About the Manton Collection
Courtesy of the Manton familyThe Manton Collection of British Art includes more than three hundred paintings, drawings, and prints by Thomas Gainsborough, John Constable, Joseph Mallord William Turner, and others. The collection was created by business leader and arts patron Sir Edwin A. G. Manton (1909–2005) and his wife Florence, Lady Manton (1911–2003). Born in Essex County, just twenty miles from “Constable Country” in the east of England, Sir Edwin arrived in New York in 1933 to help develop the American International Group. He spent the remainder of his life in the United States, though his love of British art, which he began collecting with his wife in the 1940s, was testimony to his continued devotion to his native country.
Sir Edwin was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1994 for his generous contributions to the Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain) in London. Throughout his life, his appetite for art collecting never diminished. “I am a compulsive buyer,” he once observed. “It’s better than spending your money on bottles of Scotch.” This magnificent collection, a gift from the Manton Foundation in 2007, constitutes the most significant addition of art to the Clark since it was founded in 1955, and perfectly complements the Clark’s holdings of nineteenth-century French and American art.