J.B. Manson

James Bolivar Manson (26 June 1879 in London – 3 July 1945 in London) was an artist and worked at the Tate gallery for 25 years, being its Director 1930–1938. In the Tate's own evaluation he was the "least successful" of their Directors. His time there was frustrated by his stymied ambition as a painter and he declined into alcoholism, culminating in a drunken outburst at an official dinner in Paris. Although his art policies were more advanced than previously at the Tate and embraced Impressionism, he stopped short of accepting newer artistic movements like Surrealism and German Expressionism, thus earning the scorn of critics such as Douglas Cooper. He retired on the grounds of ill health and resumed his career as a flower painter until his death.

James Bolivar Manson was born at 65 Appach Road, Brixton, London, to Margaret Emily (née Deering) and James Alexander Manson, who was the first literary editor of the Daily Chronicle, an editor for Cassell & Co Ltd and of the Makers of British Art series for Walter Scott Publishing Co.. Manson's middle name was after Simón Bolívar. His grandfather was also named James Bolivar Manson. He had an older sister, Margaret Esther Manson, a younger sister, Rhoda Mary Manson, and three younger brothers, Charles Deering Manson, Robert Graham Manson (a musician and composer) and Magnus Murray Manson.

At the age of 16, he left Alleyn's School, Dulwich, and, in the face of his father's opposition to painting as a career, became an office boy with the publisher George Newnes, and then a bank clerk, a job he loathed and lightened with bird imitations and practical jokes. In the meantime he determinedly studied painting at Heatherley School of Fine Art from 1890 and then Lambeth School of Art, and was encouraged by Lilian Beatrice Laugher, a violinist who had studied with Joachim in Berlin and was staying in the household, which by that time was at 7 Ardbeg Road, Herne Hill, London.

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