Gordon Lambert: Gordon Lambert, who has died aged 85, was a successful businessman and celebrated art collector. He donated his private collection, comprising over 300 works by leading Irish and international artists, to the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 1992, and continued to donate works, by artists such as Seán Scully and Corban Walker, in the years following.
Paying tribute to the museum's most generous benefactor, the director of IMMA, Enrique Juncosa, said that he will be remembered with great affection by all the staff, "to whom he accorded his friendship, as readily as he gave his collection".
The core of the collection consists of Op and Kinetic works by Vasarély, Cruz-Diez, Soto, Morellet and several others. In addition there are graphics by Picasso, Braque, Miró, Gottlieb and many more.
The centrepiece of the collection is probably the large Vasarély painting, Lant, the colours of which appear to change with the light of the day.
Irish art is represented by painters such as Patrick Collins, Norah McGuinness, Barrie Cooke, Charles Tyrell, Brian Maguire and Robert Ballagh, the most represented artist in the collection. Sculptors include Edward Delaney, Michael Bulfin and F.E. McWilliam.
Yet Gordon Lambert came from a sporting rather than an arty background.
His father was a renowned cricketer, who hit many centuries, while his brother, Ham, played rugby for Ireland and later became an international referee. He himself won many trophies for badminton and golf.
He purchased his first painting, Pont du Carousel by Barbara Warren, while on holiday in Paris in 1952. Encouraged by Cecil King and Sir Basil Goulding, he became a modest, but discerning, collector.
His taste was eclectic, and he bought only what he liked. While success in business enabled him in later years to cast his net wider, he never ceased to support Irish artists.
He had many friends in the art world at home and abroad, and felt that this common interest transcended social status, income levels, as well as political and religious differences. He found his interest in art very rewarding. "Through art I have reached the happy state of never knowing a moment's boredom."
Charles Gordon Lambert was born in 1919, the youngest of the four sons of Bob Lambert and his wife Nora (née Mitchell) of Rathgar. Educated at Sandford Park School, Dublin, and Rossall School, Lancashire, he studied commerce at Trinity College Dublin. Graduating with a first-class BA and BComm with distinction, he qualified as a chartered accountant, working with Stokes Brothers and Pim, before joining W. & R. Jacob and Co Ltd in 1944 as assistant accountant.
The company, dominated by the Jacob and Bewley families, then employed 4,000 people making biscuits in its Bishop Street premises. In the 1950s when Bolands entered the market, Lambert, by now chief accountant, advocated the adoption of marketing techniques and was appointed commercial manager, then marketing director in 1959, the company's first non-family board member.
His flair for marketing helped to make the Jacob's brand name almost as well known as Guinness. In 1962, with Frankie Byrne, he launched the Jacob's radio and television awards.
The company's sponsored programme went on air the following year with Byrne as Ireland's first radio "agony aunt".
Later, a media campaign introduced Jim Figgerty, who entertained the nation as he sought to guard the secret of how Jacob's got the figs into fig-rolls.
In 1967 Jacob's acquired Boland's biscuit interests, and the Irish Biscuits subsidiary was formed. In 1971 Lambert was appointed group managing director and in 1972 also became chairman of the subsidiary. He successfully met the challenge of EEC entry and the advent of import competition, and also oversaw Jacob's move to Tallaght. He retired from the company in 1986, but continued to have other business interests.
He was nominated to Seanad Éireann by the Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, in 1977, serving as a senator for four years.
He had no sense of being a token Protestant in the Seanad, but saw fit to mention his religious affiliation in debates on university representation and family planning. He felt that cultural affairs were neglected in both Houses of the Oireachtas, and that the business world should receive greater attention.
A long-time advocate of closer North-South links, he helped to organise in 1962 the first ever meeting of the Belfast and Dublin junior chambers of commerce at a lunch hosted by Jacob's and attended by the Taoiseach, SeáLemass. He also organised the first meeting between the ministers for commerce in the two governments, Brian Faulkner and Patrick Hillery, in 1966. He was conscious of a widespread wariness in the Republic towards Northern Ireland. "It's endemic in attitudes to the North since our independence," he said in the early 1980s.
"We have never tried to win them over, and some of the most vociferous people who want the unity of the country have never even crossed the Border or socialised there." He welcomed the Anglo-Irish Agreement for bringing a "much greater awareness of what we must do and become if we wish to co-operate within a united Ireland". Having lobbied for many years for a public gallery devoted to modern art, he became in 1990 a founding board member of IMMA.
A founder member of the Society of Designers in Ireland, he served on the International Council of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery Art Advisory Committee; the Contemporary Irish Art Society and the council of the Dublin Theatre Festival. A governor of the National Gallery of Ireland, he was also a member of the Northern Ireland Arts Council and the art committee of the Ulster Museum.
Active in many business organisations and professional bodies, he was made a life member of the Royal Dublin Society in 1981, conferred with an honorary doctorate in laws by TCD in 1999 and received the Business2 Art Millennium Award in 2000.
He never married, and is survived by his brother, Hammond, nieces and nephews.
Gordon Lambert: born April 9th, 1919; died January 27th, 2005