The Collectors: Walter and Louise Arensberg

The Collector12.11.2025

Walter and Louise Arensberg were intrepid collectors of contemporary art in the first half of the 20th century. Today their collection forms the centerpiece of the modern art holdings at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Raised in Pittsburgh, where his father ran a steel manufacturing business, Walter studied English and philosophy at Harvard before traveling in Europe for a couple of years. He briefly worked as a reporter for The Evening Post in New York and published several volumes of experimental poetry. He returned to Boston in 1907 and married Mary Louise Stevens, whose wealthy textile manufacturing family had emigrated from Dresden in the early 1880s. [1]

The Arensbergs’ entryway into art collecting was the 1913 Armory Show, a blockbuster exhibition that introduced Americans to avant-garde European art. The couple acquired several pieces from the exhibition, including lithographs by Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin, as well as a small work by Jacques Villon (the eldest brother of Duchamp) on the insistence of art historian and critic Walter Pach, who helped organize the show and advised the Arensbergs. [Ibid.]

Walter, in particular, was taken with Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2)” (1912). Initially ridiculed by many critics, the piece sold for $324 to a Californian art and antiquities dealer, Frederick C. Torrey. After the Armory show, the Arensbergs moved from Massachusetts to New York to be closer to the contemporary art scene, and they hosted legendary salons at their apartment at 33 West 67th Street. Drawing from mutual trust funds, the couple rapidly acquired art.

In the summer of 1915, the Arensbergs set up Duchamp in a studio apartment in their West 67th Street building. The rent was exchanged for the ownership of his masterpiece “The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even.” The couple soon became the leading collectors of Duchamp, even commissioning him to create a full-scale copy of “Nude Descending a Staircase.” [2] The Arensbergs finally purchased the original “Nude" from Torrey in 1919. Walter collaborated with Duchamp on several readymade artworks, including “Comb” (1916) and “With Hidden Noise” (1916), wherein Walter inserted an unidentified object into a ball of twine screwed between two brass plates.

In 1921, the couple moved to California and sold “The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even.” “It was the single greatest regret of their life that they sold it to [painter and patron] Katherine Dreier,” according to author Mark Nelson, “and the one thing they wanted back desperately.” [3]

In 1927, the couple moved to their permanent residence at 7065 Hillside Ave. in Hollywood, California. Unlike their New York apartment, the 5,612-square-foot home had plenty of room for their art collection. “Paintings were jammed and crowded on every available space from floor to ceiling,” wrote New York Times art critic Aline Louchheim after her 1949 visit to the couple’s home. “They filled the porch, trembled on the backs of doors, [and] lined the bathrooms.” [4]

“Has the house ever been photographed? It should be documented from cellar to attic,” wrote MoMA curator James Thrall Soby in 1945. “The Arensberg pictures stand belligerently close together, but they do not fight. Their hanging breaks every museum precept of height, space and light, but you see them clearly, one by one, and remember them in detail for a long time afterward.” [5]

The Arensbergs commissioned a custom entryway for two Brancusi sculptures, “Arch” (ca. 1914–16) and the bronze “Princess X” (1915– 16). Arrangements of pre-Columbian sculptures were displayed alongside works by Duchamp, cubists Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, and surrealists Salvador Dalí and René Magritte, along with roughly 4,000 rare books and manuscripts, including the world’s largest private library of writings by and about sixteenth-century British philosopher Sir Francis Bacon.

“I think we collected what we liked,” Walter told Kenneth Ross, a Californian modern art advocate, around 1951. “We never proposed or thought to make a collection. We suddenly found ourselves in a fix. We had a lot of things we liked.” [Ibid.]

Los Angeles would not have a proper modern art museum until the Los Angeles County Museum of Art was established as a museum in 1961. The closest thing was the Arensbergs’ mansion, which they opened to interested parties like curator and gallerist Walter Hopps, who first visited as a teenager. He later recalled asking about the meaning of René Magritte’s “The Six Elements,” to which Walter Arensberg replied, “It means absolutely nothing.” Hopps would call the Arensbergs the “most important collectors ever in the Western United States.” [3]

In their later years, the Arensbergs struggled to find a permanent home for their collection. Finally, in 1950, their entire art collection was gifted to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The rare books and archival materials that compose the Francis Bacon Foundation ended up at Claremont College, which now displays the works at the Huntington Library in San Marino. Louise died in 1953, and Walter died the following year.

SOURCES

[1] Boddewyn, Julia May, "Louise and Walter Arensberg," The Modern Art Index Project (January 2015), Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. https://doi.org/10.57011/VOSH5426

[2] Chernick, Karen. “When Duchamp Agreed to Forge One of His Most Famous Works.” Artsy.
May 8, 2018 https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-duchamp-agreed-forge-one-famous-works

[3] Riefe, Jordan. “Decades Ago, L.A.’s Only Modern Art Museum Was a Local Couple’s Home.” Los Angeles Magazine. November 19, 2020. https://lamag.com/news/decades-ago-l-a-s-only-modern-art-museum-was-a-local-couples-home/

[4] Louchheim, Aline B. “The Arensbergs Bought Cubists Then.” The New York Times. October 23, 1949 https://www.nytimes.com/1949/10/23/archives/the-arensbergs-bought-cubists-then.html

