Brinsley Ford
| Brinsley Ford | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Richard Brinsley Ford 1908 Petworth, Sussex, England |
| Died | 1999 London, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Alma mater | Eton, Trinity College, Oxford |
| Occupation | Art historian and collector |
| Parent(s) | Captain Richard Ford (1860–1940) and Rosamund Isabel Ramsden (1872–1911) |
| Relatives | Richard Ford, Richard Brinsley Sheridan |
| Awards | Knighted (1984) |
Sir Brinsley Ford (1908–1999) was a British art historian, scholar, and collector. He inherited a large collection of art from his family and was himself an avid collector. A drawing that he purchased in 1936 was sold by his estate for $12 million in 2000. Ford was the director of the Burlington Magazine, president of Walpole Society and chaired the National Art Collections Fund. During World War II he was a Troop Sergeant-Major in the Royal Artillery and then served in the military intelligence organisation, MI9.
Richard Brinsley Ford was born in 1908 in Petworth, Sussex to Captain Richard Ford (1860–1940) and Rosamund Isabel Ramsden (1872–1911). His father was an officer for the British Army, who inherited in 1917 a large art collection that had been assembled by his great great grandfather, Richard Ford (1758–1806) and his maternal great-grandfather, Benjamin Booth. Gustav Waagen describes the collection in Treasures of Art in Great Britain.Richard Ford, his great grandfather, wrote travel books on Spain. The Irish playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan was an ancestor.
Ford attended Eton College. He then studied modern history at Trinity College, Oxford and graduated in 1930. In 1937 Ford married a distant cousin, Joan Mary Vyvyan who was born in 1910. The couple had one daughter and two sons. He died of a heart attack at his home in London on 4 May 1999.
In 1927 Ford joined the National Art Collections Fund. His maternal grandmother left him a legacy two years later with which Ford was able to begin collecting art, including the works of Fuseli, Michelangelo, Ingres, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Henry Moore. He met art connoisseur James Byam Shaw and artist Charles Barrow Prescott when he joined the Burlington Fine Arts Club. In 1939 he published a scholarly article in the Burlington Magazine of portrait drawings made by Ingres. His father died in 1940 and the following year he took possession of his father's art collection.
...
Wikipedia