| PASTORAL 10 |
| Jericho J. BROOKS BUXTON, COLLECTOR I first met J. Brooks Buxton inside the Billings Library at the University of Vermont. My family had received an invitation to attend the dedication of a recently restored nineteenth-century portrait of the library’s benefactor, Frederick Billings. We were interested in seeing the portrait reinstalled in its original setting above a stunning fireplace in the large entrance hall. The event was our first encounter with Brooks Buxton, and we learned that he had provided the impetus and funding to have the canvas and its original frame restored and reinstated in one of Vermont’s most magnificent buildings. Later, Brooks invited my family and me to see his collection of art at his home in Jericho; we gladly accepted his offer. Artists, historians, scholars, and friends who are fortunate to visit Brooks and see his private collection quickly realize that it transcends boundaries. If one is interested in art, history, furniture, decorative arts, and landscape, it’s all there, installed beautifully in his handsome, comfortable home. I first met J. Brooks Buxton inside the Billings Library at the University of Vermont. My family had received an invitation to attend the dedication of a recently restored nineteenth-century portrait of the library’s benefactor, Frederick Billings. We were interested in seeing the portrait reinstalled in its original setting above a stunning fireplace in the large entrance hall. The event was our first encounter with Brooks Buxton, and we learned that he had provided the impetus and funding to have the canvas and its original frame restored and reinstated in one of Vermont’s most magnificent buildings. Later, Brooks invited my family and me to see his collection of art at his home in Jericho; we gladly accepted his offer. Artists, historians, scholars, and friends who are fortunate to visit Brooks and see his private collection quickly realize that it transcends boundaries. If one is interested in art, history, furniture, decorative arts, and landscape, it’s all there, installed beautifully in his handsome, comfortable home. Brooks Buxton is a seventh-generation Vermonter. The Buxtons were farmers who also had mercantile interests and were early settlers in Marshfield. Brooks’s father was born on the family farm, grew up there, and, as many Vermonters of his generation did, left home to seek his fortune in other parts of the state. Brooks grew up in the old millhouse at Chittenden Mills on the Browns River in the village of Jericho, a town dominated by the distinctive Camel’s Hump mountain on one side and the majestic Mount Mansfield on the other. The millhouse was built in 1856 and lays claim to being one of the most photographed buildings in Vermont. When Brooks was a schoolboy in the 1940s and ’50s, there were over 120 working farms in the area—classic Vermont hill farms and prosperous river-bottom farms. At home, Brooks and his siblings often hung their socks on the kitchen wood stove at night so that they had warm socks to put on in the morning before heading off to school. Back then, the Buxtons’ millpond was used more in winter than in summer. Brooks and other village children spent many cold winters playing hockey and, during the hot summers, swam at the falls in the Browns River. On the second floor of the mill, his father put in a basketball court for his children and their neighborhood friends to enjoy. In the 1940s and ’50s, many Vermont homes still had iceboxes. The Buxtons had a large icehouse and in late winter harvested the ice from the pond and sold it to the local general store for resale. Growing up in Vermont, Brooks had a very creative and imaginative environment around him. After completing his education at the University of Vermont and the University of Virginia School of Law, Brooks went to work for the First National City Bank (the precursor to Citibank) in New York City. He desired to work overseas and gain experience abroad, so he spent two summers working in Beirut in the bank’s international division before being assigned to Saudi Arabia in the 1960s. When the bank was working on a corporate merger of Conoco (Continental Oil and Transportation Company) and the Consolidation Coal Company, Brooks was asked by Conoco to join them. He did. He lived in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates; in Libya; and was later posted in London to look over Conoco’s interests in the Middle East and northern Africa before moving back to Saudi Arabia. Brooks spent four decades living and working as an expatriate in the Middle East—an immense area he learned to know well. He speaks fluent Arabic and enjoyed his unique experiences in a part of the world that, during his time there, was emerging from colonial-government domination. From Libya, he made trips to Egypt, Tunisia, and throughout the Saharan Desert, where he felt like a nineteenth-century traveler. Often he found he was the only foreigner exploring the ancient sites and extraordinary terrain. For him, the experience of seeing the archaeological remains of Roman-dominated Africa—the ancient historical cities and ruins—was profound. And overlaying the same region was the history of World War II. Living in the Middle East broadened his horizons tremendously, and by visiting countless historic places he developed “an understanding and respect for the three major monotheistic religions—Islam, Christianity, and Judaism; it makes one tolerant.” With his keen knowledge of history and diverse interest in the arts, he began to collect fine and decorative arts, as well as early photographs of the Middle East. Brooks is greatly interested in Turkey (he drove across the entire country more than once) and in Islamic architecture and decorative arts. “I have made a special point of visiting the great collections of Islamic decorative arts in Europe—those of Tunisia, North Africa, Morocco—these great arts and crafts traditions that were still flourishing well into the twentieth century. I was one of the few Americans to begin to collect nineteenth-century photography of the Middle East and North Africa in the early 1960s to 1970s, when most of my collection was formed. I couldn’t afford to collect it now—the work