AFA Summer 2020

Summer 94 www.afamag.com | w ww.incollect.com Mai Coe, Planting Fields (Fig.4), is a 409-acre historic site emblematic of the Gilded Age. The family home, Coe Hall, was designed by architects Walker and Gillette in 1918, and the landscape was largely shaped by the Olmsted Brothers firm. With a preference for historical English aesthetics, the Coes also ensured that the artists of their time left their mark on the site. In addition to Chanler, Everett Shinn (1876–1953), Samuel Yellin (1885–1940), and Elsie de Wolfe (1865–1950) were all engaged to contribute to the design of the estate. Chanler painted some of the finest interiors, including the loggia of the Park Avenue Colony Club, the swimming pool grotto ceiling at Vizcaya, Miami, both of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s New York studios, located in Old Westbury and New York City, and a number of other spaces, the majority of which have been demolished. Chanler participated in watershed exhibitions in Europe and America, including the 1905 Salon d’Automne and the 1913 Armory Show, where he dominated the American faction with the display of numerous screens. 2 Today only two screens remain on public view, Porcupines and Nightmare, in open storage at the Henry R. Luce Center for the Study of American Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Vizcayan Bay, at Vizcaya Museum and Gardens. Although Planting Fields’ Buffalo mural and the Vizcaya swimming pool grotto ceiling are accessible to the public, both sites have encountered significant preservation challenges. The artist’s unorthodox material choices, such as using water soluble paint in a marine environment, with the resulting inherent challenges, have caused difficulty in preserving his creations. Given the limitations of encountering a work by Fig. 5: Robert Winthrop Chanler (1872–1930), Porcupines and Foxes, (n.d.). Screen, Oil on panel. Private collection, New York. Photograph by T. Whitney Cox.