MMFA to present old master paintings from the Kress Collection

This fall, the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts’ temporary galleries will feature more than 30 exquisite paintings on loan from the Columbia Museum of Art in Columbia, South Carolina.

On view from October 13, 2023, through January 7, 2024, European Splendors: Old Master Paintings from the Kress Collection contains works from Columbia’s Kress Collection along with two objects from the MMFA’s collection that exemplify historical European painting.

Together, these works demonstrate a renewed emphasis on the human condition during the late Medieval and Baroque periods as realism and individuality emerged from the more abstract and symbolic depictions of religious subjects that characterized the art of the Middle Ages. The exhibition culminates with examples of Dutch portraiture and still life, along with works that illustrate the impulse to bring a piece of history home as a souvenir of the traditional European Grand Tour of famous landmarks and the 18th-century mania for Greek and Roman ruins.

One of America’s premier art collectors and patrons of the early 20th century was Samuel H. Kress (1863–1955), who made his fortune through the chain of popular S. H. Kress & Co. five-and-dime department stores throughout the U.S., including in Alabama. An Egyptian Revival-style building opened in 1929, housed Montgomery’s original Kress store, and is now a revitalized architectural landmark downtown on Dexter Avenue.

Samuel Kress used his fortune to buy primarily European old master paintings, and he wanted to bring the appreciation of these works to everyday Americans amid the Great Depression. The Samuel H. Kress Foundation built on this idea by donating artworks to the permanent collections of regional and university museums nationwide. After a large donation to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the second largest gift of Kress collection works was made to the Columbia Museum of Art in Columbia, South Carolina.

Curator Margaret Lynne Ausfeld says, “Samuel Kress and his foundation were responsible for donating more than 3,000 works of art to 96 museums in the United States, the most important single donation of art in the nation’s history. And Montgomery was not forgotten. At that time — a fledgling art school and museum founded in 1930 — the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts was gifted two early Italian paintings from the Kress Foundation, one in 1936 and another in 1937. This exhibition will feature works that are much earlier in art history than the MMFA’s major holdings of American art, which date beginning in the late 1700’s. The exhibition will also allow our viewers to see paintings created in the same eras, and featuring many of the same subjects, as the works in our Old Master Print Collection.”

MMFA Board President Laurie J. Weil, D.V.M. adds, “The example and tradition of public-spirited philanthropy demonstrated by Samuel Kress significantly impacted our own community. Montgomery’s art museum collection has only expanded over more than its 70 years by gifts and purchases made by donors who valued the educational and civic impact that a museum of art and culture could have in an American democracy of shared goals and values.”