At 86-1/2 inches tall, this slightly larger than life figure of Jack Tar is attributed to Jeremiah Dodge (ca. 1780–1860), a New York City carver of ship’s figureheads. The circa-1845 carved wood sculpture is the emblem of the couple’s marine collection and greets guests at the entrance to their home.

Ours was a typical Cambridge romance,” recalls the Radcliffe-educated wife, married to a Harvard-trained lawyer for the past fifty-six years. Their gracious home on Philadelphia’s Main Line reflects a tale of two cities—the colonial capitals of Boston and Philadelphia, their hometowns—as well as a tribute to the couple’s individual but intertwined interests
in American and Asian art.

As newlyweds, the husband and wife lived in Ardmore, Pennsylvania. They reared their children in nearby Gladwyne. After moving downtown to an I.M. Pei-designed townhouse in quaint Society Hill, they for a time displayed modernist sculpture by David Smith (1906–1965) and New York Color Field painting of the 1960s. To fill their next residence, this one overlooking Rittenhouse Square, they collected traditional American art of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

When the couple moved eleven years ago to a suburban aerie with a tree-lined vista of a historic tennis and racquet club, they oversaw extensive design changes to the spacious, single-floor residence, apportioning it into a welcoming foyer, expansive living room, formal dining room, cozy sitting room, kitchen, bedrooms, and offices. The wife’s fondness for color is expressed in a soft palette of pale lemon, ivory, salmon, and mint.

The couple’s sale several years ago of a Winslow Homer watercolor purchased from Childs Gallery in Boston in the 1950s financed their addition of a glass-enclosed, roof-top loggia. With views toward the city, the spring-green and raspberry colored sunroom houses the couple’s collection of sailors’ valentines and some of their Asian collections. “I like contrast,” says the wife. “My favorite uncle was in the U.S. Foreign Service. His wife was a genius at mixing decorative arts. She helped open my eyes to all cultures and their artistic endeavors.” The couple’s only flirtation with “period room” style is the dining room, which is an ode to Federal New England.

Boston-bred, the wife is a descendant of prominent Massachusetts merchants. Born in Philadelphia, the husband, like his father before him, became an expert in maritime law. Both husband and wife have long been active in philanthropic circles. He founded the Philadelphia Maritime Museum, now the Independence Seaport Museum, in 1960. Both serve on the board of the Philadelphia Museum of Art; she as an active trustee, he in an emeritus role.

Recalling how and when he became a collector of marine antiques, the husband recounts, “As a seven year old in 1927, I gave fifty cents to save America’s most historic ship, the USS Constitution, ‘Old Ironsides.’ For that donation, I received a small anchor made of metal and wood salvaged from the ship.” He still owns the anchor. By the early 1950s, the husband had narrowed his pursuit to objects related to the port of Philadelphia and the Delaware River, along with antique American and English paintings, sculpture, prints, manuscripts, and other artifacts depicting the daily life of sailors. His fascination with the latter culminated in Marine Art & Antiques: Jack Tar, A Sailor’s Life, 1750–1910 (1999), written with Rodney P. Carlisle. A companion exhibition, Life of a Sailor: A Collector’s Vision, opened at the Independence Seaport Museum in September, 1999.

