"We had a particularly good painting by Antonio Jacobsen. Bill sat and studied the canvas for about 15 minutes. Then, to my surprise, he said he'd like to buy the chair,” Granby recalls with a smile. Not for sale, the chair stayed in the shop, but weeks later Koch bought this circa 1860 ship's figurehead of Jenny Lind from Hyland-Granby Antiques.
:Nearly 39 years ago, William I. Koch, an avid collector of everything from Renoir to Remington, walked into the Cape Cod antiques shop of Janice Hyland and Alan Granby and settled his large frame into an antique rocking chair.
"We had a particularly good painting by Antonio Jacobsen. Bill sat and studied the canvas for about 15 minutes. Then, to my surprise, he said he'd like to buy the chair," Granby recalls with a smile. Not for sale, the chair stayed in the shop, but weeks later Koch bought a circa 1860 ship's figurehead of Jenny Lind from Hyland-Granby Antiques.
It was the beginning a long partnership between the client and the dealers and the first of many indications that Koch, named to Art & Antiques'
2006 list of America's top 100 collectors, had a mind of his own. Early on advised by John Walsh and later by Ted Stebbins of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Koch more often followed his instincts as his tastes matured.
The Jenny Lind figurehead is one of dozens of objects illustrated in Maritime Maverick: The Collection of William I. Koch, a book edited and produced by Alan Granby and Janice Hyland with contributions from Bob Fisher, Patrick Robinson, R.L. Wilson and Ben Simons.
David Godine's publication of Maritime Maverick
earlier this year coincided with "Upon The Sea," an exhibition of Koch's maritime collection at the Society for The Four Arts in Palm Beach, Fla., where Koch lives much of the year and near where The Oxbow Group, the energy company he founded in 1983, is headquartered.
"The Golden Rule” by Fitz Henry Lane, oil on canvas, 23 ½ by 35 5/8 inches.
Hyland grew up sailing; her husband, collecting. When they met and married, the two former teachers merged their passions, first collecting, then dealing in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century nautical art and artifacts. Exhibitors at the Winter Antiques Show in New York City and the Philadelphia Antiques Show, among other fairs, Hyland and Granby today do business by appointment from their home in Hyannis Port.
Koch, who summers in nearby Osterville, Mass., is a dedicated sailor who won the America's Cup yacht race in 1992. He grew up in Wichita, Kan., the son of the founder of Koch Industries, one of the largest privately held companies in the United States, and earned his doctoral degree in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
As Maritime Maverick
relates, Koch's first exposure to marine art was a family portrait of Captain James Lawrence (1781–1813), a War of 1812 naval hero related to his mother, Mary Robinson Koch. A portrait of Captain Lawrence hung in the front hall of the family's Kansas home. It later became the cornerstone of Bill Koch's diverse collection of Lawrence material, which ranges from paintings and swords to medals and documents. Lured into battle by the British ship Shannon, Lawrence died in 1813 at the helm of the American ship Chesapeake. His dying words, "Don't Give Up The Ship!," became a US Navy motto and made their way onto all kinds of objects, including John Bellamy's carved and painted eagle plaques.
