Arthur Kingsley Porter

Porter was born on February 16, 1883, in Darien, Connecticut, the third son born to a wealthy family that also kept a residence in New York City. Porter prepared at the Browning School in New York City, alongside classmate John D. Rockefeller Jr. He then attended Yale University, as had his two older brothers, Louis Hopkins Porter and Blachley Hoyt Porter, his father, Timothy Hopkins Porter, several uncles and cousins. Porter had intended to study law. In 1904, while traveling in France, seeing Coutances cathedral inspired an interest in architecture.{{cite book|last=Costigan|first=Lucy|title=Glenveagh Mystery: The Life, Work and Disappearance of Arthur Kinglsey Porter|publisher=Merrion|year=2012|isbn=9781908928108|location=Newbridge|page=53}} After graduating fourth in his class at Yale that year,{{Cite book|last=Harvey|first=Jacqueline Colliss|title=Dictionary of Art|publisher=Macmillan|year=1996|isbn=1884446000|editor-last=Turner|editor-first=Jane|volume=25|location=London|pages=262|chapter=Porter, Arthur Kingsley}} he began a two-year study of architectural practice as a special student at Columbia University from 1904 to 1906.{{Cite book|last=Seidel|first=Linda|title=The Architectural Historian in America|publisher=National Gallery of Art|year=1990|isbn=0894681397|series=Studies in the History of Art 35|location=Washington|pages=148|chapter=The Scholar and the Studio: A. Kingsley Port and the Study of Medieval Architecture in the Decade Before the War}}

Arthur Kingsley Porter was the son of Timothy Hopkins Porter, a banker,{{Cite journal|last=Forbes|first=Edward|date=February 1935|title=Arthur Kingsley Porter (1883–1933)|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20023098|journal=Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences|volume=69|issue=13|pages=537–541|jstor=20023098 }} and Maria Louisa Hoyt, one of the first women to graduate from Vassar College.{{cite web |title=First Students - Vassar College Encyclopedia - Vassar College |url=http://vcencyclopedia.vassar.edu/early-vassar/first-students.html |website=vcencyclopedia.vassar.edu}} When his parents married in 1870{{cite book |last1=Day |first1=Clarence |title=Decennial record of the class of 1896, Yale College. |date=1907 |publisher=Printed for the Class at the De Vinne Press |page=524 |url=https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001975669}} they merged two of Connecticut's oldest and most influential families,{{cite book |title=Glenveagh Mystery |date=2012 |publisher=Merrion |pages=15–16 |url=https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17066990-glenveagh-mystery}} both groups of ancestors having arrived in Connecticut in the early 1600s.

In a biography of Porter's life, it was said of the Porters:

:All the literature consulted converged on one main point: the Porters of Connecticut combined economic privilege with the finest pedigrees in education.{{cite book |title=Glenveagh Mystery |date=2012 |publisher=Merrion |page=29 |url=https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17066990-glenveagh-mystery}}

And of the Hoyt family:

:The Hoyts of Connecticut had long established their position at the top of the social pecking order over centuries of diligent work and astute investment. In the late nineteenth century, the United States was admitting large numbers of Europeans who sought to make their fortune in the land of opportunity. It was therefore paramount to the survival of the oldest families that wealth was not the only requirement for admittance to the highest social strata. The Hoyts fulfilled all the criteria for being one of the most influential families in Connecticut, by possessing great wealth but also having an old family tradition that no amount of money could buy.{{cite book |title=Glenveagh Mystery |date=2012 |publisher=Merrion |page=30 |url=https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17066990-glenveagh-mystery}}

