The Layton Art Gallery is a defunct art museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Built at the initiative of British-American businessman Frederick Layton, the gallery was inaugurated in 1888 as the first public art institution in the city. Its one-story building, designed in the Greek Revival style by Scottish architect George Ashdown Audsley, stood at the corner of Mason and Jefferson streets, in downtown Milwaukee.^[1]

The bulk of the gallery's works consisted of Layton's personal collection of European and American paintings and sculpture, assembled during the five years preceding the institution's opening, as well as subsequent purchases through an endowment. Among artists represented in Layton's inaugural gift were painters William-Adolphe Bouguereau, James Tissot, and Eastman Johnson (The Old Stagecoach, 1871).^[2] Later acquisitions by the gallery included purchases and gifts of works by Winslow Homer, Jules Bastien-Lepage (Le Père Jacques, 1881), Frederic Leighton, Albert Bierstadt, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Thomas Moran, Abbott Handerson Thayer, and Sofonisba Anguissola.

Following Layton's death, art educator Charlotte Partridge opened the Layton School of Art in the basement of the gallery, a decision originally met with opposition from part of the public.^[3] Nevertheless, the school operated on site until 1951, when it relocated to a new building in the East Side district of Milwaukee.^[4] In 1957, the Layton Art Gallery merged with another institution, the Milwaukee Art Institute, to form the future Milwaukee Art Museum, housed in the County War Memorial designed by architect Eero Saarinen. The vacant Audsley building was razed in fall of that year.^[3] The original Layton Art Collection was entrusted to the new museum yet has remained under the purview of a distinct board of trustees since then.^[5]

Beginning in the 1870s, the idea of establishing a public art gallery was increasingly supported by Milwaukee's city leaders, along with the need for a permanent exhibition venue. Significant artworks in town were mostly confined to private residences, including the homes of collectors Martha Reed Mitchell and William H. Metcalf.^[6] Occasional attempts were made to provide a permanent venue for the display of art, including with the construction of the Milwaukee Industrial Exposition Building.^[7] Inaugurated in 1881, the building was designed by the firm of architect Edward Townsend Mix with the financial support of businessman John Plankinton. The structure was modeled after London's Crystal Palace and Philadelphia's Centennial Exposition's Main Building, and hosted annual exhibitions of art and industry, yet it failed to become a viable option to host a museum.^{[citation needed]}

According to a popular yet unverified story, in 1883, Frederick Layton and railroad magnate Alexander Mitchell took part in a dinner at the Milwaukee Club to celebrate their imminent departure to Europe, upon which Layton commented that an art gallery was needed for the city of Milwaukee. Nonetheless, word spread quickly, with Layton called on the next day by a reporter about his plans to build the structure.^[8] Soon, the Milwaukee Sentinel reported that Layton "was now going abroad and intends studying the architecture and management of art institutes while there and hoped to pick up some information that would be of value in the construction of a model building."^[9] The information was reprised by national newspapers such as The New York Times, cementing the project and persuading Layton to act on it.^[10]

While abroad, Layton hired George Ashdown Audsley, a Liverpool-based architect, to design plans for gallery building. Edward Townsend Mix worked jointly with his British counterpart to carry out the construction. The resulting design was a single-story top-lit gallery that differed from many other American gallery designs of the period, instead directly inspired by British galleries, including the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London, and the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.^[11] The gallery's entrance was designed as a grand portico of simplified fluted Corinthian columns, with a frieze and facade ornements made of terracotta, while the three remaining exterior walls were built using local Cream City brick.^[12]

When collecting works of art, Layton sought out a range of popular artists of his time. He attended the New York estate sales of Alexander Turney Stewart and Mary J. Morgan, notably purchasing a landscape by British painter John Constable, then crossed the Atlantic to pursue his acquisitions in Europe.^[13][14] A great number of his purchases came from fine art dealer Arthur Tooth & Sons in London.^[6]

The Layton Art Gallery was officially inaugurated on April 5, 1888.^[15] Over the next two decades, gifts from local and international collectors such as Frederick Pabst, Charles Fredrick Ilsley, Philip Danforth Armour, Edward Phelps Allis, Patrick Cudahy, and John Lendrum Mitchell, brought further artworks to the gallery.^{[8][16][17][18][19]} In 1893, Italian sculptor Gaetano Trentanove, a participant to the World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago, completed a bust of Layton, while his entry into the world's fair, a marble sculpture titled The Last of the Spartans, was acquired for the gallery. ^[20]

In 1922, three years after Layton's death, art educator Charlotte Partridge took the reins of the gallery and of the Layton School of Art housed in the building. Partridge rehung the collection and allowed drawing classes to be held within the galleries, while promoting modernist art and design. Architect Frank Lloyd Wright presented a retrospective of his work at the Layton Art Gallery in November 1930 and in the midst of the Great Depression, the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration, under the supervision of Holger Cahill, helped the institution acquire works by contemporary Wisconsin painters like Richard H. Jansen.^[21]

In the early 1940s, officials including Milwaukee mayor Daniel Hoan voiced their desire to see the Layton Art Gallery work more closely with the Milwaukee Art Institute, another organization founded in 1888 that had gathered a significant collection. With public pressure for closer collaboration mounting, the two institutions organized a joint exhibition of contemporary Wisconsin art in 1948 to mark the state's centennial.^[22] The project of a new war memorial on the shores of Lake Michigan by architect Eliel Saarinen, succeeded by his son Eero, gave rise to renewed calls for a centralized art center in Milwaukee. ^[23] The move to the war memorial was supported by both Milwaukee Art Institute director LaVera Pohl and Layton School of Art director Edmund Lewandowski, Charlotte Partridge's successor, whom Saarinen eventually selected to create a mosaic for the western facade of the building.^[24]

On July 18, 1955, the Layton Art Gallery and Milwaukee Art Institute signed an agreement with the Milwaukee County War Memorial Center to dedicate spaces in the new building for the display of their respective collections.^[25] Artworks in the Layton Art Gallery collection were relocated to the memorial and, in September 1957, the historic Audsley building on Jefferson Street was demolished.^[26] While the Gallery and the Institute officially merged into the Milwaukee Art Center, the Layton Collection reorganized as an independent, collecting board within the new structure, renamed Milwaukee Art Museum in 1980.^[27]

Between 1920 and 1951, the Layton School of Art, managed by educator Charlotte Partridge, operated within the gallery's building. Its first full-time instructor was Wisconsin painter Gerrit V. Sinclair.