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Paul Mellon (June 11, 1907 – February 2, 1999) was an American philanthropist and a horse breeding of thoroughbred horse racing. He is one of only five people ever designated an "Exemplar of Racing" by the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame. He was co-heir to one of America's greatest business fortunes, derived from the Mellon Financial created by his grandfather Thomas Mellon, his father Andrew W. Mellon, and his uncle Richard B. Mellon. In 1957, when Fortune prepared its first list of the wealthiest Americans, it estimated that Paul Mellon, his sister Ailsa Mellon Bruce, and his cousins Sarah Mellon and Richard King Mellon, were all among the richest eight people in the United States, with fortunes between $400 million and $500 million each (between about $ and $ in today's dollars).
Mellon was married to Mary Conover Brown from 1935 until her death in 1946. They had two children, Catherine Conover Mellon (first wife of John Warner) and Timothy Mellon. In 1948, Paul Mellon married his second wife, Rachel Lambert ("Bunny") Mellon (August 9, 1910–March 17, 2014), adopting her two children from a previous marriage.
Mellon's autobiography, Reflections in a Silver Spoon, was published in 1992.
After graduating from Yale in 1929, he went to England to study at Clare College, Cambridge. In 1930, he and Sir Timothy William Gowers helped found the CRABS, the Clare Rugby And Boating Society, the oldest of the collegiate Gentlemen's societies still active. He received a BA in 1931; his father would serve as U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's from 1932 to 1933. In 1938, he received an Oxbridge MA from the University of Cambridge. He would become a major benefactor to Clare College's Forbes-Mellon Library, opened in 1986.
He developed his great love of England and English culture while studying at Clare. "It was while I was at Cambridge that I embarked on the dangerous seas of collecting", he once said, a passion that would have profound implications for his major beneficiaries, both in the US and the UK.
He enrolled at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1940 but six months later joined the United States Army, asking to join the cavalry. Mellon served with the Morale Operations Branch of the Office of Strategic Services in Europe. He rose to the rank of major and received four in the European Theatre of Operations.
In 1936, Mellon purchased his first British painting, Pumpkin with a Stable-lad by George Stubbs, who became a lifetime favorite of his. From the late 1950s to the mid-1960s, with the help of English art historian Basil Taylor, Mellon amassed a major collection of British art. London art dealer Geoffrey Agnew once said of his acquisitions: "It took an American collector to make the English look again at their own paintings." Mellon's collection was catalogued by Dudley Snelgrove and Judy Egerton.
Mellon granted his extensive collection of British art, rare books, and related materials to Yale in the 1960s, along with the funding to create a museum to house it (designed by Louis Kahn). He insisted that it not be named in honor of him, but rather would be called the Yale Center for British Art, to encourage others to support it as well. Mellon also funded an endowment to support operations and acquisitions, and would add yet more in his will. In 1970, he funded the creation of the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, a London-based affiliate of the Yale center, to encourage the study of British art and culture by undergraduate and research scholars alike.
Mellon also provided leadership gifts to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia, as well as Choate Rosemary Hall.
His second major gift was funding for two new undergraduate residential colleges: Ezra Stiles College and Morse College. Designed by Eero Saarinen, these colleges, along with the Kahn-designed British Art Center, demonstrated Mellon's effort to bring modern architecture to Yale. The additional undergraduate housing helped Yale add women to its student body in 1969.
Mellon endowed the masterships and deanships of each of Yale's 12 residential colleges. He created the Mellon Senior Forum program, which provides a weekly meal for seniors in each of the residential colleges where they can share progress on their senior essays and projects with one another.
Mellon provided the funding to create the Directed Studies program of intense freshman-year focus on the humanities. He supported the undergraduate theater studies program, and endowed named professorships in schools throughout the University, particularly in the humanities.
Mellon gave money to causes that advanced the preservation of horses, including the United States Jockey Club's Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation. This organization gives grants to research projects intended to increase the safety, welfare, longevity and improvement of life for racehorses.
He donated the $1 million bonus that Sea Hero won in the Chrysler Triple Crown Challenge to the Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation. Furthermore, he requested that double that amount be raised in response to his donation. That goal was met during the 1995–1996 fiscal year. Upon his death, he left yet another $2.5 million to the Foundation's endowment.
In 1999, Paul Mellon bequeathed $8 million to the University of Cambridge in England for the Fitzwilliam Museum. "Fitzwilliam pays tribute to benefactor Paul Mellon." University of Cambridge. 12 June 2007. Retrieved 1 September 2022. He agreed that £1 million of that sum could be allocated to the museum's courtyard development and in his will gave $12.5 million to re-light the museum's galleries and renovate the courtyard. The money was added to the Paul Mellon Fund, a trust fund whose income is used for education, exhibitions and publications.
He also helped to buy the Cape Hatteras National Seashore and the Sky Meadows State Park in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, where he used to go to look at the stars.
He was also a major benefactor of Clare College and Clare Hall, both in Cambridge, England. Indeed, Clare Hall, founded 1966, gains much from his benefaction; his generous bequest serves the intellectual needs of the graduate college members. The Mellon Fellowship is another example of his generosity, permitting the reciprocal exchange of two students from Yale and two from Clare College for graduate study in each other's institutions.
Mellon helped to arrange the merger of the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research, founded by his father Andrew W. Mellon and uncle Richard B. Mellon, with Andrew Carnegie Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1967 to create Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He subsequently donated money to the school.
Among honors, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1971, created an Honorary Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (KBE) in 1974, awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1985, elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992, and awarded the National Humanities Medal in 1997.
In 1978, Mellon received the S. Roger Horchow Award for Greatest Public Service by a Private Citizen, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards.
After his wife Mary's death in 1946 from an asthma attack, he married Rachel Lambert Lloyd, known as "Bunny", the former wife of Stacy Barcroft Lloyd Jr. She was a descendant of the Lambert family who formulated and marketed Listerine and an heiress to the Warner-Lambert corporate fortune (Warner-Lambert is now part of Pfizer, following a 2000 merger). Bunny Mellon was an avid horticulture and gardener, whose fondness for France Impressionism and Post-Impressionist painting, as well as American art, Mellon came to share. By this marriage, he had two stepchildren: Stacy Lloyd III and Eliza Lambert Lloyd (d. 2008; who married and divorced Viscount Moore).
Paul Mellon died on February 2, 1999 in Upperville, Virginia.The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica (June 7, 2024).
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> "Paul Mellon". Encyclopedia Britannica. Archived from the original on November 13, 2024.
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