The Porter family was known for being understated and private with matters having to do with the extent of their wealth.{{cite book |title=Glenveagh Mystery |date=2012 |publisher=Merrion |page=52 |url=https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17066990-glenveagh-mystery}} A New York Times article in October 1924 reported on the largest taxpayers in that city, with Arthur Kingsley Porter and his brother Louis listed therein. The article revealed that Louis Hopkins Porter had paid more taxes in 1923 than the estate of John Jacob Astor IV, several Rockefeller family members, and the same amount as William Randolph Hearst.{{cite news |title=New York -- Its Big Income. |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1924/10/25/archives/new-york-its-big-income.html |work=The New York Times |date=25 October 1924}}{{cite news |title=Income Tax Returns Made Public |work=The New York Times |date=October 24, 1924}}

He married Lucy Bryant Wallace in 1912 in New York City. She acted as chief photographer for the pair from 1919 onward. They eventually traveled for long stays in Italy, Greece and Spain, and finally to Ireland.

Porter disappeared at age 50, in July 1933. He was outside during a storm on Inishbofin Island, near Glenveagh Castle, his home in Ireland, and was presumed drowned.{{cite news|last1=|first1=|date=10 July 1933|title=A. Kingsley Porter Drowned Off Ireland; Archaeologist Lost From Boat in Storm|page=1|work=New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1933/07/10/archives/a-kingsley-porter-drowned-off-ireland-archaeologist-lost-from-boat.html|access-date=29 Dec 2021}} His wife later told the coroner of her six-hour search with two local fishermen. The inquest concluded that he had probably died from misadventure.

• Cousin Noah Porter, Academic, author, and the 11th President of Yale College from 1871–1886.
• Uncle Schuyler Merritt, Republican member of the United States House of Representatives representing Connecticut's 4th district for a combined 17 years. Merritt is also the namesake of the Connecticut parkway that bears his name.
• Merritt acted as a surrogate father to A. Kingsley Porter in Kingsley's father's later years {{cite book |title=Glenveagh Mystery |date=2012 |publisher=Merrion |page=42 |url=https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17066990-glenveagh-mystery}}
• Merritt was a mentor to Porter's niece, Joyce Porter Arneill, a political activist and philanthropist {{cite web |last1=Lady |first1=Western |title=Colorado Federation of Republican Women History 1938 to Present: Our First President |url=http://cfrwhistory.blogspot.com/2010/10/our-first-president.html |website=Colorado Federation of Republican Women History 1938 to Present |date=10 October 2010}}
• Uncle Frederick Maxfield Hoyt, yacht designer, naval architect and sailor. Hoyt was a member of the New York Yacht Club, and navigator on the sailing yacht Atlantic when she won the 1905 Kaiser's Cup race, setting a transatlantic sailing record that would stand for 100 years.{{cite news |title=Century-old Transatlantic Record broken by two boats |url=https://newatlas.com/century-old-transatlantic-record-broken-by-two-boats/4103/ |work=New Atlas |date=1 June 2005 |language=en}} Hoyt was also a first-class passenger on the RMS Titanic in 1912. After placing his wife in Collapsible Lifeboat D, he ascended to the bridge to have a drink with his friend, Titanic Captain Edward Smith, before jumping into the water himself and being rescued.{{cite web|date=28 August 2003|title=Jumped from Sinking Ship|url=https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/jumped-from-sinking-ship.html|url-status=live|access-date=29 Dec 2021|website=Encyclopedia Titanica|language=english|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080514045440/http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org:80/jumped-from-sinking-ship.html |archive-date=2008-05-14 }}
• Niece Joyce Porter Arneill, political activist and philanthropist, daughter of Porter's brother Louis Hopkins Porter. At 30 years old, Arneill was founder and first president of the National Federation of Republican Women,{{cite news |last1=TIMES |first1=Special to THE NEW YORK |title=MRS. ARNEILL HEADS REPUBLICAN WOMEN; New National Federation Elects Denverite President |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1938/09/25/archives/mrs-arneill-heads-republican-women-new-national-federation-elects.html |work=The New York Times |date=25 September 1938}} the women's wing of the Republican Party in the United States. At age 31, Arneill was a delegate to the Republican national convention before the 1940 presidential election.{{cite web |title=Convention History |url=http://www.nfrw.org/history-convention |website=www.nfrw.org}}

