: Rudolf G. Wunderlich, a preeminent dealer in American art for
more than 50 years, died peacefully on September 22 in Fountain
Valley, Calif., at the age of 83. "Rudy" Wunderlich, the leading
expert in Western art, had been president of Kennedy Galleries
from 1951 until 1983, and president of Mongerson-Wunderlich from
1985 until his retirement in 1998.
Rudolf Wunderlich was a founding member of the Art Dealers
Association of America, one of the inaugural exhibitors of the
Winter Antiques Show, and was on the original Art Advisory Panel
of the Internal Revenue Service. As Stuart Feld, president of
Hirschl & Adler Galleries noted, "It is truly an end of an
era."
Rudy Wunderlich also pursued a lifelong interest in collecting
stamps. During his youth, Rudy invested his money in a stamp
collection of airmails. He first exhibited in the late 1930s and
won a "silver tray." This first collection was sold in 1948, but
he again picked up collecting in the early 1960s. This time he
specialized in an area little known at the time - essays and
proofs. These were the original banknote designs and color proofs
submitted to the post office.
He was known as "King of US Proofs and Essays" and exhibited his
stamps widely and won numerous prizes including gold awards at
Sipex, 1966; Interphil, 1976; Capex, 1979; Tokyo, 1981; and the
Grand Award at Aripex, 1982. He served on the board of the
Philatelic Foundation. His primary dealers were Robert Siegel in
New York and the Weil Brothers in New Orleans, who were legends
in their own right.
If there was ever anyone destined to become an art dealer it was
Rudy Wunderlich. His grandfather, Hermann Wunderlich, formerly
head of the print department at Knoedler & Co., opened
Hermann Wunderlich & Co. in 1874. The gallery initially
specialized in fine Old Master prints by Dürer and Rembrandt,
along with many others. Quickly the business evolved with the
addition of several contemporary printmakers including Seymour
Haden and James McNeill Whistler.
Upon Hermann's death in 1893, his partner Edward G. Kennedy took
over running the gallery and subsequently changed the name of the
company to Kennedy & Company. Upon Edward Kennedy's
retirement in 1918, Herman (Jr) ran the company for the next
30-plus years through the Great Depression, and the Second World
War, dealing primarily in American prints.
Born in Tarrytown, N.Y., in 1920, Rudy began working in the
family art gallery during the summer of 1936. Upon graduation
from Hackley School in Tarrytown, in 1938, Rudy trained at the
General Motors Corporation, and during the Second World War, he
was employed at GM's Eastern Aircraft Division in Tarrytown where
he became head of the drafting department, working on aircraft
wings for the Grumman Avenger torpedo bombers.
By the late 1940s Rudy Wunderlich proceeded into the family art
business, and upon his father's death in 1951, became president
of Kennedy Galleries at the age of 31. During the next decade he
transformed Kennedy Galleries from a leading print gallery to the
premier gallery for America art.
His closest client was Thomas Gilcrease, who amassed a fortune in
the oil business and began collecting art. By the 1950s Gilcrease
was building the foremost collection of Western art with Rudy
Wunderlich as his close friend and advisor. As Kennedy Galleries
began to stock Western paintings and bronzes, clients from Texas
began dropping in, including Ima Hogg from Houston.
By the mid 1950s Rudy Wunderlich was acquiring a reputation as a
specialist in Western art, and as a result he brokered the
collection of more than 300 George Catlin paintings from the
Museum of Natural History to the National Gallery of Art. The
Amon Carter Museum was a regular client.
In the early 1960s Jacqueline Kennedy, as First Lady, asked for
his advice and help in building a collection of original American
paintings for the White House. The White House, through Clem
Conger, became major clients. Mr and Mrs Rudy Wunderlich were
invited to the state dinner at the White House on November 24,
1963 - the day President John Kennedy was buried.
Wunderlich advised many of the foremost collectors of his day
including Harold Hochshield, who was forming a collection for a
new museum in the Adirondacks, the Adirondack Museum. Wunderlich
was one of the original board members of the museum. Rudolf
Wunderlich had married into the Brandreth family who owned a
large tract of land in the central Adirondacks, and thus he
acquired a special interest in its art. As a result, many of A.F.
