Adrian Ward-Jackson

Adrian Alexander Ward-Jackson (6 June 1950 – 23 August 1991) was an English art dealer and consultant and arts administrator. He assisted the Getty Museum and the collector Barbara Piasecka Johnson in their acquisition of art at auction. Ward-Jackson became a prominent figure in dance administration with the Arts Council of Great Britain and the Rambert Dance Company before his death from AIDS in 1991.

Life Ward-Jackson was born on 6 June 1950 to the journalist and writer William Alexander Ward-Jackson and Catherine Elizabeth Ward-Jackson (née Trew). He attended Westminster School between 1964 and 1968.

Dance Ward-Jackson was passionate about ballet; his obituary in the Daily Telegraph described him as working "tirelessly in the beleaguered world of dance". He hosted many fundraising events, with several attended by Diana, Princess of Wales, and Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon.

He was the chairman of the dance panel of the Arts Council of Great Britain from 1990 to 1991. He was a governor of the Royal Ballet and chairman of the Rambert Dance Company from 1985 to 1990. He was the chairman and director of his own firm, Adrian Ward-Jackson Ltd, from 1975 until his death. Piasecka Johnson's obituary in The Art Newspaper described Ward-Jackson and fellow dealer Harry Bailey as being the "gatekeepers of [Piasecka Johnson's] existence, selling to her, introducing approved dealers and fluffing up her social life". His obituary in The Times wrote of him that "Behind the scenes he did place major paintings and drawings coming out of private hands into the world's great museums; but his most characteristic accomplishment was the making of great private collections". He paid £35,000 for François Boucher's chalk study of Apollo in April 1978. In December 1986 he bought a 17th-century Baroque marble bust of the French general François-Henri de Montmorency, duc de Luxembourg for £423,000 .

At the sale of the contents of Godmersham Park in June 1983 Ward-Jackson paid £144,400 for a Gothic tapestry and paid £15,120 for a pair of 18th-century English tapestry cushions decorated with flowers and fruit. This established a new price record for a cushion.

In May 1985 Ward-Jackson handled the Getty Museum's purchase of Antoine Caron's Dionysius the Areopagite Converting the Pagan Philosophers from the collection of Anthony Blunt for £250,000. In November 1986 he again acted for them in their purchase for £2.5 million of a page of notes by Leonardo da Vinci from the collection of John R. Gaines of the Gaines-Burgers dog food fortune.

Ward-Jackson discovered Lorenzo Lotto's Venus and Cupid in a Swiss collection which was subsequently purchased by the Metropolitan Museum in New York in July 1986 for $3 million .

Ward-Jackson also acquired pieces for the Contemporary Art Society, including work by Elizabeth Butterworth, Tony Cragg, Ian Davenport, Howard Hodgkin and Shirazeh Houshiary. Ward-Jackson donated a globe that had been dedicated to the naturalist Joseph Banks for a charity auction at Christie's in aid of the trust in June 1987. She had been introduced to him by Angela Serota, the former ballet dancer and the wife of Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate. Diana was on holiday with the royal family at Balmoral Castle when she was informed that he was close to death—she drove through the night to be with him. It was attended by Diana and Princess Margaret. Lord Palumbo read from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran and Tessa Blackstone, Baroness Blackstone read from T.S. Eliot's Burnt Norton. In her biography of Diana, Tina Brown described the funeral as being "populated with le tout London society like a scene from La Traviata" and that his sick bed had "for a time, become the place to be" as he received friends from London's high society while "reclining on an Oscar Wildean sofa amid Renaissance bronzes and French engravings". Derek Jarman presented his 1993 painting Ataxia - Aids is Fun to the Tate Galleries in memory of Ward-Jackson.