Gabrielle Keiller

Gabrielle Muriel Keiller (née Ritchie) (10 August 1908 – 23 December 1995) was a Scottish golfer, art collector, archaeological photographer and heir to Keiller's marmalade in Dundee. She bequested a large collection of Dada and Surrealist art to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.

Early life

Keiller was born on 10 August 1908 in North Berwick, Scotland, during a golf trip by her parents, Englishwoman Daisy Muriel Hoare and J. Wadsworth Ritchie, an American rancher. During World War II she served as an ambulance driver. She became interested following a 1960 visit to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, and through exposure to the work of Eduardo Paolozzi at the 1960 Venice Biennale. The collection was exhibited there anonymously in 1988. and Richard Long. She also commissioned Andy Warhol to make a 1976 portrait of her dachshund Maurice.

Beginning in the 1950s, Keiller became involved with several arts institutions. She volunteered at the Tate from 1976 to 1987, where she was known as the "Marmalade Queen". Gabrielle gave the contents of the museum to the nation in 1966, after which it was named the Alexander Keiller Museum.

From 1956 to approximately 1970, she assisted Rupert Bruce-Mitford in a study of the burial ship Sutton Hoo, taking photographs of the site.

Personal life Keiller's second husband was Charles R. Style, a brewery manager. They divorced in 1950.

In 1951, she married her third husband, Alexander Keiller (1889–1955), archaeologist and family heir of Keiller marmalade makers in Dundee.