The 1903 oil on canvas portrait by Thomas Eakins (1845–1923), right, depicts Rear Admiral Charles Dwight Sigsbee (1845–1923), the commander of the Maine, the U.S. battleship that exploded in Havana harbor on February 15, 1898, touching off the Spanish-American war. The Salem, Massachusetts, Chippendale bonnet-top high chest of drawers, circa 1760, and the 1795 Rhode Island Federal side chairs attributed to John Carlisle came from Israel Sack, Inc., in New York. The portrait of a girl, left, from Childs Gallery, is by the New York artist Abraham Delanoy Jr. (1742–1795), who studied in London under Benjamin West.
On the opposite wall hangs an undated, mid-nineteenth century portrait by Lancaster artist Jacob Eichholtz (1776–1842) of William M. Hunter of Pennsylvania, a U.S. Navy captain.
Woman in a Turban, a circa-1840 portrait by Rembrandt Peale (1778–1860), was once exhibited at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. It came from Vose Galleries of Boston. A Massachusetts dressing table displays seventeenth-century Japanese Arita plates. The ninth-century a.d. marble bust is a Mons piece from ancient Thailand. The couple acquired it at Spink in London in the late 1980s. The Queen Anne japanned looking glass, with a long history of American ownership, is early eighteenth-century English.
The couple owns four works by Lilla Cabot Perry (1848–1933), to whom the wife is related. The Pink Rose, an oil on canvas of 1910, depicts Edith Perry, the second of the American impressionist’s three daughters. The circa-1760 Boston serpentine-front chest of drawers was the couple’s first important purchase of antique American furniture. The covered tureen is one of many pieces of Chinese export porcelain in the collection.
The living room combines family heirlooms with American and Asian art. In the foreground is a foot binding chest illustrated in George N. Kates Chinese Household Furniture (1948). The circa- 1930 landscape over the fireplace is by St. Louis artist Oscar Thalinger (1885–1965). Two Western Zhou Dynasty Chinese bronze wine cups and a ding dating to 1000 B.C. adorn the mantel. Silhouetted against the window at far right is the couple’s first major acquisition of Southeast Asian sculpture, a late eleventh-century Khmer, Baphuon period stone torso of a man, probably a representation of the Hindu god Vishnu.
Morning Glory Pool, far right, one of the couple’s favorite pictures, is from a series of ambitiously modern depictions of geysers painted by John Henry Twachtman (1853–1902) in the late 1890s on a visit to Yellowstone Park in Wyoming. From left, a signed Severin Roesen (1815–1872) fruit still life; a signed and dated 1877 painting by William Trost Richards (1833–1905) depicting the South Jersey shore; and a signed and dated 1827 view of the Delaware Water Gap by Thomas Doughty (1793–1856) that once belonged to New York mayor Philip Hone. Furniture authority Berry B. Tracy attributed the New York library table of circa 1815 to Duncan Phyfe (1768–1854). Topping it is a mid-eighteenth-century ivory-inlaid Anglo-Indian box. The circa-1820 mahogany saber-leg chairs are from Boston.
Flanking The Bathers, a 1956 oil on canvas by David Park (1911–1960), a Boston-born member of the Bay Area figurative movement, are Boats Drying at Gloucester (1916) by Stuart Davis (1894–1964), and Gloucester (1906) by Maurice Prendergast (1858– 1924). The Chinese Ming chairs, a rare form, and altar table came from Hong Kong dealer Grace Wu Bruce. Surmounting the table are trade artifacts, among them an American scrimshaw coconut ladle and knitting needles, a nineteenth-century Indonesian carved-ivory boat, and a pair of Japanese Momoyama red-lacquer stirrups with silver inlay, circa 1590–1610.
Shelves in the living room display sculpture and ceramics from the couple’s extensive collection of Asian art. The wife inherited the Japanese screen, right, from her grandparents, who purchased it from Yamanaka in Boston in the early 1920s. The shelves hold an array of sculpture in wood, metal and stone, and ceramics. Collection highlights include a bronze ceremonial axe dating to circa 2500–2000 B.C.; a circa fifth century A.D. red sandstone head of a goddess from Uttar Pradesh; and a thirteenth to fourteenth century A.D. Japanese Kamakura period carved wooden head of Maitreya Buddha.
This sailor’s shell valentine, circa 1870, is one of the finest examples of its type. Most often purchased in Barbados, sailors acquired such mementos for the loved ones they left behind. Displayed on the porch, the colors of the shells match the palette of the room.
Signed J. Fisher, this 1820 oil painting portrays the whaling ship Spermo, which returned from the Pacific voyage to Nantucket with 1,920 barrels of sperm oil in 1823. In the foreground is a rare checkerboard of whale bone with whale ivory “men,” and a two-drawer swift and stand, also dating to the nineteenth century. The swift is unusual in that it is made with whale ivory, which is more precious than whale bone.
Charcoal on paper portraits of the wife’s parents by John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) date to 1923 and 1924. Below right is a circa–1920 oil on canvas painting by Joseph Stella (1877–1946). The mahogany block-front chest of drawers with molded top is a Newburyport, Massachusetts, example of circa 1770 and may have belonged to William Moulton, maker of the silver set in the dining room. Accompanying it is a gold funeral ring made in memory of the silversimith. It is topped with a circa-1830 Tucker of Philadelphia porcelain pitcher. The circa-1780 Portsmouth, New Hampshire, side chair is stamped with the name of an early owner, “R. Hart.”
The couple loaned US Frigate United States Defeating HMS Macedonian on 25 October 1812 (center) by Thomas Birch (1779–1851) to President John F. Kennedy, who displayed it in the White House. Above the sideboard, left and right, are circa-1837 Birch views of Philadelphia harbor. The silver tea service by William Moulton IV (1772– 1861) of Newburyport, Massachusetts, bears the initials of Patrick Tracy Jackson, the wife’s great-great-grandfather and founder, in 1813, of one of the first power-loom cotton mills in America. The couple acquired the mahogany and bird’s-eye maple sideboard from the late Berry B. Tracy.

