Janet Frances de Botton is a British bridge player

Contract bridge

Contract bridge, usually known simply as bridge, is a trick-taking card game using a standard deck of 52 playing cards played by four players in two competing partnerships with partners sitting opposite each other around a small table...

, collector of contemporary art and a philanthropist.

Life and career

Born Janet Wolfson, de Botton was also formerly known as Janet Green. She is daughter of Lord Wolfson of Marylebone and the granddaughter of Isaac Wolfson

Isaac Wolfson

Sir Isaac Wolfson, 1st Baronet FRS was a businessman and philanthropist. He was managing director of Great Universal Stores 1932-1947 and chairman 1947-1987. He established the Wolfson Foundation to distribute most of his fortune to good causes. Great Universal Stores was a mail order business...

 of the Great Universal Stores family, and previously the wife of multi-billionaire Michael Green

Michael Green (television magnate)

Michael Philip Green is a British businessman.He attended Haberdashers' Aske's School in Elstree, Hertfordshire on a scholarship and left, aged 17, with four O-Levels....

. Her late husband, Swiss financier Gilbert de Botton

Gilbert de Botton

Gilbert de Botton was a financial pioneer in the 20th century, who is considered the inventor of the open architecture model of asset management....

, sold Global Asset Management for £234m in 1999. In June 2010, the Wolfson Foundation announced the appointment of de Botton as the new Chairman following a unanimous decision by the Trustees. De Botton has been a Trustee of Tate and Chairman of the Council of Tate Modern

Tate Modern

Tate Modern is a modern art gallery located in London, England. It is Britain's national gallery of international modern art and forms part of the Tate group . It is the most-visited modern art gallery in the world, with around 4.7 million visitors per year...

. She was appointed Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 2006. In 2007, she appeared at number 22 (down from number 18, in 2006) in Sunday Times Rich List

Sunday Times Rich List

The Sunday Times Rich List is a list of the 1,000 wealthiest people or families in the United Kingdom, updated annually in April and published as a magazine supplement by British national Sunday newspaper The Sunday Times since 1989...

, with an estimated personal fortune of £285million. Janet de Botton is also a prominent collector of modern art. In 1996, de Botton presented sixty works of art to Tate, including examples by Carl Andre

Carl Andre

Carl Andre is an American minimalist artist recognized for his ordered linear format and grid format sculptures. His sculptures range from large public artworks to more intimate tile patterns arranged on the floor of an exhibition space Carl Andre (born September 16, 1935) is an American...

, Richard Artschwager

Richard Artschwager

Richard Artschwager is an American painter, illustrator and sculptor, born in 1923 in Washington, D.C.. Artschwager is best known for his stylistic independence; although he has associations with the Pop Art movement, Conceptual art and Minimalism....

, Gilbert & George, Richard Long

Richard Long

-English political figures:*Richard Long , Gentleman of the Privy Chamber to Henry VIII; knighted in 1537; MP for Southwark...

, Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman is an American photographer and film director, best known for her conceptual portraits. Sherman currently lives and works in New York City. In 1995, she was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. She is represented by Sprüth Magers Berlin London in and Metro Pictures gallery in...

, Roni Horn

Roni Horn

Roni Horn is an American visual artist and writer. Horn's oeuvre, which spans almost four decades, encompasses sculpture, drawing, photography, language, and site-specific installation. The granddaughter of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, she was born in New York and lives and works in New York...

, Gary Hume

Gary Hume

Gary Stewart Hume is an English artist. His work is strongly identified with the YBA artists who came to prominence in the early-1990s. In 1996, Hume was nominated for the Turner Prize, but lost out to Douglas Gordon. Hume was elected a Royal Academician in 2001.-Life and work:Hume was born in...

, Nancy Spero

Nancy Spero

Nancy Spero was an American visual artist.-Life and work:Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Spero lived for much of her life in New York City. She was married to, and collaborated with artist Leon Golub....

, Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol

Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...

 and Bill Woodrow

Bill Woodrow

Bill Woodrow is a British sculptor.Woodrow was one of a number of British sculptors to emerge in the late 1970s, the others including Richard Deacon and Tony Cragg....

.