Lillie P. Bliss

Lillie P. Bliss was an early collector and patron of French and American modernism who played an essential role in the 1929 founding of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The bequest of her collection in 1934 helped the museum build one of the most significant collections of early twentieth-century art in the world.

Under the guidance of American artist and friend Arthur B. Davies, Bliss began collecting late nineteenth-century French art and American modernism in the 1910s, purchasing Impressionist paintings from the New York branch of the Durand-Ruel gallery. She became a major lender to the 1913 Armory Show, which she had helped organize with Davies and fellow American artist Walt Kuhn. As an active member of the Armory Show organizing committee, the Association of American Painters and Sculptors, Bliss made the acquaintance of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, who, along with Davies, introduced her to contemporary French art around 1911. From 1916 to1920, Bliss actively purchased Post-Impressionist works, particularly paintings by Paul Cézanne and his contemporaries from the Montross Gallery as well as Marius de Zayas in New York. In 1921, with the aid of Rockefeller, John Quinn, and Louisine Havemeyer, Bliss convinced Bryson Burroughs, Curator of Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to organize a show titled Loan Exhibition of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Art in an effort to expose the American public to more recent French painting. Bliss lent twelve works to the exhibition, including five paintings by Cézanne. The exhibition was met with scathing reviews in the press, and deemed “dangerous” by New York World. Dismayed by the American public’s lack of openness to more recent currents in art, Bliss began making annual trips to Paris from 1924 to 1929, visiting exhibitions to keep up with contemporary trends. While she made frequent trips overseas, Bliss purchased works for her collection from New York galleries and dealers: she acquired, for instance, Picasso’s Still Life in Green (1914; Museum of Modern Art, New York) at the 1922 Kelekian Sale in the city and Woman in White (1923; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) from the Kraushaar Galleries in New York in 1927.

Following the death of Davies in 1928, Bliss and Rockefeller decided to purchase works from the late artist’s collection and began making plans for a New York institution devoted to the presentation of contemporary art. Conger Goodyear, formerly of the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo, agreed to join the new institution as its chair, with Bliss as his deputy. Bliss died in 1931 and left 150 works from her collection to the newly established foundation, including the two paintings mentioned above and a series of Picasso’s stencils made after gouaches in 1919. Though it had been founded as a loan-based exhibition space without a permanent collection, Bliss stipulated in her will that the newly founded arts space had three years to establish itself as an institution in order to acquire her collection. Bliss not only provided the Museum of Modern Art with its core collection, but specified that her works could be sold in exchange for the purchase of more contemporary works; such foresight enabled the museum to later acquire seminal works of modernism, including Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907).