Henry Osborne Havemeyer
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
Henry Osborne Havemeyer (1847–1907) was an American entrepreneur who founded the American Sugar Refining Company in 1891. He was chosen vice president and afterward its president.
Art collecting
Henry Havemeyer's first art purchases was made in Philadelphia where he bought carved ivory figures, Japanese lacquered boxes, silk, brocades, and sword guards. His purchases were impulsive, numerous, and deeply personal.
Henry Havemeyer divorced his first wife Mary Louise Elder and married her niece Louisine Elder in 1883. Both Henry and Lousine had distinct tastes for art collecting that largely complemented each other. Both Henry and Louisine had to be in agreement as to an objects worth for it to enter their now legendary collection. Louisine focused on collecting modern works by European painters, including the then-unappreciated Impressionists. She was most influenced by her close friend Mary Cassatt, who encouraged her to buy works by Edgar Degas and Claude Monet. Louisine would make 33 transatlantic crossings, returning from each major trip with a bounty of great western art.
The Havemeyers had three children:
- Adaline Havemeyer (born 1884), married to Peter Hood Ballantine Freilinghuysen
- Horace Havemeyer (born 1886)
- Electra Havemeyer (born 1888)
Although each of the children collected in their own right, Electra Havemeyer Webb collected on the grand scale of her parents and went on to found a museum to showcase her deep and diverse collections. Louisine identified some twenty works as a bequest to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but her children decided to give the Met's curators free rein. By the time they had finished an inventory of the Havemeyer's three-story Fifth Avenue manse 1,967 works would assimilated into the Met's holdings. The Havemeyer collection is represented throughout the galleries, but most notably by the sheer volume of works present in the Impressionist collection. Some choice works from the Havemeyer collection are on view at the Shelburne Museum and the University of Michigan Museum of Art to this day.
See also
