ARTS REVES ON THE REVES

ONE MORNING last May, as Wendy Reves was wrapping up the last day of a month-long visit to Dallas, she agreed to talk about the Reves Collection-her $35-million fine and decorative arts donation to the Dallas Museum of Art. She was exhausted to the point of tears and suffering from a fever and sore throat that left her lilting voice painfully hoarse. She even barked her displeasure at museum director Harry Parker, her close friend. Parker, his brow furrowed then as it probably will be until the art critics’ reviews are in, was at her elbow nearly every minute that morning; he desperately needed Reves to make a few more critical decisions about the interior design of the new arts wing before she left town and returned for a recuperative visit to her beloved Villa La Pausa in Roquebrune, Cap Martin in the south of France.

Physically drained, she was a far cry from the brave, regal, almost cocky woman whom Parker had introduced to the press and Dallas society only a month before. She’d attended nearly a party a night for 30 days, answered thousands of questions in a multitude of interviews and spent hours selecting fabrics and carpets that would eventually enhance the authenticity of the six rooms reconstructed at the museum to represent rooms at her villa. Museum staff members, already familiar with her kind but demanding nature, hovered close by. One brought her water to soothe her throat; another canceled a meeting she refused to endure and a third looked on, eyes wide with fright as if she expected the 69-year-old beauty to faint dead away at any moment.

There wasn’t a chance of that. Reves has an iron will that would impress Superman. She’d already spent a full hour posing jauntily for the camera in the open courtyard of the new wing, tilting her chin up and leaning dramatically against one of the thick white columns, holding the position as perfectly as if she were set in stone. The former couture model hadn’t forgotten any of the tricks of her trade; later she could be heard giving skin care advice to a few of the women curators.

Yes, Reves is impressive. How many people can get away with calling Harry Parker, Irvin Levy and George Charlton (the men who helped arrange the Reves donation) “my Three Musketeers” and leave them smiling? Despite the obvious strain, she calmly sat down to answer questions and was immediately transformed into a grande dame. She lovingly recalled intimate details of the stories behind some of her most cherished possessions. She had taken time before the interview to select a small Cezanne painting, a Chinese porcelain armorial tureen, two carved wood and ivory cabinets and a few Renaissance ironworks that best represent her diverse collection.

But it was clear that her favorite is the dramatic silver and gold Sutherland Cross.

All of the objects will be on display at the museum when the $3-million Decorative Arts Wing opens November 29. Since Reves left in May, dramatic progress has been made on the wing that is sealed tight by security. Back then the stark white walls of the six rooms were complete and construction crews were laying tracks where waist-high, see-through walls would be installed to keep the public from getting too close to the displays. Reves complained then that the arched entryway and the main room, called the Hall, were much-too-small copies of the real thing, but there was little that could be done about that.

In early September, luxurious white carpet was laid in the library. The rich burgundy brocade curtains were hung in the bedroom. And the staff had taped brown-paper cutouts onto display cases to indicate where some pieces would be placed. Although much of the collection would be in place by the time Reves returned in mid-October, Parker and the staff were anxious for Reves to arrive and to “do her little magic,” as Parker put it. She plans to remain in Dallas through the opening of the wing and for a while afterwards.

It was obvious, as Reves described her collection on that spring morning, that she is painfully sentimental about each piece. That extreme sentimentality extends even to her personal wardrobe. The day we talked she was wearing a handsome cream-colored silk jacket streaked with colorful vertical stripes, a jacket worn by her late husband and co-collector, Emery Reves. “I wear his clothes, his socks, his ties-his beautiful ties, his pajamas,” she said. “I feel good wearing his things. I gave him wonderful rings, quite large and massive rings. Plus he had his key chain. He had masses of keys and always carried them around. Keys to the banks, and to satchels and to safes. It was just his habit.”

It’s hard to imagine her cleaning house, but Reves says she and Emery would often stay up late and hand-wash the beautiful porcelain dishes that she often used for special guests on formal occasions. She didn’t want the servants breaking them. (The porcelain is now on display in the Porcelain Gallery between the Hall and the bedroom.) A frequent guest was one of their closest friends, sculptor and portraitist Graham Sutherland. It was he who, in 1964, created the famous Sutherland Cross that now sits in the right rear corner of the Hall in the new wing. It is solid silver and gold with the shape of an unusual Christ figure at its center. Reves recalled the details of its acquisition:

“Do you know that when Graham died [1980] he had a list of people who were waiting for their portrait and one of them was the Queen Of England? He wouldn’t do mine because he said I was too pretty. He liked tortured forms. You can see the torture in the cross. He didn’t like anything too beautiful or perfect. He liked beauty but he didn’t want to paint it. As a general rule he painted ugly things, tortured forms.”

