My grandparents, living outside of Cleveland, Ohio, collected art through the first three decades of the 20th century. At their deaths, Mrs. Ginn in 1937 and Mr. Ginn in 1938, the paintings were divided among their four children, Francis, Marian [Jones], Alexander, and Barbara [later Griesinger]. Some of the works were given by the children together, or individually, to the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA). Some others have been sold over the years, but some remain with grandchildren.
This page is an attempt to document that scattered collection as well as I can. I have based this research on family lore, on some remaining documents such as the inventory of Mr. Ginn’s possessions at his death, and on a thesis by Nancy C. Coe (Oberlin Master of Art, 1953). The Ginn collection was in some ways typical of the moneyed class of early 20th-century Cleveland, but in other ways strikingly innovative: while the Ginns quickly moved to include Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, and moderns, with some late medieval and Renaissance pieces as well.
Here is a link to a short piece in Christie’s catalog about the Ginns.
Above are photos of the Ginns’ Tudor-style home, Moxahela, in the 1930s. The house overlooks the valley of the Chagrin River to the east. The original house is on the left. The turreted stairs were added when the second part was built, housing bedrooms above and the library/music room below. The final addition is the single-story room to the right, housing the tapestries (with a billiard room below).
What you will find as you go further are images of the art, and with each some notes about what I know about it–provenance in some cases, where it is now (in some cases), and some personal reflections about it.
Medieval and Renaissance
Virgin and Child. Anonymous, early 14th century
This beautiful medieval statue was given to CMA shortly after Mr. Ginn’s death, but is no longer in their collection. These pictures show it on display at CMA. There is an article about this sculpture by William Milliken in The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, Vol. 28, No. 10 (Dec., 1941), pp. 147-149, 155, accessible on JSTOR: You may need to have permission to access JSTOR. Mrs. Ginn taught Sunday School at St. Christopher’s-by-the-River in Gates Mills, re-wrote a number of Bible stories, and read extensively about spirituality. Her garden journals are full of descriptions of the beauty of nature and its relationship to Christ. I believe this sculpture must have been very dear to her.
Gobelin Tapestry Workshops, The Four Seasons. Spring: Fishing; Summer: Harvest; Autumn: Vintage; Winter: Skating (designed c. 1535, woven late 1600s-early 1700s)
The set of four tapestries was given to the CMA in 1952 by the four Ginn children in memory of Mr. and Mrs. Ginn, but were rarely displayed because of their condition. As of 2021, the tapestries have been conserved in Belgium and are featured in an exhibition at the CMA. The museum made a fascinating video about the cleaning and conservation of these tapestries. The museum’s website has a lot of information about them. They are known to have been at Balloch Castle, outside Glasgow, until the Ginns bought them from Anderson Galleries in New York in early 1923. Mr. Ginn had an extensive library of books about wine-making, had established a vineyard at Moxahela, made his own wine, and had an cellar of vintage French wine: I presume that his interest in the tapestries was partly due to the vintage scene in the autumn piece. He commissioned a close friend, artist Karl Anderson, to create a wine label (the bear was the “mascot” of Moxahela (“bear gulch in Algonquin); the wine-maker here is, I believe, a caricature of Mr. Ginn.
Two tapestries from a similar set were sold at Christie’s, with a paragraph of explanation.
See below for the tapestries in the room added on to the Ginns’ home in the early 1930s.
Jaume Ferrer, Annunciation and Nativity. Catalonia, 15th century
These large late-medieval paintings are dated to about 1460/70 by the CMA, where they now hang, given by the Ginn children in 1953. The museum’s website gives a good deal of information about them. Their records show that the paintings were part of an altarpiece, the central panel of which is now in the Museu National d’Art de Catalunya in Barcelona. The altarpiece was in the church of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción in the Catalonian town of Peralta de la Sal, but the paintings were sold in 1908 to Celestino Dupont, a dealer in antiquities in Barcelona. According to the CMA’s provenance, Mr. Ginn purchased the paintings in 1938, after the death of Mrs. Ginn and very shortly before his own death in February of that year.
The Medieval/Renaissance pieces in the Ginn’s home
In the mid-1920s, after buying the tapestries in 1923, Mr. and Mrs. Ginn added this room to Moxahela. The glass door at the end of the room leads to a conservatory/greenhouse. It was furnished with what I think was a mixture of real antiques — perhaps the long Italianate table and replicas, and a beautiful Oriental carpet. At the end, flanking the door to the greenhouse, were the Catalonian Annunciation and Nativity. On the wall facing them was the Virgin and Child flanked by two Spanish Renaissance credenzas, with the tapestries on the long walls. A window nook gave a view to the east across the Chagrin River valley.
