John Waterloo Wilson (May 16, 1815 – August 12, 1883) was a Belgian art collector who lived many years in Haarlem. Wilson was born in Brussels as the son of the British industrialist Thomas Wilson, whose factory in Ukkel-Stalle had been damaged in 1830 by workers on strike. As a friend of Willem I of the Netherlands Thomas won a contract for a new cotton factory in Haarlem and the young John relocated there with his family in 1833. He studied chemistry in Manchester, England, presumably to learn more about the cotton-dyeing process that Haarlem was famous for at the time. In 1839 he married the daughter of the Haarlem mayor Wilhelmina Christina van Valkenburg, who died young in 1844 and left him with three young children. He travelled in Turkey and Egypt but his health prevented him from t