Hugh Andrew Johnstone Munro of Novar: Difference between revisions

Turner's Venice from the Porch of Madonna della Salute (1837), now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. Munro commissioned the painting but did not like it.

Hugh Andrew Johnstone Munro of Novar (13 February 1797 - 22 November 1864) was a Scottish art collector.

Life

H.A.J. Munro of Novar was born in London, the nephew of Hector Munro, 8th of Novar, and the son of Sir Alexander Munro (d. 1809). On his father's death in 1809 he became the head of the Munros of Novar and succeeded to the estate of Novar House in Ross-shire. He entered Christ Church, Oxford as a gentleman commoner in 1814 and left three years later with no degree. Munro remained unmarried; among his several illegitimate children was Hugh Andrew Johnstone Munro (b. 1819), the classical scholar.

Art collection and patronage

Turner, The Lake of Zug, Metropolitan Museum, New York

Munro was one of the most important patrons of J. M. W. Turner, as well as being the painter's close friend and (in 1836) traveling companion. He commissioned Turner's paintings Venice from the Porch of Madonna della Salute (1837) and The Lake of Zug (1843), neither of which pleased him. He gave The Lake of Zug to John Ruskin, his rival as a collector of Turner, who records, "Mr. Munro thought the Zug too blue and let me have it." On another occasion, Munro traded Fluelen: Morning Looking Towards the Lake (1845), another watercolor Swiss subject he had commissioned, for Storm in the St. Gotthard Pass: The First Bridge Above Altdorf (1845), which Ruskin had commissioned but disliked. Turner appointed him one of his executors in 1849. Curiously, a very distant kinsman of Munro's, Dr. Thomas Monro, had been one of the earliest supporters of the young Turner and, according to Ruskin, had exercised a significant influence on his art.

Munro also collected works by the Old Masters and by other contemporary British artists such as Richard Parkes Bonington, John Constable, and Sir David Wilkie, amassing a collection of some 2,500 works by the time of his death. Auctions of the collection were held at Christie's between 1860 and 1878.

Gallery of works collected by Munro

• Raphael, Madonna dei candelabri (Walters Art Museum, Baltimore), acquired by Munro after 1841
  Raphael, Madonna dei candelabri (Walters Art Museum, Baltimore), acquired by Munro after 1841
• 
  Andrea del Sarto, Charity (National Gallery, Washington)
• 
  Veronese, Vision of St Helena (National Gallery, London)
• Rembrandt, Lucretia (National Gallery, Washington), bought for Munro between 1828 and 1832
  Rembrandt, Lucretia (National Gallery, Washington), bought for Munro between 1828 and 1832
• 
  Turner, Venus and Adonis (private collection), painted ca. 1803-1805, acquired by Munro in 1830
• 
  Turner, Snow-Storm, Avalanche and Inundation, 1836/1837 (Art Institute, Chicago), Munro the original owner
• 
  Turner, Modern Italy, the Pifferari (Glasgow Art Gallery), Munro the original owner
• 
  Turner, Ancient Italy, Ovid Banished from Rome, 1838 (private collection), Munro the original owner

References

• Kenneth Garlick, "Munro, Hugh Andrew Johnstone, of Novar (1797–1864)," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004
• Selby Whittingham, Munro, Hugh Andrew Johnstone, The Dictionary of Art, Macmillan, 1995
• Robert Hewison, Ian Warrell, and Stephen Wildman, Ruskin, Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites, Tate Gallery Publishing, 2000
• Claus Virch, "Ye Mists and Exhalations That Now Rise," Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, New ser., v. 20, no. 8 (April, 1962)