Greeting visitors in the entranceway is the jaunty, slightly larger than life figure of “Jack Tar,” the prototypical sailor and mascot of the couple’s marine collection. Attributed to Jeremiah Dodge (ca. 1780–1860), a New York City carver of ship’s figureheads, the painted wood sculpture of circa 1845 is one of the husband’s most prized possessions. Having first admired it in a Manhattan gallery, he later purchased the folk-art icon from Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, dealer Alan Granby.

In his book, the husband describes the formation of his collection over time: “From top dealers and great auction houses to house sales and flea markets—anywhere with a glimmer of a chance of yielding something interesting was fair game.” He credits, among others, dealers Charles Childs, Harry Shaw Newman, Ron Bourgeault, Alan Granby and Janice Hyland, John Rinaldi, Carl Crossman, Diana Bittel, Norm Flayderman, Elinor Gordon, and Martyn Gregory with assisting his search.  

An interest in flagged American ships led the husband to the work of Thomas Birch (1779–1851). Over a mahogany and bird’s-eye maple Federal sideboard in the dining room hang three oil on canvas paintings by the English-born Philadelphia marine artist. The collectors loaned Birch’s War of 1812 battle scene, US Frigate United States defeating HMS Macedonian on 25 October 1812 (1813), to President John F. Kennedy, who displayed it in the Oval Office. “We had a family game of finding my painting in the many published photos of Kennedy and his advisors at the time,” says the husband.

“While he was going gung-ho with maritime antiques, I got interested in American furniture,” says the wife, who favors coastal Massachusetts and New Hampshire pieces made between 1750 and 1820. The couple primarily bought from Israel Sack, Inc., in New York, whose exacting taste for fine proportion and restrained ornamentation they shared. Their first important furniture purchase, in 1957, was a Boston Chippendale serpentine-front chest of drawers with a molded top and ball-and-claw feet. Along with a Salem, Massachusetts, Chippendale bonnet-top high chest of drawers and a Federal inlaid mahogany breakfront bookcase, probably from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, it is a highlight of the collection.

Over time the couple acquired their representative array of American paintings on canvas and paper: portraits by Philadelphia masters Rembrandt Peale and Thomas Eakins; landscapes by Thomas Doughty and William Trost Richards; still lifes by William Merritt Chase, Severin Roesen and Levi Wells Prentice; and early modernist works by John Marin, Charles Burchfield, and Joseph Stella.

“This is the only room in which we’ve tried to be all of one period,” the wife says of their dining room, largely furnished with early-nineteenth-century coastal New England furniture and related accessories. The Federal breakfront bookcase dates to circa 1810–1815 and is probably from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It houses Chinese blue and white porcelain. Several Fitzhugh pieces decorated in a pagoda pattern are from a service commissioned by eighteenth-century Boston China trader, Thomas Handasyd Perkins, an ancestor of the wife’s, on the marriage of his daughter Elizabeth to Samuel Cabot.
“We didn’t leave a wall standing,” says the wife, who oversaw extensive renovations to the residence when the couple moved in eleven years ago. Acquired from Israel Sack, Inc., the Federal mirror has an eglomise panel depicting a naval engagement between USS Constellation and a French warship, ca. 1799-1800, during the Quasi-War with France. The circa-1815 marble-top classical pier table is from Boston.
Housed in metal cabinets, the husband’s collection of photographs, manuscripts, watercolors and prints illustrated his book, Marine Art & Antiques: Jack Tar, A Sailor’s Life, 1750–1910 (1999). Above left is USS Constitution and HMS Guerriere, a circa-1840 oil painting attributed to Thomas Chambers (1808–1866). It depicts the August 19, 1812, engagement that gave the American ship the nickname “Old Ironsides.” Right is Lovely Matilda of Philadelphia, a dated 1808 watercolor on paper by Antoine Roux (1765–1835). The two Pennsylvania walnut side chairs date to circa 1755 and 1765.
The husband gave many of his nautical antiques to the Independence Seaport Museum, which he founded in 1960. He kept, top center and top right, elaborate nineteenth-century paper cuttings by Captain Frederick Williams of Portsmouth, Virginia, and a cut-out ship’s portrait by Charles Frances of the Paul Jones of Boston arriving at Sandy Hook, New Jersey, in 1845 from Canton, China. Top left is an 1898 shadow box depicting USS Maine, whose destruction in Havana harbor in 1898 precipitated the Spanish American War. Bottom left is a circa-1880 automaton showing British sailors dancing the hornpipe. In the center are several late-­nineteenth-century examples of sailors’ tattoo art.

