[1] It is based on a collection assembled by Helen Louise Birch and her husband, Frederic Clay Bartlett.
[2] Helen Louise Birch married Frederic Clay Bartlett in on January 22, 1919, in Boston Massachusetts at a private ceremony attended only by Senator Albert Beveridge and his wife Catherine Eddy Beveridge, Catherine was Helen's second cousin and close friend.
Leading a cosmopolitan lifestyle, the couple traveled regularly to Europe, where they acquired a collection of modern art.
This purchase was made specifically with the museum in mind, at a time when the Seurat was not yet represented in any American or French public collection.
Over the next several years, with the intention of placing La Grande Jatte in an appropriate artistic context, the Bartletts purchased major paintings by key Post-Impressionist artists Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, as well as important works by other modern masters, such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Rousseau.