Goldman, Henry

Biography

Henry Goldman, the son of Marcus and Bertha Goldman, was born in Philadelphia. He attended private schools and entered Harvard with the class of 1887 but did not graduate because of poor eyesight. He became a traveling salesman for the commercial firm of D. Rosenberg & Sons and was involved later with the consultant firm his father founded, Goldman, Sachs & Co. In 1890 he married Babette Kaufman of New York. In addition to being credited with developing a modern method of industrial financing for commerce and industry, Goldman was known for having one of the finest smaller collections of Italian, Renaissance, Dutch, and Flemish art. He was one of seven New Yorkers who established a $150,000 fund to support a chair of German art and culture at Harvard to honor Professor Kuno Francke, former head of the Germanic Museum at Harvard. The German Republic made him an "honorary citizen" in 1922. He was a fellow for life at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History, the Historical Society of New York, and a director of the Ehrebreuger Technische Hockschule of Berlin. Goldman's collecting interest was divided between Italian and North European art. His collection included works by Giotto, Gentile da Fabriano, Nardo di Cione, Masolino, Bartolomeo Veneto, Giorgione, and Titian. Also in the Goldman Collection were works by Petrus Christus, Holbein, Rubens, and a wood sculpture by Tilman Riemenschneider (the latter now in the NGA).

Bibliography

1922

Valentiner, Wilhelm R. The Henry Goldman Collection. New York (privately printed), 1922.

1937

"Henry Goldman, 79, Banker, Dies Here." The New York Times (5 April 1937): 19, col. I.

1937

"The Death of Henry Goldman." The Art News 35 (17 April 1937): 19.

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