Lincoln Kirstein

Lincoln Kirstein born 4 May 1907 (d. 1996)

Lincoln Edward Kirstein was an American writer, impresario, art connoisseur, and cultural figure in New York City, famous less for his own artistic achievement than for his social influence.

Born in Rochester, New York, to a very wealthy Bostonian family, he was educated at Harvard, from which he graduated in 1930.

His interest in ballet and George Balanchine started when he had seen Apollo with the Ballet Russes. He became determined to get Balanchine to America. Together with Edward M. M. Warburg (a classmate from Harvard), they started the School of American Ballet in Hartford, Connecticut, in October 1933. The studio moved to the fourth floor of a building at Madison Avenue and 59th Street in New York City in 1934. Warburg's father invited the group of students from the evening class to perform at a private party. The ballet they did was Serenade, the first major ballet choreographed by Balanchine in America. Just months later Kirstein and Warburg founded, together with Balanchine and Dimitriev, The American Ballet.

During World War 2 Kirstein joined the Army and served in Europe. He worked with the division of Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives, helping to recover stolen artwork from the Nazis. He was honorably discharged in 1946.

The American Ballet would become the resident company of the Metropolitan Opera, but this proved unsatisfactory because the Opera would not allow Balanchine and Kirstein artistic freedom. In 1946, Balanchine and Kirstein founded the Ballet Society, renamed the New York City Ballet in 1948. Together they made this one of the most innovative dance companies in the world.

His eclectic interests, ambition and keen interest in high culture, funded by independent means drew a large circle of friends which would stimulate creativity in many of the arts. These included: Glenway Wescott, Monroe Wheeler, George Platt Lynes, Pavel Tchelitchev, Katherine Anne Porter, Gertrude Stein, Cecil Beaton, Jean Cocteau, Jared French, George Tooker and far too many more to name.

[Lincoln Kirstein pictured right with Igor Stravinsky]

He was married in 1940 to Fidelma Cadmus, some say because he was in love with her brother Paul Cadmus. While his wife and he enjoyed an amicable relationship, he continued to pursue affairs with other men. The New York art world, considered his pursuit of men an 'open secret', although he did not publicly acknowledge his sexual orientation until 1982.

He was the primary patron of Cadmus and purchased many of his paintings and subsidised his living expenses. Cadmus had difficulty selling his work through galleries because of the erotically charged depictions of working and middle class men, which provoked great controversy.

Kirstein commissioned and helped to fund the physical home of the New York City Ballet: the New York State Theater building at Lincoln Center, designed in 1964 by gay architect Philip Johnson. Despite its conservative modernist exterior, the glittery red and gold interior recalls the imaginative and lavish backdrops of the Ballets Russes. He would serve as the general director of the ballet company from 1948 to 1989.

Kirstein and Balachine's collaboration lasted until Balanchine's death in 1983 [Kirstein and Balanchine pictured left].

President Ronald Reagan on March 26, 1984, presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Kirstein was a great collector, and early in the history of the Dance Collection gave The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts a wealth of rare dance materials. Before his death in 1996, he donated all his papers, artworks, and other materials related to the history of dance and his life in the arts. These treasures in the Kirstein collection will be available to inform future generations pursuing the knowledge of dance.

He exerted his greatest influence in the 1940s. He also appears to have been excessively handsome. [Photo: George Platt Lynes]

Charles Shannon

Charles Shannon born 26 April 1865 (d. 1937)

Charles Haslewood Shannon, English artist, was born at Sleaford in Lincolnshire, the son of the Rev Frederic Shannon.

He attended the Lambeth school of art, and was subsequently considerably influenced by his friend and partner Charles Ricketts and by the example of the great Venetians. In his early work he was addicted to a heavy low tone, which he abandoned subsequently for clearer and more transparent colour. He achieved great success with his portraits and his Giorgionesque figure compositions, which are marked by a classic sense of style, and with his etchings and lithographic designs.

The Dublin Municipal Gallery owns his circular composition The Bunch of Grapes and The Lady with the Green Fan (portrait of Mrs Hacon). His Study in Grey is at the Munich Gallery, a Portrait of Mr Staats Forbes at Bremen, and a Souvenir of Van Dyck at Melbourne. One of his most remarkable pictures is The Toilet of Venus in the collection of Lord Northcliffe. Several of his portrait works are on display in the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Shannon taught himself lithography, realising that lithography could be used for original artistic expression, not merely as a means of reproducing images. Shannon's skill was such that he was described as 'one of the most gracefully accomplished and scholarly lithographers of the day'. He is regarded in particular as the master of lithographic portraiture.

