Hugh Andrew Johnstone Munro of Novar

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 a close friend, traveling companion, and patron of J. M. W. Turner and is most notable as one of his main supporters and collectors. 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, who records, "Mr. Munro thought the Zug too blue and let me have it." Curiously, a distant kinsman of Munro's, Dr. Thomas Monro, had been one of the earliest supporters of Turner's youth and, according to John 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
• Claus Virch, "Ye Mists and Exhalations That Now Rise," Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, New ser., v. 20, no. 8 (April, 1962)