The Singer Collection

This collection is currently not on display

The museum, West Norway Museum of Decorative Art at the time, received it as a testamentary gift from the American couple William Henry Singer jr. (1868—1943) and Anna Bruegh Singer (1873—1962) in 1963.

The Singer Collection has previously been displayed at Permanenten, in a designated exhibition room attempting to recreate an impression of the Singer couple’s home in Olden.

The Singer couple

William Singer was a millionaire heir from a family owning one of the largest steelworks in the USA. He chose a life as an artist rather than taking over the successful family business. At the art school in Pittsburgh he took lessons with guest teacher Martin Borgord, of Norwegian descent, who would later become a lifelong friend of the couple William and Anna Brugh Singer.

Borgord accompanied them on their first study tour to Europe, and it was also he who in 1903 introduced them to Norway. These events would determine the rest of their lives.

The village Olden and the villa Dalheim, built in 1922, became their permanent residence for a few years, and the couple is buried in the mausoleum Anna had built on their estate there.

Anna, I have found my country!

For the painter William Singer his meeting with Norway was love at first sight. The most inspiring motifs he found practically on his doorstep, accompanied by undisturbed quietude. Here, he could find peace to paint his late impressionist outdoor paintings, occasionally only broken off by his other great interest: hunting and fishing.

For Anna, the choice of Olden was not as obvious. She had, as so many women before her, given up a career of her own to follow her adventurous husband. This had brought her around Europe, to the artist circles in Paris, Firenze and Laren in the Netherlands, for then to end up in Olden in the innermost part of Nordfjord. Here, she assumed her great interest in furnishing and collecting.

William and Anna Singer as collectors

Initially, the purpose of their art purchases was to furnish their new houses in Laren and Olden with beautiful antiquities they would buy just based on their personal taste. Thick Oriental carpets covered the floors and the walls were decorated with large Gobelin tapestries and paintings bought or gifted from artist friends.

They did not have any plan with a purpose for collecting, but bought what they liked, and parts of their collection was moved between their different homes.

The goal was to create beautiful, pleasant and not least welcoming homes and surround themselves with the best there was to have.

Not until the Singer couple wanted to establish an art museum in Anna’s hometown Hagerstown did they start to think more decidedly about building a collection.

They had good help from among others art dealer Joop Siedenburgh, who ran antique shops both in Amsterdam and New York, and who eventually also became a close friend. The Singer couple also had contact with buyers who purchased art on their travels to East Asia.

They had a rather conservative taste and mainly collected visual art from the 19th century. They did buy some contemporary art, but mostly from artists in their own social circle whom William admired and wanted to support financially.

They did not however, unlike many of their contemporary collectors, buy non-figurative art, because, as Anna wrote in her diary: “An abstract style is always bad”.

They still collected broadly and were also interested in older art, like medieval sculptures, European 16th and 17th furniture, Oriental rugs and not least Asian art of various kinds and from many areas.

In 1950, the newly appointed museum director Robert Kloster asked Anna how she felt about parts of the collection having a future place at the museum in Bergen. He had visited their home Dalheim in Olden and was overwhelmed by the quality of the objects he saw there, particularly the fine collection of older industrial art.

The response was positive. After a few years the list they created together was ready, detailing which works that should go to the museum after Anna’s death.

Among the highlights is the German medieval sculpture of Mother with child from around 1400 and the far more simplistic Jainistic (religion related to Hinduism) sculpture from the 16th or 17th century.

Included are also a rich collection of beautiful 18th century delftware, old Asian ceramics and Japanese woodcuts.

In the collection there are paintings by the English landscape painter John Constable, a drawing by polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen and a number of paintings done by William Singer himself.

Here are silk embroideries from China, silk paintings from Tibet, large Gobelin tapestries from the Netherlands and smaller woven fabrics from the American indigenous population.

Here are imposing late Gothic and renaissance furniture—and a tiny French silver music box that twitters optimistically when a bird pops up from the lid and shakes its feathers.

A rich collection of visual art that was simultaneously donated to their village in Laren makes up the core of the art museum there.

Together with the art museum in Hagerstown and Singerheimen in Stryn, the Kode collection constitute an important part of the great heritage from William and Anna Singer.