Fitzwilliam pays tribute to benefactor Paul Mellon

Paul Mellon: A Cambridge Tribute, which will run until 23 September, traces Mellon's love of British art and sport to the formative years he spent at the University of Cambridge, from 1929 to 1931.

Son of the prominent Pittsburgh industrialist Andrew Mellon, Paul Mellon was a dedicated Anglophile who from his childhood years in Britain and time at Cambridge developed a life-long love of English culture. He went on to create one of the greatest collections of British art outside this country and his generosity to the many English institutions with which he had long-standing ties is of equal renown.

In 1999, Paul Mellon bequeathed $8 million to the University of Cambridge for the Fitzwilliam Museum. During his lifetime he agreed that £1 million of that sum could be allocated to the Museum's Courtyard Development, and under the terms of his Will, following his death in 1999, his Executors subsequently allocated a further $12.5 million to complete the renovations associated with the Courtyard, including the re-lighting of all of the Museum's galleries.

The remaining balance has been added to the Paul Mellon Fund which was established as a trust fund for the Museum at the time of the bequest, the income from which will be used to support education, exhibitions and publications.

He was also a major benefactor of Clare College and Clare Hall. It was while studying at Clare from 1929-1931 that he developed his great love of England and English culture which ultimately led to his great collection of English paintings.

‘It was while I was at Cambridge that I embarked on the dangerous seas of collecting,' Paul Mellon once said - a statement that has had profound implications not only for the Fitzwilliam Museum but also for other major beneficiaries, both in this country and in the US, of the man who described himself as ‘the incurable collector.'

Duncan Robinson, Director of The Fitzwilliam Museum, said: "In Cambridge, both personally and through the Andrew W Mellon Foundation, Paul Mellon generously supported the Fitzwilliam Museum and several Faculties of the University of Cambridge, Clare College and Clare Hall from its foundation in 1966 onwards. We are honoured to have this opportunity, one hundred years after his birth, to pay tribute to one of Cambridge's major twentieth-century benefactors."

On display will be paintings, drawings, prints, books, applied arts and memorabilia that are connected to Paul Mellon's British interests. From the Fitzwilliam Museum's own collection, these will include major eighteenth and nineteenth-century paintings such as George Stubbs' Gimcrack and John Constable's Hampstead Heath, as well as works on paper by William Blake and Thomas Rowlandson.

Loans from the Yale Center for British Art will include biographical material such as William Orpen's Portrait of Paul Mellon and relevant subjects such as Stubbs' Newmarket Heath with a Rubbing-down House. Sir Alfred Munnings' specially commissioned portrait of Paul Mellon on Dublin will form the centrepiece of the exhibition alongside Tessa Pullan's bronze bust of Paul Mellon on loan from Clare College, Cambridge.

The Fitzwilliam Museum welcomes over 300,000 visitors a year, offers a wide-ranging programme of temporary exhibitions and events, and has an award-winning Education Service. The Museum is open Tuesday – Saturday: 10.00 – 17.00, Sunday and Bank Holiday Mondays: 12.00 - 17.00.

Admission to the permanent collections and to temporary exhibitions is free.

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