By: Anne Constable | The New Mexican
Posted: Monday, October 24, 2011, This article is syndicated from The New Mexican, click here for the original article.
Joseph Moure is a longtime collector, but didn’t begin buying ivory until about a dozen years ago after his wife gave him a small head of St. Anthony for his birthday.
Today he owns 30 pieces, including nine that are in an exhibit that opened last month at the Museum of Spanish Colonial Arts.
The exhibit, New Mexico Collects: Private Treasures, features pieces from 10 private collections in New Mexico. Except for a bulto commissioned from Spanish Market artist Victor Goler, all the items are historic pieces from Spanish or Portuguese colonies outside of New Mexico. The show is a rare chance to see beautiful items that are privately owned and seldom, if ever, available for public viewing.
“Santa Fe has always been such a center for the arts,” said Robin Farwell Gavin, the museum’s curator. “There are a lot of knowledgeable collectors and lots of collectors with great eyes,” she said. Gavin envisioned three shows based on private collections, starting with a show earlier this year of santos from a collection assembled by artist Cady Wells, this one, and a future show yet to be scheduled.
No one turned her down when she asked for pieces from their private collections, but some have requested privacy. Besides Joseph and Reine Moure, pieces from named collections come from artist Ford Ruthling (paintings, reliquaries), Dennis and Janis Lyon (a chest, glazed earthenware, a bowl), Jim and Rebecca Long (La Ascención, by Victor Goler), the Dewey family (a large textile), the Claiborne Gallery Collection (chalice, candlestick, horse and rider), and William and Maureen Field (chest). The exhibit also includes pieces from two recent donations from Marc and Marleen Olivié (18th-century banco, or bench) and John Bourne (milagros from Ecuador).
The nine Moure pieces are from the Asian colonies of Spain and Portugal, and were exported to Europe and the Americas. One of his polychromed ivory pieces in the exhibit is a 19th-century Hispano-Philippine head of the Virgin Mary, between three and four inches tall, with a pair of expressive, beautifully carved hands. Originally the piece probably included a wooden body, he said, but that may have been destroyed by weather or insects. For the exhibit she is wearing a silver resplandor, or crown, from Moure’s collection that happened to fit.
Moure first became interested in ivories when he went to a show at the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, Calif., in 1990. But, he said, “It’s a big step to go from admiring one to buying one. I never thought I would end up with 30.”
Another of Moure’s pieces in the show is an 18th-century triptych of El Divino Piloto, the Divine Pilot. In the center is an image of the Christ Child standing on a cloud and guiding a vessel (the church) through the waters of life. The child is flanked by angels carved on the doors, which fold in to reveal the orb to be a billiard ball (although its game use is unconfirmed). The piece was probably carved in Asia and embellished with a silver latch and hinges when it arrived in New Spain.
Moure, who also has collected paintings and books, is moved by the beauty and craftsmanship of these devotional items, but also by their colorful history. “Collecting art in a vacuum doesn’t make it particularly interesting. There needs to be an historical relevance to it,” he said.
Many of the ivories in his collection were commissioned by missionary priests and made by artists in China. Some were traded through Manila and transported on Spanish galleons to Acapulco. “Mexico at the time was probably as rich as any place in Europe,” Moure said, adding, “The Spanish colonies in Mexico and Peru were very wealthy, and they craved these objects.”
Moure said that the earliest pieces of this kind had Oriental features, which were much appreciated in the West, but later on the priests in the Philippines would give the Chinese artists pictures of European figures and ask them to carve those images.
Sometimes human hair eyelashes were added, and the figures were embellished with paint, particularly around the eyes. Some figures had small pegs for attaching a wig.
The Portuguese colonies were even more far-flung, and they were also importing art from China through Macao and other places.
Because of the ban on the importation of ivory, the objects are difficult to come by today, “but they do exist and come up periodically at auction,” Moure said. He purchased the carving of the Virgin Mary from a dealer in California. “It gets competitive at auction,” he said. “There are not a lot of collectors, but there are some, and museums still crave pieces of ivory.”
Moure, who retired from the investment business, said his Santa Fe house is full of Spanish colonial art produced in New Mexico, including work from contemporary artists he admires. The only new art in this exhibit, however, is a bulto, about four feet tall, by Goler that depicts the ascension of Christ witnessed by the 12 apostles. The piece is in the collection of Jim Long, founder of Heritage Hotels and Resorts (Hotel Chimayó, Lodge at Santa Fe, Hotel St. Francis).
It normally sits in Long’s house on a sofa table in front of a 12 1/2-foot altar (one of the largest in a private home in New Mexico), also by Goler. Long doesn’t describe himself as a true collector. He collects from people he knows. And with this commission, he said, “I was really hoping to advance this particular art form to the next level.”
The sheer scale was a particular challenge, according to Long, and Goler had to learn to carve with his left hand as well as his right. The artist also filmed the yearlong construction of the piece. “I’m always intrigued by the person behind the piece,” Long said. As for Goler, he said, “I think he’s an extraordinary artist, one of the most gifted in New Mexico, and I want to help support his career. And it dovetails with what I do on the business side.”
Heritage’s hotels in Santa Fe, he said, “go far in cultural preservation efforts, telling the story of our history and traditions.”
IF YOU GO
What: New Mexico Colects: Private Treasures
When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, now through Feb. 27, 2012
Where: Museum of Spanish Colonial Art, 750 Camino Lejo, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Cost: Admission is $8 ($4 for New Mexico residents); free to New Mexico residents on Sundays
