Over two hundred British paintings and drawings for the Clark Institute

1. John Constable (1776-1837)
Wheat Field, 1816
Oil on canvas
Williamstown, Sterling and Francis Clark Institute
Photo : Clark Institute

June 15, 2007 — Acquisitions — Williamstown, Massachusetts, Sterling and Francine Clark Institute — An exceptional ensemble of work donated by the Manton Foundation has just entered the collections of the Clark Institute: over two hundred paintings, watercolors and drawings by British artists. A few figures suffice to show just how important this donation is: six paintings, seventeen oil studies, eight watercolors and nineteen drawings by Constable (ill. 1 and 2); three paintings and seventeen watercolors by Turner (ill. 3 and 4); three paintings and fifteen drawings by Gainsborough (ill. 5), as well as works by Thomas Rowlandson, Thomas Girtin, Richard Parkes Bonington and other English artists of the XVIIIth and XIXthCC [1].

2. John Constable (1776-1837)
Study of Clouds, 1821-1822
Oil on paper marouflé to canvas -
27,1 x 32,9 cm
Williamstown, Sterling and Francis Clark Institute
Photo : Clark Institute

3. John Mallord William Turner (1775-1851)
Off Ramsgate, c. 1840
Oil on canvas - 31,7 x 48,9 cm
Williamstown, Sterling and Francis Clark Institute
Photo : Clark Institute

This collection was built up by Sir Edwin A. G. Manton who passed away at the age of 95 in 2005. Born in England, he arrived in New York in 1933 and spent his life in the United States without ever becoming an American citizen. He was a generous patron of the Tate Gallery, enabling it to acquire American art pieces by establishing a fund which today is valued at £15 million. Other donations were also made to the London museum in 1992 and 1997 for a total of £12 million and in the form of a painting by Constable The Glebe Farm.

4. John Mallord William Turner (1775-1851)
Sky and Sea, c. 1826-1829
Pen and watercolour
Williamstown, Sterling and Francis Clark Institute
Photo : Clark Institute

The Clark Institute is both a museum and a center for studies and research in art history, one of three in the United States along with the Getty Research Institute and the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts in Washington D.C. Besides donating its collection, the Manton Foundation has given the Clark Institute $50 million to help in developing the center, enrich its library and create a department for paper studies. The building housing the research activities and the library will be named “Sir Edwin and Lady Manton Research Center”.

5. Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788)
Landscape with a Sheperd Leading a Herd,
c. 1785-1788
Black chalk and wash
Williamstown, Sterling and Francis Clark Institute
Photo : Clark Institute

The Clark Institute has thus become a must for specialists of XVIIIth and XIXthC. British art. It is located only an hour and a half by car from the Yale Center for British Art, the largest museum of British art outside of the United Kingdom, and which has just celebrated the one hundredth birthday of its founder Paul Mellon.

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