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Suggest pagesJohn Julius Angerstein
John Julius Angerstein (1732 – 22 January 1823),[1] was a London merchant, Lloyd's under-writer, and patron of the fine arts. The imminent prospect that his collection of paintings was about to be sold by his estate, in 1824, galvanized the founding of the National Gallery, London.[2]
Angerstein was born in St Petersburg, Russia and settled in London in about 1749. It has wrongly been suggested that he was an illegitimate son of Catherine the Great or of Elizabeth, Empress of Russia. Family tradition holds that his true parents were Anna of Russia and the London merchant Andrew Poulett Thompson; his first position after arriving in London at the age of fifteen was in Thompson's counting house.[1]
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[edit] Family
Angerstein married Anna, widow of Charles Crockett and daughter of Henry Muilman (1700–1772) a South Sea Company director, banker, Danish consul in London and Russia Company consul, and Anne née Darnall at St Peter-le-Poer, Old Broad Street in 1771. They had two children; Juliana who married General Sablenkoff of the Russia Service and John Angerstein MP (1773–1858).
Anna died in 1783 and in 1785 John Julius Angerstein married Eliza, daughter of the Rev. Joseph Payne and widow of Thomas Lucas, a director of the South Sea Company, president of Guy's Hospital and West Indies merchant. The Louvre holds Sir Thomas Lawrence's portrait of Angerstein and his second wife which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1792.
[edit] Life and art collection
In his role as a merchant he was said to own a third share in slave estates in Grenada, using profits from the slave trade to build up his art collection (and also benefiting from Lloyd's underwriting of the slave trade). Angerstein was chairman of Lloyd's from 1790 to 1796 and counted King George III, British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger and artist Sir Thomas Lawrence[3] among his friends. Although a slave owner, he was also on the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor an organisation with strong abolitionist connections.
After a number of knife attacks on women by the so-called "London Monster", Angerstein promised a reward of £100 for capture of the perpetrator.
Among his earliest art purchases was The Rape of the Sabines by Rubens; later acquisitions included works by Rembrandt, Velázquez, Titian, Raphael, Correggio and Hogarth, plus early drawings by J.M.W. Turner. From the break-up in London of the Orleans Collection he bought The Raising of Lazarus by Sebastiano del Piombo and several other works. His collection of paintings, consisting of about forty of the most exquisite specimens of the art, was purchased by the British government after his death, and formed the nucleus of the collection of the National Gallery.[4] Until the National Gallery was built in Trafalgar Square, the 38 works from Angerstein's collection were displayed in Angerstein's town house in Pall Mall.
He lived for some years in Greenwich in south-east London, leasing a 54-acre (220,000 m2) estate from Sir Gregory Page in 1774 and over the next two years building a house, Woodlands (designed by local architect George Gibson).[5] This area is now known as Westcombe Park, part of a wide area on the north-eastern fringes of Blackheath that he sought to enclose in 1801. The house fell empty in 1870 when John's grandson William Angerstein relinquished the lease.[6]
In 1806, Angerstein served as Vice-president of the newly formed London Institution, and the previous year became a founding governor of the British Institution for Promoting the Fine Arts in the United Kingdom. As an active churchgoer, he worshipped in Greenwich town centre at St Alfege's Church - where he was also churchwarden.
[edit] Connections today
His family's connections with the borough are still remembered. Angerstein Lane, near the heath at Blackheath, bears the family name. A public house, The Angerstein Hotel, is on Woolwich Road, Greenwich, close to the Woolwich Road flyover (Blackwall Tunnel A102 southern approach) - on the opposite side of which lies the Angerstein Business Park (owned by Greenwich Enterprise Board). Just behind this is the 'Angerstein Railway Line' (in 2003 believed to be only used for commercial freight, mainly sea-dredged aggregate landed at Angerstein Wharf), linking the peninsula at North Greenwich with the main railway network; as a result, an area of largely industrial land in between the lines, and to the east of the A102 road, is sometimes referred to as the 'Angerstein Triangle'.
[edit] Notes and references
- ^ a b Palmer, Sarah (2004). "John Julius Angerstein (c.1732–1823)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
- ^ W. G. Constable, "The Foundation of the National Gallery", The Burlington Magazine 44 (April 1924:158-159, 162-167, 170-72).
- ^ Lawrence's double portrait of Angerstein and his wife is conserved in the Louvre Museum.
- ^
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). "Angerstein, John Julius". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. - ^ Rhind, N. (1983) Blackheath Village & Environs, 1790-1970, Vol 2 (Bookshop Blackheath, London), p. 274.
- ^ Conservation team staff (October 2007). "Character appraisal Westcombe Park Conservation Area". London Borough of Greenwich. pp. 10–12. http://www.greenwich.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/419D961C-FD3D-4078-B0BD-455A8660469F/0/WPCAD02AppraisalA.pdf. Retrieved 2008-10-26.
- ^ "John Julius Angerstein, aged over 80". Paintings. London: The National Gallery. http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/sir-thomas-lawrence-john-julius-angerstein-aged-over-80. Retrieved 13 January 2010.
[edit] External links
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