Introduction | 1907–1939 | 1941–1959 | 1961–1979 | 1980–1999
1907
On 11 June, Paul Mellon is born in Pittsburgh, the son of financier and
industrialist Andrew W. Mellon and Nora McMullen, his much younger English
wife. Paul and his sister Ailsa (1901–1969) spend their childhood in
Pittsburgh, interspersed by long summers in the English countryside.
1919
At the age of 12, Paul Mellon leaves Pittsburgh for Choate School. In
1925, he enters Yale University, where he serves on the staff of the Yale
Daily News and Yale Literary Magazine.
1929
After graduating from Yale in 1929, he enters Clare College, Cambridge,
where he develops his lifelong passion for horses and begins to explore
the world of collecting.
While I was at Cambridge, and a year later while I occasionally stayed in London with my father during his ambassadorship, I began collecting books, particularly English color-plate books and books on racing and hunting.... Later, after I was first married in 1935, and until World War II, I began buying racing and hunting and other sporting paintings. Paul Mellon, 1963
1930
Paul Mellon is appointed to the original board of trustees of the A.W.
Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust.
Father had established the E.&C. Trust, as we called it, primarily as a vehicle for transferring his collection of paintings to ultimate public ownership and for funding the construction costs of the National Gallery....Looked at in the broader context...my trusteeship marked the beginning of a special relationship with the Gallery.... Paul Mellon, 1992
1935
Paul Mellon marries Mary Conover.
1937
After Andrew W. Mellon's death in August 1937, Paul Mellon and the other
trustees of the A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust assume full
responsibility for the construction of the National Gallery and its early
operations.
Though Paul became an art collector relatively late in life, his father, sensing his interest, made him one of the three trustees responsible for the construction of the National Gallery. Except for the war years, he has been instrumental in determining its policies, its acquisitions, and its management. John Walker, 1974
1938
Paul Mellon becomes a trustee of the National Gallery and is elected president.
I remember our first trustees' meeting, Chief Justice Hughes in the chair, Zeus-like and with the whitest of beards. Paul Mellon, 1985
Mr.
Mellon accompanies museum director David Finley on visits to Joseph
Widener at Lynnewood Hall in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, and to
Samuel Kress in New York, to help persuade these collectors to contribute
their works to the National Gallery. Both Widener and Kress eventually
donate their collections to the Gallery.
1939
Paul Mellon resigns from the Gallery's board of trustees.