Portrait of Marjorie Merriweather Post,
Frank Salisbury, 1934
Businesswoman philanthropist Marjorie Merriweather Post (1887–1973) was born to wealth. And she made headlines throughout her life. In 1905 she married husband #I, banker Edward Close and then her father’s death in 1914 left her in charge of his cereal company, which she expanded.
In 1920 financier Edward Francis Hutton became husband #II and they soon developed a larger variety of food products, including Birdseye Frozen Foods. By then she ranked as one of the USA’s richest women.
Built in the 1920s for another family, Post filled her favourite residence, Hillwood, with the C18th French décorative style she loved most. The neo-Georgian house had 36 rooms full of Sèvres porcelain, Gobelins tapestries, Aubusson carpets, chandeliers with crystal pendants, 90 Fabergé treasures and portraits of aristocrats. Gilded furniture was set in tableaus, evoking the life of courtiers in C18th France.
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Her couture gowns have been preserved, along with portraits wearing them, photo albums documenting her evolving fashion sense and décor, and almost every invoice. Her jewellery, often of royal provenance, was well displayed.
Marjorie Post and her husband de jour hosted glittering parties for the leading political, diplomatic and cultural figures of the time, serving on dinnerware originally made for the rulers of ancien régimes. Even in troubled times, her staff served feasts to visiting international dignitaries on her imperial dinnerware.
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Her couture gowns have been preserved, along with portraits wearing them, photo albums documenting her evolving fashion sense and décor, and almost every invoice. Her jewellery, often of royal provenance, was well displayed.
Marjorie Post and her husband de jour hosted glittering parties for the leading political, diplomatic and cultural figures of the time, serving on dinnerware originally made for the rulers of ancien régimes. Even in troubled times, her staff served feasts to visiting international dignitaries on her imperial dinnerware.
In the French porcelain room, highlights of the C18th Sèvres collection included a cylindrical cup (1770s) with Benjamin Franklin’s portrait. In the French drawing room, interlaced initials MA (? Maria Antonia Electress of Saxony) gleamed in mother-of-pearl across a rolltop desk made by Abraham and David Roentgen in 1770s Germany. Pop-up candlesticks and mirrors were concealed within its 40 compartments and secret drawers. Post’s marble-topped commodes, fronted in marquetry bouquets and pastoral scenes, were made in the 1770s by Jean-Henri Riesener.
Wood marquetry, mother-of-pearl, gilt bronze, steel, leather, glass
In 1935 she married husband #III, lawyer-diplomat Joseph Davies, and he was soon serving as the US ambassador to the Soviet Union. She collected religious and secular treasures that were being sold off by the Soviets, filling Hillwood rooms with these treasures.
A gold chalice, encrusted in diamonds & saints’ cameos, was made by Norwegian goldsmith Iver Windfeldt Buch (1791) for Catherine II. Ribbed in diamonds Fabergé’s cobalt-enamelled egg (1896) was Nicholas II’s major Easter gift to his mother after taking the throne. Plus a pink enamel Fabergé Easter egg the Tsar gave his mother in 1914. Thus the museum included the most comprehensive collection of C18th &19th Russian imperial arts outside Russia.
Faberge, 1914
In 1958, Post's marriage #IV was to wealthy Pittsburgh businessman Herbert May. Other than the houses, Post left the bulk of her estate to her 3 daughters, Adelaide Close, Eleanor Post Close and Nedenia Hutton. In 1963 she bequeathed the estate, along with a $10m endowment to maintain it, to the Smithsonian Institution; it was to be maintained as a museum, with specific instructions. She established the Marjorie Merriweather Post Foundation D.C to ensure compliance.
**When Post died in 1973, the Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens were left to the world as her opulent house-museum. House-museums were the homes of literary or historical stars. Or they might have been historical collections housed in their original buildings eg Frick Collection in New York. These domestic settings drew people to visit the sites in which historical people, arts and architecture created a unique experience. So house-museums were the least institutional of arts institutions.
It was fascinating to follow famous dealer Joseph Duveen (1869-1947) who sold special art objects to aristocrats. Duveen was a skilled entrepreneur, an impassioned art lover. He made his fortune by buying works of art from declining European aristocrats and selling them to wealthy collectors in the USA. Marjorie Post was just one such American. Consider these other frequent buyers at Duveen’s galleries: Otto Kahn, Andrew Mellon, William Randolph Hearst, Henry & Arabella Huntington, Samuel H Kress, John D Rockefeller, PAB Widener, JP Morgan, Isabella Stewart Gardner and Henry Clay Frick. What an elite group!
It was no coincidence that Marjorie had been schooled early in her collecting career by Duveen. He met his clients when they were in their spending mode, in their efforts to raise themselves up, to show that sense of nobility that flowed in many families who were flush with money.
I have never passionate about C19th French paintings or furniture, but that is the risk a visitor takes by going into a private home that has become a museum. It was made into a museum to show the owner’s taste, not mine. So I treat house museums as a walk-in history lesson, created mostly by wealthy families from the C19th.
Read how Post left her 128-room Palm Beach mansion Mar-a-Lago to the U.S government. Enjoy Marjorie Merriweather Post: The Life Behind the Luxury, 2019, by Estella Chung.