Robert Allerton’s love of art and music was fostered from an early age by his stepmother, Agnes. As a young man, Robert attended classes at the Chicago Art Institute, studying figure drawing and portraiture. Inspired in-part by the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, Robert decided to pursue a career as an artist. He studied painting, drawing, and sculpture at Munich’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts and academies in Paris for five years. In 1897, when he was 24, Robert dramatically burned all his paintings and returned to the U.S. as a self-proclaimed failed artist to manage the family’s agricultural holdings.
With the help of his partner John Gregg, Robert spent the next three decades shaping the Illinois farmland, creating ever-evolving landscapes that captured the natural beauty of the land that served as an outdoor gallery for the sculptures they collected during their travels around the world. Robert’s visitors often included his friends from Chicago – composers, painters, sculptors, and journalists, who used the estate for inspiration and a space for creation.
Throughout his life, Robert never ceased to study and acquire art. He became an honorary president and trustee of the Art Institute of Chicago (the main building there bears his name), where he donated over 6,600 pieces. While most of the original sculptures and artifacts acquired during his travels were donated to the Art Institute, prototypes and replicas of many of his favorites are still present in the gardens at Allerton.
