John Hay Whitney (August 17, 1904 – February 8, 1982) was an American venture capitalist, sportsman, philanthropist, newspaper publisher, film producer and diplomat who served as U.S.

After attending Groton School and Yale College, where he was an oarsman, he inherited a large fortune from his father, making him one of the wealthiest people in the United States.

While ambassador, Whitney improved relations between the two countries in the wake of the Suez Crisis and purchased the New York Herald Tribune.

Whitney was a skilled polo player and raised thoroughbred racing horses, which won him the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 1929 and 1930 and were frequent entrants in the Kentucky Derby.

He was a patron of the arts, financing several Broadway productions and films, including two Academy Award for Best Picture, Gone with the Wind (1939) and Rebecca (1940).

His large art collection included famous works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Edward Hopper, Henri Matisse, James McNeill Whistler, John Singer Sargent, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, William Blake and Vincent van Gogh.

Whitney's uncle, Oliver Hazard Payne, a business partner of John D. Rockefeller, arranged the funding for Duke to buy out his competitors.

[2] In 1958, while he was still ambassador to the United Kingdom, his company Whitney Communications Corp. bought the New York Herald Tribune,[7] and was its publisher from 1961 to its closure in 1966.

[11] Whitney invested in several Broadway shows, including Peter Arno's 1931 revue Here Goes the Bride, a failure that cost him $100,000, but was more successful as one of the backers of Life with Father.

He put up half the money to option Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind for the Selznick film version, in which he then invested, and later in Rebecca (1940).

He owned Easter Hero, the Jack Anthony trained horse who was the first to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup twice in succession, in 1929 under the mount of Dick Rees and again in 1930, when ridden by Tommy Cullinan.

Jock Whitney was also an outstanding polo player, with a four-goal handicap, and it was as a sportsman that he made the cover of the March 27, 1933, issue of Time magazine.

[19] Whitney played a major role in improving Anglo-American relations, which had been severely strained during the 1956 Suez Crisis, when Eisenhower demanded that the British, French and Israelis terminate their invasion of Egypt.

[20] In 1930, Whitney purchased the Llangollen estate as a bridal gift for his fiancée, the Pennsylvania socialite Mary Elizabeth "Liz" Altemus.

[22] The couple divorced in 1940,[21] but Liz Whitney remained at Llangollen for the rest of her life, becoming an internationally renowned horse breeder and a member of the Virginia Thoroughbred Association Hall of Fame.

Mr. Whitney also owned an estate in Aiken, South Carolina, which he considered his "retirement" home and where he hoped to spend his final days.

[26] In 1951, he and his wife Betsey Cushing Whitney donated land from their "Greentree" estate in Manhasset, New York toward the building of North Shore Hospital.

In the late 1960s/early 1970's John Hay Whitney donated two small parcels of land in Manhasset to the County of Nassau and to the Manhasset-Lakeville Volunteer Fire Department.

In 1930 Whitney was elected to the board of trustees of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and named President of the MoMA Film Library in 1935.

[28][29] In 1946 he succeeded Stephen C. Clark as chairman of the board of trustees[30] When Whitney moved to England as United States ambassador, he took a number of his favourite artworks with him to enjoy during his posting.

[2] In 1990, his widow put the painting up for auction with Sotheby's, New York City and it sold for US$78 million to Japanese businessman Ryoei Saito.

One of those paintings by Pablo Picasso, Garçon à la pipe was auctioned by Sotheby's in May 2004 for $104 million [33] The following works have been publicly exhibited or sold from the former collection of John Hay Whitney.

After having been to three or four receptions one day, his wife was not surprised to find their chauffeur, groggy from his rounds, dozing on the back seat of their limousine and the Ambassador driving the car.