unparalleled exposure to the best in Chinese art. Ellsworth also influenced Western interest in modern Chinese painting of the 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1986, Ellsworth donated 471 works of later Chinese painting to the Metropolitan Museum, and once again published a seminal book on the subject. But in making that gift to the Met, in producing that very serious set of volumes on the subject, the field forever changed. In the 1980s, 1990s, he frequently traveled to China in Anhui province, and he found there a group of buildings that had been constructed in the Ming dynasty. Bob recognized their importance, and so he decided, you know, we have to restore these buildings. The Chinese scholars, government officials, and such were so grateful for what he had made possible that he was made an honorary citizen of China. He went to India with Alice Bonney in the late 1950s. She would show him things from all over Asia, so not just East Asian, but also South and Southeast Asian. In helping Christian Humann form his collection, which eventually did become the Pan-Asian Collection, he also trained and formed his eye at that time. When Mr. Humann passed away, Mr. Ellsworth was able to acquire the entire collection en masse, which he then sold off, but he kept the ones that he loved the most, and that included some of the bronzes that were on his desk. It includes some of the sculpture that lined the hallway. It includes the pieces that he had on his headboard. Bob is right there with some of the great museum or academic connoisseurs of earlier generations. I think the broad community within this world will remember Mr. Ellsworth and Aunt Alice being the two major Asian art dealers of basically the 20th century and going into this millennium. As a collector, he felt this strong sense of responsibility to the objects themselves and to see to it that they went to the right places.