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Renoir Paintings have Ties to Huge Mt. Airy Estate
By Barbara L. Sherf
First in a series published in the ChestnutHillLocal.com

While you can get an eyeful of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s (1841-1919) work later in life at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) through early September, area residents might not know that several of Renoir’s paintings were originally housed at the Park Gate estate, owned by the McIlhenny family in Mount Airy.
In exploring the Renoir/Park Gate connection, it was discovered that efforts are underway to have the once stately – but now dilapidated – mansion preserved. The house, located next to the Anna Lane Lingelbach Elementary School, at 6340 Wayne Avenue, originally stood on a five-acre impeccably landscaped site above the intersection of Lincoln Drive and Johnson streets, with a grand entrance from Lincoln Drive. The stone gates, which remain standing, marked the entrance to the Wissahickon Valley section of Fairmount Park, leading to the name of the estate. (In early references, Park Gate was written as one word, Parkgate, and in later years it is written as both one and two words; but more often the latter was used.)
According to PMA Curator Joseph J. Rishel and Germantown Historical Society preservationist J. Patrick Moran, members of the McIlhenny family were catalysts for shaping the PMA in many ways – including putting on a Renoir exhibit from a private collection at PMA in 1938 that Henry McIlhenny was responsible for bringing over from Europe for safekeeping during World War II.
According to an application that Moran submitted to have Park Gate placed on the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places: “A visit to Park Gate in the 30s and 40s was an opportunity to experience world-renowned art in a domestic setting. David, Renoir, Lautrec, Degas – just four artists among the dozens of important artists whose works were incorporated into one of the great American collections of decorative arts including antique furniture, silver, porcelain and rugs. After the house was sold, these collections followed Henry McIlhenny to the McIlhenny Mansion on Rittenhouse Square in the 1950’s where he began a second phase of collecting. But the collecting instincts and the collections themselves that have contributed core objects to almost all the departments of the Philadelphia Museum of Art were originally assembled at Park Gate.”
PMA collections include 1634 objects given to the Museum or purchased with funds donated by John D., Frances P., and Henry P. McIlhenny. Henry’s sister, Bernice “Bonnie” Wintersteen and the Wintersteen family donated another 114 objects.
The two Renoirs from Henry McIlhenny’s collection that now belong to PMA (Portrait of Mme Legrand and Grandes Boulevards) are not part of the current exhibition because they were painted in 1875 and the PMA exhibition is devoted to Renoir’s work from 1890 to 1919.
Also appearing in Late Renoir is a red chalk drawing by Aristide Maillol, which was purchased in 1941 with funds contributed by Henry’s father, John D. McIlhenny.

Family History
Despite rumors that the McIlhenny’s fortune was amassed in Louisiana with the invention of Tabasco sauce, company historians say that claim was never true. In reality, Henry’s grandfather invented a leather contraption called the McIlhenny Gas Meter and became a wealthy man. In 1877, he moved from Georgia to Philadelphia where his son, John D., continued the business and started collecting art. John D. McIlhenny married Frances Plumer and settled at Park Gate, in what was then considered Germantown. The couple had three children, Jack, born in 1900, daughter Bernice “Bonnie” born in 1903, and Henry, born in 1910, who became a world-renowned art collector.
In a letter describing his father, Henry wrote about his early start at collecting art:
“My father bought the public utilities company in Norristown, Pennsylvania, Three Counties Gas and Electric; and one of the leading families there was Lees, of the carpet firm that Joe Eastwick now runs. A rich Miss Lees had married a clergyman, Charles F. Williams, but who gave up calling, it was said, because of epilepsy, and so he became an ardent art collector, chiefly of Oriental carpets, so suitable for the family carpet business. The Williamses (sic) had become figures in the art world, so when my father went to pay his respects he saw a pile of Oriental carpets in the hall, waiting to be returned to a dealer in New York. In 1908 my parents were building a new house in Germantown (Parkgate, at Lincoln Drive and Johnson Street) and needed more rugs, so my father bought the pile rejected by Williams. With that act, he was hooked. He became a passionate collector of Oriental carpets. He really loved them, despite the fact that he was color blind!”
Henry goes on to write: “My parents naturally became known as collectors, and my father soon became a member of the board of this Museum, then housed in dear old Memorial Hall. In 1918 he was elected president, a post he held until his death in 1925, at the age of fifty-nine.” John D. McIlhenny died of a heart attack before the PMA’s relocation and opening at the Parkway location in 1928. Mrs. McIlhenny continued to serve on the PMA Board of Directors until her death in 1943.
Jack died at the age of 35. Bonnie married and became Bonnie Wintersteen, moving from Park Gate to Chestnut Hill, and then to Villanova. Bonnie was also on the Board of PMA, serving as it’s first female President from 1964 until1968. She also served on the Board of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Bonnie and Henry lived full lives and were active in shaping the Philadelphia art collecting community until their deaths. She passed away, of heart failure, two and a half weeks prior to Henry’s death. He passed away at Hahnemann University Hospital due to complications from heart surgery on Mother’s Day, 1986. Four sons survived Bonnie. Henry never married.
Katharine Norris, who served as Henry’s secretary during his final half dozen years on Rittenhouse Square, remembered going back and forth between two Philadelphia hospitals to visit the McIlhenny siblings. One of the last things Henry said to her was “it’s all in the details.” She explained how he was extremely diligent in placing the right paintings near each other and the right dinner guests at a table.

