Simpson, Merton Daniel (1928 - 2013)
Titles
Mr.
Description
Merton Daniel Simpson was born in Charleston, South Carolina. During his adolescence, he was taught how to paint and introduced to abstract art by William Halsey and Jean Robertson Fleming, but he was not allowed to take art classes because of segregation in the South. He attended Burke High School in Charleston (as the first African American to receive a prestigious five-year fellowship from the... Read more
Merton Daniel Simpson was born in Charleston, South Carolina. During his adolescence, he was taught how to paint and introduced to abstract art by William Halsey and Jean Robertson Fleming, but he was not allowed to take art classes because of segregation in the South. He attended Burke High School in Charleston (as the first African American to receive a prestigious five-year fellowship from the Charleston Scientific and Cultural Education fund), graduated in 1949 and left for New York City. He took classes at NYU and Cooper Union and worked in a frame shop, where he met many well-known artists.
He started collecting and dealing African art alongside modern art, and was a regular visitor of Julius Carlebach’s gallery. In the 1950s, he spent time between Paris and New York, and in New York he set up his gallery, the Merton D. Simpson Gallery of Modern and Tribal Arts (Wikipedia, 2022).
He sold objects from the Kingdom of Benin from around 1958 to around 1990. He purchased these objects from galleries (Galerie Mazarin 52, Alexander Suggs Gallery, etc.), at sales (Sotheby’s in 1966, 1969, 1980), or from other dealers and collectors (William Moore, Christian Humann, Kenneth John Hewett, the Morton Lipkins).
He also seems to have been close to Charles Ratton, from whom he purchased Benin objects. Among his customers were the Brooklyn Museum, the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the Indiana University Art Museum, but he also sold Benin objects to private collectors and other dealers through his New York gallery or auction sales (at Sotheby’s and Christie’s).
Places of contact
New York, USExternal biography links
Edo designations
English designations
Categories
Institutions
Provenance names
17 objects
Loading...
