Thomas Benedict Clarke (December 11, 1848 – January 18, 1931) was an art collector from

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

Biography

He was born December 11, 1848, in New York City as the son of Dr. George Washington Clarke (1816–1908), headmaster of the Mount Washington Collegiate Institute of New York. He finished his education at his father's institution and started off as a businessman in linen and lace manufacturing, but also became a patron of American contemporary art.Clarke, Thomas B. (Thomas Benedict), 1848-1931
on Winterthur.org He married Fannie Eugenia Morris in 1871 and became a patron of leading artists of the

Hudson River School The Hudson River School was a mid-19th century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by Romanticism. The paintings typically depict the Hudson River Valley and the surrounding area ...

in the 1870s, including

George Inness George Inness (May 1, 1825 – August 3, 1894) was a prominent American landscape painter. Now recognized as one of the most influential American artists of the nineteenth century, Inness was influenced by the Hudson River School at the s ...

and

Albert Bierstadt Albert Bierstadt (January 7, 1830 – February 18, 1902) was a German-American painter best known for his lavish, sweeping landscapes of the American West. He joined several journeys of the Westward Expansion to paint the scenes. He was not ...

.Catalogue of the Thomas B. Clarke collection of American pictures, 1891, by Thomas B. Clarke
in the

RKD The Netherlands Institute for Art History or RKD (Dutch: RKD-Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis), previously Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), is located in The Hague and is home to the largest art history center i ...

In 1883, his collection was shown as one of the first exhibitions at the

American Art Association The American Art Association was an art gallery and auction house with sales galleries, established in 1883. It was first located at 6 East 23rd Street (South Madison Square) in Manhattan, New York City and moved to Madison Ave and 56th St. in ...

. He also began collecting porcelain, and donated some to

Union League Club of New York The Union League Club is a private social club in New York City that was founded in 1863 in affiliation with the Union League. Its fourth and current clubhouse is located at 38 East 37th Street on the corner of Park Avenue, in the Murray Hill ...

while he was chairman of the art committee there. He retired from the linen business in 1888 to become a full-time art dealer and was an art advisor and agent for

J. P. Morgan John Pierpont Morgan Sr. (April 17, 1837 – March 31, 1913) was an American financier and investment banker who dominated corporate finance on Wall Street throughout the Gilded Age. As the head of the banking firm that ultimately became known ...

. He bought the premises of the Suffolk Hunt Club in East Hampton, Long Island in 1917 as a summer home, while transforming his new residence in New York into an art gallery, today the home of the

Collectors Club of New York The Collectors Club, often referred to as the Collectors Club of New York, is a private club and philatelic society in New York City. Founded in 1896, it is one of the oldest existing philatelic societies in the United States. Its stated purpose ...

. His daughter Grace, who married the equestrian painter Richard Newton Jr., had been a member there until her death in 1915, and Clarke published her books with illustrations by her husband in 1917. He renamed his Long Island residence "Lindenland".The Suffolk Hunt Club in Hayground
by Julie Green

References

External links

Auction catalog of early English and American furniture once owned by Thomas B. Clarke
from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries (fully available online as PDF)
''Raqqa revisited: ceramics of Ayyubid Syria''
a catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries (fully available online as PDF), which contains material from Thomas B. Clarke's collection
The private collection of Thomas B. Clarke of New York : exhibited at American Art Gallery, New York, Dec. 28, 1883 to Jan. 12, 1884 (1883)
Catalog produced in 1883 for his art show "Exhibited for the benefit of a permanent fund for a prize to be given annually hereafter for the best American figure composition shown at the National Academy of Design." on

Archive.org The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

, courtesy of

Smithsonian Institution Libraries Smithsonian Libraries and Archives is an institutional archives and library system comprising 21 branch libraries serving the various Smithsonian Institution museums and research centers. The Libraries and Archives serve Smithsonian Institutio ...

Thomas B. Clarke
on

Archives of American Art The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 20 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washingt ...

Exhibition and Sales Catalogues of the Collections Thomas B. Clarke
- Internet Archive - online {{DEFAULTSORT:Clarke, Thomas B. 1848 births 1931 deaths American art collectors Businesspeople from New York City The Lambs presidents