Henry’s Impact
Henry P. McIlhenny, studied Fine Arts at Harvard University and toured Europe in the summers, starting his own art collection during his college years. He was appointed Curator of Decorative Arts at PMA in 1933 and served in a number of roles until 1964, when he made his way onto the Board. He later served as Chairman of the Board from 1976 until his death. According to Rishel, by the summer of 1937, while working for PMA McIlhenny was back in Europe seeking collections and he cabled Director Fiske Kimball from London conveying his concerns about the political events there:
“WILL YOU STORE GANGNAT COLLECTION SIXTY LATE RENOIRS FOR SEVERAL YEARS MAXIMUM COST FIVE THOUSAND FRANCS SUGGEST EXHIBITION REPLY BERKELY.”
Kimball agreed and the large group of pictures formed the core of the exhibition of Renoir’s late period that McIlhenny organized at PMA in April 1938.
In 1939 Henry purchased Renoir’s “The Judgment of Paris” and displayed it, along with a host of European paintings, statues, and rugs at Park Gate. He sold “The Judgment of Paris” in 1974 to the Hiroshima Museum of Art in Japan. It is now back on display at PMA through September 6.

First in a series: In the next installment, a detailed firsthand account of the exquisite dinner parties and the ‘end of an era’ with Henry P. McIlhenny’s death.

Henry P. McIlhenny, seen here in his Germantown/Mt.Airy mansion around 1950.

By Barbara L. Sherf
I was honored to have been part of a press tour of the Late Renoir exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum or Art (PMA) this past Friday.  I must agree with the late Albert C. Barnes, who assembled an exquisite collection of Pierre-Auguste Renoir paintings on display at the Barnes Foundation Museum in Merion.   Barnes felt that as Renoir aged, he mastered the use of light, color and form. Born in 1841, Renoir died on December 3, 1919, having worked on a still life of flowers earlier in the day.  According to Curator Jennifer Thompson, he handed his paintbrush and palette to his nurse, declaring “I think I am beginning to understand something about painting.”  The room full of media representatives turned unusually silent and I got goosebumps listening to that quote.  I have been thinking about that statement and the exhibit much of the weekend.

The show features 79 original works by Renoir and 14 by his admirers. Unlike his earlier works, consisting  primarily of landscapes, in the later years you will find primarily portraits and sculptures of nudes. The full-figured women bathing and dressing were refreshing in this era of ‘thin is in.’  While the exhibit was superbly curated by Thompson, the real treat awaits you at the end, where you can view old black and white silent film clips of Renoir painting, smoking, and generally looking like he was enjoying life – despite his severe arthritis.  On my way out of the gallery

Renoir "Bathers Playing with a Crab" at Philadelphia Museum of Art

I decided to treat myself to a lovely lunch at the restaurant and listened to an amazing jazz duo.  Their seafood cocktail was quite refreshing and my server, Deran, turned out to be a true Southern gentleman.  What a  lovely way to start the weekend.   If you live in or around Philadelphia, you must treat yourself to the Late Renoir exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.   For more information, go to www.philamuseum.org.
Note: A fuller article, with some interesting Mount Airy and Chestnut Hill connections, is being researched and written for The Chestnut Hill Local.  It will be posted here following publication.