JAYNE WRIGHTSMAN (1919–2019)
New York philanthropist and longtime Metropolitan Museum of Art trustee Jayne Wrightsman, who amassed an incredible collection of paintings by Eugène Delacroix, Johannes Vermeer, El Greco, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Peter Paul Rubens, and Jacques-Louis David, which she gifted to the Met over the years, died at her Manhattan home on Saturday at age ninety-nine, the New York Times reports.
She and her husband, the late oil tycoon Charles B. Wrightsman, also donated extensive collections of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century porcelain, furniture, chandeliers, clocks, and other pieces made for the salons of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI to the museum, which created the Wrightsman Galleries for French Decorative Arts in their honor. A five-volume catalogue, The Wrightsman Collection, was written by Francis J.B. Watson and published by the Met in 1965 and 1966. Wrightsman was also a major patron of the British Museum, the Louvre, and the State Hermitage Museum.
“Charles and Jayne Wrightsman little by little have assembled a collection of furniture and related works of art that may be favorably compared with the great national collections,” James J. Rorimer, a former director of the Met, wrote in an introduction to their collection catalogue.
The duo was also known for throwing lavish parties at their Fifth Avenue apartment, which guests described as a museum in its own right. Wrightsman, who was not a fan of publicity, attended museum functions such as fundraisers and other events and could often be found walking through the Met, talking to curators, and assessing the institution’s holdings.
The Met’s current director, Max Hollein, said on Saturday: “Jayne Wrightsman’s incredible impact on the Metropolitan Museum of Art cannot be overstated. Through her beneficence, expertise and guidance, she has forever transformed the museum, and the museum will be forever connected with her.”
