Isaac Dudley Fletcher (1844 – April 28, 1917) was an American businessman, art collector and museum benefactor. Native of Bangor, Maine, he settled in New York in 1865 and was a member of the Lotos and Union League clubs. He had the mansion built that is called today the

Harry F. Sinclair House The Harry F. Sinclair House is a mansion at the southeast corner of East 79th Street and Fifth Avenue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. The house was built between 1897 and 1899. Over the first half of the 20th century, th ...

. He was president of Barrett Manufacturing Company which distributed asphalt and acquired a large art collection which he bequeathed to the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

. According to the Frick library, he owned work by "David, Gainsborough, Rembrandt, Reynolds, and Rubens, Alexander H Wyant, Corot and Daubigny". The "work by David" referred to the '' Portrait of Charlotte du Val d'Ognes'', which at the time of the bequest in 1917 was still attributed to Jacques-Louis David, but since 1995 has been attributed to

Marie-Denise Villers Marie-Denise Villers (''née'' Lemoine; 1774 – 19 August 1821) was a French Painting, painter who specialized in portraits. Life Marie-Denise Lemoine was born in Paris to Charles Lemoine and Marie-Anne Rouselle. Two of her three sisters, Marie ...

. Besides the collection itself, the bequest included a large sum of money to start a fund for the purchase of art. According to the 1994 Museum guidebook, several of the paintings listed were purchased through the ''Fletcher Fund'', most notably the ''

Portrait of Juan de Pareja The ''Portrait of Juan de Pareja'' is a painting by Spanish artist Diego Velázquez of his slave Juan de Pareja, a notable painter in his own right, who was owned by Velázquez at the time the painting was completed. Velázquez painted the portra ...

''.

Some objects in 1917 bequest

File:Head of Christ MET DP145916.jpg, ''

Head of Christ The ''Head of Christ'', also called the ''Sallman Head'', is a 1940 portrait painting of Jesus of Nazareth by American artist Warner Sallman (1892–1968). As an extraordinarily successful work of Christian popular devotional art, it had been ...

'' File:Portrait of a Young Woman, Called Miss Sparrow MET DP162145.jpg, ''Portrait of a Young Woman, Called Miss Sparrow'' File:The Fletcher Mansion, New York City MET DT398.jpg, ''The Fletcher Mansion'' File:Villers Young Woman Drawing.jpg, ''Portrait of Charlotte du Val d'Ognes'' File:Autumn Landscape with a Flock of Turkeys MET DT1982.jpg, ''Autumn Landscape with a Flock of Turkeys'' File:Relief of the Betrayal and Arrest of Jesus MET DP-12239-004.jpg, ''Relief of the Betrayal and Arrest of Jesus''

Some objects purchased through the Fletcher Fund

File:Retrato de Juan Pareja, by Diego Velázquez.jpg, ''

'' File:Youth Met 26.60.2.jpg, ''Youth'' File:The bearded man drowning.jpg, ''The Anecdote of the Man Who Fell into the Water'' File:Amasis Ptr cat 48 lekythos MMA 31.11.10 weaving.JPG, ''Weaving Vase''

References

1844 births 1917 deaths American art collectors People associated with the Metropolitan Museum of Art 19th-century American businesspeople {{US-business-bio-stub