According to Reves, the cross was originally commissioned to hang in the Ely Cathedral in England. Ely is quite far from London, but Graham was told that it was not necessary for him to visit the cathedral. He worked from the architects’ dimensions.

“When the cross was finished, it was so overwhelming that it did not go to Ely in the beginning,” Reves said. “It toured. It went to London and to Australia and it was just the big talk of the art world. Emery and I saw it while we were in London and we were in a small private gallery in an old 16th-century house. You had to bend down to get into one of the rooms, and as I bent down and stood up I saw the cross and I was transfixed. I had never had anything go through me like that. We were so excited that we went out and sent him a ’Hello’ telegram telling him what a great genius he was and how fabulous the cross was.”

But when the cross arrived in Ely, Sutherland and the art world were dealt a shock: The cathedral’s huge, ornate altarpiece dwarfed Sutherland’s creation. “It was completely lost,” Reves said. “It just didn’t go. And as it was solid silver and solid gold, it was quite costly. Ely turned it down. That is the way a great artist always works-giving the opportunity for a commissioned piece to be turned down if it doesn’t please you. All I could think of was Graham, my poor darling friend. And in the back of my mind I said, ’Now who is going to get it?’”

A few days later Sutherland and his wife had dinner with Reves. She had made a decision. “Graham, I’m so sorry about the cross,” she told him. “I know you must feel terrible, but would you not be happy if it came into my collection?” Sutherland was stunned, then delighted. “He looked at me and said, ’Oh, Wendy! Oh, Wendy!’” Then Reves told him something that may prove prophetic: “When we make our museum, the cross will be seen more and known more than if it stands on the altar of the Ely Cathedral.

“I had no idea what it cost,” Reves said. “I hadn’t even discussed it with Emery. 1 had my own money and quite often bought things if Emery wouldn’t, but half the time he would pay me back. It was so sweet. So we went in and had dinner and Graham and I were talking and Emery was over sitting with other people. Afterwards, we had coffee together and Graham said, ’Did you hear what Wendy’s going to do? She’s buying the cross.’ Emery almost died.”

Reves paused for a moment and picked up the photographs of the carved wooden and ivory cabinets that now stand in the room called the Grand Salon. Each is about five-and-a-half feet tall and estimated to be from the late 17th century.

“Emery gave these to me on my 50th birthday. We had olive trees hanging down at the villa and huge trucks would come up the drive and break off the branches. Early one morning we were sitting in the dining room having our breakfast when I saw from the window this huge truck. I said, ’Oh, look! Who is that?’ and I jumped up from the table. I was terribly agitated and Emery, with his Hungarian sense of humor, was enjoying the whole scene. I got to the front door and the truck stopped on the front path. They opened the back doors of the truck and I said, ’What are you doing here?’ And I started to scream at them to go away.” The deliverymen said they had a present for her and then showed her two hand-carved cabinets. “They are two of the rarest things,” she said. “I believe one is Italian and one is French. Emery didn’t give me presents very often because he said he was afraid he would buy me something I didn’t like. But he knew I would like these.”

She put the photographs down and pointed to another photograph of Cezanne’s The Water Can. It’s one of 41 major paintings in the collection that includes works by Van Gogh, Monet and Renoir. Most of the still-life paintings, like this one, hang in the Dining Room as they did at the Villa La Pausa. “Most people think a collection is paintings,” Reves said. “And they are so snobbish about it. I used to get very angry with people who would come in to the villa and never look down. On the floor were rugs that cost 100 times what was on the wall and were far more rare. People would never look down or never look on a table where we had fabulous pieces of iron or porcelain. They just went looking at those paintings. It used to make me so mad. If someone did that through the entry, by the time they got to the Hall I washed my hands of them and just went over and sat down in a corner and talked to Emery. But if someone would come in and look naturally at the paintings then all of a sudden look down and say ’Ooh-la-la!-then that was my cup of tea.”

For Reves, the opening of the Decorative Arts Wing at the end of the month will be the culmination of the dream she shared with her late husband since they met in the late Forties. On her first visit to Dallas she reminded people everywhere that she and Emery had chosen Dallas and the Dallas Museum of Art to receive their art collection because the city, like the museum, is young and has yet to realize its potential. Besides her appreciation for the city, she established an immediate rapport with the museum directors and especially Harry Parker. “You see, it is seldom a donator can give to a museum under such circumstances. This is just like a fairytale for me. It is wonderful.”