Complete sets of his lithographs and etchings have been acquired by the British Museum and the Berlin and Dresden print rooms. He was awarded a first-class gold medal at Munich in 1895 and a first-class silver medal in Paris in 1900.

Shannon and Ricketts founded The Dial, a magazine, which had five issues from 1889 to 1897, and the Vale Press, named after their house, The Vale, in Chelsea, London. The pair came to the attention of Oscar Wilde with the publication of their magazine. He visited them at their home and they become great friends. Ricketts and Shannon were among the few to remain faithful to Wilde when he was disgraced.

Throughout their careers Shannon and Ricketts were collectors of art and over time built up a valuable collection. Charles Shannon was particularly interested in Japanese art and they bought a number of Hokusai drawings. In their joint will they left their collection to public bodies such as the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and the British Museum.

Charles Shannon was elected as an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1911 and a full member in 1920.

In January 1929 Shannon was re-hanging some pictures on the staircase of his studio when he fell and hit his head on the marble floor. From then on he was a physical and mental invalid, and unable to recognise and communicate with Charles Ricketts. Charles Ricketts died of a heart attack two years later, and Charles Shannon lived for a further six years.

Shannon and Ricketts spent their entire adults lives together but were very discreet as a couple. It is generally accepted that Charles Ricketts was a homosexual but there are those who believe that Shannon was bisexual. One particular friendship with a woman caused an anxious Ricketts to record in his diary his fears that Shannon might marry.

Simon Sainsbury

Simon Sainsbury born 1 March 1930 (d. 2006)

Simon Sainsbury was part of a remarkable fourth generation that transformed a medium-sized family business, based in the South-East of England, into a public company that became the most profitable retailer in Britain. The personal wealth that resulted from the rapid expansion of Sainsbury's in the 1980s and early 1990s enabled him to become one of the country's most generous and thoughtful philanthropists.

The scale of the Sainsbury family's philanthropy became well known in 1987 when Simon, and his brothers John and Tim, donated the Sainsbury Wing to the National Gallery. Equally significant, if far less well known, were the many charities that Simon Sainsbury supported over 40 years, ranging from the preservation of historic buildings to the improvement of conditions within prisons and the funding of services for those diagnosed with HIV/Aids.

His business career and his philanthropy were marked by a thoroughness of approach and a determination to ensure that whatever plan had been decided upon would be successfully achieved. For the institutions and causes with which he was associated, and which were the recipients of (literally) millions of pounds a year, he did a great deal more than sign the cheque.

He was born in 1930, the middle son of Doreen and Alan Sainsbury (later the Labour peer Lord Sainsbury), and he grew up in Chelsea, before moving during the Second World War to Dorney, near Windsor. He went to Eton, where he was a gifted sportsman and pianist, and became President of the Eton Society, or 'Pop'. Unlike many others who have held that post, he was naturally self-effacing.

He served his National Service with the Life Guards, where he was 'sports officer', and went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read History. After training as a chartered accountant, he joined the family business in 1956, working in the finance department. He became a director in 1959. The three brothers had distinct areas of expertise: John (later Lord Sainsbury of Preston Candover) was in charge of trading, Simon was in charge of finance, administration and personnel, and Tim (later a Conservative minister, now Sir Timothy) was in charge of development.

Sainsbury's father Alan and his uncle Robert retired as chairmen in 1967 and 1969, respectively. It was a hundred years after their great-grandparents had opened the first J. Sainsbury dairy shop in Drury Lane. Sainsbury's elder brother, John, became chairman and Simon became deputy chairman.

Business analysts at the time commented on how improbable it was that the fourth generation of a family business should produce four directors of such calibre and commitment (the three brothers and their cousin David, now the Science minister Lord Sainsbury of Turville). By the time his elder brother retired as chairman in 1992, the company had a turnover of £9.2bn.

Simon Sainsbury's most significant role in these years was handling the transition from a private company to a publicly listed one. His job was to add the letters 'plc' to 'J. Sainsbury'. In terms of capitalisation it was the biggest flotation ever mounted by the London Stock Exchange. A million shares were set aside for staff, which led to many staff members' buying shares that shot up in value. The company went public on 12 July 1973. Within one minute the list of applications was closed: £495m had been offered for £14.5m available shares. The feverish press that surrounded the flotation greatly enhanced the company's new dynamic image.