Porter taught as a lecturer at Yale University in 1915, and was named Assistant Professor in the History of Art in 1917. In January 1916, he proposed giving the University $500,000 ($12 million in 2017 dollars) in order to establish a department of art history. Porter laid out the very specific purposes for which the money was to be used{{cite book |title=Records of Arthur Twining Hadley as president of Yale University |url=https://orbis.library.yale.edu/vwebv/holdingsInfo?searchId=2971&recCount=50&recPointer=5&bibId=884370}}

[t]o provide salaries for professors or instructors in the history of art in the academic department, as might be required. To provide for the running and overhead expenses of such a department, the purchases of equipment, slides, photographs, books, etc. Any residue to be used for the purchase of additional works of art to add to the collection of the Art School, and for the proper maintenance and housing of the same.

The University declined the offer, which could only be used for the purposes he set out.

Porter became frustrated at Yale's lack of openness to having a full department dedicated to the study of the history of art and architecture. In 1918 he left Yale to lead architectural preservation efforts by the French government caused by war damage and was the only American invited to join said commission.{{cite book|last=Petro|first=Pamela|title=The Slow Breath of Stone: A Romanesque Love Story|publisher=Fourth Estate|year=2005|isbn=9780007445806|location=London|page=74}}

Porter began teaching at Harvard University in 1921. He and his wife bought Cambridge mansion Elmwood that same year. He was appointed to the newly established William Dorr Boardman Memorial Professorship of Fine Arts in January 1925.{{cite news |title=Harvard Advances Edgell and Morize |publisher=The Daily Boston Globe |date=28 February 1925}} In 1923 and 1924 he taught as an exchange professor in France and visiting professor Spain.{{Cite journal|last=Forbes|first=Edward|date=February 1935|title=Arthur Kingsley Porter (1883–1933)|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20023098|journal=Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences|volume=69|issue=13|pages=537–541|jstor=20023098 }} Porter taught at Harvard until his disappearance in 1933.

Porter left Elmwood to Harvard University in his will, as well as a trust for its maintenance. His widow, Lucy, left the University an additional $1,000,000 in her will ($9 million in 2017 dollars) to endow a chair to be called the A Kingsley Porter Chair Professorship.{{cite news |title=Widow of Archeologist Wills Million to Harvard |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1962/11/07/archives/widow-of-archeologist-wills-million-to-harvard.html |work=The New York Times |date=7 November 1962}} The medievalist Ernst Kitzinger was appointed in 1967 as the chair's first professor.

Porter has been called a ‘real-life Indiana Jones’.{{cite book |title=Glenveagh Mystery |date=2012 |publisher=Merrion |page=230 |url=https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17066990-glenveagh-mystery}} He was unique in the academic community, given he was a multimillionaire in his own right, with his own European castle, and the means to travel extensively, often for more than a year at a time. He was so respected that the University let him do so.

Sarcophagus curse

While his overall station and manner of teaching, exploring, researching and writing certainly fit this "Indiana Jones" profile, perhaps nothing made this a more fitting comparison than the incident with the sarcophagus commissioned by Count Pedro Ansùrez in 1093 for his young son Alfonso.

Porter came into possession of the sarcophagus, and took it to Harvard as a gift to the university's Fogg Museum, where it was prominently displayed. The sarcophagus enabled Porter to prove his theory on the spread of Romanesque sculpture:

:The lid of the sarcophagus was considered to be one of the finest examples of European sepulchral sculpture in existence from the Middle Ages. The discovery of the burial slab gave Kingsley the proof he had been searching for that Romanesque sculpture was practiced in Spain during the eleventh century. The sculptured style of decoration on the coffin lid was a divergence from tomb construction of the time. It contained large figures representing souls that had passed into the other world, Evangelists and Archangels, all in human form. The figures were depicted with large bulging eyes and the archangel Gabriel had long chiselled curls. Therefore, as an art object it was invaluable to archaeologists to further their knowledge of eleventh-century Romanesque Spanish sculpture.{{cite book |title=Official Register of Harvard University Containing Report of the President of Harvard College and Reports of Departments for 1932, 1933, 31, 3 |date=5 February 1934 |page=309}}

