John Currie Wilmerding Jr. (April 28, 1938 – June 6, 2024) was an American professor of art, collector, curator and author of books on American art.[1]
Early life
Wilmerding was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on April 28, 1938, and was descended from prominent families in old New York City social circles.[2][3] His parents were John Currie Wilmerding Sr. (1911–1965), a vice president in the personal trust division of Bankers Trust Company,[4] and Lila Vanderbilt (née Webb) Wilmerding (1913–1961).[5] He had two siblings, James Wilmerding and Lila Wilmerding.[4] After his mother's death, his father remarried, to Katharine (née Salvage) Polk (1914–2003),[6] the daughter of Samuel Agar Salvage and widow of Frank Lyon Polk Jr.[7][8]
His maternal grandparents were James Watson Webb (1884–1960)[9] and Electra Havemeyer Webb (1888–1960),[10][11] co-founders of the Shelburne Museum, which showcases the family's "collection of collections" of early American homes and public buildings, including a general store, meeting house, log cabin, and a steamship.[12][13] His great-grandfather, Henry Osborne Havemeyer and his wife, Louisine Waldron Havemeyer, were also art collectors who bequeathed a large group of their European and Asian works of art to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.[2] John decided not to bequeath the family art of significance importances back to the Shelburne Museum.
In 2016, the Walton Family Foundation and Alice Walton granted $10 million to the National Gallery of Art to establish the John Wilmerding Fund for Education in honor of Wilmerding's contributions to the Gallery and to art history.[19] He died of congestive heart failure in Manhattan, on June 6, 2024, at the age of 86.[14]
Art collection
Wilmerding began collecting art while still a student at Harvard, purchasing the 1857 painting Stage Rocks and Western Shore of Gloucester Outer Harbor by Fitz Hugh Lane during his senior year for $3,500.[2] His second purchase was the 1850 painting Mississippi Boatman by George Caleb Bingham "which shows a pipe-smoking boatman sitting on top of a crate," followed by The Newbury Marshes by Martin Johnson Heade, c. 1890, which were all donated by Wilmerding to the National Gallery of Art.[2] By 2004, he built a collection of 51 paintings and drawings by acknowledged masters.[20]
A History of American Marine Painting (Peabody Museum of Salem, 1968)
Robert Salmon, Painter of Ship & Shore (Peabody Museum of Salem, 1971)
Winslow Homer (Praeger Publishers, 1972)
Important Information inside: The Art of John F. Peto and the Idea of Still-Life Painting in Nineteenth-Century America (National Gallery of Art, 1983)
American Art (Hist of Art) (Puffin, 1976)
American Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art (Gramercy, 1980)
American Marine Painting (Harry N. Abrams, 1987)
Andrew Wyeth—The Helga Pictures (Harry N. Abrams, 1987)
Paintings by Fitz Hugh Lane (Harry N. Abrams, 1988)
Frank W. Benson—The Impressionist Years (Spanierman Gallery, 1988)
American Views—Essays on American Art (Princeton University Press, 1993)
The Artist's Mount Desert: American Painters on the Maine Coast (Princeton University Press, 1994)
Compass and Clock: Defining Moments in American Culture (Harry N. Abrams, 1999)
Signs of the Artist: Signatures and Self-Expression in American Painting (Yale University Press, 2003)
Robert Indiana—The Artist and His Work 1955–2005 (Rizzoli, 2006)
Tom Wesselmann—His Voice and Vision (Rizzoli, 2008)
The Pop Object: The Still Life Tradition in Pop Art (Rizzoli, 2013)
^"John Wilmerding". Princeton University, Office of the Dean of the Faculty. Retrieved 2024-06-07.
^John Currie Wilmerding. "A History of American Marine Painting Up to the Age of Steam." 2 volumes. Ph.D. Harvard University, 1965. ISBN 9798641983202. Proquest Dissertations no. 0247930.
