Abstract:
Over one-hundred paintings purchased by the State Art Commission in 1952 with the General Assembly’s one-million-dollar appropriation of 1947 included several well-known Nativity scenes by European masters. One of the most important of them was Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens’, “The Holy Family with St. Anne.” A donation from the Phifer family of North Carolina to the State Art Society was also important in broadening the collection, which is now at the North Carolina Museum of Art.