Ailsa Mellon Bruce

Ailsa Mellon Bruce ( born June 28, 1901 in Pittsburgh, † June 25, 1969 in New York City ) was an American collector, philanthropist and patron. As the daughter of Andrew William Mellon bankers and industrialists, she was co-heiress of one of the greatest assets of the United States. During his lifetime, it supported several charities and founded various foundations. Your art collection bequeathed to the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, the East Building she and her brother Paul Mellon financed.

• 3.1 Painting of Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection

Life

The basis for the family fortune had placed Ailsa Mellon's grandfather Thomas Mellon. This had emigrated as a Protestant farmer's son in 1818 from Northern Ireland to the United States and initially had successfully worked as a lawyer before he founded the Mellon Bank. His son, Andrew William Mellon later took over the management of the Bank and also invested in shipyard, oil, steel and construction companies. After Andrew William Mellon's marriage to 20-year- younger Englishwoman Nora McMullen 1901 took their first child Alisa Mellon to the world. Six years later, the brother of Paul Mellon was born. After the parents divorced in 1912, the children grew up with their father.

After the visit of Miss Porter 's School, a boarding school for girls in Farmington ( Connecticut ), Ailsa Mellon returned to her father to Pittsburgh. When in 1921 his appointment was to the Treasury of the United States, she followed him to Washington DC and served there as a lady of the house. In 1926 she married the diplomat David Kirkpatrick Este Bruce ( 1898-1977 ), who worked as U.S. ambassador in Paris, Bonn and London since 1945. When her father was in the years 1932-33 itself Ambassador in London, Ailsa Mellon Bruce his daughter lived with him. After returning to the United States in 1934 their only child, daughter Audrey Bruce, was born. The marriage with David Kirkpatrick Este Bruce was divorced in 1945.

Her daughter Audrey Bruce married in the 1950s, Stephen Currier. 1967 plunged the charter plane of the couple off at a Caribbean flight and was never found. The couple left three children aged five, nine and ten years. Ailsa Mellon Bruce died two years later and was buried in the Trinity Episcopal Church Cemetery in Upperville in the U.S. state of Virginia.

Wealth and patronage

After the death of his father in 1937 Ailsa Mellon Bruce inherited along with her brother Paul, the considerable wealth and was one of the richest women in the United States. When the American magazine Fortune in 1957 for the first time published a list of the richest Americans, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, her brother Paul Mellon, her cousin Sarah Mellon and her cousin Richard King Mellon among the eight richest U.S. citizens were listed. 1968 guess the same magazine alone the assets Ailsa Mellon Bruce at 500 million U.S. dollars.

Ailsa Mellon Bruce in 1940 had founded the Avalon Foundation. This non-profit foundation dedicated for schools and universities, hospitals, youth services, churches, conservation projects, art and other cultural institutions. After the death of Ailsa Mellon Bruce, her brother Paul led this foundation along with its own Old Dominion Foundation and gave her, in memory of her father, the name of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Ailsa Mellon Bruce Furthermore supported numerous facilities, especially in the cultural field. So she donated in 1958 three million U.S. dollars for the construction of New York's Lincoln Center and donated his own lifetime to the Carnegie Museum of Art in her hometown of Pittsburgh with its collection of 18th century English furniture and other crafts.

However, their main interest was founded by her father and largely funded National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, 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. By means of this fund of old master paintings such as St. George were with the dragon by Rogier van der Weyden, A Scene on the Ice by Hendrick Avercamp, The penitent Magdalene by Georges de La Tour, Assumption of 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 to buy 31 by Wassily Kandinsky. The most spectacular purchase with funds from the Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund managed the National Gallery in 1967, when they supported by additional funding 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 of Leonardo, which is in a collection outside Europe.

In 1967 Ailsa Mellon Bruce donated along with her brother Paul, the share capital for the construction of the East Building of the National Gallery. Since the completion of built after plans by the architect IM Pei building in 1978, the museum shows here, among others of the 19th century French art from the collection of Ailsa Mellon Bruce, which she bequeathed to the National Gallery.

From Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund acquired paintings

Rogier van der Weyden: St. George and the Dragon

Nicolas Poussin: Assumption

Gilbert Stuart: Portrait of James Madison

Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection

Ailsa Mellon Bruce came as a child with works by old masters in touch when her father continuously built his collection of paintings. While the majority of this collection after the death of the father went to the newly founded National Gallery of Art, 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 of Henry Raeburn. From before 1800 Ailsa Mellon Bruce later added yet Fragonard's Young Girl Reading and the portrait of María Teresa de Borbón y Vallabriga by Francisco de Goya their collection.

The actual collecting activities of Ailsa Mellon Bruce began after her divorce in 1945 and focused on French painting of the 19th century. After seeing the exhibition of the art collection of the fashion designer Edward Molyneux in the National Gallery of Art in 1952, she decided, with the advice of the former museum director, 1955 to acquire this collection en bloc. This collection she added in subsequent years by other plants, so that they total 153 paintings and prints from the National Gallery of Art bequeathed upon death.

Of the three French artists are represented by more extensive groups of works in the collection. By Pierre -Auguste Renoir more than 20 paintings come from all phases of the possession of the collector. Extensively are the stocks with works by Edouard Vuillard ( 10 ) and Pierre Bonnard (9). There are also several beach pictures of Eugène Boudin, two landscapes and a portrait of Madame Stumpf and her daughter of Jean -Baptiste- Camille Corot, five paintings by Claude Monet from the 1870s, three ballet pictures of Edgar Degas, as well as a harbor view and three female portraits of Berthe Morisot. Mostly cityscapes and landscapes show the smaller groups of works by Camille Pissarro, Maurice Utrillo and Raoul Dufy in the Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection. Individual works of 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, and Henri de Alfred Sisley Toulouse- Lautrec complete the National Gallery of Art ceded collection.

Painting the Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection

Édouard Manet: King Charles Spaniel

Vincent van Gogh: Farmhouse in Provence

Henri de Toulouse- Lautrec: Carmen Gaudin