NYPL Researcher Spotlight: Eliot Rowlands
Eliot Rowlands, December 2022.
This profile is part of a series of interviews chronicling the experiences of researchers who use The New York Public Library's collections for the development of their work.
Eliot Rowlands is researching art agent Harold Woodbury Parsons, who helped build up major US art collections during the 20th century.
Tell us about your research project.
I’m working on a book about the art agent and connoisseur Harold Woodbury Parsons (1882–1967). It will offer an opening survey of his life and then ten focused studies of particular moments in his career, such as what masterpieces he scouted for for the Cleveland Museum of Art in the 1920s, and the effective way that he was able to have the museum refunded for two expensive forgeries. In the process, he discovered the forger himself! Other themes include Parsons’s business relationships over some 20 years with the Swiss art dealer Dr. Jacob Hirsch; how he acquired masterpieces for the art-poor but cash-rich Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art; his work as an art scout for other art dealers, such as Germain Seligman, developing clients in California and the Midwest in the 1930s; and his later exposure of the “Etruscan Warriors” forgeries at the Met Museum.
When did you first get the idea for your research project?
While writing the introduction to my scholarly catalogue, Italian Paintings, 1300-1800: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (1996), and especially after reading Parsons’s extensive correspondence regarding individual art acquisitions. His highly informative letters proved to be a major primary source for the history of collecting European paintings, sculpture, and antiquities in America.
What brought you to NYPL?
The vast resources and specialty reference librarians; also, the fabulous reference collection on the shelves on the east and west walls of the Reading Room. In the course of a ca. 50-year career in art history and connoisseurship, I have benefited extremely from the first two of these features of NYPL.
Describe a moment when your research took an unexpected turn.
Uncovering 130 letters from Parsons to Bernard Berenson, dating from 1912 to 1958, in the Berenson Archive in Florence. This proved a major source for Parsons’s modus operandi, especially as it involved the Italian art market. The letters also illuminated the freelance agent’s work with the firm of Duveen Brothers and his skill in acquisition negotiations. My research in Florence led to a well-received article on Parsons, Berenson, and Duveen Brothers in the last years of World War I in Italy.
Describe your research routine.
It’s different each time!
What’s the most unexpected item you’ve encountered in your research?
A ca. 5,000 word letter from Parsons to a curator at the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1948, which describes the Italian art market (dealers and their sources, collectors, art experts, and Old Master painting discoveries). The richness of material is amazingly detailed and novel, especially given the preference art dealers have for working in relative secrecy.
What research tools could you not live without?
The periodical literature, especially as indexed by Kubikat, a periodical index maintained by a consortium of four German art libraries. The catalogue raisonnés of individual artists.
What’s your favorite distraction?
Travel, especially with my wife to see my son.
Have we left anything out that you’d like to tell other researchers?
A very general rule of thumb: as much as one reads on a limited, specialized subject, I find, as an art historian, that it is always rewarding to read background studies and broad narratives of history, as well.