Page 11 - Metropolitan Museum Collection September 2016

J. PIERPOINT MORGAN (1837-1913) Interestingly many of Morgan’s Chinese ceramics had previously
been in the collection of James A. Garland (d. 1902), a successful
J. Pierpoint Morgan (1837-1913) (fg. 4), of whom it was said banker who had amassed a collection of some 1,000 piece of Kangxi
that a visit from him left one with the feeling ‘as if a gale had porcelain – the majority bought through the dealer Henry J. Duveen.
blown through the house’, could not have been more different These were on loan to the Metropolitan Museum when Garland died
from the mild-mannered Altman. Born into a wealthy in 1902, and contrary to expectation were not left to the Museum in
American banking family, Morgan appears to have thrived his will. Duveen purchased the ceramics from the Garland family for
on hard work and enjoyed the world of fnance. He was a US$500,000, and then sold them to J.P. Morgan for US$600,000.
dominating fgure in US fnancial circles for some 50 years, After he had made this purchase J.P. Morgan instructed Duveen to fll
with particular interests in railways and industrial corporations. any gaps in the collection in order to make it more comprehensive.
Morgan also expended some of his considerable energies on This instruction reportedly cost Morgan some US$200,000 in 1902
collecting art and supporting museums and other cultural alone. When J.P. Morgan died in 1913 and his heirs had to sell his
institutions. Indeed the text of the limestone memorial tablet Chinese ceramic collection, Henry Duveen was once more on hand
to Morgan set into the south wall of the entrance to the to purchase it for US$3 million. In 1915-16 Duveen sold the greater
Metropolitan Museum concludes with the phrase: Vita Plena portion of the collection to J.D. Rockefeller Jr. (1874-1960), Henry
Laboris – ‘a life full of work’. Clay Frick (1849-1919) and Joseph E. Widener (1872-1943) for
US$3.35 million.
As a young man, in the 1850s, Morgan studied at Bellerive,
near Vevey in Switzerland, with a view to improving his Fig. 4. Portrait of J. Pierpont Morgan.
French, followed by further study at the University of The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, ARC2701.
Göttingen, in Germany, to improve his German. In 1857
he entered the London branch of his father’s merchant
bank, moving to New York in 1858. As his career
progressed Morgan’s interests also expanded into felds such
as newspapers, steel, and shipping. Morgan’s International
Mercantile Marine Company owned the White Star Line,
to which the ‘RMS Titanic’ belonged, and Morgan was
scheduled to sail on her ill-fated maiden voyage in his private
suite. However, at the last minute he decided to stay on in
Aix-les-Bains in France – a decision which, in all probability,
saved his life. Morgan was also an important collector of
gems, and assembled his frst collection of gemstones under
the guidance of Tiffany’s chief gemmologist George Frederick
Kunz. In 1911 Kunz named a newly found gem ‘Morganite’
after J.P. Morgan.

Morgan frst became a patron of the Metropolitan Museum
in 1871, just a year after it was founded and in 1888 joined
the board of trustees. In 1897 he gave the Museum what
was to be the frst of many gifts of works of art. In 1904 he
was frst elected vice president and then president later in the
same year, a post he retained until his death in 1913. He
presided over the building expansions and also loaned parts
of his own collection to almost every department of the
museum. A photograph from May 1913 shows some of his
Chinese ceramics on display in the Museum’s Gallery 6, as
they were at the time of his death. Morgan had not specifed
his intentions in regard to his collection after his death,
other than to note in his will that it should be used for the
education and enjoyment of the general public. Although his
son, J.P. Morgan Jr., gave the Museum some 7,000 objects
from his father’s collection, these did not include the Chinese
ceramics which had been on loan. Morgan’s Chinese ceramics
constituted one of the largest sections of his art collection, and
were among those items which had to be sold by his heirs to
cover death duties.

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