Exhibition

Chicago-born artist Frederic Clay Bartlett (1873–1953) and his second wife Helen Birch Bartlett (1883–1925) began collecting around 1922 and, in a short period of time, amassed an impressive assortment of artworks. Shortly after Helen’s untimely death, Frederic offered the collection to the Art Institute of Chicago in January 1926. The so-called Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection consists of two dozen masterpieces by Cézanne, Seurat, Derain, Matisse, Picasso, and Segonzac, and Bartlett’s gift positioned the museum as the first in the United States to have an exemplary collection of modern European art. 

Originally shown in Chicago, the exhibition of the Birch-Bartlett Collection traveled to Boston, where it was displayed with a slightly different title: Birch Bartlett Collection of Modern French Painting.