University of Virginia Art Museum curator Andrea Douglas, along with associate art professor Maurie McInnis and architecture professor Richard Guy Wilson, working with the Landons, selected and researched the objects included in the show. They also developed courses at the university and prepared an American studies symposium on the collection. Art history graduate students visited the collection, studied the pieces and wrote the catalog entries. It was truly an academical village cooperation and the result is most impressive.

A 1745 Boston mahogany bureau table or knee-hole desk demonstrates the more reserved form of pieces made in Massachusetts at the time.

“A Jeffersonian Ideal: Selections from the Dr and Mrs HenryC. Landon III Collection of American Fine and Decorative Art”comprises some 70 pieces of American fine and decorative art. Theobjects are, according to Douglas, a balanced representation of theLandon holdings, which are divided equally between fine anddecorative art. Douglas and her team made their selections ofobjects to be placed on view considering the pieces the Landonsenjoyed the most and with an eye toward representing the importantschools, forms or figures in the panoply of decorative arts in theEighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.

For example, Douglas points to a Benjamin West genre painting, the 1796 “Laborers Resting Near London” that is an atypical West. Not only is it fairly small (15 by 21 inches) for a West picture, but the subject matter is considerably less grand than his usual epic representations. Its inclusion in the exhibit, notes Douglas, rounds out our knowledge of the artist. Other works on view are there specifically to expand the visitor’s knowledge. They may not be iconic works, but they have been chosen carefully by the collectors and by the museum for what they tell us.

Douglas remarks that the Landons never sought those iconic pieces, but looked instead for pieces by important makers in forms that are seldom seen. She says that they were as interested in scholarship as they were in collecting. It is fitting that the collection is on view at the university where exposure to the arts is a requirement. As Douglas points out, the Jeffersonian ideal drives what happens at the University of Virginia.

Among the major furniture pieces on view is a Hartford, Conn., Federal cherry sideboard. Its flamboyant inlay suggests the influence of Massachusetts furniture maker Nathan Lombard, and the influence of the Hepplewhite tradition is evident in its form. It is, as Andrea Douglas says, simply, “Unbelievably beautiful.”

The Landons acquired the sideboard in the 1960s through Craig and Tarlton of Raleigh, N.C., who guided them to a number of other pieces, including a Garvan Philadelphia high chest, a pair of Philadelphia Chippendale side chairs and eight late Eighteenth Century Philadelphia dining chairs.

The circa 1810 giltwood girandole mirror has four arms and a nice eagle finial.

A 96-inch Philadelphia walnut high chest with carvingattributed to Nicholas Bernard dates from 1760 and demonstrates theexuberance of ornament that was typically Philadelphian. It standsin marked contrast to a Salem cherry example that was executed withregional restraint.

Collector Henry Landon describes his and his wife Barbara’s early collecting, freely admitting to the mistakes of many novices. As he explains, “We both grew up in homes filled with antiques,” he in North Wilkesboro, N.C., where he practiced internal medicine for years, and his wife along the eastern shore of Maryland.

Their 1958 meeting was a romantic one – aboard the RMS Queen Mary on the second night out en route to England where Henry Landon was headed for the first conference on the link between cigarette smoking and cancer. Barbara Landon spoke French like a native and captured his interest straightaway. When they married the next year, they looked to furnish their home in a way similar to what they had known. When they began, they bought reproductions of late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Century pieces, some outright fakes, some married pieces and what he describes as “Americanized English” pieces. From the start, they concentrated on American furniture made between 1715 and 1810. The consistent unifying factor in their collecting has been originality of form.

As their taste evolved and Landons determined that they wanted the best and truest of particular forms, they sought out dealers who would be straightforward about a piece’s qualities and shortcomings. It was an extensive search until they found James Craig and Sam Tarlton. Craig offered guidance and honest opinions. Through him the Landons eventually extended their dealer range around the country. They studied as they searched, recycling early mistakes, researching and refining their holdings along the way.

Each acquisition was special and remains so, and the result is a simply superlative collection.

Some objects in their collection represent the third and fourth iteration of a particular form. As Landon puts it, “We sometimes went through three or four replacements until we found ‘the real McCoy.'” For example, the stunning Hartford sideboard on view is the third such piece in their collection’s evolution.

As the Civil War drew to a close, Winslow Homer moved from illustration to painting. He painted “Old Woman Gathering Faggots” in 1865. It is a later picture than most others in the Landon collection.

Among the earliest pieces on view is a coastal Massachusettsdressing table made circa 1715 that demonstrates the solidity ofform that characterizes the colonial period. Another is an earlybaroque or William and Mary high chest that dates from about 1720.

Their collection and their expertise flourished along with a demanding career, children, dogs, cats and whatever else came their way. Although the Landons pretty much completed their collection of furniture by the early 1980s, and the pieces remain in constant use by family members, Landon hesitates to say that he and his wife have retired from collecting altogether.

In keeping with the Jeffersonian principles that Henry Landon absorbed as an undergraduate and a medical student at UVA, the Landons engage in scholarship themselves but, more importantly, they have shared their collection and their connoisseurship with the community of curators, scholars and collectors across the country. Objects from their collection have been on view in several major museum shows. Landon suggested that his university years were probably the genesis of his collecting. As a student, he patronized a local antiques shop, buying Christmas presents and other bibelots.

As the Landons turned to paintings, they sought works appropriate to their furniture. They admired the work of Copley, Charles Willson Peale, Gilbert Stuart and Benjamin West, but they thought initially that works by such masters were out of reach. Accordingly, they bought work by students of those artists. One early acquisition was a 1784 portrait of F.W. Greyer by Mather Brown that was acquired from Vose Galleries in Boston. Vose also supplied a portrait of David Lincoln by James Frothingham, a student of Gilbert Stuart.

In 1971, the Landons bought the 1818 picture by Joshua Shaw that was believed at the time to be the earliest known American landscape painting. That was disproved two years later when the 1815 “A Meeting by the River” by Alvin Fisher went to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

They went on to acquire gems by Copley, Peale, Stuart and West that are on view, along with an album of 23 pictures by members of the Boston Art Club. The artists presented the album to Fannie Kemble in 1857 in gratitude for a reading she gave to help raise funds for a new gallery.

The Landons added a Bierstadt view of sea turtles on a beach near Nassau, a Frank W. Benson, a glorious Severin Roesen still life, a pair of Antonio Jacobsen ship portraits and a Benjamin Champney, among others.

Landon also writes that when he and his wife considered a picture, they studied the artist, the subject’s history and the family’s history. When they began gathering their paintings collection, there was no library in their area with substantive art reference materials. So they created their own. By 1990 their library had grown to some 1,500 volumes.

Sculpture was also an area of great interest, particularly for Barbara Landon. The genesis of the Landons’ sculpture collection was a gift, the bronze “Frog Baby” by Edith Parsons, one of 12 cast. It is on view in the exhibit.

The Landon collection is remarkably rounded; it embraces all the arts, much as Jefferson enumerated them. The catalog is exhaustive and scholarly and is available from the museum.

“A Jeffersonian Ideal: Selections from the Dr and Mrs Henry C. Landon III Collection of American Fine and Decorative Art” remains on view through November 23 at the University of Virginia Art Museum.

For information, 434-924-3592 or www.virginia.edu/artmuseum.