Walter Percy Chrysler Jr.

Walter Percy Chrysler Jr. (May 27, 1909 – September 17, 1988) was an American art collector, museum benefactor, and collector of other objects such as stamps, rare books, and glassworks. He was also a theatre and film producer.

Early life

Chrysler, whose father, Walter Chrysler, founded the Chrysler Corporation in 1925, was born in Oelwein, Iowa. He grew up on the family estate at Kings Point on Long Island, New York.

He began collecting art as a fourteen-year-old student at The Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut. Using $350 that his father had given him as a birthday present, Chrysler purchased a small watercolor landscape that featured an inch-high nude, and he brought the painting to his room at school. His dorm master, believing that it was improper for a young gentleman to display a picture of a nude woman, confiscated the picture and destroyed it. The painting was by Renoir.

Chrysler went on to Dartmouth College, where he started an art magazine called Five Arts with a fellow student and future art collector, Nelson Rockefeller. In the following year he became president of the Chrysler Building; he continued in that position until 1953. His works were also exhibited at the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Mellon Library.

Although the visual arts were Chrysler's principal interest, he was also active in theatre and filmmaking. He produced the Broadway plays The Strong Are Lonely and New Faces of 1952, the latter helping to launch the careers of Eartha Kitt and Mel Brooks. That same year, at Picasso's 80th birthday exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, the artist himself was shown photographs of six of his works owned by Chrysler, and he wrote faux ("false") across two of them. Chrysler never pressed a case against the dealers who had sold the works to him, but when his collection was eventually transferred to the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia, the suspect works were removed.

Personal life

Chrysler married Marguerite Sykes in New York City on April 29, 1938. The marriage was unhappy and short lived, and a divorce was granted on December 4, 1939; a contributing factor may have been Chrysler's homosexuality.

While stationed in Norfolk during World War II, Chrysler met Jean Esther Outland, and they married on January 13, 1945. They lived on the North Wales estate near Warrenton, Virginia, where Walter bred racehorses and Jean bred champion long-hair Chihuahuas. The couple had no children, and Jean Chrysler predeceased her husband on January 26, 1982, aged 60.

Chrysler maintained a residence in New York and a home in Key West, but he died near his museum in Norfolk after a long struggle with cancer. Upon Chrysler's death, the Chrysler Museum received three-quarters of the Chrysler Family Trust.