Ailsa Mellon Bruce

Ailsa Mellon Bruce, painting by Philip Alexius de László , 1926

Ailsa Mellon Bruce (born June 28, 1901 in Pittsburgh , † June 25, 1969 in New York ) was an American collector, philanthropist and patron . As the daughter of the banker and industrialist Andrew William Mellon , she was a co-heir to one of America's greatest fortunes. During her lifetime she supported several charitable organizations and founded various foundations. She bequeathed her art collection to the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, whose East Building she and her brother Paul Mellon helped finance.

Life

Ailsa Mellon's grandfather Thomas Mellon laid the foundations for the family's fortune . As a Protestant farmer's son, he emigrated to the USA from Northern Ireland in 1818 and had initially worked successfully as a lawyer before founding the Mellon Bank . His son Andrew William Mellon later took over the management of the bank and also invested in shipyards, oil, steel and construction companies. After Andrew William Mellon's marriage to Nora McMullen, who was 20 years his junior, their first child, Alisa Mellon, was born in 1901. Six years later, brother Paul Mellon was born. After the parents divorced in 1912, the children grew up with the father.

After attending Miss Porter's School , a boarding school for girls in Farmington, Connecticut , Ailsa Mellon returned to live with her father in Pittsburgh. When he received his appointment as Secretary of the Treasury of the United States in 1921, she followed him to Washington DC, where she served as lady of the house . In 1926 she married the diplomat David Kirkpatrick Este Bruce (1898–1977), who worked after 1945 as US ambassador in Paris, Bonn and London. When her father himself was ambassador to London from 1932–33, his daughter Ailsa Mellon Bruce lived with him. After returning to the United States, their only child, Audrey Bruce, was born in 1934. The marriage to David Kirkpatrick Este Bruce was divorced in 1945.

Their daughter Audrey Bruce married Stephen Currier in the 1950s. In 1967, the couple's charter plane crashed on a Caribbean flight and was never found. The couple left three children, ages five, nine, and ten. Ailsa Mellon Bruce died two years later and was buried in the Trinity Episcopal Church Cemetery in Upperville, Virginia.

Wealth and patronage

East Building of the National Gallery of Art

After her father's death in 1937, Ailsa Mellon Bruce inherited the considerable fortune together with her brother Paul and was one of the richest women in the USA. When the American magazine Fortune first published a list of the richest Americans in 1957, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, her brother Paul Mellon, her cousin Sarah Mellon and her cousin Richard King Mellon were listed among the eight richest US citizens. In 1968 the same magazine estimated Ailsa Mellon Bruce's fortune alone at $ 500 million.

Ailsa Mellon Bruce founded the Avalon Foundation back in 1940. This non-profit foundation was committed to schools and universities, hospitals, youth welfare, churches, nature conservation projects, art and other cultural institutions. After the death of Ailsa Mellon Bruce, her brother Paul ran this foundation along with his own Old Dominion Foundation and named it The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in memory of her father .

In addition, Ailsa Mellon Bruce supported numerous institutions, especially in the cultural field. In 1958, for example, she donated three million US dollars to the construction of New York's Lincoln Center and, while she was still alive, donated her collection of 18th-century English furniture and other handicrafts to the Carnegie Museum of Art in her native Pittsburgh.

Her main interest, however, was in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, founded and largely financed by her father , whose president was both her then husband and later her brother. In 1962 she founded the Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund for the acquisition of works of art. With funds from this fund, old masters' paintings such as Saint George with the Dragon by Rogier van der Weyden , A Scene on the Ice by Hendrick Avercamp , The Remorseful Magdalena by Georges de La Tour , Assumption of the Virgin by Nicolas Poussin , American paintings such as the portrait of James Madison by Gilbert Stuart and the cycle The Voyage of Life by Thomas Cole , or modern works of art such as Number 1, 1950 by Jackson Pollock and Improvisation 31 by Wassily Kandinsky . The most spectacular purchase with funds from the Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund managed the National Gallery in 1967, when she, supported by additional funds from Paul Mellon, the painting Ginevra de 'Benci by Leonardo da Vinci from the collection of Prince Franz Josef II. Of Liechtenstein acquired , the only painting by Leonardo that is in a collection outside of Europe.

