Monet

Chicago Daily News July 11, 1922
OPEN POTTER PALMER
PAINTINGS TO PUBLIC
Fifty Canvases on Exhibit at
Art Institute Are Valued at $900,000
       By Marguerite B. Williams

All the details connected with the presentation of the Potter Palmer collection of French paintings to the Art Institute have now been completed, and the two especially appointed galleries set aside for the permanent display of the collection are open to the public today. The fifty paintings which have come into the possession of the Art Institute were selected with the greatest care by Robert B. Harshe, director of the institute. They represent the choicest works in the collection.
Through the terms of Mrs. Palmer's will the institute was to have $100,000 worth of paintings. Between the time the will was made and the death of Mrs. Palmer the value of the paintings increased so much that $100,000 worth would have been scarecely a handful. As it was the intention of Mrs. Palmer to present the museum with the bulk of her collection her wishes were made possible by the gifts of Potter Palmer Jr. and Honore Palmer. The combined gifts, consisting of fifty paintings, represent a value of about $900,000.
           Mrs. Palmer Once Criticized
It is said that Mrs. Palmer was very much criticized for throwing away her money when in the early '90s she bought Monets, Renoirs and Manets. At that time the impressionist group were still the laughing stock of Paris. But a few hundred dollars invested then in one of the pictures means a thousand or more today...
           Collection Stands Alone
...Monet has a race course picture which might be mistaken for a Degas. Monet a luminous canvas of a young girl seated on the bank of a stream painted more in the style of Manet and without the dots of broken color for which he was later famous. And Renoir has a marine which shows the influence of Monet.
The group also includes early works by Pissaro and Sisley, important members of the group who are little known in this country. There is no other collection of this kind in this country although Americans since Mrs. Palmer's time have bought many impressionist canvases, and with the possible exception of a prvate collection in Paris there is nothing which duplicates it abroad.

Bordighera painted by Claude Monet on 1884 trip to Italy, purchased by Potter and Bertha Palmer in 1890s and at The Chicago Art Institute since 1922.

Bertha Palmer Made $12 Million

Bertha Honore Palmer was 23 years younger than her husband Potter, founder of The Palmer House in Chicago. When he died in 1902 she was 53 years old.
Potter had left his entire $8 million fortune to Bertha against the advice of his lawyer who asked: "What if she marries again?" Potter replied: "If she does, he will need the money."
Bertha remained single and spent a lot of time in Europe traveling with her niece Julia Grant, granddaughter of President U.S. Grant and wife of a Russian prince. Bertha was a favorite bridge partner of Edward VII.
Back in America in 1910, Bertha invested in real estate in Sarasota, Florida, and became a successful cattle rancher and exporter of Florida grapefruit to the Midwest. Her estate was worth $20 million when she died of breast cancer in 1918. She was 69 years old.