Archives Directory for the History of Collecting in America

Colt, Elizabeth H. print view role Collector Patron dates 1826-1905 city Hartford state CT sex F historical notes Elizabeth Hart Jarvis Colt (1826 - 1905), was a collector, philanthropist, institution builder, and art patron. Colt was the widow of arms manufacturer Samuel Colt and daughter of Rev. William Jarvis of Middletown, CT. 1865 Elizabeth Colt began work on a formal art gallery to be established on the second floor of Armswear, the elaborate Italianate villa the couple had built on Wethersfield Avenue, south of the Atheneum. With the help of the artist Frederic Church, she began to collect paintings and sculpture and to commission landscape works by other well-known New York artists, including Thomas Cole, John Kensett, James Hamilton, William Beard, and William Bradford, as well as Charles Loring Elliott, who painted monumental portraits of Samuel Colt and of Elizabeth with her only surviving child, her son Caldwell. In 1905, Elizabeth Colt bequeathed to the Wadsworth Atheneum a collection of nearly 1,000 objects, artworks, and documents and a fund to build the Colt Memorial, the first American museum wing bearing the name of a woman patron. decades of activity 1860-1870 1870-1880 1880-1890 1890-1900 1900-1910 updated 02/14/2025 10:12:24 bibliographic search Search Frick Art Reference Library Catalog Search Photoarchive Search Worldcat Search Library of Congress Name Authority File (LCNAF) Search Virtual International Authority File (VIAF) Search Wikidata Entry Archives/Repository Collection Title Collection Details Connecticut Historical Society Library, Manuscript Collections Samuel Colt Papers, 1848-1857. see details... Wadsworth Atheneum Museum Library and Archives Colt Manuscripts see details... Connecticut State Library, Hartford Samuel Colt estate inventory, May 20, 1862. see details... Connecticut Historical Society Library, Manuscript Collections Hart family business and personal papers, 1772-1859. see details... Connecticut Historical Society Library, Manuscript Collections Letter, 1873 April 26, Hartford, Conn., to Col. Cooley. see details... Connecticut Historical Society Library, Manuscript Collections Letter, 1901 January 2, Hartford, Conn., to Fannie Bulkeley. see details... Connecticut Historical Society Library, Manuscript Collections Taylor Family Papers, 1852-1937. see details... Connecticut Historical Society Library, Manuscript Collections Edward Elbridge Salisbury Papers, 1876-1906. see details... Connecticut Historical Society Library, Manuscript Collections Hetty Buckingham Hart Papers, 1856. see details... Connecticut Historical Society Library, Manuscript Collections Colonial Dames of America. Connecticut. Old House Committee. Records, 1899-1924. see details... «  back