Cowan Collection

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In April 1927, twenty-one crates arrived in Nashville from Grand Central Galleries in New York City. These were the first of three shipments of paintings from an anonymous donor to the city of Nashville. Some three years later, upon his death, James M. Cowan (1858-1930) was revealed as the patron who had donated the paintings. The Cowan Collection, as it is known today, is an assemblage of sixty-three paintings donated to Nashville, to be housed in the Parthenon.

Cowan, born in 1858, was a successful insurance executive, who began collecting art while in his thirties and who, by his death, had amassed some seven hundred pieces of art. Cowan spent a portion of his childhood in Tennessee, and he considered our state his ancestral home, because several of his immediate relatives were buried in Tullahoma, Tennessee.

The Cowan Collection spans the years 1765-1923. Mr. Cowan was very specific in the choices for his collection, and in the interests they displayed. His selection of works emphasizes the landscape and seascape more than any other subject matter. And the technical styles vary from the smooth almost non-brushstroke of the Neo-Classic, to the impasto and laded brush work of Impressionism. All of the artists in this collection were American, most of whom were also members of the National Academy.