Charles Bierer Wrightsman

Who was Charles Bierer Wrightsman?

Charles Bierer Wrightsman was an American oil executive and arts patron. His wife Jayne was also an arts patron.

On retirement, he used his money to buy artworks for his private collection and for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, most notably donating David's Virgin and Child with Four Angels and Vermeer's Portrait of a Young Woman, along with works by El Greco, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Georges de La Tour, Rubens and Jacques-Louis David. He also funded the Museum's eight Wrightsman Rooms, furnished and decorated in the 18th century French style, and three further galleries for objets-d'art and furniture from that period.

He also successfully bid for Goya's Portrait of the Duke of Wellington, which was instead sold to the National Gallery in London to enable it to stay in the United Kingdom. He also had homes in London and Palm Beach at which he frequently hosted John F Kennedy.