R.T.H. Halsey: American Wing founder and champion of Duncan Phyfe - New York Metropolitan Museum, American Wing

Richard Townley Haines Halsey (Fig. 1), known to family and friends as R.T., was one of the best friends the Metropolitan Museum of Art ever had. In Merchants and Masterpieces, a history of the museum, Calvin Tomkins wrote that, in the decade leading up to the building of the American Wing, Halsey was the Metropolitan's principal "scout, scholar and benefactor" for all things American. [1] In reality, he functioned as the Metropolitan's first curator of American decorative arts, although he never officially held that title.

Born on August 28, 1865, in Elizabeth, New Jersey, R. T. H. Halsey was the eldest child of William Forest Halsey, a banker, and Frances Electa Haines. [2] His lifelong reverence for the history and traditions of this country was rooted in his lineage, which on his father's side could be traced to Thomas Halsey (1591-1679), an Englishman who immigrated to Lynn, Massachusetts, in 1630 and ten years later moved to Southampton, Long Island, where his house still stands. [3] The Halsey family was especially proud of Luther Halsey, R.T.H.'s great-grandfather, a captain in the Continental army and an original member of the Society of the Cincinnati. After graduating from the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) in 1886, Halsey went to work as a clerk in the office of his future father-in-law, Edward C. Homans. In 1891 Halsey became a member of the New York Stock Exchange, a position he maintained until December 1923, [4] when he retired to devote himself entirely to the final phases of work on the Ameri can Wing.

Halsey's involvement with the Metropolitan Museum began in 1906, when he donated money for "the development of the Americana side." [5] In 1909 he was a major lender of furniture and silver to the American section of the Hudson-Fulton exhibition at the museum (see pp.l70-175). Acknowledging this contribution in the preface of the show's catalogue, Robert W de Forest (see pp. 176-181), then the secretary of the board of trustees, thanked Halsey for "the complete showing of furniture by Duncan Phyfe, the New York cabinet-maker, for the loan of his collection of silver, and for valuable assistance in the preparation of the catalogue of silver." [6]

In 1913, de Forest became president of the Metropolitan Museum, Henry W. Kent (see p. 179, Fig. 3) replaced him as secretary of the board, and less than a year later Halsey was elected a trustee and made chairman of the committee on American decorative arts. Thus was formed the triumvirate responsible for the building of the American Wing. If the American Wing could be thought of as a product of the Hollywood film industry instead of as a permanent museum installation, then de Forest, who paid for the project, could fir the role of the powerful studio mogul; Kent, the savvy producer; and Halsey, the artistic director. So powerful was Halsey's personal stamp on the look and interpretive thrust of the American Wing, that on the occasion of its opening, de Forest remarked, "Except for Mr. Halsey, you might have had an American Wing, but you never would have had this American Wing." [7]

Between about 1914 and the opening of the wing in 1924, Halsey spent countless hours tracking down period rooms and architectural elements from houses in New England, the Middle Atlantic states, and the South, as well as the furniture, textiles, and decorative accessories he needed to install a complete chronological arrangement of galleries and period rooms from the seventeenth century to the early nineteenth. He already had on hand the Bolles collection of predominantly seventeenth- to early eighteenth-century American furniture, acquired in 1909 (see pp. 170-175). In 1918 he negotiated the purchase of the collection of Bolles's cousin George S. Palmer (1855-1934). which had as its crowning glory supreme examples of Philadelphia rococo furniture. Thus a thorough presentation of the arts of the colonial period was possible, but there was not enough to furnish the galleries and rooms representing the new Republic. These Halsey initially furnished largely with loans of objects from his own collection, which h e had assembled over twenty-five years. His collection was rich in examples from New York City, especially from the Phyfe school, as well as from the South and New England. In later years he wrote that it was

unquestionably the finest collection of American furniture of the period 1790-1810 in the country. Herbert Cescinsky [b. 1875], the English writer and furniture expert, after going over my collection fifteen years ago, said that he felt that my American Phyfe and Sheraton was of a higher order than the English of the period. His remark pleased me because I had selected this period as I felt our American Chippendale did not equal the English. [8]

Ironically, although the Metropolitan eventually purchased part of Halsey's collection, only one piece of his furniture (Pl. IV) ended up permanently at the museum. [9]

Halsey's fascination with Duncan Phyfe apparently began in the 1890s, probably through his patronage of Ernest F. Hagen (1830-1913), a New York cabinetmaker, antique furniture dealer, and Phyfe's first biographer. [10] Halsey loved the superb craftsmanship of pre-industrial American silver and furniture and he loved to feel a connection with the craftsmen who made them. Identifying the maker's marks on silver provided a satisfying outlet for this passion, but furniture was more frustrating because it often lacked a maker's signature or label. No doubt this is why he was drawn to the coherent body of superbly designed and crafted furniture that Hagen had ascribed to Phyfe, the attributions of which were based in great part on family histories of having been made in the master's shop. We now know that while provenance is extremely important in identifying the original owners and makers of furniture, provenance has to be documented beyond family tradition. As Wendy Kaplan has pointed out, "Halsey shared some of his contemporary scholars' limitations and excesses in attribution" and helped to foster the myth that all New York furniture in the later Sheraton style was made by Phyfe. [11] Very little in the way of substantive formal analysis and connoisseurship of Phyfe's work has been done since Halsey's time, and Phyfe attributions are still all-too-casually bandied about. However, there is no question that Halsey's collection included some of the finest pieces of furniture made in New York City in the late Federal period.