Frank Porter Wood
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Frank Porter Wood, son of Canadian immigrants - an Irish father (John W Wood) and a Scottish mother (Jane Porter), was born in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada on 29 June 1882 and died on 20 March 1955 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He married Emma Matilda Junkin in 1906 and had three daughters: Mary (Mollie) Dorothy Porter Wood, Frances (Franie) Junkin Wood and Joyce Rogers Wood.
In 1897 he started working in Peterborough, Ontario as a clerk of Central Canada Loan and Savings Company started by SenatorGeorge Albertus Cox. In 1899 Frank P Wood moved to Montreal to work at the National Trust, incorporated a year earlier by Cox and his brother Edward Rogers Wood. Later in life he became a Vice-President of the National Trust.
In 1903 Frank Porter Wood started up, with Sir Frank Wilton Baillie, and his brother James W. Baillie, a brokerage firm, Baillie Brothers and Company (later Baillie, Wood, and Croft), which operated on the Toronto Stock Exchange. In 1910 Frank Porter Wood became President of Burlington Steel. In 1912 the Bankers’ Bond Company Limited was formed to succeed Baillie, Wood, and Croft. Late in 1914 Frank Porter Wood and Sir Frank Wilton Baillie collaborated with the owners of the Chadwick Brass Company in Hamilton to set up the large Canadian Cartridge Company Limited, of which Sir Frank Wilton Baillie became president and Frank P Wood Vice-President. Until his death in 1955, Frank Porter Wood continued to participate in the Canadian business community as a financier.
FP Wood and his family were consummately modest, they never spoke of their accolades and they were quickly forgotten. Frank P Wood, however, will be remembered not for his business accomplishments but for his love of the arts and philanthropy. To this date he is still the single most generous donor of the Art Gallery of Ontario. “He is given a place of honour among the earlier collectors of Old Master paintings in Toronto” according to David McTavish of Queen’s University and a former curator of the Art Gallery of Toronto. Frank Porter Wood was a client of SirJoseph Duveen; and like most of Duveen clients Frank Porter Wood donated his paintings to public institutions, including his residence that was distinguished by the Beaux-Arts architecture, influenced and built by William Adams Delano and which now houses the Crescent School.
His major bequest to the Art Gallery of Ontario included: "The Harvest Wagon" by Thomas Gainsborough, "Daedalus Warning His Son Icarus" by Anthony van Dyck, "A Portrait of Dr. Joseph Joachim" by John Singer Sargent, "Portrait of a Gentleman, Isaak Abrahamsz Massa" by Frans Hals, "Lady with a Lap Dog" by Rembrandt van Rijn, and, "Portrait of Vincent Laurensz van der Vinne" by Frans Hals.
Other paintings owned or donated by Frank Porter Wood include artist such as: Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro, Auguste Renoir, Lambert Sustris, Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Maurice Utrillo, Claude Monet, Aelbert Cuyp, Auguste Rodin, John Singer Sargent, Francesco Raibolini (known as Francia), Jacopo Comin (Tintoretto), Tiziano Vecelli, and Jacob van Ruisdael to mention only a few.
[edit] References
McTavish, D. (1998). "From Rembrandt to Renoir in Toronto: Frank P. Wood's role as private collector, public adviser and munificent patron". The private collector and the public institution: 12-32, University of Toronto Art Centre.
Secrest, Meryle (2006). "Duveen". Duveen: A Life in Art: 442, University of Chicago Press.
Art Gallery of Toronto (1956). "Three Paintings". The Frank P. Wood Bequest, Art Gallery of Toronto.
Slive, Seymour (2001). "Jacob van Ruisdael". A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings, Drawings, and ...: 83, Yale University Press.
Brown, George William; David M. Hayne, Francess G. Halpenny, Ramsay Cook (1966). "Dictionary of Canadian Biography".: 45, University of Toronto Press. ISBN:0802090877.
