Edward Guthrie Kennedy

William Merritt Chase

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Born in Ireland, Edward Guthrie Kennedy (1849–1932) immigrated to the United States at age eighteen. After a decade in the art business in Boston, he joined the New York art gallery Wunderlich and Company, which later became Kennedy Galleries. In 1916, he resigned from the gallery to devote himself to collecting cloisonnÉ enamels and Japanese robes, which he later gave to the Metropolitan Museum. By 1895, when Chase exhibited this portrait at the National Academy of Design, the two men were friends and professional associates. Kennedy served as an intermediary between Chase and Whistler, who had a falling out in 1885 over the portrait that Chase painted of Whistler in London.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art