Pre-Impressionist paintings
Henry Golden Dearth, Church in Normandy
Typical of early Cleveland collecting, this large painting is by the American painter Henry Golden Dearth (1864-1918). Dark like much of 19th-century pre-Impressionist painting, it nonetheless has a beautiful luminescence in the sky and the reflections in the wetlands. It hung over the mantle in the library at the Ginns’ home. I found this image on alchetron.com/Henry-Golden-Dearth; it matches the photographs of the Ginns’ library, but I have not found where the painting is now. It was sold by Shannon’s Auction House in Milford CT in 2000.
The library at Moxahela. The Dearth hangs over the fireplaces, flanked by the Derain (upper left) and the Renoir Tete de jeune fille to the right.
Manet, Edouard. Woman with Dogs, c. 1862.
I am guessing that part of the interest that the Ginns had in this painting was the dogs. They had several dogs at a time, including black and golden retrievers — not unlike the woman in Manet’s haunting picture. In an article in Parnassus (1932), “The Spanish Background for Manet’s Early Work,” Daniel C. Rich writes, “In [Manet’s] own work of this early period, there is much that is reminiscent of Velasquez. He was primarily impressed by the Spanish master’s atmospheric effects, best exemplified in the Infante and the Philip IV. In a little known picture painted about hte time of the famous Absinthe Drinker of 1859 and now in the collection of Frank H. Ginn of Cleveland, Velasquez’ methods are recalled. This Woman with Dogs, immediately suggests the motif of Philip IV made over into a feminine subject. The tall figure, with its dark silhouette and angular outline, the light background with traces of trees, the pose of the woman’s right arm and hand, the presence of the dogs, all go to show that Manet had been studying the canvas in the Louvre with great attention. There is added a quality rare in Manet, but found so often in another follower of Velasquez, Whistler. The color is thinly and fastidiously applied: the modeling reduced to the minimum, so that the weave of the linen is apparent in certain parts.” Rich cites the painting as “Canvas, 36 x 26 inches. Included in the Manet Sale, it was formerly in the collections of Camentron (Paris) and J. J. Cowan (England). It appears in C. Lewis Hind’s Adventures among Pictures, and is listed in Duret’s Manet, Paris, 1919, No. 14, p. 236. Mutual Art records that the painting sold at Sotheby’s in London in 2016 for £413,000.
The Manet hung above the piano in the Ginns’ library and music room, where a number of musicales were held with members of the Cleveland Orchestra. Nearby is the Renoir Deux Soeurs, and a number of musical manuscripts.
Impressionist French painting
Auguste Renoir, Mother and Child. Pastel, 1886.
This beautiful Renoir pastel was in the collection of my uncle Sandy Ginn (Alexander), and he gave it to CMA in 1977. I remember it lovingly displayed in his home. The CMA website has information. It depicts the painter’s (future) wife with their child Pierre, later an actor and the father of the filmmaker Claude Renoir.
The Renoir over the fireplace in the Ginns’ living room.
Renoir, Claude Renoir Jouant aux dominos, 1905
This lovely small Renoir hung in our dining room when I grew up. It shows Renoir’s third son, Claude, known as Coco, born in 1901 (he is not the filmmaker of the same name, Renoir’s grandson). I think my mother chose it when her father died as a mark of her love of children. When my mother died, we sold the painting at Sotheby’s. From the sale catalog: “Renoir chose to paint him in a variety of ways, some of them large scaled and posed, but the majority of his paintings of his children capture them engaging in everyday activities. By the time of his son’s birth, Renoir was sixty years old and in increasingly poor health. The birth of Claude brought him great joy, for he saw the baby’s growth and health as an affirmation of life. Coco became one of his favorite models. Claude Renoir joyant aux Dominos is a highly finished painting that depicts his son sitting at a table in a fancy blouse and hair ribbon playing with dominos. The concentration on his son’s face is captured by his raised eyebrows and fixed mouth. While he is too young to understand the game, Coco is intent on playing with the dominos as if they were toys meant to fit together.”
Renoir, Les deux soeurs
Renoir painted a number of pictures of two sisters. I identified this through a b&w photo in Ms. Coe’s thesis, and found this color image on a reproduction website without attribution of where the picture is, or any further information about it.
