Pictured is Pierpont’s personal yacht, The Corsair.

By Dee Anna Muraski
and Darla McCammon
Guest Columnists

Last week, we alluded to the art in the Morgan Library that was first curated by Belle da Costa Greene.

The Morgan Library/Art Museum has a fascinating history. The origins lay with John Pierpont Morgan, more famously known as J.P. Morgan, but more intimately known as Pierpont. He obtained his middle, preferred name from his mother’s maiden name. He was born in 1837 to a heritage already entrepreneurial in spirit. His maternal relatives started Yale University; his paternal grandfather started Aetna Insurance and his uncle penned Jingle Bells (initially deemed as a failure.) However, Pierpont would go a different direction and make his own mark on the world.

As a young boy, Pierpont’s parents would whisk him off to boutique art galleries and the fond memories of those trips forever stoked his love of art. To further his studies, his parents sent him to school in France and Germany to learn the respective languages. He quickly became fluent in both. Due to his affinity with art, he graduated college with a degree in art history. He married but his young wife died of tuberculosis after only four months of marriage. A scant three years later, he was remarried and would eventually be blessed with four children.

Contrary to his degree and passion for art, at 20 years of age he went into banking and forged an impressive presence in an intimidating field. He quickly diversified from banking and retained a controlling interest in electric businesses, railroads, and U.S. steel; the latter became the first billion-dollar company in the world. He remained a board member on all the boards, which may explain why his personal residence was the first to become electrically lit in the state of New York.

In 1898, his 300-foot personal yacht, the Corsair, was purchased by the U.S. government for use in the Spanish-American War, as it was the largest in the world at the time. By the 1900s, he also had some other world’s largest figures as he retained the world’s most powerful banking institutions. Pierpont particularly enjoyed buying struggling companies, retaining the staff and making them profitable, evidencing his astute business sense.

During the 1907 financial panic, he ingeniously and quickly organized financiers to collectively loan the government $60 million to stabilize the economy. This private bail-out provided the means to make the U.S. solvent again and eventually led to the development of the Federal Reserve.

Pierpont retained the monikers of: financier, investment banker, business developer and accountant; but his favorite interest was as an art collector. While he was amassing his own personal art collection in a two-story private library, he was also helping establish the Metropolitan Museum of Art through massive loans and donations of his grand private art collection.

He realized art was a means of connecting. Art could connect one to others, to beauty, and to something outside oneself. His favorite collections were his rare incunabulum (manuscripts printed before 1501), Chinese porcelains, and Renaissance paintings. He obtained over 1,000 gemstones so rare they were exhibited, under heavy guard, at the World’s Fair in 1889.

For his personal library, he retained a roster of full-time employees. The two most important were Roger Fry, his collector; and Belle da Costa Greene, his director. Belle, Roger and Pierpont’s knowledge of art and access to financial capital allowed the collection to grow and be heralded as the greatest collection in the world.

At Pierpont’s death in 1913, flags on Wall Street flew at half-staff and remained closed until noon to honor him.

Next week, we will delve into Pierpont’s library (which is an art treasure itself) and the collection of work curated therein.