Olivia
2000
Paul Green
Oil on panel, 9" x 8"
Photo: Sean Cardinal Courtesy Davidson Galleries

The Seattle collector Wallace Engstrom died last year at 85 after acquiring over 800 artworks since he began collecting in 1985. Often accompanied by a friend, his framer Louie Congdon, Engstrom favored figurative and narrative art, though not exclusively, and was among the rare breed of collectors who never had an eye for art-as-investment; yet, according to Congdon, "everything he touched turned to gold. If he bought a stock, it went up." The same could be said for many of the younger local artists he acquired early on such as Susan Bennerstrom, Paul Green, and Francesca Sundsten. At first eclectic and uneven like the most enthusiastic of collectors, Engstrom's eye gradually improved though he was neither art historian nor connoisseur. However, viewing treasures, mostly prints and works on paper, by Max Beckmann The Shooting Gallery, (1921), Thomas Hart Benton Investigation, (1937), Lovis Corinth Faun and Nymph, (1914) and others, his taste for scenes of human compassion and conflict shines through.

The Harvesters (1940) by Art Landy; Longshoremen (1930) by James J. Vullo; Steelworkers (1938) by Anthony Sisti; and the charcoal Wrestlers by Eugene Dyczkowski all reveal a strong homoerotic undercurrent that runs through the collection and is underscored by Lucas van Leyden's Cain Killing Abel (1524) and Picasso's etchings, The Drinking Trough (1905) with nude men on horseback and Agreement Between the Warriors of Sparta and Athens (1934).

Seventeenth and 19th-century French prints by Callot, Brebiette, Chapront and Cheret accompany examples of German Expressionist woodcuts by Heckel, Schmidt-Rottluff and Grosz, among others. Perhaps the strongest image in the exhibition is Negro Carrying a Suitcase (1932) by Georges Rouault. Dynamic and painterly, the combination aquatint, etching and engraving is a high point of printmaking, commending Engstrom for the connoisseur he eventually became.