Edwin Manton

Sir Edwin Manton (January 22, 1909 - October 1, 2005) was a driving force in the creation of the American International Group (AIG), a collector of paintings by John Constable and his contemporaries, and a generous benefactor to the arts, the church and medicine.

Knighted in 1994 for charitable services to the Tate Gallery he was, after Sir Henry Tate, the most generous benefactor in its history and continued to involve himself in the affairs of the gallery well into his 90s.

Early life

Sir Edwin, known to his colleagues in America as Jimmy and to friends in England as Jim, was born in Earls Colne, Essex, 20 miles from Constable's birth place. Shortly after his birth, the family moved to Westcliff-on-Sea on the Thames estuary, a location that gave him a life-long affection for expanses of water and sky and which he much later recalled by acquiring paintings of the area by the English painter John Wonnacott.

However, during the first world war the family moved to Shaftesbury in Dorset. There he eventually enrolled at Shaftesbury Grammar School where he stayed on as a boarder, even after the family had moved to London.

American International Group

In 1926 he declined a scholarship to Cambridge, instead following an uncle's introduction to the Paris agent of the Caledonian Insurance Company. In 1933 he was offered a post in New York. He joined as a casualty underwriter with the then small American International Underwriter Group, later the AIG, one of a number of companies established by Cornelius Vander Starr.

Soon afterwards he married and American, Florence Brewer, known to all as Gretchen and they later had a daughter Diana. In 1939 he returned to London and volunteered for service, but was rejected on medical grounds having suffered from Stokes-Adams disease.

He became vice president of AIG in 1938 and served as president from 1942 to 1969, chairman from 1969 to 1975 and finally as a senior advisor until his death. During his most influential years, the company grew to a force of more than 50,000 people and Manton became a leading figure in the American insurance business.

His shareholding in AIG made him very wealthy and he was ranked as the 83rd richest person in the United Kingdom according to the Sunday Times Rich List 2003.

Art Collecting

After the second world war, he began to collect British paintings. His particular enthusiasm was for Constable. During the 1960s and 1970s he assembled one of the best collections in private hands, in spite of competition from Paul Mellon among others.

During this period Constable scholars began to distinguish more rigorously between the works of John Constable, his son Lionel, and followers. In the early 1980s Manton came to know Leslie Parris, deputy keeper of the British Collection at the Tate, who, together with Ian Fleming-Williams and Graham Reynolds, were the leading authorities in the field. Manton discovered many of the works in his collection were what he called Constabiles, rather than works by the master, but Manton took this to be part of the learning process and became close friends with Parris in particular.

Philanthropy and The Tate

His friendship with Parris resulted in the offer of a contribution to the Tate's 1987 appeal for funds to acquire Constable's The Opening of Waterloo Bridge, and shortly afterwards a gift of AIG shares, which established the American Fund for the Tate Gallery with an endowment of $6.5m in 1988.

Manton never took up US citizenship, retaining his British nationality until his death. In 1997 he established the American Fund for the Tate Gallery with an endowment generated by a gift of AIG shares. In creating a fund that would respond to the Tate's wish to strengthen its American collection, he was giving expression both to his affection for his birthplace and to his enthusiasm for his adopted country.

By 2005 the fund was worth $30m, and made possible the acquisition of major works by Robert Motherwell, Philip Guston, Donald Judd, David Smith, Louise Bourgeois, Ellsworth Kelly, Bruce Nauman and Cildo Meireles. Manton deliberately established the fund in a form that would allow American citizens to make donations which would support the mission of the Tate and this has stimulated very significant gifts of works of art and more than $70m in donations.

In 1992 and 1997 Manton made further gifts totalling nearly £12m towards the centenary development and other projects at Tate Britain; he also made a promised bequest of a major Constable, The Glebe Farm. These magnificent gifts allowed the trustees to transform the presentation of British art at Millbank as Tate Britain, in 2001. Taken together, Manton's benefactions, enhancing both the British and international collections, are by far the most generous gift in the history of the Tate.

External links

* [http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/ Tate Britain official website]
* [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/10/06/db0601.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/10/06/ixportal.html Telegraph Obituary]
* [http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,11711,1593812,00.html Guardian Obituary]