Arthur Lehman was born in 1873 and trained as a banker. In 1897, he became a partner in the investment banking firm Lehman Brothers and, shortly thereafter, the founder of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies. Both Lehman and his wife, Adele Lewisohn, followed the family tradition and became major art collectors, mainly of European works. Saturdays were their "collecting days," during which they spent the day visiting antique shops and galleries to acquire pieces of all kinds (Virch, 1965). They donated twenty-four works of art to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) and seven to the Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge).