Charles Bierer Wrightsman
Charles Bierer Wrightsman (13 June 1895 – 27 May 1986 in Manhattan) was an American oil executive and arts patron. His second wife, Jayne was also an arts patron.
Charles Bierer Wrightsman would marry twice. His first wife was Irene Stafford, with whom he had two daughters, Irene Wrightsman and Charlene Stafford Wrightsman (1927–1963) the latter of which, like her father, would also marry twice, first to actor Helmut Dantine and second to newspaper columnist Igor Cassini. His second wife was the above-noted Jayne Kirkman Larkin (b. 1919).
On retirement, he used his money to buy artworks for his private collection and for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, most notably donating Gerard David's Virgin and Child with Four Angels and Vermeer's Portrait of a Young Woman, along with works by El Greco, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Georges de La Tour, Rubens and Jacques-Louis David. He also funded the Museum's eight Wrightsman Rooms, furnished and decorated in the 18th century French style, and three further galleries for objets-d'art and furniture from that period.[1]
He also successfully bid for Goya's Portrait of the Duke of Wellington, which was instead sold to the National Gallery in London to enable it to stay in the United Kingdom. He also had homes in London and Palm Beach at which he frequently hosted John F Kennedy.[2]
References
External links
- A Guide to the Wrightsman Galleries at The Metropolitan Museum of Art