Edwin Manton
Sir Edwin Alfred Grenville Manton (22 January 1909 – 1 October 2005) was an English art collector. He was a driving force in the creation of the American International Group (AIG), a collector of paintings by John Constable and his contemporaries, and a generous benefactor to the arts, the church and medicine. Knighted in 1994 for charitable services to the Tate Gallery he was, after Sir Henry Tate, the most generous benefactor in its history and continued to involve himself in the affairs of the gallery well into his 90s. Early life Sir Edwin was born in Earls Colne, Essex, 20 miles from Constable's birthplace. Shortly after his birth, the family moved to Westcliff-on-Sea on the Thames estuary, a location that gave him a lifelong affection for expanses of water and sky and which he much later recalled by acquiring paintings of the area by the English painter John Wonnacott. However, during the first world war the family moved to Shaftesbury in Dorset. There he eventually enrolled at Shaftesbury Grammar School where he stayed on as a boarder, even after the family had moved to London. American International Group In 1926, he declined a scholarship to Cambridge, instead following an