Once upon a time in America, the art collector was regarded as a paragon whose virtue increased with every purchase. The ownership of art implied taste, which implied humanity in turn. It hardly mattered that the railroad magnate had invested on the instructions of some dealer like Duveen or that he might be a ruthless industrialist such as Henry Frick, once known as the most hated man in America. The collector's judgment and integrity, apparent when he bought a Rembrandt for his Upper East Side mansion, were confirmed when he left both to the nation.
It sounds like pure hokum until one considers the case of Sterling Clark, whose rich collection of French art is currently on show at the Royal Academy. Clark (1877-1956) was heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune. He inherited an entire block of Manhattan before he was out of his teens. But where his peers returned after Yale to tend the family fortunes, Clark signed up for the army, won a Silver Star during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 and led an expedition to map the mountains of northern China. He is more TE Lawrence than Henry James.