Howard Mansfield

The eminent lawyer, Howard Mansfield, stood high in that honored category described in our constitution as “amateurs of letters and the fine arts.” He was indeed an “amateur” in the Century sense. His activity in the MacDowell Association and in the Grolier Club dated from their foundation; he served as treasurer of the Metropolitan Museum of Art for twenty years. He was a Centurion for more than fifty years, a term ranking as the second longest on this roll. In the words of a younger member of the Century, himself a distinguished collector, Mansfield “was a born collector with an extraordinary flair for what was beautiful, and an equally extraordinary ability to find beauty in certain things before the general run of critics and collectors discovered them. His Meryon collection was famous many years ago; his Whistlers, if not quite the largest lot in America, were probably the best chosen; his Japanese collections now in the Metropolitan showed an extraordinary range; and I remember at least one print valued later at many hundred dollars that Mansfield had known enough to get, at some obscure auction, for three dollars long before other people in New York were awake to such things. He bought Japanese paintings and lacquers and metal works in the early days of American collecting; opened the eyes of Mr. Freer to the Orient; and exerted a fine influence on many other collectors who were far more wealthy than himself but perhaps lacked his taste. His judgments were almost entirely aesthetic rather than based on study and scholarship. The furniture, the rugs, the Seymour Hadens in his apartment were very carefully chosen, and his library was notable along a number of different lines.”

Howard Mansfield’s geniality and his keen interest in a variety of subjects close to the hearts of Centurions created for him a wide circle of friends. And his zest for life and for art kept him young in spirit through all his eighty-nine years.

Geoffrey Parsons
1938 Century Memorials