In 1931, Jacobo Fitz-James Stuart, the 17th Duke of Alba, discovered the sarcophagus had been removed from Lèon and brought to Harvard by Porter. The Spanish government became involved with the negotiations with Harvard, but before any deal was reached, Alfonso XIII of Spain was overthrown by a revolution, and so the slab remained on display at Harvard in 1931.{{cite news |title=Collections and Critiques {{!}} News {{!}} The Harvard Crimson |url=https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1935/12/12/collections-and-critiques-pa-sarcophagus-slab/ |work=www.thecrimson.com |date=12 December 1935 |language=en}} Negotiations resumed in 1933, and Porter consented for the sarcophagus lid to be returned to Léon in 8 July 1933.

:For those who insisted on a supernatural explanation for Kingsley’s demise, then his disturbance of the tomb at Sahagún in 1926…and his mysterious disappearance would have been fodder for their belief in a medieval curse that had been unleashed on the unwary archaeologist. There was still one fact to emerge, involving the infamous sarcophagus slab, that was certainly uncanny: The sarcophagus lid that had enclosed the tomb of Alfonso Ansúrez in 1093 was finally returned to its rightful place on 8 July 1933 – the day of Kingsley’s disappearance.{{cite book |title=Glenveagh Mystery |date=2012 |publisher=Merrion |page=215 |url=https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17066990-glenveagh-mystery}}

• Blachley Lodge, on Noroton Hill, Darien, CT, where Porter was born
• Elmwood File:Elmwood-Winter08.jpg
• Porter's Cambridge Mansion, Elmwood, had been previously occupied by Elbridge Gerry, a signer of the US Declaration of Independence and Vice President of the United States under President James Madison. Poet James Russell Lowell was born at Elmwood and lived there most of his life. Lowell's friend Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a poem about the house entitled “The Herons of Elmwood”{{cite web |title=Birds of Passage (Collection)/The Herons of Elmwood |url=https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Birds_of_Passage_(Collection)/The_Herons_of_Elmwood}}{{cite web |last1=Longfellow |first1=Henry Wadsworth |title=Birds of Passage |url=https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Birds_of_Passage_(Collection)/The_Herons_of_Elmwood}}
• Porter purchased Elmwood from Lowell's heirs in 1920, and put significant resources into improving it while honoring the home's history.{{cite web |url=https://hollisarchives.lib.harvard.edu/repositories/4/resources/10567 |title=Harvard University Archives, HUG 1706.105, Arthur Kingsley Porter Papers Correspondence, Correspondence re. Purchases of Elmwood, Letter from Dr Francis L. Burnett, 205 Beacon Street, Boston, MA, 1 February 1923, re. the letting of Elmwood |date=1 February 1923}}
• Porter often held class at Elmwood and allowed students to see relics from his travels.{{cite book |title=Glenveagh Mystery |date=2012 |publisher=Merrion |page=110 |url=https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17066990-glenveagh-mystery}}
• Elmwood became the official residence of Harvard University's President in 1970, and remains so today.
• Glenveagh Castle, Ireland File:Glenveagh Castle - geograph.org.uk - 395086.jpg
• Porter purchased Glenveagh Castle and its surrounding 30,000 acres in 1929. He further restored a fisherman's cottage on nearby Inishboffin Island. In 1937, Lucy Porter sold the property to Henry Plumer McHilhenny, one of Porter's former students from Harvard.{{cite web |title=Glenveagh Castle – Cruelty, Cowboys and Celebrities |url=https://dailyscribbling.com/the-secret-life-of-irish-castles/glenveagh-castle-cruelty-cowboys-and-celebrities/ |website=Daily Scribbling |language=en |date=15 June 2014}} It briefly became a retreat for Hollywood stars such as Greta Garbo and Charlie Chaplin.{{Cite web|last=Guidera|first=Anita|date=1 December 2012|title=Riddle of the Gay Harvard Millionaire Who Vanished from Inishboffin Island|url=https://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/riddle-of-the-gay-harvard-millionaire-who-vanished-from-inishboffin-island-28942836.html|url-status=live|access-date=2021-12-24|website=Independent|language=en|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191203204057/https://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/riddle-of-the-gay-harvard-millionaire-who-vanished-from-inishboffin-island-28942836.html |archive-date=2019-12-03 }}

