Donald L. Bryant Jr., a winery proprietor who constructed up a star-studded artwork assortment crammed with key works by People and Germans, died on March 1 at 82. His passing was introduced by his winery, the Bryant Household Property, on March 3.
Bryant spun the wealth into a large assortment that included nice—and sometimes very costly—works. The checklist of artists behind these artists counts lots of the most celebrated painters of the twentieth century, amongst them Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Gerhard Richter, Richard Serra, Robert Ryman, Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Gober, and Willem de Kooning.
Extra just lately, an array of disputes, some waged inside courts and others inside the press, have forged a pall over this assortment. Works from his holdings have often headed to public sale, together with a Picasso portray made in 1932, essentially the most beneficial 12 months of the artist’s profession available on the market, that offered at Sotheby’s for $11 million in 2023.
He appeared on the ARTnews Prime 200 Collectors checklist greater than a dozen occasions, generally alongside his third spouse, Bettina Bryant. He had three kids: Derek (together with his first spouse, Doris Hughes), in addition to Christina and Justin (together with his second spouse, Barbara Murphy).
Born in 1942 in Mount Vernon, Illinois, Bryant initially started by founding a wealth administration agency in St. Louis earlier than launching the Bryant Group, an insurance coverage agency. By this level, he was already a millionaire, and he had espoused a private motto: “Suppose large. Speak large. Do large.”
With Barbara, he bought his vineyard in Napa, California, and whereas there have been initially some monetary hurdles, the vinery turned a hit, because of the hiring of cult winemaker Helen Turley through the ’90s. Right now, the vinery is understood for its Cabernets.
Whereas some collectors undertake their ardour from a younger age, Bryant solely started pursuing it aggressively when he was in his 50s. In 1993, whereas on sabbatical, he relocated to London together with his household and began finding out up on artwork. Beneath the steerage of a Tate advisor (who went unnamed within the varied profiles of the businessman), Bryant visited 47 European museums—the Wall Avenue Journal cited that actual quantity—and constructed up a working information of recent and modern artwork.
He started by shopping for a Pierre Bonnard portray as a present to his Murphy, his second spouse, and went on to snap up a de Kooning portray. In 2019, the Wall Avenue Journal reported that the portray, a 1948 canvas referred to as Mailbox, was purchased for $3.7 million and “might arguably resell for $45 million right this moment.” When Bryant started displaying off his artwork in 2009 in a freshly renovated 4,000-square-foot duplex in New York, Mailbox was hung above a fire. “There’s the whole lot on this factor, but it surely’s all revolved round intercourse,” Bryant advised the Journal in 2009.
Bryant was an avid supporter of establishments, funding the Tate museum community through the ’90s and sitting on the boards of the St. Louis Artwork Museum and the Museum of Trendy Artwork in New York. Right now, there’s even a whole gallery named after Bryant at MoMA.
His dealings with MoMA periodically drew scrutiny. In 2013, collectors and MoMA trustees Henry Kravis and his spouse, Marie-Josée, sued Bryant, claiming that he had held three Jasper Johns work “hostage” when he made makes an attempt to maintain them from heading to MoMA. Bryant denied this, and the events agreed to resolve the claims a number of months later. (On the museum’s web site, all three of these works are at present listed as promised items from the Kravises and Bryant.)
Bryant was a MoMA trustee till 2011, the 12 months after he retired from the Bryant Group, although the museum has by no means formally acknowledged why he left the board. In line with a Wall Avenue Journal report from 2019 that cited two members of the family and one former MoMA trustee, Bryant had made antisemitic feedback at a celebration.
The Journal story was centered on the authorized and monetary woes that beset Bryant, who was battling Alzheimer’s. The article, written by Kelly Crow, described one occasion by which Bryant purchased a $37 million Richter portray at public sale—though he didn’t have the cash to pay for it. Crow reported that, on the time, the Bryant household had taken out $90 million in art-backed loans.
In interviews, it was clear that his love for artwork counted for him as considered one of his longest relationships. “You date it, you set it up you then put it in a basement for a few years,” he as soon as stated. “I’ve a relationship with the artwork.”
Correction, 3/18/25, 2:30 p.m.: A earlier model of this text misstated particulars about Bryant’s marriages and youngsters. They’ve been clarified and up to date the place related.
