Virginia P. Bacon

Virginia Purdy Bacon (née Barker) (1853 – April 7, 1919) was an American heiress and art dealer.

Early life Circa 1892. Seated: Walter Rathbone Bacon, Gifford Pinchot, Virginia P. Bacon; Standing: Emily Sloane, Adele Sloane, George Vanderbilt

Virginia Purdy Barker was born in New York City in 1853. She was the youngest granddaughter of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt. Her mother, Katherine Juliette Vanderbilt Lafitte (formerly Katherine J. Vanderbilt Barker), moved her family to Bordeaux, France when Virginia was very young, and it is there that she was educated. Bacon's father, Smith Barker, died when she was a child.

Personal life Virginia married Walter Rathbone Bacon in Bordeaux, France, on February 16, 1882. After her marriage she divided her time between Bordeaux, France, Turriff, Scotland, and New York City. Her main places of residence were Netherdale House, the large estate she shared with Walter in Turriff, and the apartment at 247 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan that she shared with Walter and his brother Edward Rathbone Bacon.

The couple returned to New York at least once a year. In 1914 the Bacons found themselves, and Virginia's brother-in-law Edward, stuck in the United States due to the outbreak of World War I. Neither Walter nor Edward would live to see the end of the war. Virginia died several months after peace was declared, on April 7, 1919. She died in her home from "a complication of diseases."

Bacon's close relationship to businessman and art enthusiast, Charles Deering resulted in several well-known artists reproducing her image. Charles Deering commissioned both Anders Zorn and Roman Casas to paint Bacon's portrait. In 1917 American Art News heralded Zorn's painting of Mrs. Bacon as "the finest woman’s portrait the Swedish modern master ever produced." Zorn also produced a half-length portrait of Bacon in Paris in 1891, two years before his first trip to the United States. It was owned first by Charles Deering, and is now in a private collection.

In some cases she used her position to do good works. For example, to support the war effort Bacon donated several paintings to the Red Cross and other war work societies, to be auctioned off at the societies’ benefit. Most of the paintings and objects remained in Bacon's possession until her death, however, she sold and donated several works in the years directly after Edward passed.

Five major paintings were sold to Henry Clay Frick in 1916 and are presently part of the Frick Collection. She sold him all four pieces to The Four Seasons by François Boucher, and Child with Flowers by Sir Thomas Lawrence. Bacon also sold two vases to J.D. Rockefeller for a total of $30,000. After the death of her husband Walter, Bacon donated two paintings from Edward's collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in memory of her husband and brother-in-law. She gave The Abbe by Anthony van Dyck in honor of Edward and the portrait of herself by Anders Zorn in honor of her husband. Though her portrait remains in the museum's collection, the Van Dyck is not listed in their collection database. Though she died before they were published, two volumes listing and detailing Edward's collection were finished and printed in limited quantity. The collection is separated, one volume focusing on the Old Master paintings, and the other on the Chinese art and decorative objects. James B. Townsend and W. Stanton Howard prepared the catalogs and John Getz wrote the object descriptions.

During his lifetime, few people were aware of how extensive Edward's collection was because he did not like to send his paintings out for exhibitions. The selection contained works by Raeburn, Romney, Turner, Fragonard, and Watteau. The Edward R. Bacon painting scholarship was intended to allow students to travel to Europe to study. Similarly, the scholarship she funded in the name of her late husband, Walter Bacon, was specified as a traveling scholarship. Bacon willed $50,000 to the Smithsonian Institution to create the Walter Rathbone Bacon traveling scholarship for the study of fauna in countries other than the United States. This scholarship received heavy praise from employees of the Smithsonian Institution. The National Museum (as the Smithsonian was called at the time) Annual Report included that the scholarship was "hailed as a first step in the right direction" in the effort to correct the imbalance of information on fauna of the world. Bacon left $50,000 and a painting of Clarence Barker to All Souls Church in Biltmore, North Carolina and $25,000 to Columbia University.

On December 12, 1919 there was a sale in London that included paintings from Bacon's estate. The sale was conducted by Christie, Manson & Woods, and included 40 paintings from Edward's collection. Thirty-one years later on March 2, 1950, the estate of Virginia P. Bacon was again auctioned, this time in New York. Four paintings from her estate were noted in the auction catalog. Her name is one of the few advertised on the inside cover of the catalog.