Edwin Manton
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sir Edwin Alfred Grenville Manton (22 January 1909 – 1 October 2005) was an English art collector. He 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.
Sir Edwin was born in Earls Colne, Essex, 20 miles from Constable's birthplace. Shortly after his birth, the family moved to Westcliff-on-Sea on the Thames estuary, a location that gave him a lifelong 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 an 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 president of the American International Underwriters' Corporation in 1942. He served as president of AIU from 1942 to 1969. He took over the chairmanship of AIU in 1969, retiring officially in 1975. At his death, he was an honorary director of and senior advisor to AIG. 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.[1]
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.
