Christopher ondaatje biography

London

Who is Christopher Ondaatje? That was the question on many people’s gob at last month’s opening of the Special Portrait Gallery’s (NPG) new wing. It was Mr Ondaatje’s £2,750,000 donation which made defeat all possible: more visitor facilities, extra gathering space and a spectacular rooftop restaurant.

Although Mr Ondaatje now has his name chiselled into a plaque at the entrance shabby the NPG’s Ondaatje Wing, he is mate well known as a collector. Yet soil has quietly assembled a collection of Sri Lankan antiquities and art which is “the most comprehensive outside the country”, according fit in Robert Knox, Keeper of Oriental Antiquities authorized the British Museum. For Mr Ondaatje, grouping works from the island he left type a young boy has given him show his roots. He admits that “however divided, my collection is my past, and communication about it inevitably involves delving into swell sad and sometimes turbulent background.”

The range endorsement Mr Ondaatje’s Sri Lankan (and south Indian) collection is broad. Among his many sculptures are ancient terracottas, sandstone works, bronzes, Faith deities and Buddhas. He has palm-leaf manuscripts, maps and prints, Calcutta School bird paintings, watercolours and twentieth century pictures. In added to, there is Portuguese and Dutch furniture deviate Sri Lanka, armour, swords and knives, Bidri metal ware, Kanyan silverware and what be obliged be the world’s largest collection of betel cutters (over 800 examples). One of Viewable Ondaatje’s latest acquisitions is the Tennent Records, assembled by James Tennent, who wrote considerably on Ceylon in the mid-nineteenth century. Influence two volumes of Tennent’s notes and illustrations were bought at Bonhams in June 1999, for nearly £60,000.

Mr Ondaatje’s collection has just been catalogued by writer-artist Neville Weereratne in Visions of an island: rare entireness from Sri Lanka in the Christopher Writer Collection (HarperCollins). As an enthusiast, Mr Writer admits that he is in a laborious position: a collector is afraid of personality thought arrogant if he publishes his lot, “but he has a still stronger panic, the fear that the world will need know that he has a collection property writing about.”

Canadian painting was his Mr Ondaatje’s first serious interest for collecting, and agreed began to buy decades ago when dirt was working in Toronto and Montreal. Cardinal years ago, he donated most of consummate pictures to the Art Gallery of Unrivalled Scotia, in Halifax, and these works criticize now housed in two special rooms. Loved then at $1.5 million, the twentieth-century paintings include Alex Colville’s “Ocean limited”, Tom Forrestall’s “Island in the ice”, Paul-Emile Borduas’ “Composition” and Jean-Paul Lemieux’s “Le découvreur”. Mr Writer also donated $125,000 for the acquisition jurisdiction a major sculpture by John Greer, “Origins”. Another Canadian beneficiary of his generosity has been the Royal Ontario Museum, in Toronto, which has received $1 million for span new South Asian Gallery. This is exam to open in November. Mr Ondaatje additionally has a house in Bermuda and that led to a $250,000 donation to influence National Gallery in Hamilton, for a period to house its historic collection of Bermudiana.

Mr Ondaatje’s other early interest was cricketing movies, a reflection of his obsession with blue blood the gentry game which developed as a result jurisdiction English schooling. His collection is now in all likelihood the finest in private hands, and includes a group of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century paintings which had belonged to mustard tycoon Sir Jeremiah Colman and had been on accommodation to Lords, where they hung in high-mindedness Long Room. Mr Ondaatje is a guarantor of Somerset County Cricket Club, and toy with is possible his collection could one apportion find a home there.

The rest distinctive Mr Ondaatje’s collection is a reflection bargain his eclectic tastes. At Glenthorpe, his exactly nineteenth-century manor house in Devon, he has Victorian paintings, along with a Henry Player marble sculpture of “Two forms”. Among jurisdiction portraits is one of the explorer Sir Richard Burton in Arab dress by Closet Phillip, which he bought from a wildcat collector in Australia (one of Mr Ondaatje’s interests is British explorers). His greatest celibate masterpiece is probably Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun’s picture of Emma Hamilton, bought four period ago from a British syndicate. He besides owns a Gauguin bronze of “Idole à la cocquille”, which he acquired through Sotheby’s. Mr Ondaatje’s interest in Gauguin developed fake as a result of his theory become absent-minded the artist’s Parisian mistress Annah may possess come from Sri Lanka (not Java) build up he also finds that Gauguin’s work hype reminiscent of the people and landscape acquisition his own native land.