Tait's best work went through the gallery.
Industrialists, such as Jack Warner of Gulf State Paper
Corporation and Temple Smith, were always welcome and purchased
aggressively from Rudy Wunderlich. John D. Rockefeller III was a
steady client and formed an early and formidable collection of
Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century American art that
eventually was given to the H. M. De Young Collection in San
Francisco.
Rudy's son Gerold Wunderlich remembered, "John R. would call the
house frequently, and my youngest brother, who was then about 5
or 6, answered the phone, came back to the dinning table and when
asked who was on the phone, answered, 'Oh, it's only that Mr
Rockefeller again.'"
But it was Western art where Rudy made his mark, and as a result
his clients included Philip Anschutz, the oilman from Denver,
Harrison Eiteljorg of Indianapolis and later Ross Perot, a young
entrepreneur from Dallas, and Bill Foxley, who formed the Museum
of Western Art.
By the mid 1960s the gallery handled virtually all facets of
American art from Eighteenth Century portraiture to the Hudson
River School, American Impressionism and folk art. Kennedy
Galleries continued to pursue Nineteenth Century prints,
including Audubon's, Currier & Ives, botanical illustrations
and a vast selection of Americana. It also continued to
specialize in Twentieth Century fine prints from Whistler to
Hopper and others; Old Master prints were also a specialty.
Yet it was Frederic Remington's sculptures where Rudy
Wunderlich's expertise blossomed. He realized there was an
inconsistency in the castings of Remington's sculptures that came
into the gallery, with little or no research to fall back upon.
Some castings of Remington's "Bronco Buster" were smaller than
others, and because of Rudy's engineering training at General
Motors he realized that metals have a shrinkage factor. In other
words, when a metal is cast, it shrinks slightly as it cools.
Specifically, bronze shrinks approximately a quarter-inch to the
foot; thus if a two-foot bronze such as Remington's "Bronco
Buster" were cast from another bronze, it would be approximately
a half inch smaller than the original casting. Armed with this
information, Rudy Wunderlich carefully made base tracings on
every Remington bronze he came across and became the acknowledged
authority on them.
By the 1970s he was the leading authority in Western Americana -
the art of Frederic Remington, Charles M. Russell and the other
artists who portrayed the early Western frontier. The Buffalo
Bill Museum awarded him a medal for his accomplishments in 1974,
and not to be outdone, the National Cowboy Hall of Fame presented
him with a gold medal a couple years later. He was instrumentally
involved with the New-York Historical Society as well.
In 1985, he moved to Chicago and became president of
Mongerson-Wunderlich Galleries until his retirement in 1998. In
his later years he spent much of his time on appraising artwork
for museums and private collections. By his own estimate he
appraised more than $200 million in art annually. His particular
emphasis was Western Americana - and in this capacity he advised
and appraised virtually every major public and private collection
in the field including the Amon Carter Museum, The Cowboy Hall of
Fame, The Buffalo Bill Museum, the Gene Autry Museum, the
Frederic Remington Museum, The Rockwell Museum, The Sid
Richardson Collection and the R.W. Norton Museum.
In his introduction to the premier issue (1959) of The Kennedy
Quarterly, he commented, "With the development of interest in
our native culture and heritage, we were amongst the first art
dealers to specialize in the important field of 'Americana.'"
Rudy was in the right place at the right time. While he had a
good inventory to work from, he also had the interest and
developed the knowledge to become one of the great art dealers of
his generation.
He is survived by his wife Susan and his sister Roberta
Chamberlain. He is also survived by his children, Gerold,
Theodore and John; his stepchildren, Tyler Mongerson, Tina Smith
and Lindsey Mongerson, nine grandchildren and two great
grandchildren. A memorial service is planned for the end of
October. For information, contact Gerold Wunderlich at Gerald
Peters Gallery, 914-954-1905.