Porter wrote 293 works that were published in 934 publications, in seven languages, with 7,452 library holdings.{{cite web |title=Porter, Arthur Kingsley 1883-1933 |url=http://www.worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n50-23212}} Porter's photographic collection contains 35,000 photographs and 11,700 negatives, pertaining to every aspect of medieval art.{{cite book |title=Ackermann, J. 'The Visual Arts Collection: Manifold Resources', in L. Todd and M. Banta (eds). The Invention of Photography and Its Impact of Learning: Photographs from Harvard University and Radclff College and from the Collection of Harrison D. Horblit |date=1989 |publisher=Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Library |page=170}} Photographs taken by Porter are held in the Conway Library of art and architecture at The Courtauld Institute in London.{{Cite web|date=30 June 2020|title=Who Made the Conway Library?|url=http://blog.courtauld.ac.uk/digitalmedia/2020/06/30/who-made-the-conway-library/|url-status=live|access-date=2020-11-19|website=Digital Media|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200703211341/http://blog.courtauld.ac.uk/digitalmedia/2020/06/30/who-made-the-conway-library/ |archive-date=2020-07-03 }}

• Medieval Architecture: Its Origins and Development, with Lists of Monuments and Bibliographies (2 volumes, Baker & Taylor, 1909)
• The Construction of Lombard and Gothic Vaults (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1911)
• Lombard Architecture (4 volumes, 1915–1919)
• The Seven Who Slept (Boston: Marshall Jones Company, 1919)
• Romanesque Sculpture of the Pilgrimage Roads (10 vol., 1923) – "his most well known and contentious work"{{According to whom|date=August 2020}}
• Spanish Romanesque Sculpture (2 volumes, 1928), based on lectures at the Sorbonne.{{Cite web|last=Berger|first=LaNitra Michele Walker|title=Porter, A. Kinsley|url=https://arthistorians.info/portera|url-status=live|access-date=28 December 2021|website=Dictionary of Art Historians|date=21 February 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181125204610/http://arthistorians.info/portera |archive-date=2018-11-25 }}
• The Crosses and Culture of Ireland (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1931), based on five lectures delivered at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in February and March 1930.{{Cite journal|date=1931|title=Notes|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3256120|journal=Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin|volume=26|issue=10|pages=250|doi=10.2307/3256120|jstor=3256120 |issn=0026-1521}}

{{Reflist}}

• [https://hollisarchives.lib.harvard.edu/repositories/4/resources/10567 Papers] at Harvard
• [https://arthistorians.info/portera Dictionary of Art Historians]
• [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/04/inishbofin-mystery-us-archaeologists-irish-disappearance-tv-examination Guardian article, 5 September 2022]

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Category:20th-century American historians

Category:20th-century American male writers

Category:American medievalists

Category:American archaeologists

Category:American art historians

Category:1883 births

Category:1933 deaths

Category:Members of the Institute for Catalan Studies

Category:Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America

Category:American male non-fiction writers

Category:Yale University alumni

Category:Harvard University faculty

Category:People from Darien, Connecticut

Category:Writers from Connecticut

Category:Historians from Connecticut

Category:Academics from Connecticut