IRENE KREITMAN made a deep and lasting mark on the artistic life of this country. The Tate Gallery, in particular, owes much to her judgment and exceptional generosity.
She was the elder daughter of Sir John Cohen, the founder of the Tesco supermarket chain. Her husband, Hyman, whom she married when she was 19, opened the first Tesco self-service shop and contributed vastly to the success of the chain through nearly three decades in its leadership. He retired from all business life at the age of 60, and with Irene set up the Kreitman Foundation to spend substantial parts of their riches to boost the artistic life of this country.
Hyman had made most of the money that went into the foundation. But the decisive judgment in the choice of artists, causes and institutions to be supported was Irene’s, for she had the cultural knowledge and the personal contacts. Irene and Hyman bought the work of the best contemporary sculptors such as Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Elisabeth Frink and Lynn Chadwick. The Wigmore Hall, London’s chamber music centre, received unstinting grants, as did the National Theatre.
But Tate Britain at Millbank and Tate Modern on the South Bank became probably their main and most constant beneficiaries. They enabled the Tate to buy Night Movements by Sir Anthony Caro, and a seminal early painting by Mondrian.
They chose the Tate because Irene was an insider. She had trained there as a guide and for more than 25 years was on its rota as a regular, mostly anonymous, but always a lively and expert, guide. This gave her first-hand knowledge of the urgent need for adequate storage and display facilities for such incidental treasures as J. M. W. Turner’s palette, the ribbon worn by Edgar Degas’ sculpture Little Dancer, and Paul Nash’s paintbox. That led to another gift of £2.2 million just over three years ago, to transform the artistic research facilities at the Tate. The Hyman Kreitman Research Centre at Tate Britain brought together the Tate Library and Archive in stunning new rooms at Millbank. It also houses more than 120,000 exhibition catalogues, and the papers of Stanley Spencer, Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, David Bomberg and the art historian Kenneth Clark.
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Irene first met Hyman around her 19th birthday while on holiday with her parents. He was 12 years her senior. Within weeks, if not days, she had decided to marry him. She also decided that running a home and a marriage was a full-time occupation and gave up her undergraduate studies at the LSE.
She was as passionately interested in places as in people. Till the end of her life she regularly flew off to Asia and South America, as well as doing short “hops” to nearer sights in Russia and the United States.
Though their gifts to the Tate exceeded £5 million, and their total philanthropic disbursements are estimated to have been in excess of £l5 million, neither Irene nor Hyman Kreitman received the recognition of an honours list award.
Hyman died four years ago, and Irene is survived by their daughter and two sons.
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Irene Kreitman, patron of the arts, was born on October 2, 1926. She died on May 14, 2005, aged 78.