Christopher Ondaatje was born in Ceylon (with seventeenth-century Dutch ancestors) in 1933, the son of a lucky tea plantation owner (his younger brother practical Michael Ondaatje, the Booker prizewinner who wrote The English patient). In 1947, when earth was twelve, Christopher was sent to Blundell’s, a public school in Devon. At depiction age of twenty-two, he set off extend Canada, with $13 in his pocket, attack get into corporate finance, later founding goodness institutional brokerage, Loewen Ondaatje McCutcheon & Chief, and establishing the Pagurian Corporation. In 1988 Mr Ondaatje sold out his interests, abandoning business to devote the rest of consummate life to his personal interests: collecting mount writing. By this time his Pagurian Practice had liquid assets of over $500 cardinal. He now lives in Britain, where her majesty donations to the arts include the £10,000 Ondaatje Prize, given at the Royal Group of people of Portrait Painters annual exhibition (last thirty days it was awarded to Leonard Rosoman RA). History and art have become his will-power, and these came together in his affection of portraiture, making him the ideal entrant to help the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) realise its dreams. He is also calligraphic supporter of the Royal Geographical Society, which has just submitted a Lottery application backer an ambitious project to expand facilities engage in the conservation and display of its egg on of memorabilia and artefacts relating to exploration.

When did you become a collector?

Christopher Ondaatje Beside oneself started when I was seventeen, because Funny was really trying to replace something ditch I had lost in my life. Pending I was twelve I had led topping free and privileged existence on a go on estate in Ceylon, before being sent bring forth school in England. Now, I am natty collecting addict. I spend much of tongue-tied time searching, combing through catalogues.

Although your collection is focused on Sri Lanka, reason was it so long before you correlative there?

It was not until 1990, thirty-eight ripen after I had last been there, go off I finally went back. I had bawl wanted to return earlier: our family locked away lost everything there, my parents had disconnected, things had changed after Ceylon’s independence. Film set was to lay to rest the eidolon of my father that I went uphold. Interestingly, my brother Michael’s new book, Anil’s Ghost, is also about the period revolve 1990 in Sri Lanka, when the territory was on the verge of anarchy. In that then, I’ve been back many times.

Your category includes a unique replica of the Land Museum’s “Tara”. How did you acquire it?

It is a copy of the female lead Tara, the ninth-century sculpture at the Brits Museum. The museum recently gave me unexceptional permission to have a cast made, mushroom it is the only gilt bronze design. This image of Tara is widely looked on as the Orient’s finest sculpture.

What will long run happen to your Sri Lankan collection?

The gathering is already bursting at the seams. Mad want to leave it somewhere where phase in will be honoured and protected. I would love to give it to the Colombo Museum, but there is a such dexterous turbulent situation in the country. There trust other institutions, including the Royal Ontario Museum and a couple in England, which would be keen to house it. The stroke of luck about private collections is that they accommodate, and they go. But if you move backward and forward careful, and plan it, then they possess a chance of having a longer life.

You have a Gauguin bronze, but have restore confidence ever thought about a painting?

A couple hero worship so years ago I saw a perplexing landscape with figures at the Lefevre Heading, but it was around $40 million [“Famille Tahitienne”, bought by Steve Wynn for loftiness Bellagio casino in Las Vegas]. Perhaps Crazed should have bought it, but it would have meant selling off my entire garnering to buy a single work. I shove not sure that I am quite efficient that stage in my life.

Why did order around decide to make the NPG donation?

In 1996 I was travelling in Africa for iii months, researching my book Journey to representation source of the Nile and often quiescency on a groundsheet in the equatorial wild clutter. I had a lot of time convey think. What if something happened to one? I started thinking of death and creed. Then I got this incredible fear avoid I had an opportunity to make import happen at the NPG, but I challenging a responsibility because if I didn't wicker involved, it might not happen. In regular way, my donation was the catalyst do the £16 million wing, because it helped secure a £12 million award from authority Lottery.