In 1965, Sainsbury set up the Monument Trust and his approach to grant-making was businesslike, proactive and (when possible) discreet to the point of anonymity. He maintained a daily interest in the trust's affairs and took a clear-headed view of charities, their financial plans, the strength of their personnel, and their long-term strategies. The Monument Trust took a lead in many areas: for instance, providing essential funding for the development of services for those diagnosed with HIV/Aids before statutory funding became available. (The trust's level of support for this remains high.)

Two areas left him frustrated. One was the many obstacles facing projects that attempted to make the lives of prisoners more hopeful and productive. The other was the huge growth in regulations governing the ways that a charitable trust could give money. He believed the process of giving money should be a simple one. One of his last substantial donations was to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.

He supported many institutions from the British Museum, Royal Academy, Tate Modern and V&A to the Council for the Protection of (now Campaign to Protect) Rural England, the Landmark Trust and Christ Church, Spitalfields, with which he was closely involved. His donation to the new Cambridge Judge Business School was decisive in securing its future.

For 40 years Sainsbury shared his life with Stewart Grimshaw, a successful restaurateur and, later, bookseller. Together they leased a Georgian house from the National Trust, restored it to its full glory and created a beautiful garden in its surroundings.

Sainsbury possessed an exceptional eye for art and design, a quality he shared with his uncle Robert, who had endowed the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts, in East Anglia. His principal interests lay in English furniture, early English pottery and late-19th-century and early-20th-century paintings. He was a trustee of the National Gallery (1991-98) and Chairman of the Wallace Collection (1992-97), where he set in place the biggest programme of changes since the museum had opened in 1900. He also returned to Sainsbury's to chair the arts sponsorship panel, whose activities included the popular Sainsbury's Choir of the Year competition.

Urbane and often funny, Sainsbury was also very private. He accepted no honours or high-profile jobs, though there were rumours that he had been offered both. Characteristically, he had no listing in Who's Who. Early in 2006 he celebrated his civil partnership with Grimshaw in a ceremony which, considering the enormous shift in the law during the time they had known one another, was powerful and affecting. (Both had campaigned over the years for changes in the law that disadvantaged same-sex couples.)

His seventies were clouded by the onset of Parkinson's, but it never diminished the depth of his interest in friends, family and good causes.

A year after his death, it was revealed that Simon Sainsbury has made one of the most significant art bequests to the nation, a collection worth about £100 million. The Tate and National galleries have received 18 paintings, including works by Monet, Degas, Gauguin and Bacon, each one a masterpiece, from a benefactor who preferred anonymity during his lifetime.

Simon Sainsbury's Obituary in The Independent, The Times and The Telegraph.

Richard Heber

Richard Heber born 5 January 1773 (d. 1833)

Richard Heber, an English book-collector, was born in London.

As an undergraduate at Brasenose College, Oxford, he began to collect a purely classical library, but his taste broadening, he became interested in early English drama and literature, and began his wonderful collection of rare books in these departments. He attended continental book sales, purchasing sometimes single volumes, sometimes whole libraries. Sir Walter Scott, whose intimate friend he was, classed Heber's library as 'superior to all others in the world'; Campbell described him as 'the fiercest and strongest of all the "bibliomaniacs"'.

He did not confine himself to the purchase of a single copy of a work which took his fancy. 'No gentleman,' he remarked, 'can be without three copies of a book, one for show, one for use, and one for borrowers.' To such a size did his library grow that it over-ran eight houses, some in England, some on the Continent. It is estimated to have cost over £100,000, and after his death the sale of that part of his collection stored in England realised more than £56,000. He is known to have owned 150,000 volumes, and probably many more. He possessed extensive landed property in Shropshire and Yorkshire, and was sheriff of the former county in 1821, was member of Parliament for Oxford University from 1821-1826, and in 1822 was made a DCL of that University. He was one of the founders of the Athenaeum Club, London.

According to Martin Greif's marvellous The Gay Book of Days, Heber was 'forced to leave England in exile after public disclosure of his "unnatural acts"', but corroboration of this has been hard to find.

Peter Watson

Peter Watson born 14 September 1908 (d. 1956)

Victor William (Peter) Watson was a wealthy art collector in England in the 20th century. He is most well-known for funding the literary magazine Horizon, edited by Cyril Connolly, and for being the principal benefactor of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. He also provided financial assistance to Francis Bacon.

