Laffan, William M.

Full Name: Laffan, William Mackay

Other Names:

• William Mackay Laffan
• William M. Laffan
• W. M. Laffan

Gender: male

Date Born: 22 January 1848

Date Died: 19 November 1909

Place Died: New York, NY, USA [Lawrence, New York, USA]

Home Country/ies: United States

Career(s): art collectors, art historians, and curators

Institution(s): Metropolitan Museum of Art

Overview

Curator and engraving authority. Born in Dublin, Ireland, William M. Laffan was the eldest of six children of Michael Laffan and Ellen Sarah Fitzgibbon (Laffan) (d. 1862). His father ran a tavern, and his parents were of a mixed Catholic and Protestant marriage. Laffan was raised as a Catholic, because of his mother’s early death. He attended H. T. Humphrey’s School in Blackrock, Dublin, Ireland, the French College (later Blackrock College), Trinity College Dublin, and in 1864, Cecilia Street Medical School. While studying medicine, Laffan covertly studied art, working as an illustrator for the Pathological Society of Dublin and collecting ornaments. He left medical school in 1868. He subsequently emigrated to the USA, visiting China en route to San Francisco.

Laffan began his journalism career as a reporter and then editor for the San Francisco Chronicle, eventually becoming managing editor of the San Francisco Bulletin. He later moved to Baltimore, where he edited and part-owned the Baltimore Daily Bulletin in 1870. In 1872, he married Georgiana Radcliffe, the daughter of a Baltimore judge. In 1877, Charles Dana (1819-1897), owner of the New York Sun, recruited him as the paper’s first drama and art critic. In 1878, Laffan first met William T. Walters(1820-1894) on a gala reception for Walters’ recent acquisition of Oriental art and European painting. Laffan soon became William Walters’s art consultant and formed close friendship with Walters and his son Henry Walters (1848‒1931). Laffan also served as the art editor for Harper & Brothers from 1881 to 1884, spending two years in London. He became the publisher of The Sun in 1884 and funded the Evening Sun in 1887. That same year, he published his monograph, American Wood Engravers. With J.P. Morgan’s assistance, Laffan acquired the Morning Sun after Dana’s death in 1897 and became President of the Sun Printing and Publishing Association in 1900. In addition to their connection through journalism, Laffan was also a trusted art adviser and close friend of J.P. Morgan(1837-1913). Laffan learned art connoisseurship from Bernard Berenson, who later courted Laffan to sell Renaissance art in 1904 and obtain the patronage of Henry Walters in 1910.

Following Luigi Palma di Cesnola’s death, Laffan was considered for the directorship of the Metropolitan Museum of Art but declined due to his ambitions for a trusteeship. This led to J.P. Morgan’s appointment of Sir Caspar Purdon Clarke. In 1905, Laffan achieved his goal and became a trustee of the Met. That same year, he persuaded Roger Fry, founder of Burlington Magazine, to visit New York to raise funds for the magazine and interview for a position at the Met. He significantly contributed to the Metropolitan Museum’s initial archaeological campaign in Egypt. Also in 1905, Laffan met Albert Lythgoe in Egypt and introduced him to Morgan. 1906, Laffan convinced Morgan to fund the Egyptian Expedition and hired Lythgoe to curate Egyptian art at Met. His passion for Far Eastern art culminated in his editing the museum’s Catalogue of the Morgan Collection of Chinese Ceramics in 1907. At the end of his life, Laffan aimed at excavations at Mesopotamia, resulting in the establishment of the William M. Laffan Professorship of Assyriology and Babylonian Literature at Yale University by J. P. Morgan in 1910. Laffan died of appendicitis in 1909 at home in Lawrence, NY.

While building his own collection, Laffan advised prominent collectors J.P. Morgan and W.T. Walters, and formed relationships with them. He also served on the acquisitions committee at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Many items from his collection are now part of the W.T. Walters Collection in Baltimore. In addition, Laffan edited and compiled catalogs for museum collections, including the Morgan Collection of Chinese Porcelains and The  Walters Collection of Oriental Ceramic Art.

