Miltiades Basil Manuel
Date of birth: 1841.07.09
Place of birth: Constantinople
Date of death: 1907.12.23
Place of death: Paddington, London
Category: collector
Identity:
Constantinople-born Miltiades Basil Manuel, the son of Basil Manuel (b. ca 1805) and Euphrosyne Ioannou (b. ca 1810), was a collector. In Kensington in December 1874 he married Sophia Eustratius Ionides (1853-1905), the daughter of Eustratius Constantine Ionides (1817-1888) and [Hariclia Xeno] Chariclea Xenos (1827-1919), and the sister of Helen ('Nellie') Euphrosyne Whistler (1849-1917), née Ellen Ionides, the wife of Whistler's brother Dr William McNeill Whistler. He became a naturalised British subject in 1881. The Manuels had several children including a son, Stephen.
Life:
In London Whistler was among the many guests who received the hospitality of the Ionides at the Tulse Hill home of Alexander Constantine Ionides (1810-1890), Sophia's uncle. The Ionides family commissioned and bought a significant number of Whistler's paintings and etchings. Sophia herself commissioned Whistler to painted a portrait of their son in 1885, Arrangement in Grey: Portrait of Master Stephen Manuel y321. T Manuel bought lithographs by Whistler from the Fine Art Society in 1895. Whistler seemed to be fond of 'Sophie', whom he described as 'delightful' (GUW #06713).
Bibliography:
Butterworth, Dorothea, Ionides Family Tree, [privately published], 1936; Metaxas, K. H., 'The Ionides: a Greek family in Britain: family tree', The Greek Gazette, December 1995; Spink, Nesta R., Harriet K. Stratis, and Martha Tedeschi, The Lithographs of James McNeill Whistler, (gen. eds, Harriet K. Stratis and Martha Tedeschi), 2 vols., Chicago, 1998 , vol. 2, p. 172; Young, Andrew McLaren, Margaret F. MacDonald, Robin Spencer, and Hamish Miles, The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler, New Haven and London, 1980 ; Ionides biographies, Christoper Long website. ; England and Wales, Birth, Marriage and Death Index: 1837-1915, website.
