John Quinn (art collector)

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John Quinn, around 1913

John Quinn (born April 14, 1870 in Tiffin , Ohio , † July 28, 1924 in Fostoria , Ohio) was an Irish-American lawyer in New York , an important promoter of the most important artists of Post-Impressionism and literary modernism and a collector of Original manuscripts.

Live and act

Quinn was born the son of the Irish baker and grocer James W. Quinn and his wife Mary Quinn, b. Quinlaw was born in Tiffin, Ohio. He grew up near Fostoria, Ohio, where his parents worked in 1871. His paternal grandparents, James and Mary Quinn, b. Madigan, who came from County Limerick , Ireland , settled in Tiffin, Ohio, in 1851, where his grandfather was a blacksmith by trade.

John Quinn soon became a successful New York lawyer, patron, and collector, most notably of Joseph Conrad's manuscripts . In 1902 he met William Butler Yeats and became his main sponsor. He served as counsel for James Joyce and TS Eliot on legal matters. The writer Ezra Pound was his friend.

Quinn was one of the organizers and lauders of the Armory Show , an exhibition of modern art in New York in 1913, at which he once again clearly stated the intentions of this important exhibition in the opening speech: “The members of this association have shown us that the American Artists - the young American artists - are not afraid of European ideas or European culture and have no reason to be. They are of the opinion that in the field of art only the best should be preserved and cared for. This exhibition will be epoch-making in American art. This evening will be a landmark not only for the history of modern and American art, but for modern art in general. […]. ”At the exhibition he got to know the sculptures of the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncuși and promoted him until his death.

Quinn was a supporter of Irish nationalists and with people like John Devoy and Roger Casement associated, although it before and during the First World War for the British secret service worked. In this role he acted as a clerk, including for Aleister Crowley , an agent provocateur who posed as an Irish nationalist in order to smuggle anti-British groups of Irish and Germans into the United States .

Quinn died at the age of 54 and was buried by his family in Fostoria.

literature

  • Benjamin Lawrence Reid: The Man from New York: John Quinn and His Friends , Oxford University Press, New York 1968 (1969 Pulitzer Prize for Biography)
  • Ezra Pound, Timothy Materer (Ed.): Selected Letters of Ezra Pound to John Quinn, 1915-1924 . Duke University Press, Durham (NC) 1991, ISBN 978-0-822-31132-4
  • Judith Zilczer: The “Noble Buyer”. John Quinn, Patron of the Avant-Garde . The Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC 1978

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Pontus Hulten, Natalia Dumitresco, Alexandre Istrati: Brancusi , Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1986, p. 90
  2. ↑ Richard B. Spence. Secret Agent 666: Aleister Crowley, British Intelligence and the Occult. Port Townsend: Feral House. pp. 54-57, 60-61, 2008, ISBN 978-1-932595-33-8
personal data
SURNAME Quinn, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH April 14, 1870
PLACE OF BIRTH Tiffin , Ohio
DATE OF DEATH July 28, 1924
Place of death Fostoria , Ohio