George Donaldson

Artist Info

George DonaldsonEdinburgh, 1845 - 1925

Donaldson, Sir George Hunter (1845–1925), art collector and dealer, was born in Edinburgh on 25 May 1845, the youngest child of Charles Alexander Donaldson (c.1800–1868), importer and exporter of furniture, and his wife, Mathilda Hunter. Although little is known about his early life and education, it is clear that Donaldson travelled extensively in Europe, settling in Paris in the late 1860s. He developed there what became a lifelong interest in historic furniture. After moving to London about 1871, he set up in business as a dealer in works of art in New Bond Street, where his shop remained until his retirement in the 1890s. In 1872 he married Alice Jessie Stronach (1851–1907), with whom he had seven children.

Perhaps in recognition of his knowledge and contacts, Donaldson was made a juror in the furniture section of the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1867. His professional and private interests were principally in English and European furniture of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries and early musical instruments. He built up outstanding personal collections of both and could list among his clients the collectors George Salting and John Jones, and the South Kensington (later the Victoria and Albert) Museum. The latter made its first purchase from him in 1885 and continued to receive furniture, carpets, and ceramics from him, as purchases or gifts, until his death. The Royal College of Music was the recipient of his unparalleled collection of historic musical instruments in 1894. Timed to coincide with the opening of the new college building in Prince Consort Road, Donaldson was given free rein to decorate the room of his choice in an appropriate style, which included a coffered ceiling and a Sienese minstrels' gallery. The Donaldson Room, as it became known, is now used as a library.

Donaldson's interest in international exhibitions continued with his creation of the historic music rooms for the Inventions Exhibition in London in 1885. He was a juror again at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1889 and was made vice-president of the jury in Paris in 1900. Recognizing the ‘superior ingenuity and taste’ shown by the European ‘new art’ exhibits, he spent £500 granted by the Board of Education and several thousand pounds of his own on a collection of furniture and ceramics that he presented to the Victoria and Albert Museum for circulation among the government schools of design (new art furniture nominal file, V&A). The collection included two cabinets by Louis Majorelle, a table by Émile Gallé, and part of a music room by Charles Spindler (all V&A). It was, and remains, one of the finest collections of art nouveau—acquired contemporaneously—outside France and Belgium. However, its initial reception in England was decidedly mixed, eliciting letters of complaint to The Times and the Architectural Review.

The success of Donaldson's business can be measured by the string of homes he bought or rented in Britain and Europe from the mid-1880s. He eventually settled at 1 Grand Avenue, Hove, Sussex, where he opened his own museum. He was made a knight, first class, by the grand duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1885, and a chevalier of the Légion d'honneur ‘for artistic services to France’ in 1892 (Mott, 85). In 1904 he received a knighthood. Having suffered from bronchial conditions all his life, he died at home in Hove on 19 March 1925 after a long illness and was buried on 23 March in Brighton.

Sorrel Hershberg

Sources

E. A. Mott, ‘Portrait of a man: Sir George Donaldson, 1845–1925’, 1983, Royal College of Music Museum, London [unpublished memoir] · The Times (20 March 1925) · ‘Sir George Donaldson’, V&A, archive and registry, nominal file · ‘New art furniture’, V&A, archive and registry, nominal file · G. Donaldson, ‘The Victoria and Albert Museum, gift of new art furniture for circulation’, Magazine of Art, 25 (1900–01), 466–71 · P. Macquoid, ‘English furniture in Sir George Donaldson's collection’, Country Life, 43 (1918), 115–17, 137–40 · E. Aslin, ‘Sir George Donaldson and art nouveau at South Kensington’, Journal of the Decorative Art Society, 7 (1983), 9–14 · J. A. Neiswander, ‘“Fantastic malady” or competitive edge?’, Apollo, 32 (1989), 310–13