[5] Chernick, Karen. “Inside the Legendary Art-Filled Home of Walter and Louise Arensberg. Artsy. September 11, 2020 https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-inside-legendary-art-filled-walter-louise-arensberg

IMAGE CREDIT

Photos Courtesy of Philadelphia Museum of Art, Library and Archives, Arensberg Archives

Floyd Faxon: 1, 5, 9, 11
Charles Sheeler: 18, 19, 20, 22
Fred R. Dapprich: 6, 7, 8
Karl Bissinger: 10
Corporal F. W. Lumbord: 12

Image: Left: Georges Braque, “Still Life” (1912–13)
Above mantle: Marcel Duchamp, “The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes” (1912); Brancusi, “Prodigal Son” (1914–15); Henri Rousseau, “Landscape” (1905-1910)
In fireplace: Brancusi, “Three Penguins” (1911–12)
Right: Pablo Picasso, “Old Woman (Woman with Gloves)” (1901) and “Head” (1906); Brancusi, “Bird in Space (Yellow Bird)” (1923-24)

Los Angeles Foyer, 1948. Constantin Brancusi, “Arch” (1915) and “Princess X” (1915-16)
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From left: Giorgio de Chirico, “The Soothsayer’s Recompense” (1913); Jean Metzinger, “Landscape with Roofs” (1914); Picasso, “Female Nude” (1910); Duchamp, “The King and Queen Traversed by Swift Nudes at High Speed” (1912); Rousseau, “The Merry Jesters” (1906)
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Left: Piet Mondrian, “Composition in Black and Gray” (1919); Paul Klee, “Animal Terror” (1926) “Jörg” (1924)
Left wall, right: André Masson, “Animal Caught in a Trap” (1929); Klee, “Prestidigitator (Conjuring Trick)” (1927)
Right: Fernand Léger, “Contrast of Forms” (1913)
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Metzinger, “The Bathers” (1913); Juan Gris, “Chessboard, Glass, and Dish” (1917); Diego Rivera, “The Flowered Canoe” (1931); Lyonel Feininger, “Umpferstedt II” (1914); Braque, “Violin and Newspaper” (1912–13)
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On the table: Brancusi, “White Negress [I]” (1923) and “Prometheus” (1911). Hanging, from left: Robert Delaunay, “Eiffel Tower” (1925); Duchamp, “Portrait of Chess Players” (1911); Picasso, “Still Life: The Table” (1921); Francis Picabia, “Dances at the Spring” (1912)
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Inside 7065 Hillside Ave.
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Duchamp, “Nude Descending the Staircase”; Brancusi, “Mademoiselle Pogany” (1931); Salvador Dalí, “Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War)” (1936); Duchamp, “Chocolate Grinder [No. 1]” (1913); Picasso, “Two Trees” (1907-08) and “Man with a Violin” ( 1911-1912); Braque, “Guitar and Pipe (Polka)” (1920-1921)
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March 16, 1950: a Richard Neutra-designed sunroom featuring Duchamp’s “Glider Containing a Water Mill in Neighboring Metals” (1913-15)
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Henri Matisse, “Portrait of Yvonne Landsberg” (1914); Paul Cézanne, “Still Life with Apples and a Glass of Wine” (1877-79) and “Group of Bathers” (1895); Picasso, “Violin and a Guitar” (1912–13); Gris, “Lamp” (1916)
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Matisse, “Portrait of Yvonne Landsberg” (1914); Duchamp, “Chocolate Grinder [No. 2]” (1914); Brancusi, “Maiastra” (1912); Picasso, “Violin” (1912) and “Seated Female Nude” (1908-1909); Joan Miró, “The Lovers” (1934)
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Mondrian, “Composition” (1936)
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NY c. 1918: Duchamp, “Portrait (Dulcinea)” (1911) and “The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes” (1912); John R. Covert, “Hydro Cell” (1918); Rousseau, “Village Street” (1909-10), “Landscape with Cattle” (1895-1900); Duchamp “Chocolate Grinder [No. 1]” (1913); Picabia, “Physical Culture” (1913); Duchamp, “Yvonne and Magdeleine Torn in Tatters” (1911)
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NY: Duchamp “Chocolate Grinder [No. 1]” (1913); Picabia, “Physical Culture” (1913); Duchamp, “Yvonne and Magdeleine Torn in Tatters” (1911); Matisse, “Portrait of Yvonne Landsberg” (1914); Braque, “Violin and Newspaper” (1912-13)
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New York: Braque, “Fox” (1911, published 1912); Picasso, “Violin and a Guitar” (1912–13); Duchamp, “Nude Descending the Staircase (No. 3)” (1916); Pierre-Auguste Renoir, “Bather” (1917-18); Picasso, “Still Life with Bottle of Marc (Nature morte à la bouteille de marc)” (1912); Picasso, “Female Nude” (1910); Morton Livingston Schamberg, “Painting VIII (Mechanical Abstraction)” (1916)
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NY: From left: Braque, “Still Life” (1912), “Musical Forms” (1918); Duchamp, “Sonata” (1911); Braque, “Still Life” (1912-1913); Duchamp, “Chocolate Grinder [No. 2]” (1914); André Derain, Woman” (1914); Duchamp, “Nude Descending the Staircase”
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