Leonard Gow
Date of birth: 1859
Place of birth: Glasgow
Date of death: 1936.11.11
Category: collector
Identity:
Leonard Gow was a Glasgow collector.
Life:
The son of a Glasgow shipping magnate, Leonard Gow senior, Gow attended the University of Glasgow in 1884 to study Moral Philosophy. His elder brother John Barnett Gow studied Chemistry and Literature in 1881-82. Gow went on to become a senior partner in the shipping company Gow, Harrison & Co and director of the Burmah Oil Company. In 1919 he founded the Leonard Gow Lectureship on Medical Diseases of Infancy and Childhood and was given an Honorary degree in 1934. With an interest in fine art and ceramics, Gow formed a collection of pictures, etchings and Chinese porcelain, including works by Whistler. Gow's collection was sold at Sotheby's in London on 12 May 1943. K1770405 (lot 219) was purchased by P. & D. Colnaghi & Co. and subsequently bought by the University of Glasgow in 1972. In 1965 the trustees of Gow's estate presented a large collection of over 300 prints by the Glasgow artist Muirhead Bone to the Hunterian Art Gallery.
Bibliography:
http://www.universitystory.gla.ac.uk (accessed August 2009); http://www.huntsearch.gla.ac.uk (accessed August 2009).