Renoir, Tête de jeune fille, 1890
This was in my Uncle Sandy (Alexander) Ginn’s collection. It had been acquired from Renoir by the dealer Durand-Ruel in 1890, and by Mr. Ginn from them in April 1926. It was sold at Christies, 8 May 2000, by the Frank Hadley Ginn and Cornelia Root Ginn Charitable Trust.
Renoir did many pictures of women arranging their hair. The most famous—and a number of them—show women semi-nude or fully nude after bathing. I think it’s not a coincidence that the one the Ginns acquired does not show flesh.
Renoir, Pierre-Auguste. Flowers
Belonged to Alexander Ginn, now with Walter Ginn.
Renoir, Pierre-Auguste. Girl Reclining in a Landscape
Belonged to Frank and Barbara Griesinger. Need further information.
Sisley, Alfred. Le Village de Champagne au coucher du soleil– Avril, 1885
From the collection of the dealers Durand-Ruel (Paris and New York), sold to Mr. Ginn 8 March 1926. (From François Daulte, Alfred Sisley: Catalogue Raisonné de l’oevre peint. Edition Durand-Ruel, Lausanne, 1959. #565.) In collection of Alexander Ginn, sold at Christie’s May 8, 2000. The purchaser sold it again at Christie’s in 2009.
Christie’s accompanied the sales with essays on the painting.
The Sisley in the living room at Moxahela, to the right of the couch. The brilliance of the paint must have been radiant in the dark-mahogany paneled room.
Camille Pissarro, Paysage à Osny près de l’abreuvoir
This verdant Pissarro was bought by Mr. and Mrs. Ginn from Durand-Ruel in March, 1925. It passed to Alexander Ginn, and was sold at Christie’s on May 8, 2000. A lengthy essay on the painting is in the Christie’s catalog.
The Pissarro in the Ginns’ dining room. I have not identified the painting higher up on the right.
Christie’s lists two literature sources for the painting: L.-R. Pissarro and L. Venturi, Camille Pissarro, son art–son oeuvre, Paris, 1939, vol. I, p. 166, no. 596; vol. II, pl. 124 (illustrated); and R. Shikes and P. Harper, Pissarro His Life and Work, New York 1980, p. 190 (illustrated).
It was again sold by Sotheby’s in Nov., 2003. It is Item 717 in the 2005 catalog raisonée of Pissarro (Pissarro: Critical Catalogue of Paintings / Joachim Pissarro and Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, 2005).
Camille Pissarro, Le Marché (The Market)
Camille Pissarro, Marchè du Gisors (Rue Cappeville)
There are apparently five extant Pissarro images of this market in the town of Gisors. I am not sure if this one, from a Christie’s sale in 2008, is the one that the Ginns owned and that passed on to Barbara Ginn Griesinger.
Another image of the same market sold at Christie’s in 2018.
Degas, Edgar. Danseuses en scène, 1883
This pastel of ballet dancers was purchased from Durand-Ruel, New York, in 1926. It was kept by my parents (Marian Ginn and William Powell Jones), and later sold. The color image was found online from an art reproduction website.
Jean Francois Raffaelli, Place de la Trinité, Paris.
Belonged to Alexander Ginn. A picture of this name is in the Art Institute of Chicago, but acquisitioned in 1922, so not that of Mr. Ginn.
Lewis Henry Meakin
This landscape by the English-American Impressionist L. H. Meakin was found in the Ginns’ attic; we presume that the Ginns had acquired it. My niece Laura Nelson has it in her home in St. Paul, MN.
Post-Impressionist Paintings
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, La Clowness Cha-U-Kao
Toulouse-Lautrec made a number of paintings and images of this French entertainer, who is apparently only known by her stage name, a version of the name of a popular dance. She is said to have been openly lesbian. She began her career as a gymnast, and then entered the male world of clowning.
Mr. Ginn bought the painting in 1929 from M. P. Gallimard, Paris. It passed to my parents, Marian Ginn and William Powell Jones. Below is a photo showing it in the Ginns’ living room entry way, near the Sisley, opposite the Renoir Mother and Child (not visible here).
I have not found a record of the painting, but the above photo from Wikimedia Commons seems to be the Ginn version. On Wikimedia, it is labeled as being in the Kunst Winterthur, but it does not appear on their website.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Miss May Belfort (1895)
This striking portrait in oil and gouache on paper may have been acquired by the Ginns in 1933, according to the June, 2011, sale catalog at Christie’s. It had been in the collection of Barbara Ginn Griesinger and her husband Frank, and sold at some time to the Swiss art dealer and collector Ernst Beyeler, Basel (1921–2010), and sold by him in 2011.
