Joan Whitney Payson

Joan Whitney Payson ( born February 5, 1903 in New York, NY, USA, † October 4, 1975 ibid ) was an American businesswoman, art collector, philanthropist. As a co-heiress of one of the largest American fortunes they donated funds for education, health care and culture. She talked with her brother a successful horse breeding and was co-founder and majority shareholder of the New York Mets baseball team. Parts of their art collection are now in various American museums.

Family

The basis of the assets of the Whitney family put Joan Whitney's grandfather William Collins Whitney. A native of Massachusetts lawyer has been through financial speculation to one of the richest men in the United States, serving under President Grover Cleveland as United States Secretary of the Navy. Joan Whitney's father, William Payne Whitney, also worked in the financial sector, owned corporate shares in Bank - tobacco, oil and railways, and served on the board several companies, including the City Bank of New York. In 1902 he married Helen Hay, the daughter of the then Secretary of State John Hay. William Payne Whitney founded by various foundations, patronage tradition of the family. So he donated example, 1923 12.000.000 dollars, the New York Public Library and inherited the NewYork- Presbyterian Hospital 1927 20.000.000 dollars. Joan Whitney's parents received for their wedding of William Payne Whitney's uncle Oliver Hazard Payne, a by architects McKim, Mead, and White build town house on New York's Fifth Avenue, which today serves as a French cultural institute. In this house, as well as the more than 150 -acre estate Greentree in Manhasset, grew up Joan Whitney, as well as her brother born in 1904 John Hay Whitney. He later became editor of the New York Herald Tribune and served from 1957-1961 as U.S. ambassador in London. Like his sister, he was wearing a large art collection together. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, an aunt of Joan Whitney, founded in 1931, the New York Whitney Museum of American Art married Upon completion of the Barnard College Joan Whitney 1924 Charles Shipman Payson lawyer and entrepreneur. From this marriage five children were born.

Sports

How many members of the Whitney family was also Joan Whitney Payson enjoy sports. The paternal estate in Manhasset decreed next outdoor tennis courts also has a tennis center. However, the main focus of interest on generation to the horse racing and horse breeding. Joan Whitney Payson Already grandfather owned a successful horse racing. Her father founded the stud farm Greentree Stable in Lexington in the U.S. state of Kentucky. After his death in 1930 inherited Joan Whitney Payson and her brother this stud and ran it until her death on. Horse racing team won this repeatedly important horses races like the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes.

Joan Whitney Payson in 1950 acquired its first share of the baseball team New York Giants and built in the years that followed its corporate share to ten percent. In 1957, the majority shareholder Horace Stoneham decided to seat the Giants to San Francisco too embarrassed to Joan Whitney Payson sold its share in this team. After the same time moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to California and New York thus had no team in the National League, Joan Whitney Payson decided to participate in the founding of the New York Mets. As the majority shareholder and as a long-time president of this team it certain for many years the fortunes of the Mets. Joan Whitney Payson was the first woman who had a professional team in one of the North American sports leagues.

Art Collection

Joan Whitney Payson learned as a child art in his parents' homes in New York City and Manhasset know. The collection consisted addition to numerous arts and crafts work especially from European paintings of the 16th and 17th centuries, one of which came some works as a foundation, the Metropolitan Museum of Art after the death of the mother. Joan Whitney Payson's own collection they built up since the 1940s. Apart from a few old master paintings, such as the depiction of Samson and Delilah by Lucas Cranach the Elder, she focused primarily on European - mostly French - painting of the 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as their American contemporaries. The collection has not survived closed today. Parts of the collection came in various museum ownership, other parts are still in private collections.

After the death of the collector 1975 a group of paintings came as a donation to the Metropolitan Museum of Art This included besides the mentioned Cranach image that by 1500 the resulting work Virgin with Child by Jan Provost, and the paintings The Mole of cassis by Paul Signac, road from Moret to Saint -Mammès by Alfred Sisley, peonies and the Monet Family in the Garden at Argenteuil by Edouard Manet, the portrait of Toussaint Lemaistre by Jean -Baptiste- Camille Corot, a version of the bathers by Paul Cézanne and the woman in the garden of Monsieur Forest by Henri de Toulouse- Lautrec. In addition, the museum received watercolors by Thomas Eakins and Maurice Prendergast in the context of this foundation. In addition to these paintings, the founder donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art $ 5 million for the construction of its exhibition spaces for American art, some of which carry since 1980 the name Joan Whitney Payson Galleries.

Joan Whitney Payson's husband in 1976 donated to the Portland Museum of Art 17 Works of working in Maine artist Winslow Homer. In addition, he provided financial resources available to allow an extension of the museum, which now bears the name of Charles Shipman Payson Building. 1991, chose the son of the collector, John Whitney Payson, give around 20 works from the collection of the mother to the museum in Portland. The Joan Whitney Payson Collection includes paintings Moret -sur -Loing by Alfred Sisley, Etretat in stormy weather by Gustave Courbet, White cat in the studio of Albert Marquet, a landscape of the year 1933 by Chaim Soutine, Landscape at Saint-Cloud by Paul Gauguin, Two monkeys in the jungle by Henri Rousseau, spring in Argenteuil by Claude Monet and doll in the window of Albert Marquet. In addition, pastels, watercolors, and graphic works by Andrew Wyeth, Honoré Daumier, Pablo Picasso, John Singer Sargent, Marc Chagall, Edgar Degas, Jean -Auguste -Dominique Ingres, Maurice Brazil Prendergast, James McNeill Whistler and William Glackens.

Of the remaining family-owned paintings since the 1980s came repeated individual works in the art trade. Caused a stir between three paintings that achieved particularly high prices at auctions. For $ 53.9 million auctioned in 1987, the Sotheby's auction house the painting Irises by Vincent van Gogh - at that time the highest ever achieved at auction for a painting price. Joan Whitney Payson 1947 had purchased the plant now owned by the J. Paul Getty Museum located for only $ 84,000. Two years later, Walter Annenberg acquired at Sotheby's Joan Whitney Payson from the heirs of the painting Au Lapin Agile Pablo Picasso. This sold for $ 40,700,000 image is today with the Annenberg Collection at the Metropolitan Museum. On 7 November 2007 again concluded a work from the Payson collection for auction. For $ 39,241,000 auctioned by the Hong Kong billionaire Joseph Lau Paul Gauguin's Te poipoi.

Painting Joan Whitney Payson Collection

Jean -Baptiste- Camille Corot: Toussaint Lemaistre

Édouard Manet: Monet Family in their Garden at Argenteuil

Paul Cézanne: bather

Henri Rousseau: Two monkeys in the jungle

Henri de Toulouse- Lautrec: Woman in the Garden of Monsieur Forest

Paul Gauguin: Te poipoi

Paul Signac: The Mole of cassis

Legacy

In addition to the foundations in the cultural field, Joan Whitney Payson involved in numerous other charitable fields, which included, for example, health promotion and education. In 1943, she founded after her mother named Helen Hay Whitney Foundation. The Foundation supported the first medical research in the field of rheumatic fever, and later also in the area of ​​connective tissue diseases. Today Helen Hay Whitney Foundation is active in many fields of medical research. Together with her husband donated Joan Whitney Payson 1972 Pepperdine University in Malibu, the Payson Library. At this university, her son had studied in the 1960s.

Joan Whitney Payson died in 1975 at the age of 72 years. Her grave is located on the Pine Grove Cemetery in Falmouth in the U.S. state of Maine.