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[Bernheim]

French family of dealers and publishers. Joseph Bernheim (b Besançon; bapt 31 March 1790; d 1859) was a colourman and artists’ supplier in Besançon. His son Alexandre Bernheim-Jeune (b Besançon, 3 April 1839; d Paris, 2 March 1915) moved to Paris in 1863 and two years later set up a gallery there in the Rue Laffitte, apparently on the advice of Courbet, who was, like himself, a native of the Franche-Comté region. Bernheim-Jeune knew Delacroix and Corot and was at first particularly associated with the Barbizon school and with Théodule Ribot, exhibiting the latter’s work in 1887 and 1890. Part of the family’s business was established in Brussels as early as 1867 and the family presumably moved there—as did several other dealers—during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71). Alexandre’s two sons, Joseph (‘Josse’) Bernheim-Jeune [Bernheim d’Auberville] (b 2 Jan 1870; d Paris, 5 July 1941...

(b Grüneberg, June 28, 1865; d Dresden, Feb 1, 1910).

German writer and publisher. From 1892 to 1894 he edited the Freie Bühne (later renamed Neue deutsche Rundschau), the Berlin-based magazine that acted as the chief mouthpiece of literary naturalism. He took up the cause of modernist painting in his very first publication, A. Böcklin (1891), a text introducing 15 heliographs of the artist’s work, and this was followed by publications on Fritz von Uhde (1893; 1908) and on Hans Thoma (1904). In 1894, with Julius Meier-Graefe, Bierbaum founded Pan, which was to become the leading avant-garde journal of the period in Germany, notable for its typography and for the inventive integration of text and illustration. There were also reproductions of paintings, drawings and sculpture, and the list of contributors included Franz von Stuck, Thoma, von Uhde, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Max Klinger, Arnold Böcklin, Paul Signac, Georges Seurat, Félix Vallotton, ...

Journal devoted to photography that was published from 1903 to 1917. Camera Work evolved from a quarterly journal of photography to become one of the most ground-breaking and influential periodicals in American cultural history. Founded in January 1903 by photographer Alfred Stieglitz as the official publication of the Photo-Secession, the journal originally promoted the cause of photography as a fine art. As Stieglitz, its editor and publisher, expanded the journal’s scope to include essays on aesthetics, literature, criticism and modern art, Camera Work fueled intellectual discourse in early 20th-century America.

Camera Work mirrored the aesthetic philosophy of its founder Alfred Stieglitz. The journal resulted from his decade-long campaign to broaden and professionalize American photography. Serving for three years as editor of American Amateur Photographer (1893–6), Stieglitz championed the expressive potential of photography and advocated expanded exhibition opportunities comparable to those available in European photographic salons. In 1897, when the Society of Amateur Photographers merged with the New York Camera Club, Stieglitz convinced the enlarged organization to replace their modest leaflet with a more substantial quarterly journal, Camera Notes, which he edited until ...

(b Görlitz, Feb 21, 1871; d Berlin, Jan 7, 1926).

German dealer, publisher and journalist. After studying art history at the University of Munich, where he was co-editor of Simplicissimus from 1896 to 1898, he established himself in 1898 as a publisher and dealer in Berlin, helping contemporary artists towards international recognition. In 1908 he founded Verlag Paul Cassirer, a firm that published belles-lettres, especially Expressionist literature, and that promoted such artists as Ernst Barlach. In 1910 he married Ottilie Godefroy, who wrote her memoirs many years later under her stage name of Tilla Durieux.

Cassirer founded the Pan-Presse in 1909, edited the bi-monthly Pan in 1910 and in 1913 founded the journal Die Weissen Blätter, containing comment on literature and art, which he published until 1921. Already President of the Berlin Secession, in 1913 he founded the Freie Sezession, whose exhibitions he planned. In the years preceding World War I Cassirer became a friend of Paul Durand-Ruel and promoted the work of the ...

(b 1854; d England, 1913).

English photographer, publisher and writer. He first travelled to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) as private secretary to the Bishop of Colombo. In 1870 he set up a small bookshop in Colombo, which by 1884 had diversified into a flourishing publishing house, H. W. Cave & Company, and a printing firm equipped to produce books with excellent quality photographic reproductions. He took a serious interest in photography, and this enabled him to illustrate the pictorial travelogues written by him and published by his own firm. His close supervision of the details of book production and photographic reproduction gave him a competitive edge over other commercial photographers. He returned to England in 1886 after the death of his wife and settled down in Oxford. He made occasional visits to Ceylon, but continued to manage his firm’s business from England.

