Archival Labels
Houses under the Trees
Fernand Léger
1913
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Chrysler

The initials "WPC" on this modest sticker refer to Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., scion of the founder of the Chrysler Corporation. Raised on Long Island, Chrysler (1909–1988) began collecting while still in boarding school. After graduating from Dartmouth College in 1933, he worked at his family's automobile conglomerate. His first major purchases, made during the late 1930s and 1940s, include Léger's Houses Under the Trees (1913), on which this label can be found, and Picasso's Woman with a Book (1909), both now in the Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection. Chrysler later devoted himself to the arts and was closely involved with the Norfolk, Virginia museum that now bears his name. His collection was broad in scope; in addition to Cubist works, he owned earlier European paintings, five of which now hang at The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Cigoli (Ludovico Cardi), Adoration of Shepherds (1599; 1991.7); Bartholomeus Breenberg, Preaching of St. John (1634; 1991.305); Samuel van Hoogstraten, Annunciation of Death, (ca. 1670; 1992.133); and Théodore Géricault, Evening: Landscape with an Aqueduct (1818; 1989.183).

For more information, see:

Boate, Rachel, "Chrysler, Walter P.", The Modern Art Index Project (August 2018), Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. https://doi.org/10.57011/FVAN8243

The website of the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk.

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