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10. ANDREW WILLIAM MELLON
BANKER, BUSINESS MAN, INDUSTRIALIST, PHILANTHROPIST, ART COLLECTOR AND POLITICIAN
Andrew William Mellon was born the year the Paris Exposition exalted Delacroix and died the year Picasso painted Guernica. As faceted as his era, he is remembered for being an industrialist, a financial genius, and a philanthropist of gargantuan generosity. A man of myriad accomplishments, he passed at the history best for one: with his combination of vision, patriotism, and modesty, he founded an Art Museum by making what was thought at the time to be the single largest gift by any individual to any nation. Such philanthropic acts normally bear anything but their donor’s name but Mellon stipulated that his museum would be called The National Gallery of Art.
Cima da Conegliano, Italian, c. 1459 - 1517 or 1518, Madonna and Child with Saint Jerome and Saint John the Baptist, c. 1492/1495, oil on panel, Andrew W. Mellon Collection. Good example of the sensuous, luminous colour that would characterize Venetian painting for centuries to come
As a capitalist Andrew Mellon was a diversifier before his time. Unlike peers such as Andrew Carnegie, who cornered steel, or John D. Rockefeller, who dominated the oil business, Mellon did not concentrate on a single industry and instead financed other men’s risks, lending funds to found new companies or invent new processes and then taking repayment in the new company’s stock. By learning to judge who did or did not have the character to succeed, and by choosing projects adroitly and backing practical ideas, he became a driving force in industries as diverse as oil, chemicals, metals, and transportation and a major player in US commerce during a period of explosive expansion.
One of the first men he backed was Henry Clay Frick. When he sought a loan from T. Mellon and Sons, a lackey sent to check his bona fides reported that he was on the job all day and kept the books faithfully at night. He got the loan of $10,000 for six months at ten-percent interest. Frick and Mellon continued to do business together as long as they lived. The two also became close friends and it was indeed Frick who introduced Mellon to the Art Collecting, tutoring him in how to collect. In 1880, ‘as neither of us had been abroad and the business horizon appeared clear’, Mellon wrote, they sailed for Europe with two associates to spend ‘a happy period’ of five months on their Grand Tour. Landing in Ireland, they proceeded to Edinburgh, London, Paris, and then to Venice.
After his marriage with Nora, Andrew began to buy even more Art and became a regular at the Knoedler galleries in New York, Paris, and London. For decades Mellon would indeed buy art bought art through M. Knoedler & Co.