Paul Gauguin, In the Waves (Dans les Vagues), 1889
This painting is one of the favorites of visitors to the CMA. Mr. Ginn bought it from Leicester Galleries in London in 1929; my parents had it in their collection in the library when I was growing up, and gave it to the museum in 1978.
The Ginns’ library, with the Gauguin on the right wall, partially obscured in this photo from the 1930s. The large painting over the fireplace is the Dearth.
The CMA describes the painting on their website: “Painted at Pont-Aven in northwest France, this depiction of a nude figure throwing herself into the sea suggests a metaphor for a modern European woman forsaking civilization and abandoning herself to her natural, primitive instincts. The simplified lines and exaggerated colors, especially the contrasting green and orange, seem invented rather than observed from life. Exhibiting the painting at the Café Volpini in Paris in 1889, Gauguin established himself as a leader of the Symbolist movement in art.”
The website has two videos about aspects of the painting, and lists numerous exhibitions and citations.
Paul Gauguin, The Large Tree, 1891
Mr. Ginn bought the painting from Leicester Galleries in London in 1929 (the same gallery and time as he bought the Gauguin “In the Waves.” It passed down to my aunt Bobby (Barbara Ginn Griesinger), and she and her husband Frank gave it to the museum in 1976.
The painting is inscribed with the title in Tahitian, “Te raau rahi.” The CMA description: “Disgusted with the materialism of European society, Gauguin abandoned his family and career as a stockbroker and departed for Tahiti in 1891. This canvas is among the first paintings he completed on the island. Its rich colors and stylized figures were intended to be both symbolic and mysterious, evoking private thoughts and emotions. “I obtain symphonies,” he wrote, “harmonies that represent nothing real in the absolute sense of the word.”
The CMA website has citations and exhibition history, as well as a fascinating picture of the back of the painting’s stretcher after extensive conservation.
Odilon Redon, Les yeux clos (Closed Eyes), 1895
This splendid pastel in Redon’s mystical style was the favorite of my mother (Marian Ginn Jones). She hung it in the living room at Moxahela (which she and my father had taken over when her parents died).
Modernist Painting
Derain. Head of a Girl.
Belonged to Francis Ginn. The B&W photo acknowledging the Ginns is from Image from Mary Mannes, “André Derain: Thoughtful Painter,” International Studio (Nov., 1929), p. 2. I found what must be the same painting on Artsy.net apparently for sale at Robert Funk Fine Art in Miami, although their provenance does not mention the Ginns.
Coe’s thesis lists this as showing at the Reinhardt Galleries, New York, in Jan-Feb. 1930 (which is consistent with the first item in Funk’s provenance. It is illustrated in A Retrospective Exhibition of Paintings by Picasso and Derain from the Reinhardt Galleries. It was in an exhibition at the Cincinnati Museum of Art from Dec 1930 to Jan 1931 and included in the catalog, Paintings by André Derain.
The painting was featured in a full page/ color illustration in Vanity Fair, May, 1934, as number 12 in the magazine’s Series of Modern Painters, with acknowledgement to the Ginns.
Derain. Head of a Girl.
Oil, 15.5” x 11.5”. The image is from Coe’s thesis. It was in the home of Barbara Ginn Griesinger. I have not found a newer image or information about it.
Pierre Bonnard. La Terrasse de Café, 1898
Bought from Alex Reid & Lefevre, London. In the collection of Alexander Ginn, then given to the CMA.
From the CMA website: “One of the leading artists of the group known as the Nabis (Hebrew for prophets), Bonnard was critically acclaimed for his intimate portrayals of domestic life. This depiction of figures relaxing at a café follows the Impressionist precedent of painting contemporary urban life. However, Bonnard avoided individual characterization to concentrate on evoking a mood of quiet reverie through evocative shadows and jewel-like colors.”
The painting is included in an exhibition in Cleveland and Portland in 2021 and 2022: Private Lives: Home and Family in the Art of the Nabis, Paris, 1889–1900. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (co-organizer) (July 1-September 19, 2021); Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR (co-organizer) (October 23, 2021-January 23, 2022).
Paintings by Karl Anderson
Mr. and Mrs. Ginn commissioned a number of paintings from American Impressionist painter Karl Anderson, who (with his older brother Sherwood Anderson, author of Winesburg, Ohio) had grown up with Mr. Ginn in Clyde, Ohio, a small town between Toledo and Cleveland. There are many more to be added here when I can.
Anna Younglove Root (my grandmother) in her garden in Cleveland