“A big lady in black bombazine—absolutely terrifying,” says the wife, recalling from early childhood an elderly relative, American impressionist artist Lilla Cabot Perry (1848–1933). The couple own several Perry paintings and drawings, including The Pink Rose of 1910, a large, luscious three-quarter length oil on canvas portrait of the artist’s daughter. In the wife’s room, a Perry pastel of Giverny—where the artist, a friend of Monet, summered for nine years—joins Childe Hassam’s (1859–1935) Moonrise at Sunset, Cos Cob of 1902. Two John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) charcoal on paper portraits of the wife’s parents date from 1922 and 1923. “My paternal grandmother knew him quite well,” says the wife.

In the living room on opposite walls are Morning Glory Pool by John Henry Twachtman (1853–1902), and The Bathers, an oblique nod to Matisse by David Park (1911–1960), a Boston-born artist who was a leader of the Bay Area figurative movement. Park, the couple later learned, was also the son of the Unitarian minister who married them.

“It’s a toss up as to which painting is our favorite. The Twachtman is finesse but the Park is umph,” says the wife. Flanking the Park are views of Gloucester, Massachusetts, by Maurice Prendergast (1858–1924) and Stuart Davis (1894–1964). Though painted only a decade apart, in 1906 and 1916, respectively. they illustrate the abrupt transition from realism to abstraction that took place in the early twentieth century.

Stitched by an English sailor, this mid-nineteenth-century woolwork picture depicts a British vessel, possibly the Royal Yacht, flying the royal standard, a suggestion that Queen Victoria may have been aboard.

Both Philadelphia and Boston were major ports in America’s late eighteenth and early nineteenth century trade with China. Suitably, two circa 1835 oil on canvas Canton scenes by Lam Qua (1801–1860) hang in the couple’s dining room. From understated Japanese Arita porcelain to voluptuous Indian statuary, the couple’s collection of Asian art is extensive. A gilded and painted Kano school Japanese screen, which occupies a place of honor in the couple’s foyer, is an inherited piece from the wife’s family, who had long cultural and commercial ties to the Far East. It wasn’t until the husband served as U.S. Commissioner General for the 1974 Expo in Spokane, Washington, and the Consul General for Japan in Philadelphia between 1978 and 1990 that the couple became seriously interested in Asian art, acquiring Japanese prints, porcelain and lacquer; Chinese Ming furniture; and Indonesian trade goods, among other artifacts. The wife even returned to school to study Southeast Asian sculpture, her greatest love.

On a buying trip to London on behalf of Philadelphia’s Fairmont Park Art Association, the couple made their first visit to Spink. They subsequently purchased many Southeast Asian sculptures for their own collection from the prominent dealers.

“It took my breath away,” the wife recalls of the eleventh-century Khmer Baphuon period stone torso that was their first major acquisition. Another favorite piece is a late-third- or early-fourth-century A.D. Gandaharan gray-schist carving of a Bodhisattva, now housed in a niche constructed especially for its display.

“Connections make history much more interesting and meaningful”, the husband believes. From a little boy’s souvenir anchor to masterworks of American painting and serene relics of ancient Asia, this well-edited collection is an unusually personal evocation of two lives, well lived, together.