Collectors

Susan Dwight Bliss

Active
1954–1956
Collecting
Drawings, prints, and Egyptian antiquities
Interior photo of an intimate library room with chandeliers and an ornately carved ceiling.

Sole heir to wealthy financier George T. (1816–1901) and Jeanette Dwight Bliss (1852–1924), Susan Dwight Bliss was a New York collector and philanthropist. She inherited a sizeable collection of ancient Mediterranean and historic European art from her parents, prominent collectors of the Gilded Age, and continued to collect rare books, manuscripts, and historic art and artifacts herself. Bliss maintained a summer home in Bar Harbor and visited Bowdoin and the Walker Art Museum regularly during her travels through Maine. Beginning in the 1950s, she donated to Bowdoin many of her rare books, manuscripts, and the interior and furnishings of the library of her Upper Eastside mansion, installed today as the Susan Dwight Bliss Room in Bowdoin’s Hubbard Hall. From 1954–56, she also donated a major collection of almost one thousand prints to the Museum, including many neoclassical works and a small but notable group of Egyptian antiquities. 

Painting of a nude woman draped in satin sheets lounging under a tree. She holds a chalice and feeds herself grapes while a cherub frolics nearby.
Le Triomphe de L’Amour (The Triumph of Love) Charles Joseph Natoire ca. 1736
Painting of a partially nude woman draped in sheets looks forlorn as she leans against a tree with her arm around a sleeping cherub.
L’Amour Vaincu (Love Vanquished) Charles Joseph Natoire ca. 1736
Ink drawing of five classical male figures wearing togas and carrying weapons, posed in action at the base of a tall statue.
Five Classical Figures Jacques-Louis David 1809
Horizontal ink drawing of an active scene featuring several classical figures at a ceremony. Classical Roman architecture fills the background.
Classical Award Ceremony Jean-Pierre Saint-Ours 1752–1809
V-shaped brown ink drawing of a male figure passing two children upwards to a female figure holding an orb and a cross.
Sacred and Christian Rome Maratti, Carlo ca. 1674-1677
Alternate view of
Pair of alabastrons (small vessel) 6th–2nd c. BCE
Smooth black jar with two lug handles.
Ovoid jar ca. 3200–2815 BCE
Orange-tinted jar with lug handles and subtle rings visible across its cracked surface.
Jar with lug handles 4th c. BCE
Small black cone-shaped jar with the number 300 labeled on the surface.
Ointment jar 4th–3rd millennium BCE
Bronze sculpture of a cat head mounted on a wooden base.
Head of a cat 6th–2nd c. BCE
Black Egyptian stauette wearing a headdress, standing on a small platform.
Neith statuette 6th–2nd c. BCE
Green-tinted carved handle with a goddess head.
Sistrum (musical instrument) handle with the goddess Hathor 1st c. BCE- 1st c. CE