Background
Chester Dale was born on May 3, 1883 in New York City, New York, United States. He was the son of Thomas W. Dale, a department store salesman, and Jane Roberts. He grew up in modest but comfortable circumstances.
Chester Dale was born on May 3, 1883 in New York City, New York, United States. He was the son of Thomas W. Dale, a department store salesman, and Jane Roberts. He grew up in modest but comfortable circumstances.
Dale briefly attended Peekskill (New York) Military Academy but left before graduating.
Still in his mid-teens, Dale got a job as an office boy on Wall Street, working twelve hours a day for five dollars a week. Eventually, he became a runner for the firm of F. J. Lisman, which specialized in railroad securities and other corporate bonds. Dale studied intricate mortgage situations and tried his hand in the market. By about 1904, he was trading on his own with a desk at Pollock and Vaughan.
In 1909 he went into business with a friend, William C. Langley, specializing in railroad mortgages and utilities. In 1918 he became a member of the New York Stock Exchange. He consolidated power companies and sold their stocks and bonds to the public. These utilities made him wealthy. Dale retired from W. C. Langley and Company in 1935.
His wife, Maud Dale, had studied painting and, at her suggestion, they began to collect American paintings. Among others, they enjoyed the work of Benjamin West, Mary Cassatt, and Guy Pene du Bois. A favorite painter at this time was their neighbor George Bellows. After World War I the Dales traveled regularly to Europe, and their collection began to include earlier European artists, impressionists, and contemporary French painters.
In the early 1930's Dale became a partner in the Galerie Georges Petit in Paris, thus gaining the advantage of being able to bid on paintings before their availability became generally known. Although guided to some extent by Parisian art dealers, the Dales usually bought paintings selected by Maud Dale. Dale frequently remarked that she had the knowledge and he the acquisitiveness. He enjoyed bargaining for the works and was proud of their increasing market value; but he also loved the paintings as if they were his children.
Dale lent large portions of his collection to the Art Institute of Chicago and the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the 1940's--with the apparent understanding that the museums would eventually receive the art by bequest. But in 1951 he suddenly withdrew the paintings from both institutions and lent them to the National Gallery, although even then he constantly threatened to donate the works elsewhere. Only after Dale's death in New York City was it known that the National Gallery would be the repository of the bulk of his vast collection.
Dale was a trustee of numerous museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1952 - 1962), the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1929 - 1931), the Art Institute of Chicago (1943 - 1952), the Philadelphia Museum of Art (1943 - 1956), and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D. C. (1943 - 1955). Of the last named, he was president of the board from 1955 until his death.
Dale was a peppery, ebullient, and impetuous person. He was a heavy drinker and astonished friends and acquaintances with his rough vocabulary. He was a sports enthusiast (having at one time been a welterweight boxer) and an avid fire buff, proud of his honorary membership in a local hook-and-ladder company of the New York City Fire Department.
Dale married Maud Murray on April 28, 1911, a few weeks after her divorce from his friend Frederick M. Thompson. The Dales had no children and led an active social life, which was recorded in detail by the New York press. The Dales lived apart for some years before Maud's death in 1953. On May 27, 1954, at the age of seventy-one, Dale married Mary Towar Bullard, who had been Maud Dale's secretary for almost a quarter of a century.