Nathan Cummings (born Komiensky; 14 October 1896 – 19 February 1985) was a Jewish-Canadian-American businessman, investor and philanthropist.

David Komiensky was born in Minsk, then part of the Russian Empire, and in 1892 left the country to escape the oppressive May Laws that had been enacted following the assassination of Czar Alexander II.

Shortly after arriving in Saint John, David met Bessie Howe, who had recently come to Canada from Lithuania, and soon married.

During this time, Nathan enrolled in a dry goods economist training school in New York City and lived in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

In 1911, David moved the family back to Canada and settled in Montreal, while Nathan remained in New York.

Cummings had established a shoe shop and factory of his own by 1924, but the business foundered during the Depression, and he was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1932.

The success of that business, which he sold to Weston in 1939,[1] prompted an invitation to manage the Baltimore-based coffee, tea and sugar chain, C.D.

[4] In 1992, a history of the Cummings family entitled David and Bessie Komiensky, Jewish Lithuanian Immigrants: A Brief Family History, was commissioned by friends as a surprise gift for Herbert Kellert Cummings, and published by Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.

His first significant acquisition was made in Paris in 1945, immediately after World War II, when he purchased Camille Pissarro's Bountiful Harvest 1893, which he noticed in the window of an art dealer.

Later in his life he liked to tell of his first tentative encounter with art: "An advertising man convinced me that I should have a painting made of the view from my window."

Cummings' collections were diverse, including French Impressionist paintings, modern sculpture, ancient Peruvian ceramics, and works of living artists such as Henry Moore, Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Georges Braque, Giacomo Manzù and Alberto Giacometti, who became members of his social circle.

He enjoyed friendships with other celebrities, including Duke and Duchess of Windsor and Bob Hope, a good friend who emerged from a giant cake at Cummings's eightieth birthday.