is much too rare today and far too expensive.” When he moved to London—a city where access to most of Europe is very easy—he found it was the perfect launching point to sharpen his attention in the visual arts, world history, and collecting. In London, where he still keeps an apartment, he collected the work of major twentieth-century British painters while also concentrating on collecting art and objects from other countries that span over twenty centuries. When he decided to retire from Conoco, Brooks left Saudi Arabia and returned to Vermont and built a splendid house in his hometown, Jericho, where he established a consulting firm to advise companies whose work is in the Middle East and to focus his attention on his collections of art, antiques, and rare books. Collecting is not new to Brooks. His parents were also keen collectors; they were specially interested in Vermont decorative arts—glass, pottery, and furniture. At his home in Jericho, Brooks still has the circa 1810 arrow-back Windsor chairs made in Danville that he inherited from his family. The Buxtons recognized the importance of keeping the chairs in the family. “Use and not abuse,” Brooks remembers. “Mother rubbed them down with linseed oil and turpentine once or twice a year.” The chairs have held up very well. In his house, several pieces are purchases his great-grandparents, Alonzo and Fanny Buxton, made around the time of their wedding in 1901. They bought Vermont antiques, recognizing the importance of keeping the heritage of Vermont-made things alive. Their desire to collect coincided with the interest of great museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in building the collections of American, and specifically New England, furniture. The Buxton family honored that tradition, and today, Brooks is the beneficiary. Brooks built his own collection of Vermont furniture and decorative arts to complement what his family’s collection already comprised. First he collected finely crafted furniture, then added Benningtonware pottery to add to a large collection he inherited. For over thirty years he strengthened his family collection of Vermont furniture, decorative art, and fine art with the purpose in mind of eventually giving it to a Vermont institution. “It is important that institutional collections are strengthened and that important Vermont art and antiques ultimately remain in Vermont, rather than be dispersed at an auction.” Vermont sold many of its great historic treasures in the 1920s and ’30s, when antiques dealers and shops in towns like Woodstock and Manchester were nationally known. Sadly for Vermont, countless Vermont treasures left the state. As a result, some of the greatest historic museums in the nation exhibit fine examples of Vermont art and decorative arts. Today, when Brooks attends auctions or visits galleries, he is always looking for exceptional Vermont pieces to purchase. Not all the work in the Buxton collection is old. Buxton is as discerning in collecting works by twentieth-century and contemporary Vermont artists as he is in choosing work from earlier periods: “Wolf Kahn, a European émigré, exemplifies the openness of Vermont. He came to Vermont after the war—as many did—and recognized the uniqueness of the state and the inspiration that Vermont gives him.” Brooks purchased Kahn’s first pastel rendering of a Vermont barn and three more works since then. In Brooks’s collection, the imaging of Vermont’s highest mountain, Mount Mansfield, figures numerously in artworks in a variety of media. Recent works—such a lithograph by Vermonter Claire Van Vliet that depicts Mansfield’s “chin” as viewed across the top of the mountain, and an earlier print by New Hampshire artist Chauncey Ryder that depicts the same “chin” and the Mount Mansfield hotel, which is no longer standing, in the foreground—continue to provide artistic viewpoints as well as a historical record. Collecting gives Brooks Buxton great pleasure, and his collection reflects the best of the cultures he has been exposed to. He wants others to experience and enjoy it, and although much of his collection resides in his private home in Jericho, many works of art, antiques, or rare books that he acquired can be seen at institutions such as the Shelburne Museum, the University of Vermont’s Robert Hull Fleming Museum and the Bailey Howe Library Special Collections, the Vermont Historical Society Museum, and the Jericho Historical Society. For three decades he has been engaged in advising and supporting Vermont institutions and has been highly selective in his gifts to them in order to strengthen an existing collection, fill a gap, or make their collections more representational or chronologically complete. His ultimate goal is to make these important examples accessible to the public for study, enjoyment, and enrichment: “I feel quite strongly that we need to strengthen our existing collections and to ensure that they remain in Vermont for future generations.” As an example of his commitment to maintaining historic artworks, Brooks felt it important to restore the Frederick Billings portrait at the University of Vermont not only for the school but also for the state. “I think it is very important that young students today who come to Vermont to study at the university have a feeling of place and history and appreciate that other people as imaginative and creative as them also went to the university.” Billings was a Vermont hill-country farm boy who went to California, made his fortune, and returned to Vermont. Brooks Buxton followed that tradition but went to the Middle East instead of heading west. “There is a pattern of Vermonters who leave and seek their fortunes elsewhere, but in Billings’s case—as with many others—it was not only for financial reward but also for intellectual reward. He had a desire to educate. I hope that students today have that inspiration, that it rings a bell and inspires creativity.” The Buxton collection is a living one; it is always growing and evolving. In describing why he collects and why he provides important works of art to many Vermont institutions, the collector answers modestly, “Well, it keeps you going. Here, I must show you another piece....” —Glenn Suokko, 2009 |