Timken Museum purchases Zurbarán masterwork

The Timken Museum of Art has purchased Zurbarán’s 1635 masterpiece “Saint Francis in Meditation,” the first acquisition in a decade for the 50-year-old Balboa Park institution and the second Zurbarán acquired by a San Diego museum this year.

“Being able to celebrate our 50th anniversary in this way is really spectacular,” said Timken general manager Megan Pogue. “It’s something the board has been working toward for years.”

Zurbarán, with Velázquez and Murillo, was a leading figure in 17th century Spanish art. He was remarkably prolific, with he and his workshop producing hundreds of canvases. At least 35 of them, painted during different periods in his life, depict St. Francis.

One of those paintings, thanks to a gift from Conrad Prebys and Debbie Turner in celebration of the centennial of the Panama-California Exposition, entered the collection of the San Diego Museum of Art earlier this year. That 1655 canvas, Zurbarán’s “St. Francis in Prayer in a Grotto,” is believed to have cost in excess of $1.5 million.

Pogue said the seller of “Saint Francis in Meditation” asked the museum not to disclose the sale price. Individual donors to the museum’s acquisition fund, and major gifts from the Timken Foundation and Donna K. Sefton, covered the cost of the painting.

“I’m thrilled for them to have it,” said scholar and conservator David Bull, the Timken’s interim director who was instrumental in the acquisition. “It’s a fabulous painting and I think it fits superbly into their collection.”

While the San Diego Museum of Art’s acquisition bolstered an already distinguished Spanish collection, the Timken’s acquisition joins a Spanish collection of a single painting, albeit a superb painting, Murillo’s 1660-70 “Christ on the Cross.”

“I actually thought this was a very good thing,” Bull said. “This will add to the San Diego Museum of Art next door, their Zurbaráns and their Cotán.

“Spanish painting is so important in San Diego. This is adding strength to strength rather than competing in any way. I feel this very strongly. I feel this St. Francis is an earlier period than the one they (SDMA) have, and it shows a totally different way that he was painting. It’s a matter of looking at the painter in all his different styles, different periods.”

Bull said he first saw the Timken’s painting about five years ago when someone asked him to look at an entire collection that had been passed down through the family.

“This young man had inherited from his father, who had inherited from his father, quite a collection,” Bull said. “Some things were mediocre, but there were one or two or three or four very good ones, and this was one of them.”

The individual asked Bull to clean the painting, which he did, and then it was put up for sale. Pogue said the Timken acquisition committee first saw it in 2011, when John Wilson was director, with a selection of other paintings for consideration. Nothing was acquired, and Wilson and the museum parted ways last year, prompting Bull’s interim appointment, the museum’s restructuring, and Pogue being named general manager earlier this year.

The board, headed by Tim Zinn, asked Bull to put together another selection of paintings for possible acquisition to celebrate the Timken’s 50th anniversary.

“I gathered about 26, 27, 28 different paintings, and I threw in the Zurbarán, because I knew it hadn’t sold,” Bull said. “I put in because I liked it and thought it was a terrific picture. But there was a whole range, from landscapes to flowers to beautiful women.”

Bull said he heard nothing for weeks, and then to his surprise, the committee said they liked the Zurbarán the best.

“I never, never expected that,” Bull said. “But I thought it was fabulous that they did.”

The new painting was unveiled Friday at the museum’s 50th anniversary gala, the Orange & Black Ball and will continue on public view.

“It’s a very, very tough painting for a lot of people,” Bull said. “There are no bright colors and it’s very somber. But I find it intensely moving. It’s a remarkable painting.”