Spotlight on... William Hosley '77

Author: Jessie Kissinger

Last Friday William Hosley '77, executive director of the New Haven Museum, gave a lecture entitled "Robbins Battell: A Social Vision for Collecting Art," which focused on the art collections and art-related charity work of 19th-century New England philanthropists Elizabeth Hart Colt and Robbins Battell, brother of Middlebury's own Joseph Battell.



The Middlebury Campus: Can you tell us about Colt and Battell's philanthopic efforts?

William Hosley: They built churches. They endowed schools. In the case of Colt, she endowed and founded a city park. She founded one of the first social service agencies in Hartford, Conn. And the Battells were, of course, very involved in patronage of music and music education, endowing Yale's music department.



MC: Both possessed extensive collections of American paintings. When talking about the some of the themes seen in 19th-century paintings, you said, "it's not my job to judge taste, but to report what people considered good art at the time." How does that affect your role as executive director of a museum?

WH: I basically see my work as more anthological than judgmental, although I obviously gravitate towards subjects that interest me. And I think that one of the problems with traditional art history is that it applies contemporary standards of value to things whose value were shaped by a different time and context. So I try to be respectful of the different time context and not necessarily judge it. I think it enables you to get closer to the mindset of what made people tick and what made the art relevant to them.



MC: Colt's art collection was autobiographical in many ways. Within the span of five years, she lost four children and her husband. There are more paintings of women than of men in her collection.

WH: Well I think the pictures reflected her personal experiences - the loss of innocence and childhood, the death of her children, the sense of empowering the value of language, reading and literature, the dignity of women, the dignity of the poor. I think that these were all things that were personal to her and that influenced the choices she made about art.



MC: In continuation with Colt's biography, the death of her children and husband inspired several memorial projects.

WH: She built the Colt Memorial Church, the Colt Memorial Statue, the Colt Memorial Monument, the Colt memorial wing of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art and published the Colt Memorial Biography. She hired one of the leading writers in the country to do a biography of her husband, and she built the Colt Memorial Gallery. It was like a shrine to her husband in the house that showed all of the prototypes and production models of his guns. And I mean, she was the survivor when all of her family had died...I think she felt an obligation to remember and to demonstrate the good fortune she had to live. The resources and opportunities that she had did not ever get in the way of her being ever mindful of the family that she lost.

MC: The Colts made their fortune in the firearms industry and in the Colt Church of the Good Shepard. Colt was very involved in the construction and design of the church. How do you think that reflects her role in the industry, as a 19th-century woman who took charge of her husband's major arms corporation?

WH: I think that she was proud of the company's role in creating weapons of defense as she would have probably perceived it ... This is not a pretty part of the American story, but we wouldn't be here now without firearms. I'm sure in her mind it was a symbol of progress, a self defense tool that enabled the West to be settled.



MC: Switching over to Robbins Battell, you mentioned an interest in conservationism that can be seen Battell's art collection.

WH: Yeah, I think for the patrons of the Hudson River School the tradition of landscape art is one that is about reverence that reflects a conversationalist sensibility. These are people who were proud of the distinctive beauty of the American landscape. They wanted to capture its essence and they valued its preservation and care.



MC: Robbins Battell was also a major abolitionist and commissioned Thomas Hovenden to paint "The Last Moments of John Brown."

WH: John Brown was one of the most controversial figures in the 19th century. He really polarized the country. The south was apoplectic that northern liberals and abolitionists were touting this guy as a hero, because it was treason. He had captured a federal armory, a gun factory and was trying to arm the slaves for an uprising. This was disturbing to some people, and yet the northern abolitionists regarded this guy as a martyr ... I think the Battells would have regarded him as such, and that to them this was a holy war over slavery. I'm sure that they thought that John Brown had been an instrument of God and that this painting, this depiction of that last moment was like Christ going to the cross.