Identity:

Howard Mansfield, a New York lawyer, was a major collector of JW's etchings. He married Nellie Coolidge Tuttle in 1895.

Life:

Mansfield studied at Yale and Columbia universities and was called to the bar in 1874. He later became a keen supporter of cultural causes; he was a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and later became its first acting curator of Asian art until a staff curator was appointed. C. L. Freer first saw JW's etchings in Mansfield's collection in 1887. As well as prints, Mansfield's collection included Japanese paintings and pottery. Mansfield published catalogues of JW's etchings in 1909 (Mansfield, Howard,A Descriptive Catalogue of the Etchings and Dry-Points of James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Chicago, 1909) and the work of Charles Meryon (A catalogue of etchings and drawings by Charles Meryon and portraits of Meryon in the Howard Mansfield collection) in 1911.

Bibliography:

Who Was Who in America, vol. 1, 1897-1942, Chicago, 1943.