Page 14 - Metropolitan Museum Collection September 2016

Fig. 7. Portrait of Mary Clark Thompson (1835-1923)
provided by UR Medicine’s Thompson Health.
MARY CLARK THOMPSON (1835-1923)
Several of the Chinese porcelain collectors who subsequently donated items to
the Metropolitan Museum were women, but due to considerations of space, only
two can be selected for inclusion in this brief essay. The frst of these is Mary
Clark Thompson (1835-1923) (fg. 7), who was a keen collector and generous
donor of Qing dynasty porcelains to the Museum. Mary’s father was elected
Governor of New York State in 1855 and the family moved to Albany where
Mary met Frederick Ferris Thompson, son of a prominent banker. They were
married in 1857, and soon established themselves as philanthropists, providing
generous support to a number of educational and cultural institutions, including
the Metropolitan Museum.
The Thompson’s had a fne residence in New York at 283 Madison Avenue
and a summer home in Canandaigua, New York. Canandaigua was where Mary
had lived as a small child, and was also where the couple had held their wedding
celebrations. The estate they bought there in 1863 was called Sonnenberg.
The couple demolished the original farmhouse on the site and built a 40-room
Queen Anne-style mansion in its place. Frederick Ferris Thompson was a keen
photographer and photographs taken by him in the 1860s and 1870s are still
preserved at Sonnenberg. The couple were generous benefactors to a number of
religious and educational institutions, including Williams College, Vassar College voyage, but at the last minute changed her mind and
and Teacher’s College. Mrs. Thompson also supported the Bronx Zoo and the
Women’s Hospital. In 1920 she was awarded the Cornplanter Medal for her
work on Iroquois burial sites. A further medal bears her name. The Mary Clark
Thompson Geology and Palaeontology Medal was frst awarded in 1921 by the
12
US National Academy of Sciences, having been
established through the Mary Clark Thompson Fund.
Mrs. Thompson was also a generous benefactor to
the community around Sonnenberg – establishing a
chapel, a retirement home, a library and, in 1903, the
F.F. Thompson Hospital in memory of her husband.
Mrs. Thompson was also a keen garden designer,
spending a great deal of time on the gardens at
Sonnenberg, and travelled the world visiting famous
gardens, from which she took inspiration. A John
A. Turner, who acted as a guide to Mrs. Thompson
during her 1912 tour of Europe, described how
‘Mrs. Thompson was deeply interested in gardens
and plant life and on her tour of Europe had bought
several fne gardens’.3 Among the European gardens
she visited was that of the Schloss Ambras near
Innsbruck in Austria, from which she faithfully copied
certain garden structures – most notably the gloriette,
constructed in 1915. It may be signifcant that the
Schloss Ambras also contained a collection of Chinese
art. Mrs. Thompson’s interest in horticulture possibly
saved her life in 1912, for – like J.P. Morgan – she
was scheduled to sail on the ‘ RMS Titanic’s’ maiden
decided instead to go to the Netherlands to see a
display of tulips.
Mary Clark Thompson was a supporter of the
Metropolitan Museum from its inception. In 1903
Mrs. Thompson purchased 34 pieces of marble
statuary from the famous 17th century collection of
the Giustiniani brothers – Vincenzo and Benedetto
- with the intention of donating all of them to the
Metropolitan Museum. In the end the Museum
decided that it was unable to house all of the
sculptures, and thus 8 of them were sent by Mrs.
Thompson to be displayed at Sonnenberg. In terms
of Chinese ceramics, Mary Thompson appears to have
had a particular fondness for Qing monochromes, as
can be seen from some of the pieces from her bequest,
which are included in the current sale [Lot 928].
Lot 928