Freestone County, Texas
Obituaries

 
The Fairfield Recorder newspaper - Thursday, July 13, 2006 edition


Collection exhibited at Dallas museum . . .
Fairfield man known as art patron, collector

Classmates and hometown friends of Graham Devoe Williford knew that their 
contemporary graduated from Fairfield high school in 1943 and made his way in 
the world far away from Freestone county. But it is safe to say that few knew 
how influential he became in the world of art collecting, and to what extent 
his expertise was sought by inhabitants of that exclusive world.

Mr. Williford died last month at the age of 80, but his legacy lives on for 
the enjoyment of the masses at the Dallas Museum of Art, in an exhibition 
entitled  "There and Back Again: Selections from the Graham D. Williford 
Collection of American Art."

The exhibition showcases rare and little-known examples of late 19th-cemtury 
American painting and silver pieces, studying the search for a national 
artistic identity through "American" styles and subjects back home. It 
includes more than three dozen important American pieces created by artists 
who were studying, working and exhibiting in Europe and America within the 
critical era of the 18th and 19th century.

Born in Fairfield on February 22, 1926, Mr. Williford served in the navy 
after graduation during World War II. After the war ended, he received a degree
in art history from Columbia University in New York City, where he made his home.

Following graduate studies at Columbia, Mr. Williford made his way to Paris, 
France, where he practiced to become a concert pianist at a music conservatory 
there. He became intensely interested in American art during his stay there, 
and later made his second home at a Paris apartment.

It was during his stay in Paris that he saw how early American artists modeled 
the nation’s fledgling art institutions and academies on European models. The 
exhibit There and Back Again investigates the ways in which American art later 
struggled to create its own traditions, away from the looming influence of the 
Old World.

"Graham Williford had a distinctive and highly refined taste for fine objects,"
says Dr. William Keyse Rudolph, co-curator of There and Back Again. "He also 
had a taste far in advance of his moment. When museums and galleries only 
concentrated on nationalistic subject matter, Mr. Williford daringly explored 
the international exchange between America and Europe."
"Fortunately for us, this selection from his collection allows us to 
investigate the important and richly textured history of American artists and 
designers working, exhibiting and studying abroad in the critical final decade 
of the 19th century," Dr. Rudolph says.

"The works assembled represent one of the most distinctive private collections 
of its kind," he adds.

Mr. Williford’s collection consists of more than 400 works and includes major 
silver pieces by Tiffany and Gorham, with a substantial range of rare flatware 
and pieces by William Vanderbilt. The selection includes silver in the Japanese 
taste inspired by the displays of Japanese art at the renowned Paris Exposition 
of 1867; as well as works emphasizing the later movement toward naturalism, 
with pieces such as Tiffany & Co.’s Hopi vase, suggesting the design of a 
period Native American vessel.

"The richness of Mr. Williford’s silver holdings marks the unparalleled 
achievement of the American silver industry in the last decades of the 19th 
century," says Kevin W. Tucker, co-curator of the exhibit.

Also on view in the exhibition are both well-known and less celebrated 
silverware by Tiffany & Co., Gorham, and George W. Schiebler & Co., along with 
paintings by artists such as Thomas Wilbur Dewing and Elihu Vedder.

"They reveal a collector of prescient vision and dedicated connoisseurship," he
says.

Described by the Dallas Museum of Art as a "longtime supporter," Mr. Williford 
has still other paintings and silver works on view in the museum’s permanent 
collection galleries, including several works in the new American Silver Gallery.
The exhibition There and Back Again will be on view through August 20 at the 
Dallas Museum of Art, located in the Dallas Arts District.