Alexander Constantine Ionides (1 September 1810, Istanbul – 10 November 1890, Hastings) was a British art patron and art collector and patron of Greek ancestry.
Contents |
His parents were Mariora Sendoukaki (1784–1857) and her husband Constantine Ipliktzis (1775–1852), who had set up a London branch for his trading firm in c.1815. In 1827 Alexander came to London, finishing his education at Brixton and marrying Euterpe Sgouta (1816–1892) in Constantinople before finally settling in Cheetham Hill, Manchester (they had five children). He then founded his own textile and wheat trading-firm, Ionides and Company (he changed his surname from Ipliktzis to Ionides at this time), operating between London and the Near East and the Balkans. He began to patronise the arts around 1829, both in England (his proteges included Edward Calvert and George Frederic Watts, both of whom became friends of Ionides) and in Greece (he followed his father as a patron of the University of Athens).
He and his family moved to London in 1834, living at 9 Finsbury Circus (1834-39), Tulse Hill (1838-64) and finally 1 Holland Park (1864 onwards), during which time he was made a naturalised British subject in 1837 and began to gather an artistic salon at his home. Acting as Greek consul-general in 1854–66, he held directorships of the Crystal Palace (1855) and of many banks. His son Alexander introduced him in 1860 to artists he had met in Paris, such as James Whistler, Edward Poynter, Thomas Armstrong, and George Du Maurier, whilst Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones also later joined Ionides' circle. He commissioned the designers Philip Webb and Thomas Jeckyll to redecorate 1 Holland Park. He finally moved to a house called "Windycroft" in Hastings in 1875 (leaving Alexander to complete the Aesthetic redecoration at 1 Holland Park by commissioning William Morris and Walter Crane).