Maxim Karolik folk art

(2.) The prices Karolik paid for folk paintings paralleled--and sometimes exceeded--the prices he paid for academic paintings. In the same month that he bought Meditation by the Sea for $650, he paid $600 for the much larger Eagle Cliff, New Hampshire, by Jasper F. Cropsey (in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).

(3.) The exhibition was organized by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., for the Tate Gallery; it included 240 paintings. Meditation by the Sea was one of only eight works illustrated in the catalogue, American Painting from the Eighteenth Century to the Present Day (Tate Gallery, London, 1946). (Paintings by Copley, Eakins, Homer, and Ryder were among the others.) Ellis Waterhouse called Meditation "wholly entrancing" in his review of the exhibition ("American Painting before 1850," Burlington Magazine, vol. 88 [September 1946], p. 212). It was also reproduced in the account of the show by the curator of thc show at the National Gallery, John Walker (1906-1996), in "Amcrican Painters and British Critics," Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 6th series, vol.30 (December 1946), p. 341.

(4.) "A Folk-Art Collector Confesses Some Embarassing Errors," New England Antiques Journal, vol.9 (November 1990), pp. 16-17.

(5.) See "Letter to the Director," p. x; "The Barren Period" (interview with Maxim Karolik by Brian O'Doherty on radio station WGBH, April 11, 1960, transcript in the archives of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston); and Brian O'Doherty, "Maxim Karolik," Art in America, vol. 50, no. 4 (Winter 1962), p. 63.

(6.) "Letter to the Director," p. ix,

(7.) Ibid., p. xii.

(8.) Carey S. Hayward, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, to Maxim Karolik, January 22, 1949 (department files, art of the Americas, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).

(9.) Rossiter to Karolik, August 20, 1948 (Karolik papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston).

(10.) Life on the Mississippi, quoted in Henry P. Rossiter, "Introduction," M. and M. Karolik Collection of American Water Colors and Drawings: 1800-1875 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1962), voL 1, p.39.

(11.) Quoted in Milton E. Flower, "Schimmel the Woodcarver," The Magazine ANTIQUES, vol 44, no.4 (October 1943), p.166. 12

(12.) Others eventually entered the collections of the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design in Providence; New York State Historical Association/Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown; and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

(13.) The letter is in the department of prints and drawings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

(14.) Boston Morning Globe, October 18, 1962.

(15.) New York Times, October 18, 1962.

(16.) This appointment was made by the trustees "in grateful recognition of [Karolik's] benefactions to the Museum" (archives, Museum of Fine Arts. Boston). It is interesting to note that, despite his extraordinary "benefactions." Karolik was never made a trustee.