Grenville Lindall Winthrop

Grenville Lindall Winthrop was born on February 11, 1864 in New York City.[1] His father, Robert Winthrop,[2] was a banker. His mother, Kate Wilson Taylor,[2] was the daughter of banker Moses Taylor. He was a direct descendant of John Winthrop, the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.[1][2] His brother, Beekman Winthrop, went on to serve as the Governor of Puerto Rico from 1904 to 1907. He had another brother, Frederic Winthrop.[3]

He graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor of arts degree in geology and art history in 1886 and an LL.B. in 1889.[1] While he was studying at Harvard, he lived at Beck Hall,[4] and he was a member of the Porcellian Club.[1]

Winthrop co-founded a law firm in New York City with James B. Ludlow and Frederick Philips.[1][2] He retired in 1896.[1]

Winthrop restored a number of buildings in Lenox, Massachusetts, namely the Church on the Hill, a Congregational church; the Lenox Academy, later known as the Lenox Academy; and the Colonial Courthouse, which houses the Lenox Library as a result of his patronage.[2] Subsequently, Winthrop served as the President of the Lenox Library.[2]

Winthrop served as the President of the Women's Hospital in New York City from 1915 to 1941.[2]

Winthrop was an "internationally known art collector."[5] He was influenced from an early age by Charles Eliot Norton and his nephew, Francis Bullard, two prominent art collectors from Boston.[2] He was assisted in assembling his collection by Martin Birnbaum, an art dealer from New York City.[1][6] Winthrop never lent any of his artwork to museums.[7] When he showed visitors around his collection, he pretended to be the butler.[8]

Winthrop collected "early Wedgwood, Pre-Raphaelite paintings, Mesoamerican masks, gold-ground Italian paintings, French drawings, clocks, Korean Buddhas."[1] Initially, Winthrop focused on collecting the bulk of a given artist's work.[8] He owned the largest individual collection of paintings by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and William Blake.[1] Additionally, he owned paintings by Edward Burne-Jones, Honoré Daumier, Jacques-Louis David, Vincent van Gogh, Winslow Homer, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Auguste Rodin, John Singer Sargent, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Gustave Moreau, Théodore Géricault, Eugène Delacroix, Théodore Chassériau, John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart, and Aubrey Beardsley.[1][2] The collection also included major collections of Chinese and Asian art including jades, bronzes, ceramics, sculpture, and wall paintings. Some of these sub-collections now rank with the finest of their kind in any art museum.

Winthrop's collection amounted to 4,000 objects by the time of his death.[1][7]

Winthrop served on the Visiting Committee of the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University for twelve years.[2]

Winthrop married Mary Tallmadge Trevor in 1892.[1] They had two daughters, Emily and Katherine.[1] In New York City, they resided in a townhouse in Murray Hill, Manhattan, until they moved to 15 East 81st Street on the Upper East Side.[1] They summered at Groton Place, a 150-acre estate spreading across the Baldhead Mountain in Lenox, Massachusetts whose main house was designed by Carrère and Hastings and whose grounds included 500 peacocks and pheasants.[5][9] His wife predeceased him in 1900.[1] His daughters were educated by private tutors; despite his attentive parenting, they both eloped with the help: one with a chauffeur, the other one with an electrician.[1][7]

Winthrop was described by art critic Richard Dorment as "a figure straight out of the pages of Henry James."[7]

Winthrop died on January 19, 1943 in New York City. His funeral was held at the Grace Episcopal Church.[5] He was buried at the Green-Wood Cemetery.[5]

The Fogg Art Museum, home to the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection.

Winthrop bequeathed his art collection to the Fogg Art Museum at his alma mater, Harvard University.[1] His will had a clause whereby the museum could only lend his artwork to other museums if they donated US$100,000 to the Foundling Hospital in New York City.[7] In the early 2000s, as inflation meant that the sum was less colossal than in 1937, the university decided to donated the sum to the hospital and plan a worldwide exhibition.[7] By 2003-2004, his entire art collection was exhibited at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon in France, followed by the National Gallery in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.[1] The exhibit was called "A Private Passion: 19th-Century Paintings and Drawings from the Grenville L Winthrop Collection, Harvard University."[7]

Winthrop's Lenox estate, Groton Place, was purchased by educator Max Bondy, who opened the Windsor Mountain School there shortly after Winthrop's death.[9] It is now owned by Boston University.[9]

• Wolohojian, Stephan, ed.A Private Passion: Nineteenth-Century Paintings and Drawings from the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection, Harvard University. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2003.[10]