John Julius Angerstein
John Julius Angerstein (
1735- January
1823),
London merchant,
Lloyd's under-writer, and patron of the fine arts, was born in
St Petersburg,
Russia (it has - wrongly - been suggested that he was an illegitimate son of
Catherine the Great or of Elizabeth, Empress of Russia, herself the illegitimate daughter of
Peter the Great!) and settled in London in about
1749.
In his role as a merchant he was said to own a third share in
slave estates in
Grenada, using profits from the
slave trade to build up his art collection (and also benefitting from Lloyd's underwriting of the slave trade). Angerstein was chairman of Lloyd's from
1790 to
1796 and counted King
George III, British
Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger and artist Sir
Thomas Lawrence among his friends.
Among his earliest art purchases was
The Rape of the Sabines by
Rubens; later acquisitions included works by
Rembrandt,
Velasquez,
Titian,
Raphael,
Correggio and
Hogarth, plus early drawings by
J.M.W. Turner. His collection of paintings, consisting of about forty of the most exquisite specimens of the art, purchased by the
British government, after his death, formed the nucleus of the
National Gallery. Until the National Gallery was built in
Trafalgar Square, the works were displayed in Angerstein's town house in
Pall Mall.
He lived for some years in
Greenwich in south-east London, leasing a 54-acre plot of land from Sir
Gregory Page in
1774 and over the next two years building a house,
Woodlands (designed by local
architect George Gibson).
[Rhind, N. (1983) Blackheath Village & Environs, 1790-1970, Vol 2 (Bookshop Blackheath, London), p.274.] This area is now known as
Westcombe Park, part of a wide area on the north-eastern fringes of
Blackheath that he sought to enclose in
1801.
In
1972, his house, now owned by the local council, the
London Borough of Greenwich, opened - appropriately enough - as an art gallery, the Woodlands Art Gallery. (In 2006, the Gallery was closed for prolonged periods; the council was seeking new funding for the adjacent
Mycenae House and redevelopment of the buildings.)
An active churchgoer, Angerstein worshipped in Greenwich town centre at
St Alfege's Church - where he was also
churchwarden.
His family's connections with the borough are still remembered. Angerstein Lane, near the heath at Blackheath, bears the family name. A public house,
The Angerstein, is on Woolwich Road, close to the Woolwich Road flyover (
Blackwall Tunnel A102 southern approach) - on the opposite side of which lies the Angerstein Business Park (owned by
Greenwich Enterprise Board). Just behind this, is the 'Angerstein Railway Line' (in 2003 believed to be only used for commercial freight, mainly sea-dredged aggregate landed at 'Angerstein Wharf') linking the peninsula at north Greenwich with the main railway network; as a result, an area of largely industrial land in between the lines to the east of the A102(M) is still sometimes referred to as the 'Angerstein Triangle'.