In 1930, photographer Sir Cecil Beaton began a lifelong obsession with Watson - who was for a time the lover of Beaton's rival Oliver Messel - though the two never became lovers.

Watson drowned in his bath on May 3, 1956. Some have suggested that he was murdered by his lover, Norman Fowler; a rich young American (from whom Bacon stole £300 to go gambling). Fowler died in similar circumstances in the West Indies just a few years later.

Herbert Pollitt

Herbert Pollitt born 23 August 1871 (d. 1942)

Collector and connoisseur Herbert Pollitt, known as Jerome Pollitt, was an amateur female impersonator of late 19th-century England, who performed under the stage name Diane de Rougy, in tribute to the actress Liane de Pougy. He was a close friend of the British illustrator and writer Aubrey Beardsley - who created this ex-libris (book plate) for his friend.

He is known to have had an affair with the young Aleister Crowley - Crowley was 23 and in his final year at Cambridge. Pollitt was ten years his senior. Later he immortalised Pollitt in The Scented Garden of Abdullah the Satirist - a collection of poems which are a blend of Persian mysticism and the glorification of homosexual love, written in the style of ghazals by an imaginary seventeenth-century poet. They are supposedly translated into English by an Anglo-Indian, Major Lutiy, helped by an anonymous 'editor', and are then discussed by an equally fictitious clergyman. The collection, however, is typically Crowley-esque: both spoof and serious.

Edward Perry Warren

Edward Perry Warren born 8 June 1860 (d. 1928)

Edward Perry Warren, known as Ned Warren, was an American art collector, and a writer of works proposing an idealised view of homosexual relationships.

He was one of six children of a wealthy family of Boston, Massachusetts. He was educated at Harvard and later at New College, Oxford where he met John Marshall, with whom he formed a close and long-lasting relationship. The two set up house together at Lewes House, a large residence in Lewes, East Sussex where they became the centre of a circle of like-minded people interested in art and antiquities who ate together in a dining room overlooked by Lucas Cranach's Adam and Eve (now in the Courtauld Institute of Art).

He spent much time on the Continent of Europe, collecting art works many of which he sold to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. His published works include A Defence of Uranian Love, which proposes a type of same-sex relationship similar to that prevalent in Classical Greece, in which an older man would act as guide as well as lover to younger men.

He is perhaps best known today as the purchaser of the Roman silver drinking vessel known as the Warren Cup, which he did not attempt to sell during his lifetime, because of its explicit depiction of homoerotic scenes. It is now in the British Museum. He also commissioned a version of The Kiss from Auguste Rodin which he offered to the local council in Lewes as a gift — it was rejected as "too big and too nude", but is now in the Tate Gallery.

Edward Douglas-Scott-Montagu, 3rd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu

Edward Douglas-Scott-Montagu, 3rd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu born 20 October 1926

Edward John Barrington Douglas-Scott-Montagu, 3rd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu is a British Conservative politician known for founding the National Motor Museum.

Montagu was born in London, and inherited his Peerage in 1929 at the age of two, when his father John Walter Edward Douglas-Scott-Montagu, 2nd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu was killed in an accident. He attended St Peter's Court School and Ridley College in Canada, Eton College and New College, Oxford. He served in the Grenadier Guards including in Palestine before the end of the British Mandate.

On coming of age Montagu immediately took his seat in the House of Lords and swiftly made his maiden speech on the subject of Palestine. His interest in historic cars led him to open the National Motor Museum on his estate at Beaulieu, Hampshire in 1952.

Montagu knew from an early stage of life that he was bisexual, and while attending Oxford was relieved to find others with similar feelings. In a 2000 interview Lord Montagu stated, 'My attraction to both sexes neither changed nor diminished at university and it was comforting to find that I was not the only person faced with such a predicament. I agonised less than my contemporaries, for I was reconciled to my bisexuality, but I was still nervous about being exposed.'

In 1954 Montagu was imprisoned for twelve months for consensual homosexual offences along with Michael Pitt-Rivers and Peter Wildeblood.

On the August Bank Holiday weekend in 1953 Edward Montagu and film director Kenneth Hume took two boy scouts to a beach hut at Beaulieu for a bathe. Edward Montagu had reported the loss of a camera to the police and the purpose of the visit to the beach hut had originally been to look for the camera. When the police arrived they took more interest in what had been happening and the boy scouts said that they had been indecently assaulted in the beach hut.

