Embarking on its first journey across the Atlantic, the extensive collection of American collector Armand Hammer (1898-1990), preserving exquisite works from the Renaissance to the 20th century, will be displayed at the Pierre Gianadda Foundation from June 20 to December 2, 2025.
Being a part of Hammer Museum’s display in Los Angeles, the collection consists of 103 artworks from 36 artists and is very well a journey through time – from the Renaissance to the beginning of the 20th century. Armand Hammer once said while speaking of this collection,
“I feel the deep need to share with others the magnificent spectacle, enthusiasm and joy that these works of art have given me”.
An observation of the gallery reveals the very nature of Hammer’s taste and a recap of the history our ancestors had created. Curated over the years, the collection predominantly displays French art from the 19th century, with American painters completing the set. Some of the crucial signed works by remarkable painters such as Titian (1488-1576), Rembrandt (1606-1659), Chardin (1699-1779), Fragonard (1732-1806), and Goya (1746-1828) bring value as well as interest in this collection. It is to note that the names certainly don’t end here, as the Hammer Museum of UCLA possesses the Armand Hammer Daumier and Its Contemporary Collection – 4000 lithographs and thanks to the beloved Lord, the 7500 works that it preserves make it one of the most important collections outside France to indulge into paintings, drawings, sculptures, and lithographs of Daumier.
Outside his passion for collection art, Armand Hammer was an excellent businessman and philanthropist who distilled whiskey, produced livestock feed, manufactured pens, and drilled oil wells. His taste for art, however, was germinated when he stayed in Moscow in the 1920s. The palace he rented had large empty walls, requiring decoration, a task that Hammer associated himself with during this stay. Later, he would describe his passion for collection as “hunt” and “joy”. When Hammer returned to his country, he continued his purchases, and in 1928, Armand, alongside his brother Victor, an art history graduate from Princeton University, associated with a New York Gallery and took it over their name, thus forming Hammer Galleries. The institution was directed by the latter until his death in 1985.
The painting that will be celebrated through the attention of the viewers in the upcoming exhibition in Switzerland Eugène Boudin’s Sailing Ships in Port (1869), Jean-Siméon Chardin’s The Attributes of Painting (c. 1730-32), Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot’s Distant View of Mantes Cathedral (1859-60), Edgar Degas’ Theater Box (1885), Jean-Honore Fragonard’s The Education of the Virgin (1748-52), Paul Gauguin’s Bonjour Monsieur Gauguin (1889), Claude Monet’s View of Bordighera (1884), Camille Pissarro’s Boulevard Montmartre, Mardi Gras (1897), Rembrandt Van Rijn’s Juno (c. 1662-65), Alfred Sisley’s Timber Yard at Saint-Mammès (1880), Alfred Stevens’ Portrait of Sarah Bernhardt (1885), Vincent van Gogh’s Hospital at Saint-Rémy (1889), Edouard Vuillard’s Madame Hessel at the Seashore (c. 1904), Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s Study for “in the Salon on the Rue des Moulins” (1894), and Vincent van Gogh’s The Sower (c. 1888).
An exhibition that gives insights into the masters from home who reside in foreign lands, Rembrandt to Van Gogh is not only a visit that ties a viewer to the personal lives of the artists through their works but also to the collector who curated a collection of such splendor and made it accessible to the public.
Featured Image: Rembrandt van Rijn, Juno, ca. 1662-1665. Oil on canvas. 50 x 48 3/4 in. (127 x 123.8 cm) Frame: 65 3/4 x 58 1/4 x 6 1/4 in. (167 x 148 x 15.9 cm). The Armand Hammer Collection, Gift of the Armand Hammer Foundation. Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.
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