Showing posts with label John McFadden and His Age. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John McFadden and His Age. Show all posts
Saturday, 25 January 2025
JOHN H. McFADDEN AND HIS AGE: PROMOTIONAL PRESENTATION
Saturday, 31 August 2024
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Saturday, 18 June 2022
McFADDEN GOES TO CAMBRIDGE
Clare College @ Cambridge University
Book Notes from All Over
Friday, 3 September 2021
Liverpool Learned Society Praises New Book on Local Art Collector John H. McFadden
John H. McFadden and His Age: Cotton and Culture in Philadelphia
Richard Carreño 304pp.19 black and white illustrations. Camino Books, Philadelphia, 2021. Available from Amazon £18.69 hardback. ISBN: 978-1680980394.
I consider myself a reasonably well-read amateur Liverpool historian but confess that, until recently, I had never heard of John H McFadden. And, I suspect, neither had any of my fellow local history friends. This despite the fact that he and brother George headed up the biggest firm of cotton dealers not just in Liverpool during the late Victorian and early Edwardian era when the city was indisputably “King Cotton”, but on both sides of the Atlantic.
Like John Howard McFadden’s life itself, this is a book of two halves covering his early and later years in Philadelphia and his two decades or so in Liverpool when he was at the height of his cotton dealing powers. In spite of his business success and the great wealth that went with it, McFadden largely lived his life under the radar. So, it is thanks to Carreño that he has managed to tease out so much of the detail of his life. Aside from dealing in cotton futures, McFadden had three main passions, and the money to indulge them: medical research (of which Liverpool was a major beneficiary), polar exploration (and in particular Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton) and assembling an outstanding private collection of 18th and 19th century British paintings by the great masters, including one by Liverpool horse painter George Stubbs.
Thursday, 26 August 2021
LIVERPOOL'S LITTLE-KNOWN ART WORLD
 |
THE TOFF OF LIVERPOOL |
John H. McFadden and His Age
By Richard Carreño
Camino Press (2021)
BOOK'S STARTLING REVELATIONS
GET ACCLAIM FROM LOCAL AUTHOR
By Ron Jones
Amazon.com
This is no hagiography. Where there are skeletons in the cupboard (and there are), Richard Carreño relishes dragging them out into the light of day. I consider myself a reasonably well-read amateur Liverpool historian, but confess that I had never heard of John H. McFadden. And neither had any of my fellow local history buffs, despite the fact that he and brother George headed up the biggest firm of cotton dealers not just in Liverpool during the late Victorian and early Edwardian era when the city was indisputably “King Cotton”, but on both sides of the Atlantic.
Like John Howard McFadden's life itself, this is a book of two halves covering his early and later years in Philadelphia and his two decades or so in Liverpool when he was at the height of his cotton dealing powers. In spite of his business success and the great wealth that went with it, McFadden largely lived his life under the radar. So, it is thanks to Carreño that he has managed to tease out so much of the detail of his life. Aside from dealing in cotton futures, McFadden had three main passions, and the money to indulge them: medical research (of which Liverpool was a major beneficiary), polar exploration (and in particular Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton), and assembling an outstanding private collection of 18th and 19th century British paintings by the great masters.
Whilst McFadden largely amassed his fortune during his days in Liverpool, it was his birthplace of Philadelphia that was the main recipient of his largesse. Having spent the greater part of his life buying British masterpieces, what to do with them with life drawing to a close? The answer was to donate them to his hometown. But the canny McFadden had one stipulation: the “City of Brotherly Love” must first build a fitting gallery in which to display them…and build it within a challenging timespan. Hence the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Carreño has undertaken impressive research into this whole saga, which rightly takes up a goodly part of the book.
In other hands this biography might have resulted in a worthy but rather dull account of an extraordinary man leading a fairly ordinary life, but in Carreño’s hands it comes to life, mainly because it is so well-researched and entertainingly written.
Ron Jones is a journalist based in Liverpool. He is the author of The American Connection: The Story of Liverpool's Links with America from Christopher Columbus to The Beatles.
Tuesday, 17 August 2021
PHILADELPHIA MAGAZINE RAVES!
SERIOUS McFADDEN BIO
ALSO ROLLICKING FUN READ
Take it from Sandy Hingston at Philadelphia Magazine and you, too, might spend a couple of reading days rollicking with Richard Carreno's bio of John H. McFadden, the Philadelphia 19th century millionaire, art collector, and founder of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Click below:
Wednesday, 9 June 2021
AT THE MOVIES
JOHN McFADDEN AND HIS AGE:
Coming Soon to a Bookshop Near You
Monday, 24 May 2021
'JOHN H. McFADDEN AND HIS AGE: COTTON AND CULTURE IN PHILADELPHIA' NOW AVAILABLE AT BARNES & NOBLE
More info? Click Here
Preface: Beau Ideal
In a city where Benjamin
Franklin’s legacy permeates the
institutional landscape, it is easy to
believe that the Philadelphia Museum of
Art is another of Philadelphia’s ancient
and legendary cultural institutions. Many of them indeed date from the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including the Pennsylvania Academy of
the Fine Arts, founded in 1805, and the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, begun in
1814. And Franklin was in fact associated with two public institutions: the
Library Company (1731) and the American Philosophical Society (1743). In
contrast, the Philadelphia Museum is a mere youngblood, less than a century
from its opening in 1928 as the Pennsylvania Museum of Art.
That is, if we are considering it as it is today: the majestic Greek Revival
colossus atop Fairmount Hill.
But the museum’s roots run much deeper, to the
late nineteenth century, in its first incarnation in 1877 as the Pennsylvania
Museum and School of Industrial Art. By this measure, it is actually older than
the iconic Metropolitan Museum of Art (1880) in New York.
John H. McFadden and His Age The Pennsylvania Museum of Art was
born in a time of tumultuous municipal transition, which tore and remade the
fabric of virtually all of Philadelphia’s institutions, from political to cultural,
from commercial to societal.
Friday, 30 April 2021
McFADDEN: IN BOOKSHOPS IN LATE JUNE
Greetings Friends,
Many have inquired about the publication schedule of my new book, John H. McFadden and His Age: Cotton and Culture in Philadelphia. Whew, it's been a long and winding road!
Finally we have a firm publication date, 6 July. This means, I'm told by the publisher, Camino Books, that the book will be in bookshops in late June.
If you have any questions, please contact me anytime.
Warmest regards,
Richard
Thursday, 3 December 2020
Saturday, 10 October 2020
PUBLICATION: CHRISTMAS 2020
John McFadden and His Age
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