Gabrielle Keiller

Keiller was born on 10 August 1908 in North Berwick, Scotland, during a golf trip by her parents, Englishwoman Daisy Muriel Hoare and J. Wadsworth Ritchie, an American rancher. During World War II she served as an ambulance driver. Her paternal grandmother was Cornelia Adair, the American-born matriarch of Glenveagh Castle in County Donegal, Ireland who was married to John George Adair, a Scottish-Irish businessman and landowner. == Golf career ==

Keiller's amateur golf career began in the 1930s under the surname of her second husband, Style. She won the 1948 Ladies' Open Championships in Luxembourg, Switzerland and Monaco, and again in Monaco in 1949. In 1951 she was a finalist in the English Women's Amateur Championship. == Art collector and patron ==

In the 1930s, Keiller inherited part-ownership of an Adair ranch in Texas from her grandmother. Proceeds from the later sale of this asset enabled her to begin collecting art. As an art patron, Keiller focused upon 20th-century avant-garde art. She became interested following a 1960 visit to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, and through exposure to the work of Eduardo Paolozzi at the 1960 Venice Biennale. The collection was exhibited there anonymously in 1988. and Richard Long. She also commissioned Andy Warhol to make a 1976 portrait of her dachshund Maurice. Beginning in the 1950s, Keiller became involved with several arts institutions. She volunteered at the Tate from 1976 to 1987, where she was known as the "Marmalade Queen". From 1978 to 1985, she was a member of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art's advisory committee. == Archaeology ==

Her third husband, Alexander Keiller, had used wealth from his family's marmalade business to pursue interests in archaeology, particularly the stone circles at Avebury in Wiltshire and the surrounding prehistoric landscape. He bought land to ensure the preservation of the monuments, and in 1938 created a museum at Avebury. After his death in 1955, Gabrielle employed Isobel Smith to make archival records of Alexander's excavations in the 1920s and 1930s. Gabrielle gave the contents of the museum to the nation in 1966, after which it was named the Alexander Keiller Museum. From 1956 to approximately 1970, she assisted Rupert Bruce-Mitford in a study of the burial ship Sutton Hoo, taking photographs of the site. == Personal life ==

Keiller's second husband was Charles R. Style, a brewery manager. They divorced in 1950. In 1951, she married her third husband, Alexander Keiller (1889–1955), archaeologist and family heir of Keiller marmalade makers in Dundee. ==References==