My wife, Linda Tanner, who has died aged 84, was a figure in the art world of 1960s New York and later a patron of the arts in London. A trained art historian, she once declared, when visiting the Frick Gallery, “If that’s a Duccio, I’ll eat my hat!”. Two weeks later the painting was removed from display, and she kept her headgear.
Linda was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the daughter of Rhita Loveman and Harry Perlman, who was a fashion salesman. She won a scholarship to Vassar College in New York, where she studied art history.
After graduating she won a Marshall scholarship to Yale University to do a master’s degree, but left after one year to live in Rome. There she worked as picture editor of the Italian Renaissance edition of the Encyclopaedia of World Art. After three years in Rome she returned to New York and, following some time working as a gallery assistant, set up a successful advertising agency catering to art galleries.
Moving in artistic circles, she was friends with gallerists, dealers and artists; I met her at a Museum of Modern Art gala, when she gave a friend a spare ticket and it was handed to me because I happened to have a tuxedo. I must have made a good impression, because we were married four months later, in 1967.
Linda eventually sold her advertising agency, and in 1970 we moved to London and jointly established a brokerage firm, Tanner & Tanner, connecting buyers and sellers to complete transactions for stock shares, bonds, options and other financial instruments.
Later we built an investor relations firm which represented large American companies throughout Europe, arranging lunches and one-on-one meetings for them with banks, fund managers and insurance companies.
In London Linda joined the Board of American Friends of the Royal Opera and became a patron of the National Portrait Gallery. In addition she volunteered for six years at the Victoria and Albert Museum, to which she later donated several pieces of her jewellery that are now on display.
She is survived by me and by a cousin, Amy.
