Arts

A Thrilling Obsession

Art collector Jane Joel Knox describes her early forays into collecting local art, visits to New York City and London galleries, overseas research, and the “terrifying” process of bidding at the premier auction houses.

6/3/10 4:45 PM

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How one becomes an art collector is not easily explained. For me, it always seemed inevitable. I’m not an artist, and I don’t have a formal art history background, but I’ve always been someone with a great appreciation for art. I have always loved museums and galleries and, most important, have always been powerfully drawn to pictures and colors and all the beauty a mere human can produce by his hand.

"The Polish Exile," 1890-91, oil on canvas 46" x 34", William Satterwhite Noble, American (1825 - 1907); acquired 2001, Sotheby's, New York.

A Thrilling Obsession: Selections from the Collection of Jane Joel Knox

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, when I was a stay-at-home mom, I used to stretch my meager resources to invest in local art. I bought works from the Virginia Museum Loan/Own enterprise (among them a painting by Nancy Camden—she later became Nancy Witt), from Arts in the Park (a striking Paul Germain) and from the Hand Workshop, now the Visual Art Center (a Judy Bumgardner). I collected from the Virginia Beach Boardwalk Art Show, acquiring a painting by Sandra Walker, who later became a British resident and soon after was invited into the prestigious British Watercolor Society. At the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria, I bought a Charlotte C. Clark print of a narcissus plant on an Oriental rug. These purchases are still valued and in my collection.

Still, I was ambitious and wanted a bigger, more important collection. The question was, how? It’s no secret: You need money to collect art. My big break came in the 1980s at, of all places, a craps table in Atlantic City. My late husband, Irving Joel, was an avid craps player—and a good one. I had watched him play many times and was obliged to observe his techniques since he was superstitious and made me stay at his side whenever he was winning. Knowing his formula, I decided on one occasion to play on my own. I made an amazing 21 passes in a row—a phenomenally lucky streak that a gutsier dice player might have parlayed into buying the entire casino! It was a heady experience, especially when the men at the table cheered me on, yelling, “I believe in women!” Despite all the money I won, I knew I could never repeat that performance and swore never to gamble again.

We went on to New York City the next day, and I spent my winnings in what I would now call a “commercial” gallery—a place that dealt mainly in prints and copies, with very few original artworks. I bought two pieces, one of which, an Erte, hangs in the powder room of my house. The second is a very unusual bas-relief in an entirely Lucite frame. It hangs at a home at the beach. They are not the quality I later learned to seek, but I was thrilled to buy them.