Step off the elevator at the fourth floor of the Walters Art Gallery's 1974 building and there, waiting to show you his collection, is William Walters himself. Not in the flesh, exactly, but in oil and marble: the bust (1866-1867) by sculptor William Henry Rinehart, and the painting (1883) by that fashionable 19th century portraitist Leon Bonnat.
In the painting, there is a certain tension evident in the figure, and the expression is a cross between severe and anxious: anxious, perhaps, that the world should like what it sees and prepared to be severe if it doesn't show the proper admiration.
Well, Mr. Walters, who made his fortune from liquor, banking and railroads and spent a great deal of it on art, should be happy about one thing: The world can now see his 19th century art better than ever before, thanks to a new, more complete and highly successful installation.
For many years, the Walters collections that everybody knew best were those amassed by son Henry: primarily Western art from ancient times through the 18th century. But with the opening of Hackerman House last spring, father William's Asian collection found a proper home. And now, with the reopening today, after six months of renovating and reinstalling the fourth floor, William's other passion, 19th century art, has been given a handsome and intelligent treatment.
The 19th century collection was on this floor before, but it had to share the space with a small part of the Asian collection. Now it has inherited the entire floor, and as a result more than 250 works of art, 60 more than before, can be shown.
And before, the 19th century paintings never looked quite at home in the context of a modern building. This time around, with the help of a $513,000 grant from the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund, curator William R. Johnston and chief preparator John Klink have been able to make the setting comfortable for the art.
They have not totally overridden the nature of the building, but they have softened the effect. A chair rail below the paintings and a molding above break up the walls and make them look more room-size in scale. A door frame at the beginning of the galleries, modeled after those in the Walters house at 5 West Mount Vernon Place, adds a bit of 19th century architectural flavor. Rich wall colors -- blues, greens, a deep red -- set off the paintings in their gilt frames, and different colors in different areas provide a sense of change and progression that counteracts fatigue. The long, L-shaped principal gallery area is broken visually here and there by sculptures and a case of period decorative arts.
And the imaginative installation of the art makes for a trip through the collection that's both instructive and enjoyable. Except for putting most of the American works at the beginning, the paintings are not grouped strictly by chronology or country, but by style or type of subject matter (for instance, romanticism or genre), with works from different nationalities mixed. This approach helps the viewer to understand the works, and the frequent change from one kind of painting to another keeps interest from flagging.
It's logical to start the series of galleries with American painting, since that's what William Walters (1819-1894) started collecting, before the Civil War. Here we have a mixture of landscape, portraiture, genre and still life painting: Gilbert Stuart's 1825 replica of his 1796 portrait of "George Washington," Asher B. Durand's "The Catskills" (1859), Eastman Johnson's "The Nantucket School of Philosophy" (1887), A. J. H. Way's "Bunch of Grapes" (1873) and no fewer than seven paintings by the Baltimore-born but internationally known genre painter Richard Caton Woodville, including the well-known "Politics in an Oyster House" (1848), "Old '76 and Young '48" (1849) and "A Sailor's Wedding" (1852).
A smaller gallery off this one, to be devoted to rotating shows of American art, has been inaugurated with a selection from the 200 watercolors William Walters commissioned from Alfred Jacob Miller recording Miller's trip to the American West in 1837, together with a few Miller oils including a "Self-Portrait" (about 1850).
Despite the fact that he had been born in Pennsylvania, William ** Walters was a Southern sympathizer, and found it wise to take his family to Europe during the Civil War. There, aided by Baltimore-born expatriate collector and art agent George A. Lucas, his tastes changed from contemporary American to contemporary European painting, which occupied much of his collecting fervor for the rest of his life. Therefore, the vast majority of the fourth floor's spaces is devoted to European painting.
Stepping out of the main American gallery, one enters 19th century Europe with a presentation of two major strains of painting: neo-classicism, represented by four Ingres paintings dating from 1813 to 1864 and including "Reclining Venus" (1822) and "Odalisque with Slave" (1842); and romanticism, represented by five Delacroix paintings all in a row with subject matter as varied as "Sketch for the Battle of Poitiers" (1829-1830), "Collision of Moorish Horsemen" (1843-1844) and "Christ on the Sea of Galilee" (1854). Near these is Gericault's dynamic, tension-filled "Riderless Racers at Rome" (1817).
After a section devoted largely to romantic landscape and genre painting, one encounters a major selection of mid-century Barbizon paintings, with works by Corot (including "The Evening Star," 1864), Jean-Francois Millet (including "The Sheepfold, Moonlight," 1856-1860), Constant Troyon ("Coast near Villers," about 1859) and Rosa Bonheur ("Ploughing Scene," 1854), among others.
The gallery devoted to academic salon paintings has rich red walls. Here are works from England, Belgium and Germany, but primarily from France. Among paintings by Meissonier, Delaroche, Gleyre and others are no fewer than eight by Jean-Leon Gerome, including "The Death of Caesar" (1867), and "The Christian Martyrs' Last Prayer" (1863-1883), which Walters commissioned and Gerome took 20 years to complete.
Walters' greatest collecting passion was the animalist sculptor Antoine-Louis Barye, of whose works he bought about 200. In the center of the academic gallery are the five tour-de-force hunting scenes (tiger, lion, wild ox, boar and elk) that Barye executed between 1834 and 1839 and that composed the surtout de table (or centerpiece) of the Duke of Orleans, son of French King Louis-Philippe.
One of the most interesting and original sections in the whole installation is called "Expanding Cultural Horizons." Devoted to the influence of the non-European world, it deals with interest in the Near East (called Orientalism), Northern Africa and the Far East. Among the works are two bronze busts of Africans by Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier: "Said Abdullah of the Mayse, Kingdom of Darfur, Sudan" (1848) and "African Venus" (1851).
William Walters didn't collect impressionism, but his son Henry rounded off the 19th century collection with a number of works, some bought from Mary Cassatt. They bring the paintings galleries to a dazzling end, with much-loved works by Manet ("At the Cafe," 1879), Monet (including "Springtime," about 1872), Sisley (including "View of Saint-Mammes," about 1880) and Degas (including "Before the Race," 1875-1877). Joining them now is a recent major addition to the collection, Pissarro's "The Church of Eragny" (1884), a gift of Barbara B. Hirschorn, &L; Elizabeth B. Roswell and Mary Jane Blaustein in memory of their parents, Jacob and Hilda Blaustein.
The tour of the newly opened galleries ends with two final ones devoted to rotating exhibitions, now given to Daumier and works on paper, respectively.
Anyone might make a few different choices of works to show in this installation. I would have tried, at least, to choose something other than Ludwig Knaus' "Mud Pies" (1873) as the centerpiece of the genre section -- it's so sweet it makes your teeth itch.
It's a pity not to see Corot's "Very Early Spring" (about 1857), but its authenticity has been challenged. If the issue could be resolved, one hopes in its favor, perhaps it could be shown again, for it's a painting of great charm.
And I would love to see somewhere Mariano Fortuny's "An Ecclesiastic" (about 1874), which is both a devastating comment on the clergy and, with its pink robes and red background, a spectacular exercise in color. The down side of dividing everything into categories is that if something doesn't fit the categories then there's no place to put it.
But on the whole, Mr. Walters' 19th century collection has been treated as well as even Mr. Walters could have hoped.