Britain gets glimpse of philanthropist's priceless art collection

His father, Andrew W Mellon, was one of entrepreneurial businessmen whose names, from Rockefeller to Carnegie to Ford, are etched into the American psyche. But it was arguably through his English mother, Nora, that the late philanthropist and art collector Paul Mellon acquired his love of English culture.

He spent his childhood summers in the English countryside and was even baptised in St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle. And the great Anglophile went on to accumulate the biggest collection of British art outside the UK's national museums and galleries, with 2,000 paintings, 50,000 prints and drawings and 35,000 rare books and manuscripts.

Thirty years ago he bequeathed it all to his alma mater, Yale University, with an endowment that has enabled the Yale Centre for British Art to operate as a world-class research institute.

This year, the centenary of Paul Mellon's birth, that centre is sending some of the treasures in the collection back for exhibition in the UK. This October, the Royal Academy will open Paul Mellon's Legacy, an exhibition of 150 works. It will include a J M W Turner, The Dort or Dordrecht: The Dort Packet-Boat from Rotterdam Becalmed, which Yale has never previously lent, and a painting, Pumpkin with a Stable Lad, by George Stubbs that was the first piece of British art he ever bought.

But the centenary will be also marked by other institutions which benefited from the philanthropist's generosity.

From June until January, the Tate is presenting British Sporting Art, an exhibition of paintings he gave the gallery. They include hunting and racing scenes, Mr Mellon being a fan of both sports. (His racehorse Mill Reef won the Epsom Derby in 1971 and his American-trained Sea Hero won the Kentucky Derby in 1993.)

The Yale Centre is supporting an exhibition of the work of Howard Hodgkin at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, where his actual birthday will be celebrated in June. And it has already worked with the Dulwich Picture Gallery on its show of Canaletto in England.

In his native America, the Yale Centre is turning the entire building over to displaying its collection. There will also be exhibitions and talks and events in Virginia, where he lived, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, which his father founded.

But Amy Meyers, the director of the Yale Centre, said the celebrations really began in England. "He had an English mother and came to love this country and this culture very deeply," she said.

His generosity towards England was enormous. "As a cultural philanthropist, he bears no equal in the 20th century," Ms Meyers said.

David Cannadine, the history professor who recently published a biography of Andrew Mellon, described Paul's whole life as "a dialogue with his father". While Paul Mellon did not share his father's interest in business, they did have common ground in art.

"Whereas his father made money, Paul wanted to give it away," Professor Cannadine said. "There was a curious love-hate relationship of which the British art is an expression - it was both a rebellion against [his father] and a homage to." Andrew collected British art in the form of 18th-century portraits by the likes of Gainsborough and landscapes by artists such as Constable. His son's tastes were more varied.

Paul's first purchase was the Stubbs in 1936 but he became a serious collector later in life when it became a passion shared with his second wife, Rachel.

Sir Geoffrey Agnew, the London art dealer, once said of Paul Mellon: "It took an American collector to make the English look again at their own paintings."

The man himself was more modest. In his autobiography, he said he had been an amateur in everything he had done. But he said: "The root of the word 'amateur' is the Latin word for love, and I can honestly say that I've thoroughly enjoyed all the roles I have played."