Marjorie Merriweather Post's magnificent art house-museum, Washington DC

Portrait of Marjorie Merriweather Post, 

Frank Salisbury, 1934

I was very interested in Hillwood house-museum in Washington DC. The first half of this story, of the Hillwood collection and of Marjorie Merriweather Post, was inspired by Master­piece Online. The second half is my thinking about the relevance of house-museums today.

Businesswoman philanthropist Marjorie Merriweather Post (1887–1973) was born to wealth. And she made head­lines throughout her life. In 1905 she married husband #I, banker Edward Close and then her father’s death in 1914 left her in ch­arge of his cereal company, which she expanded.

In 1920 financier Edward Francis Hutton became husband #II and they soon developed a larger variety of food products, includ­ing Birds­eye Frozen Foods. By then she ranked as one of the USA’s rich­est women.

Built in the 1920s for another family, Post filled her fav­our­ite residence, Hillwood, with the C18th French décor­at­ive style she loved most. The neo-Georgian house had 36 rooms full of Sèvres porcelain, Gobe­lins tapestries, Aubusson carpets, chand­eliers with crystal pend­ants, 90 Fabergé treasures and portraits of aris­tocrats. Gilded furniture was set in tableaus, evoking the life of courtiers in C18th France.

  

Elegant façade of the Hillwood mansion, 

Washington DC
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Her couture gowns have been pre­served, along with port­raits wearing them, photo alb­ums docum­ent­­ing her evolving fashion sense and décor, and almost every invoice. Her jewellery, often of royal provenance, was well displayed.

Marjorie Post and her husband de jour hosted glitt­er­ing parties for the leading political, diplomatic and cultural figures of the time, serving on dinnerware orig­inally made for the rulers of ancien rég­imes. Even in troub­­led times, her staff served feasts to visit­ing international dign­it­aries on her imperial dinnerware.

In the French porcelain room, highlights of the C18th Sèvres coll­ect­ion included a cylindrical cup (1770s) with Benjamin Franklin’s portrait. In the French drawing room, inter­­laced init­ials MA (? Maria Antonia Electress of Saxony) gleamed in mother-of-pearl across a rolltop desk made by Abrah­am and David Roentgen in 1770s Germany. Pop-up candlesticks and mirrors were concealed with­in its 40 compartments and secret drawers. Post’s marble-topped commodes, fronted in marquetry bouquets and pastoral scenes, were made in the 1770s by Jean-Henri Riesener.

Roll-top desk, c1765-70. Abraham and David Roentgen, Germany.
Wood marquetry, mother-of-pearl, gilt bronze, steel, leather, glass

In 1935 she married husband #III, lawyer-diplomat Joseph Davies, and he was soon serving as the US ambassador to the Soviet Union. She collected religious and secular treas­ures that were being sold off by the Soviets, filling Hillwood rooms with these treas­ures. 

A gold chal­ice, encrusted in diamonds & saints’ cameos, was made by Norw­egian gold­smith Iver Wind­feldt Buch  (1791) for Cath­erine II. Ribbed in diamonds  Fabergé’s cobalt-enamelled egg (1896) was Nich­olas II’s maj­or Easter gift to his mother after taking the throne. Plus a pink enamel Fabergé Eas­t­er egg the Tsar gave his mother in 1914. Thus the mus­eum included the most compreh­en­sive collect­ion of C18th &19th Russian imperial arts outside Russia. 

  

Catherine the Great Easter Egg, 

Faberge, 1914

In 1958, Post's marriage #IV was to wealthy Pittsburgh businessman Herbert May. Other than the houses, Post left the bulk of her estate to her 3 daughters, Adelaide Close, Eleanor Post Close and Nedenia Hutton. In 1963 she bequeathed the estate, along with a $10m endowment to maintain it, to the Smithsonian Institution; it was to be maintain­ed as a museum, with spec­ific­ instructions. She established the Marjorie Merriweather Post Found­ation D.C to ensure compliance.

  

**When Post died in 1973, the Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens were left to the world as her opulent house-museum. House-museums were the homes of literary or historical stars. Or they might have been historical collect­ions housed in their orig­in­al buildings eg Frick Collec­t­ion in New York. These dom­es­tic set­t­ings drew people to visit the sites in which historical peop­le, arts and archit­ecture created a unique experience. So house-museums were the least institutional of arts institutions.

So how do we moderns respond to the personal collections in house-museums? They definitely offer a window into how the great collectors of the past lived, with works of art. And they rem­ind us that collecting-skills were specifically about the collectors’ personalities, preferences and even obsessions. And their obscenely high incomes, I suppose.

It was fascinating to follow famous dealer Joseph Duveen (1869-1947) who sold special art objects to aristocrats. Duveen was a skilled entrepreneur, an im­pass­ioned art lover. He made his fortune by buy­ing works of art from dec­l­ining European aristocrats and selling them to wealthy collectors in the USA. Marj­orie Post was just one such Amer­ican. Con­sider these other frequent buyers at Duveen’s galleries: Otto Kahn, And­rew Mellon, William Rand­olph Hearst, Henry & Arabella Hunt­ing­ton, Samuel H Kress, John D Rock­efeller, PAB Wid­en­er, JP Morgan, Isab­ella Stewart Gardner and Henry Clay Frick. What an elite group!

It was no coincidence that Marjorie had been schooled early in her coll­ecting career by Duveen. He met his clients when they were in their spending mode, in their efforts to raise themselves up, to show that sense of nob­ility that flowed in many families who were flush with money.

  

Royal Romanov family portraits

I have never passionate about C19th French paintings or furniture, but that is the risk a visitor takes by going into a private home that has become a museum. It was made into a museum to show the owner’s taste, not mine. So I treat house museums as a walk-in history lesson, created mostly by wealthy families from the C19th. 

Post was a pioneering collector who bought Russian imperial art works long before they were valued in the US. These pieces demonstrated her insight into, and her great love of Russian culture – and mine! See the 3 finely embroidered mitres worn by bishops when performing the holy liturgy; and the icons and the 300 rare Russian books devoted to decorative arts history in Russian imperial culture. 

Read how Post left her 128-room Palm Beach mansion Mar-a-Lago to the U.S government. Enjoy Marjorie Merriweather Post: The Life Behind the Luxury, 2019, by Estella Chung.