The Collector: Richard E. Lang and Jane Lang Davis

The Collector08.15.2025

In the early 1960s, a group of Seattle collectors who regularly met to discuss modern art decided to formalize their activities and founded the Contemporary Art Council (CAC) to support the Seattle Art Museum.Seattle transplant Jane Lang Davis officially joined CAC in 1970, the same year she and her husband Richard bought their first artwork together, Franz Kline’s “Painting No. 11” (1951). The couple’s fortuitous decision to purchase a “painting for over the couch” kicked off a lifelong passion for arts patronage and collecting. Like the Kline canvas, their next acquisitions, by Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell, were similarly restrained. The Lang collection grew more colorful in 1973 with the acquisition of works by Helen Frankenthaler and Clyfford Still, the latter a rarity in private collections due to the artist’s early withdrawal from the marketplace. That same year, the Langs joined the International Council of the MoMA in 1973.

The Lang Collection is connected by a focus on Abstract Expressionism and shows the influence of the European Surrealists, which inspired many artists of the New York School. Although based in Washington, the couple quickly became a fixture within the New York art world in the 1970s and early 1980s, buying directly from galleries like David McKee and Marlborough. Jane set her sights on a cast of Giacometti’s “Femme de Venise II” (1956) after seeing it in the back room at Sidney Janis Gallery in May 1974. (The task of convincing Janis to relinquish his personal bronze fell to Richard.)

The couple’s heirs now run the Friday Foundation which sold a number of works from the Lang collection in a 2019 Sotheby’s auction including Francis Bacon’s “Study for a Head” (1952), sold for $50.1 million. The foundation later donated nearly half of the sale’s proceeds to Seattle arts organizations including the symphony, ballet and opera. In 2021, the Foundation gifted many of the works seen below to the Seattle Art Museum.

Photos by Spike Mafford / Zocalo Studios. Courtesy of Friday Foundation.

Image: Philip Guston, “The Painter” (1976)

Alberto Giacometti, “Femme de Venise II” (1956)
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Letter from dealer Sidney Janis to Jane Lang Davis offering Alberto Giacometti’s, “Femme de Venise II” (1956) which she later purchased.
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Ad Reinhardt, “Painting, 1950” (1950); Joan Mitchell, “The Sink” (1956); Helen Frankenthaler, “Dawn Shapes” (1967)
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Letter from Richard Lang to David McKee confirming the acquisition of Philip Guston, “The Painter” (1976).
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Robert Motherwell, “Irish Elegy” (1965, right foreground) and “Before the Day” (1972, right background); Francis Bacon, “Study for a Portrait” (1967) hangs in the background
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Franz Kline, “Painting No. 11” (1951); Clyfford Still, “PH-338 (1949-No. 2)” (1949); Philip Guston, “To B.W.T.” (1952).
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