Edward Montagu was charged with an unnatural offence and an indecent assault and his trial took place at Winchester Assizes in December 1953. Edward Montagu was acquitted on the more serious charge of committing an unnatural offence but the jury disagreed on the lesser charge of indecent assault. The Director of Public Prosecutions decided that Edward Montagu and Kenneth Hume should be tried again on the charge of indecent assault.

Michael Pitt-Rivers and Peter Wildeblood were arrested three weeks after the end of the first Montagu/Hume trial. Their premises were searched without a warrant. They were charged with several specific indecency charges with two RAF men, Edward McNally and John Reynolds, at the beach hut near Beaulieu and also at the Pitt-Rivers estate in Dorset. They were also accused of conspiring with Edward Montagu to commit these offences. This would prejudice the chances of Edward Montagu's aquittal at his re-trial. Unlike other defendants in the trial Montagu continued to protest his innocence.

Fifty years on, in an interview with the Mail on Sunday Lord Montagu acknowledged his bisexuality, but maintains that his guilt was mainly by association [with Peter Wildeblood], and that the police were seeking a high-profile prosecution as part of their government sponsored crackdown on homosexuals.

The trial was a consequence of concern in the early 1950s about the increasing 'incidence' of homosexuality but caused a backlash which led to the Wolfenden Report which recommended legalisation.

Following the trial and his imprisonment, Montagu quietly returned to his life and went on to marry twice, declining, generally, to speak publicly about the issue.

Montagu founded The Veteran And Vintage Magazine in 1956 and continued to develop the museum, making a name for himself in tourism. He was Chairman of the Historic Houses Association from 1973 to 1978 and Chairman of English Heritage from 1984 to 1992.

Lord Montagu on the court case which ended the legal persecution of homosexuals - this interview with the Mail on Sunday on 15 July 2007 is the first time Lord Montagu has spoken of the events that led to his conviction fifty years before.

The story of Lord Montagu's trial and unwitting role in the history of decriminalisation in England was told in a 2007 Channel 4 drama-documentary, A Very British Sex Scandal.

William Beckford

William Beckford born 1 October 1760 (d. 1844)

William Thomas Beckford was an English novelist, art critic, travel writer and politician.

He was born in Fonthill, Wiltshire, in the manor house owned by his father, former Lord Mayor of London William Beckford. From him, William Jr. inherited, at the age of ten, a large fortune consisting of £1 million in cash, land, and several sugar plantations in Jamaica, which allowed him to indulge his interest in art and architecture, not to mention writing.

Three years later he married the fourth Earl of Aboyne's daughter, Lady Margaret Gordon on 5 May 1783. She later died in childbirth. Beckford was primarily homosexual, and at the age of 19 notoriously had an affair with the Hon William Courtenay, later 3rd Viscount and 9th Earl of Devon, then ten years old.

He travelled in Italy in 1782 and promptly wrote a book on the subject Dreams, Waking Thoughts and Incidents (1783). Shortly afterwards came his best-known work, the Gothic novel Vathek (1786), written originally in French and, as he was improbably accustomed to boast, at a single sitting of three days and two nights. It is an impressive work, full of fantastic and magnificent conceptions. His other principal writings are Memoirs of Extraordinary Painters (1780), a satirical work, and Letters from Italy with Sketches of Spain and Portugal (1835), full of brilliant descriptions of scenes and manners. In 1793 he visited Portugal, where he lived for a while.

Beckford's fame, however, rests nearly as much upon his eccentric extravagances as a builder and collector as upon his literary efforts. In carrying out these he managed to dissipate his fortune of £100,000 a year, only £80,000 of his capital remaining at his death.

The opportunity of purchasing the complete library of Edward Gibbon gave Beckford the basis of his own library, and James Wyatt built Fonthill Abbey, in which this and the owner's art collection would be housed; it was completed in 1807.

He entered parliament as member for Wells and later for Hindon quitting by accepting the Chiltern Hundreds, but mostly lived in seclusion, spending most of his father's wealth without adding to it, so that the great house he had built became a ruin. In 1822 he sold it to John Farquhar, and moved to Lansdown Hill, where he commissioned architect Henry Goodridge to design a spectacular folly, Lansdowne Tower.

He had a seat in parliament from 1784 to 1793, and again from 1806 to 1820.

He died on 2 May at his residence, Lansdown Crescent, age 84. He left two daughters.

He spent his elderly years living in Bath on Lansdown Terrace and built a final masterpiece, Lansdown Tower, (now known as Beckford's Tower), where he kept many of his treasures. He is buried in the grounds of this tower, now a graveyard.