WILLIAMSTOWN, MA.- The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute announced today that the Manton Foundation has donated a significant collection of British paintings, oil sketches, watercolors, and other works on paper by J.M.W. Turner, John Constable, and Thomas Gainsborough, among others. As part of this gift, the foundation has contributed $50 million to endow the Clark’s acclaimed Research and Academic Program, a leading international center for discussion and scholarship in the visual arts. The Clark Fellows Program supports scholars from around the world who come to Williamstown to work in its distinguished art history library and participate in its conferences, symposia, and colloquia. The Clark also sponsors and houses on its campus the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art, one of the nation’s leading masters programs in art history.

The Manton Collection and Foundation were created by Sir Edwin A. G. Manton, a business leader and arts patron, who died in October 2005 at the age of 96. Mr. Manton amassed a collection of over 200 works, mainly watercolors, drawings, prints, oil studies, as well as oil paintings. Among the highlights of the gift to the Clark are Turner’s Off Ramsgate (1840) and Constable’s Wheatfield (1816) and Cloud Study (1821–22). The collection includes three paintings and seventeen watercolors by Turner; six paintings, seventeen oil studies, eight watercolors, and nineteen drawings by Constable; and three oil paintings and fifteen drawings by Gainsborough. The collection also includes significant works by Thomas Rowlandson, Thomas Girtin, and Richard Parkes Bonington, among other British artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Gainsborough, Constable, and Turner: The Manton Collection will go on view in a special installation at the Clark this summer.

Sir Edwin A. G. Manton, known to his friends and colleagues as “Jimmy,” was a driving force in the development of American International Group (AIG). Mr. Manton was born in Essex County, just a few miles from Constable’s birthplace and arrived in New York in 1933 to work for AIG. He rose swiftly in the young company and become a vice president in 1938 and served as president from 1942 to 1969, chairman from 1969 to 1975, and finally as a senior advisor until his death. Despite his long residence in the United States, he never took U.S. citizenship. Mr. Manton donated to the Tate in London becoming its most generous benefactor after its founder, Sir Henry Tate. He established the American Patrons of the Tate in 1988 and was knighted in 1994 in recognition of his philanthropy.

“Like Sterling and Francine Clark, Sir Edwin A. G. Manton quietly and methodically assembled a distinguished collection over the course of a half-century, maintaining his anonymity in the art world until his later years. He focused his attention on several major figures, building significant clusters of the work of Constable, Turner, and Gainsborough that would become among the most important in private hands,” stated Michael Conforti, director of the Clark. “This magnanimous and visionary gift advances the Clark’s dual mission as both a public art museum and a center for research and higher education, dedicated to enhancing the public’s understanding of art while advancing scholarship,” continued Conforti.

“We knew that the Clark would be excellent stewards of the collection making it available to future generations of the American public, visitors worldwide, and the scholars and students who frequent the Clark,” said Diana Morton, daughter of Sir Edwin A. G. Manton and head of the Manton Foundation.

In selecting the Clark as the beneficiaries of this generous gift, the Manton Foundation recognized the Clark’s role as a global center of research in the visual arts and in the development of professionals in the visual arts field. In the spirit of collaboration and support, the gift will be dedicated to enhancing and expanding the Clark’s extensive programs for research and scholarship. The funds generated by the endowment will be used to create a new study center for works on paper, support the Clark’s outstanding art history library (one of the most comprehensive in the country), and increase the activities of its renowned research program.

In recognition of this gift, the Clark will re-name the building that serves as the home of its research and academic program the Sir Edwin and Lady Manton Research Center. The study center for works on paper, a gallery dedicated to British art, as well as the position of curator of prints, drawings, and photographs also will carry his name.