| McFadden, John Howard | |||||||||||||
| type | Collector | ||||||||||||
| dates | 1850-1921 | ||||||||||||
| city | Philadelphia | ||||||||||||
| state | PA | ||||||||||||
| other cities | Memphis, TN; Liverpool, United Kingdom; | ||||||||||||
| sex | M | ||||||||||||
| history |
According to the Historical Register edited by Edwin Charles Hill, John Howard McFadden was an art collector, philanthropist, and cotton merchant of George H McFadden & Brothers. McFadden gave the Pennsylvania Museum, Memorial Hall, Fairmont a collection of Antarctic specimens which were given to him by the explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, and the collection included flora, minerals and photographs (Hill, Edwin Charles (Ed) (1921) Historical Register, A record of People, Places, and Events in American History, New York: E.C. Hill, 1919-, pp. 116-118). McFadden helped finance Sir Shackleton's trans-Antarctic expedition. McFadden began collecting art in 1892, concentrating exclusively on important British paintings by 1895 (Dorment, Richard. British Painting in the Philadelphia Museum of Art from the Seventeenth through the Nineteenth Century. Philadelphia, 1986: xiii-xv). During his entire twenty-year period of collecting, he dealt only through the London firm of Thomas Agnew & Sons, relying on the advice of close friend William Lockett Agnew [1858-1919] (Dorment, 1986). The First World War interrupted his collecting, and he returned to America in 1913 (Dorment, 1986). Back in England in 1916, McFadden hired William Roberts, an art historian/antiquarian bookseller, to catalogue his collection (Dorment, 1986). The paintings were displayed in McFadden's Philadelphia mansion until it was torn down in 1916 (Dorment, 1986). For several months they were shown at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, followed by the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, while McFadden had built on the site of his mansion the high-rise Wellington apartments. He moved into the thirteenth and fourteenth floors and re-hung his pictures in much the same arrangement as they were in the demolished mansion (Dorment, 1986). The rooms themselves were also reproduced after those in the original house, but up here they were seen in light unhindered by surrounding buildings, and "above the city dust line". McFadden opened these rooms to the public on Wednesdays (Dorment, 1986). Conservative in nature, the collection was largely comprised of portraits and landscapes by well-respected British artists. McFadden left his pictures to the city of Philadelphia, on condition that a city art museum in which to house them safely be completed within seven years (Dorment, 1986). Otherwise the paintings would go to the Metropolitan in New York (Dorment). Philadelphia managed to finish its museum and acquire the bequest (Dorment, 1986). Later, in the 1940's and fifties, one of McFadden's three children, John Jr. (Jack), also donated several paintings to the Philadelphia Museum of Art(Dorment, 1986). McFadden’s Art collection included work by John Crome, John Constable, Richard Wilson, R. A. Romney, Raeburn, George Morland, George Henry Harlow, and Sir Thomas Lawrence (Hill, 1921). McFadden was a trustee of Jefferson Hospital and of the Pennsylvania School of Industrial Art, director of the Academy of the Fine Arts, member of the Union League and Arts Clubs, Philadelphia; of the Metropolitan and New York Yacht Clubs, New York and the Junior-Carlton Club, London (Hill, 1921). McFadden was married to Florence De Witt Bates and they had three children: Philip Grandin McFadden, Mrs. Jasper Yates Brinton, and Captain John H McFadden, Jr. (Hill, 1921). |
||||||||||||
| decades | 1890-1900 1900-1910 1910-1920 |
||||||||||||
| updated | 10/31/2024 13:33:17 | ||||||||||||
| research links |
Search FRESCO (Frick Research Catalog Online) Search Worldcat Search Virtual International Authority File (VIAF) Search Wikidata Entry | ||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||