Compare Constellations

Manton, Edwin Alfred Grenville, 1909-2005. Records of Edwin Alfred Grenville Manton, 1927-2005.

Title: Records of Edwin Alfred Grenville Manton, 1927-2005.

Born January 22, 1909 in Essex, England, 20 miles from Constable's birth place, Edwin "Jim" / "Jimmy" Alfred Grenville Manton grew up and was educated in Britain. In 1933 he joined the fledgling American International Underwriter group in New York as a casualty underwriter. He rose through the company to become Vice President in 1938, President between 1942 and 1969, Chairman between 1969 and 1975 and Senior Advisor from 1975 until his death in October 2005. He was a lifelong collector of British art, notably Constable. In 1988 he established the American Fund for the Tate Gallery with an endowment of $6.5 million. He made further gifts in 1992 and 1997, totaling tens of millions of dollars, towards the centenary development and other projects at Tate Britain. He was knighted in 1994. In June 2007 the Manton Foundation donated a significant collection of British paintings, oil sketches, watercolors, and other works on paper by J.M.W. Turner, John Constable, and Thomas Gainsborough to the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. The Foundation also contributed $50 million to endow the Clark's Research and Academic Program. This series contains records relating to objects which do not belong to that gift to the Clark; much of the content is correspondence of one sort or another. This series is a small subsection of Manton's extant records and since the content was drawn from a larger collection of documents and was compiled and assembled in piecemeal fashion, the materials are loosely arranged. Some folders contain clusters of correspondence with an individual or institution or refer to an object. The records include: correspondence with art dealers, especially Oscar and Peter Johnson, Ackerman and Johnson, Leger Galleries, Spink and Sons, Spink-Leger, Salander-O'Reilly Galleries; correspondence with art historians, notably Leslie Parris who worked with and for Manton to produce a catalogue of Manton's Constable collection; correspondence with other people involved with the project to produce a catalogue of Manton's Constable collection; correspondence (a few letters) with Sir Nicholas Serota and other officials and directors at the (then) Tate Gallery; correspondence with several national art galleries about potential loans for public art exhibitions (Yale Center for British Art, National Gallery, London, National Gallery, Washington); color slides and photographs of objects which, for the most part, Manton decided not to purchase; invoices and receipts from art dealers for objects which Manton purchased; correspondence with the Art Loss Register and Kroll Associates, a private investigation company which attempted to recover Manton's lost art; correspondence with security consultants and insurers; letters of thanks which Manton received from the recipients of his Constable catalogue; page proofs for the Constable catalogue; page proofs from the Constable supplement catalogue; newspapers and newspaper clippings relating to Constable and his work and to repatriated works of art taken by the Nazis; AIG brochures; records of art works for insurance purposes; correspondence with the Salmagundi Club concerning an exhibit of John Constable works belonging to Manton.

ArchivalResource: 5.42 linear feet (6 boxes)

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/317495049 View