This important collection of snuff bottles and other Chinese works of art was formed over the course of three generations. Its contents were principally selected by the women in the family, and the collection as a whole has passed through the matriline. The majority of the pieces were purchased by Kenyon Vickers Painter, Sr. (1867-1940) and Leila Maud Wyeth Painter (1885-1971). Mr. Painter was born to a prominent Quaker family in Ohio, in which his pioneering mother, Lydia Ethel Farmer Painter (1842-1909), was an author, poet, avid traveller, owner of the Cleveland & Pittsburgh Railroad Company, and had a fascination with East Asian philosophy.
Mr. Painter followed in his father’s footsteps as a banker, and became the head of the Union Trust Company, the largest bank in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1907, he went on his first safari in Arusha, German East Africa (now Tanzania), and subsequently returned to the region 30 times to explore its natural habitats (including a safari with U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt), and to invest in the region. Notably, he developed an 11,000-acre coffee plantation, a coffee research institute, a post office, hotels, hospital, church, and other infrastructure around Arusha. His keen interest in the natural world was reflected on the grounds of his Cleveland mansion, which housed mementos from his time in Africa, as well as a zoo, two aviaries, a deer park, and stables. Two years after he died, the widowed Mrs. Painter sold the home and grounds to the Ursuline nuns for use as a girls’ school, a function it continues to serve to this day as the Beaumont School, which fulfilled a wish of her own and her late mother-in-law’s to support women’s education.
Mrs. Painter, who went by Maud, was the driving force behind the couple’s collection of Chinese antiquities. Maud had travelled to Asia as a teenager, and returned with a passion for East Asian art. The couple principally purchased from major auctions in New York, including the 1916 sale of the A. W. Bahr Collection at the American Art Association, and the 1917 auctions of the Frederick Moore Collection (Anderson Galleries), the Abbott Collection (Anderson Galleries), and the Lee Van Ching Collection (American Art Galleries).
Beyond the Chinese artworks that the couple purchased together or inherited from Kenyon’s sister, Leila Marion Painter (1856-1901), Maud continued to build the collection even after her husband passed, and maintained a close relationship with auction house luminaries, such as Otto Bernet, who assisted her in making acquisitions. In addition, the Painters were major benefactors of the Cleveland Museum of Art and churches in the area. Following Maud’s death in 1971, the Chinese art collection passed to her daughter and her granddaughter, both of whom have added to the collection over the past 50 years.
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