In 1967, Ailsa Mellon Bruce and her brother Paul donated the share capital for the construction of the East Building of the National Gallery. Since the building, designed by architect Ieoh Ming Pei , was completed in 1978, the museum has shown 19th century French art from the collection of Ailsa Mellon Bruce, which she bequeathed to the National Gallery in her will.

Paintings acquired from the Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund

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  Leonardo Da Vinci:
  Ginevra de 'Benci

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  Rogier van der Weyden:
  St. George with the dragon

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  Nicolas Poussin:
  Assumption of the Virgin

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  Gilbert Stuart:
  Portrait James Madison

The Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection

Ailsa Mellon Bruce came into contact with works of art by the old masters as a child when her father continuously built up his collection of paintings. While the majority of this collection went to the newly founded National Gallery of Art after her father's death, his daughter inherited two paintings by Jean-Honoré Fragonard , the portrait of Sir William Hamilton by George Romney , Seashore with Fishermen by Thomas Gainsborough and the portrait Mrs. George Hill by Henry Raeburn . Ailsa Mellon Bruce later added Fragonard's Reading Young Girl and the portrait of María Teresa de Borbón y Vallabriga by Francisco de Goya to her collection from before 1800 .

Ailsa Mellon Bruce's actual collecting activity only began after her divorce in 1945 and focused on 19th century French painting. After seeing the exhibition of the art collection of fashion designer Edward Molyneux in the National Gallery of Art in 1952 , she decided, with the advice of the museum director at the time, to purchase this collection en bloc in 1955. She added further works to this collection in the following years, so that on her death she bequeathed a total of 153 paintings and graphic works to the National Gallery of Art.

Three of the French artists are represented in the collection with particularly extensive groups of works. More than 20 paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir from all creative phases come from the collection of the collector. The holdings of works by Edouard Vuillard (10) and Pierre Bonnard (9) are also extensive . There are also several beach pictures by Eugène Boudin , two landscape pictures and the portrait of Madame Stumpf and her daughter by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot , five pictures by Claude Monet from the 1870s, three ballet pictures by Edgar Degas , as well as a harbor view and three portraits of women by Berthe Morisot . The smaller groups of works by Camille Pissarro , Maurice Utrillo and Raoul Dufy in the Ailsa Mellon Bruce collection mainly show cityscapes and landscapes . Individual works by Jean Béraud , Mary Cassatt , Paul Cézanne , Jean-Charles Cazin , André Derain , Vincent van Gogh , Childe Hassam , Édouard Manet , Henri Matisse , Henri Moret , Odilon Redon , Georges Rouault , Georges Seurat , Alfred Sisley and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec complete the collection donated to the National Gallery of Art.

Painting from the Ailsa Mellon Bruce collection

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  Pierre-Auguste Renoir:
  Madame Monet with her son

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  Edouard Manet:
  King Charles Spaniel

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  Vincent van Gogh:
  Farmhouse in Provence

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  Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec:
  Carmen Gaudin

literature

• Art & Nature Shop of Carnegie Institute (Ed.): The Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection in Carnegie Museum of Art . Pittsburgh 1973-76
• David E. Rust: Small French Paintings from the Bequest of Alisa Mellon Bruce . National Gallery of Art, Washington 1978
• Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen (Ed.): French Impressionists and their trailblazers . Neue Pinakothek, Munich 1990
• Susann de Vries-Evans: The Lost Impressionists . Roberts Rinehart Publishers, Niwot, Colorado 1992, ISBN 1-879373-25-4

Web links

• The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (Biography, English)
• National Gallery of Art (Biography, English)