Museum accessions.

Not surprisingly, a good many of the major collectors of English art in this country, especially of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century watercolors and drawings, have had close ties to England. Among the earliest was Samuel Bancroft, an avid admirer of Pre-Raphaelite painting and collector of works in other English styles and mediums as well. Bancroft was the son of an English immigrant and Delaware cotton manufacturer, and the family business regularly brought him to England, most often to Manchester. He began acquiring English art in the 1870s under the guidance of, among others, the English artist and connoisseur Charles Fairfax Murray. Bancroft's works are now in the Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington. Some years later, in 1910, in one fell swoop, J. Pierpont Morgan purchased Fairfax Murray's own collection, which included both the old master drawings and watercolors as well as the English ones that now form the basis of the collection in the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City. Another American, Morgan had worked in the London office of his father's major banking enterprise, which he inherited and expanded. In more recent times, Pittsburgh-born Paul Mellon amassed a very large and wide-ranging collection of English drawings and watercolors, which is now in the Yale Center for British Art, in New Haven. From the time of his christening and childhood holidays spent in England, Mellon was taken with English life and culture.

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This year another major collection of English works, mainly works on paper, has been acquired by an American museum. It was formed by Sir Edwin A. G. Man-ton, who was born in England but lived most of his life in New York City. He moved to this country in 1933 to work for C. V. Starr and Company, which later became part of the American Insurance Group (AIG). He rose to president of the company by 1942, served as chairman from 1969 to 1975, and as a senior adviser until his death. In the 1940s Manton began to pursue an interest in art, focusing on the works of John Constable, whose birthplace was not far from where he had grown up. Over the next sixty years, Manton acquired a rich variety of works by many other English artists as well, including Thomas Gainsbourgh, Joseph Mallord William Turner, Samuel Palmer, Thomas Girtin, Thomas Rowlandson, John Martin, and William Blake. What is remarkable about Manton's ...