Press Room: Press Release

The San Antonio Museum of Art celebrates the legacy of founding member Gilbert M. Denman, Jr. this summer with a new exhibit of 30 paintings and 30 works on paper from his collection. A Refined Eye will focus on Denman’s many European oil paintings, drawings, lithographs and engravings from artistic greats as varied as Henri Matisse, John Singer Sargent, Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt and Pablo Picasso.

Always an active donor to the Museum, after Denman’s death in 2004, the San Antonio Museum of Art inherited the remainder of his prestigious collection. A one-night private showing entitled Rosemont Recollections was held in September of 2005; A Refined Eye is an expansion of that intimate preview. Aside from occasional loans to the Museum, none of the works in A Refined Eye have ever been seen by the public. A Refined Eye is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see an intimate glimpse into the mind of an eclectic, passionate and devoted collector.

The exhibit, while canvassing a wide range of time periods, nations and media, has a significant focus on French 19th century painting, including master works by Camille Pissaro, William Adolphe Bouguereau, Gustave Doré, Henri Fantin-Latour, Jean-Baptiste-Armand Guillaumin and Berthe Morisot, one of the most significant female Impressionists. Included alongside Morisot’s work are portraits of her by contemporaries Pierre-August Renior and Edouard Manet.

Denman (1921-2004) is best known to Museum members and patrons for donating his internationally renowned collection of Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities, which make up the majority of the museum’s Ewing Halsell Wing for Ancient Art. Denman was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Museum of Art and its predecessor the San Antonio Museum Association for longer than any other individual. His interest in the Museum, like his interest in art, reached across the spectrum to include significant donations to the American, Asian, Contemporary, European, Oceanic, and Latin American collections. Through his leadership of the Ewing Halsell Foundation, Denman assisted the Museum in securing funds to renovate the Museum’s Ewing Halsell Wing for Ancient Art; to establish the Museum’s Curator of Ancient Art Endowment Fund and the Grace Fortner Rider Acquisition fund, to construct the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Latin American Art; and to provide the initial challenge grant that transformed into reality the Lenora and Walter F. Brown Asian Art Wing.