Laffan was an art critic known for his tough personality. Helen Kahn described his manner as “witty, sarcastic, and short-tempered, stubborn and at times vindictive.” During his journalism career, he helped publish works by Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) and imported and employed Irish journalists, including his relatives. Laffan used his position and influence to help his sister, May Hartley (1849-1916) become a published realist fiction author in the US.

Laffan was a member of the Fine Arts Society and the London Arts Club. He maintained friendships with notable figures such as J.H. Choate (1832-1917), George B. Cortelyou (1862-1940), and Thomas F. Ryan (1851-1928).

Selected Bibliography

• Engravings on wood, by members of the Society of American wood-engravers, with an introduction and descriptive text by William M. Laffan. Published: New York, Harper and brothers, 1887.
• and Bushell, Stephen Wootton. Catalogue of the Morgan collection of Chinese porcelains. Published: New York: Privately printed by the order of Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, 1904-1911.
• [auction collection] Catalogue of the Ancient and Modern Paintings and other Objects of Art Collected by the Late William M. Laffan to be Sold at Unrestricted Public Sale on the Dates Herein Stated [January 20, 21, 1911] The sale will be conducted by Mr. Thomas E. Kirby, of the American art association, managers. Published: New York, 1911.

Sources

• [obituary] “W. M. Laffan Died of Appendicitis ” New York Times, 1909 Nov 20, p.11.
• “May be Slow to Choose Di Cesnola’s Successor.” New York Times, 1904 Nov 23, p.6
• R. W. De Forest, “Mr. Laffan’s Part in the Development of the Metropolitan Museum,” the Sun, Nov. 20, 1909, p. 6
• “Laffan in Baltimore.” The Sun, Nov 20, 1909, p.13.
• “Funeral Service for W. M. Laffan.” New York Times, 1909 Nov 23, p.9.
• Who’s Who in America: a Biographical Dictionary of Notable Living Men and Women of  States. 1908-1909. Chicago: Marquis, 1908-1909.
• “J.P. Morgan Gives $100,000 to Yale.” New York Times, 1910 Jan 14, p.9.
• Men and Women of America: a Biographical Dictionary of Contemporaries. New York: Hamersly, 1910. P.982.
• Memorial Resolutions: In Memoriam: John Stewart Kennedy, William Mackay Laffan, Charles Stewart Smith.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 5, no. 1 (1910): 2–4.
• Who Was Who 1897-1916. London, 1920
• Johnston, William R.. William and Henry Walters: the reticent collectors. United Kingdom: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. p.77-78.
• Strouse, Jean. Morgan: American Financier. United States: Random House Publishing Group, 2014. p.498.
• Molesworth, Charles. The Capitalist and the Critic: J. P. Morgan, Roger Fry, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. United States: University of Texas Press, 2016. p.139, 150.
• Mazaroff, Stanley. Henry Walters and Bernard Berenson: Collector and Connoisseur. United States: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020. p.18-19.
• “Archives Directory for the History of Collecting.” n.d. Center for the History of Collecting, The Frick Collection. Accessed July 1, 2024. https://research.frick.org/directory/detail/3482.
• “From Laffan, William Mackay to Clemens, Samuel L. (1880-01-15).” n.d. Accessed July 1, 2024. https://www.correspondence.ie/index.php?letters_function=4&letters_idno=260015.
• Kahn, Helen. 2009. “Laffan, William Mackay.” In Dictionary of Irish Biography, edited by James Quinn. Royal Irish Academy. Accessed July 1, 2024.  https://doi.org/10.3318/dib.004637.v1.
• “William Mackay Laffan.” In Dictionary of American Biography. New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936. Gale In Context: Biography (accessed July 3, 2024). https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/BT2310009490/BIC?u=duke_perkins&sid=bookmark-BIC&xid=c5ede434.

Contributors: Yuhuan Zhang