Peter Arrell Brown Widener

Peter Arrell Brown Widener ( born November 13, 1834 † November 6, 1915 in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania) was an American transport entrepreneur and art collector.

Life

Widner was very successful as an investor in tram systems and was a founding member of Philadelphia Traction Company in Philadelphia. Together with his business partner William Lukens Elkins, he invested in the expansion of streetcar systems in other U.S. cities such as Chicago. With his entrepreneurial profits he became a founding member of U.S. Steel and the American Tobacco Company and participated in Standard Oil.

As an art collector, he was particularly interested in the acquisition of European paintings from the Renaissance and Baroque. So he bought the painting Small Cowper Madonna by Raphael in 1913 by Joseph Duveen seller and 1911 he acquired the painting The Mill by Rembrandt from the British Lord Lansdowne. Both paintings were in those years to the ever expensive in the world paintings.

Widener was married to Hannah Josephine Dunton (1836-1896), had three children and lived with his family in the Lynnewood Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His son George Dunton Widener Harry Elkins Widener and his grandson died in 1912 in the sinking of the RMS Titanic. His son Joseph Widener donated in 1939 by his father acquired paintings to the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC.

Others

Widener had among others the construction of the U.S. ship USS Vixen ( PY- 4 ) was commissioned. 1896, the ship at the Crescent Shipyard in Elizabeth Port (U.S. state of New Jersey) had run from the stack. In advance of the impending Spanish-American conflict, the U.S. Navy took over the ship on April 9, 1898.