Maryhill Museum of Art

Ray, Andrew, Mel and I went to Maryhill today, about 100 miles east of Portland, overlooking the Columbia River from the north (in Washington). It is an art museum with an interesting history (for one thing, an art museum in Central Washington?). We went to see a book arts exhibit, but I'm going to talk about the fascinating man of many contradictions who built it, Sam Hill (1857-1931). The museum was quite frank about some aspects of the man's life, and glossed over other aspects.

It has Minnesota connections. Sam Hill was born in North Carolina to Quaker parents; the family moved to Minneapolis in the 1860's. As an adult he worked for J. J. Hill (apparently no relation), and married the boss's eldest daughter, Mary (Mamie). In 1890, he quit working for J. J., and set out west to become an entrepreneur, and never went back. He was quite successful, making and spending several fortunes in many different arenas. His wife, Mamie, "did not like the West" and moved back to Minneapolis to live with her parents in 1893, and the two remained separated and apparently estranged for the rest of their lives. They had two children -- a daughter with whom Hill remained close, who suffered schizophrenia, and a son who did not like his father and did not follow in his business or philanthropic efforts.

Hill also had two other, illegitimate children, talked about in the Family History part of the museum. One was the child of his secretary, who quit and moved to California, where she raised their daughter with the fiction that her father had died in WWI. The daughter only learned the truth when a biographer of Sam Hill contacted her in the 1970s. The other child was a son, born to an artist, Mona Bell, with whom Hill had a long-term relationship. According to the blurb under the photo of Sam Hill (Jr.), Hill (Sr.) "arranged for her to marry his cousin Edgar Hill, so the boy would have the same last name." (!) Both of these children are still living.

In 1906, Sam Hill bought 6,000 acres of land just across the Columbia River from The Dalles. He intended to start a Quaker communal farm on the land, and named it "Maryhill" after his daughter. The land, although beautiful, proved not to be arable (too dry, too far from the river -- 850 feet above it -- to irrigate), and he could not get investors. He had started to build a "ranch house" (a Georgian style 4-story house made of experimental poured concrete), but was convinced by a friend to convert it into an art museum instead.

That friend was Loie Fuller -- a dancer made famous by Toulouse-Latrec and Jacques Cheret. She was also a close friend of Rodin, and she arranged for all of the molds of Rodin's sculptures to be sent to Maryhill. Thus, it has the largest collection of Rodin sculptures (if you count the molds) in the world, perhaps including the Rodin museum in Paris.

Another "friend" was the future Queen of Romania, Marie (a granddaughter of both Victoria and one of the Tsars. I couldn't remember my European royal family genealogy well enough to figure out who were her parents). She apparently was very close to Sam Hill for many years, and was convinced to come dedicate the museum in 1926, the only time she ever came to central southern Washington. The museum has a nice collection of furniture which she designed, all gold plated but actually rather wonderful, in the height of Art Nouveau style.

It is not clear whether Hill had intimate relations with these women. Apparently Loie Fuller had a long-term lesbian partner (at least, there was a picture of Gabrielle Bloch, who "first fell in love with Loie" after seeing her perform, and who lived in her household for 20+ years until Fuller's death), so maybe his relationship with her was platonic. Marie of Romania, according to the biography in the gift shop, was not much bothered by conventional morals, and there is even some doubt that her six children were all fathered by her Romanian prince husband.

Hill's third partner in the formation of the museum was another woman, Alma de Bretteville Spreckels, the daughter of Belgian nobility who married a San Francisco millionaire. She was also very close to Hill for many years, and she is the one who lobbied to complete the museum after Hill's death in the 30's (it opened in the late 1940's).

So it was all good gossip, and it all adds up to an eccentric but high quality collection: the Rodin molds, the Romanian Art Nouveau furniture and glasswork, a large collection of ivory and porcelain chess sets, a small selection of 20th century American Classic Realism paintings (again, with a Minnesota connection -- the heart of that movement was the Atelier Lack studio in Minneapolis in the 40's-70's), not to mention the exhibit of Northwest book artists which we went to see.

The photos were taken in the sculpture garden. There were even tame peacocks roaming around, but I couldn't get a photo of any of them. The "apple tree" is a charming folly, made out of rusting steel, each leaf shaped individually, and connected in such a way that it moves in a (strong) wind.