In his photography Cave specialized in rural and landscape scenes and was especially interested in creating views with luxuriant tropical vegetation, using dramatic atmospheric lighting effects. Some of the best examples of this type of work are reproduced in his lavishly printed travelogues ...

English music, book and fine art printers and publishers . In 1863 the Rev. John Curwen (1816–80), a congregational minister, established the Curwen Press in Plaistow, London with the aim of promulgating the Tonic Sol-fa method of teaching music. Under John Curwen, and after his death under his son John Spencer Curwen (1847–1916), the Curwen Press printed sheet music and texts on music education. By 1908 John Curwen’s grandson Harold Curwen (1885–?1965) had joined the firm and encouraged them to broaden their production to include high-quality limited edition books. Harold also created a lithography studio so that artists could produce book illustrations. In 1920 Oliver Simon (d 1956) joined the press as a typographer, later becoming a renowned book designer. His brother Herbert joined shortly after and together they held the posts of chairman and managing director respectively through the 1940s and 1950s. In ...

(b Veracruz, Mar 13, 1880; d Stamford, CT, Jan 10, 1961).

Mexican illustrator, writer, gallery owner, and publisher, active in the USA. He was the son of a wealthy Mexican lawyer and publisher. De Zayas started his career as an artist by providing drawings for his father’s newspaper in Veracruz. In 1906 he moved on to Mexico City’s leading newspaper, El Diario, but a year later, after the ascension of the dictator Porfirio Diaz, whom the newspaper had opposed, he fled to the USA. There he landed a position making caricatures for the New York Evening World. Shortly after his arrival in the USA, he came into contact with Alfred Stieglitz, who staged solo shows of De Zayas’s caricatures at his gallery Gallery 291 in 1909 and 1910, both of which proved to be huge popular successes.

In 1910 De Zayas traveled to Paris, where he stayed almost a year, scouting out adventurous forms of modern art for Stieglitz, notably the cubist work of Picasso and African sculpture. On his return, equipped with knowledge of European modern art and inspired by the work of the French modernist ...

(William)

(b Southwark, London, Feb 23, 1826; d Ventnor, Isle of Wight, Aug 21, 1905).

English printer. He established his printing firm (still operating in the late 20th century) in 1847. Working with Routledge Publishers he specialized in illustrated children’s books, including the ‘toy books’ of Walter Crane, and also printed a range of illustrated textbooks, poetry and novels. His sensitive line and capacity to translate effects from drawing to woodblock while retaining the style and spirit of the original made him justly popular with his clients. His ingenious combination of pigments and engraving techniques made him a pioneer in colour printing, greatly enlarging the scope of the art....

(b Gräfentonna, Thuringia, July 13, 1841; d Tegernsee, Bavaria, March 28, 1916).

German writer, publisher and editor. In 1875 he co-founded the publishing company Knorr & Hirth based in Munich. Werke unserer Väter, an exhibition of German Renaissance arts and crafts held in Munich in 1876, stimulated his interest in art, and in that year he began to edit and publish a series of handsomely produced art books and prints in affordable editions. In 1881 he took over the printing of the Münchner neuesten Nachrichten, developing it into one of Germany’s leading daily newspapers. He himself wrote on a wide range of issues. In Ideen über Zeichenunterricht und künstlerische Berufsbildung (1887), for example, he advocated a democratizing reform of the teaching of art; in Das plastische Sehen als Rindenzwang (1892) he took issue with the optical theories of Hermann von Helmholtz by propagating the idea that the optical function was physiologically inborn. Although he initially favoured German Gothic and early Renaissance art, by the 1890s he had become interested in contemporary art. In ...

(b Bloomington, IL, June 19, 1856; d SS Lusitania, off Co. Cork, May 7, 1915).

American designer. He was initially a successful salesman for the Illinois-based Weller’s Practical Soaps. He settled in East Aurora, near Buffalo, NY, and abandoned selling soap in 1893. During a trip to England the following year, he met William Morris and admired the works of his Kelmscott Press. On returning to East Aurora, Hubbard employed his great showmanship to popularize a simplified version of English Arts and Crafts design for a wide audience. With the help of a local press, he began publishing monthly biographies, Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great (1895–1909), the first two of which treat the lives of George Eliot and John Ruskin. Soon after, he founded the Roycroft Press with the publication of The Philistine (1895–1915), a monthly journal combining popular philosophy, aphorisms and brief preachments with crude Art Nouveau lettering and ornament. The Song of Songs (1895), printed on handmade paper with rough and arty bindings, was the first of many Roycroft books. The press became the centre of the ...

American, 19th–20th century, male.

Born 4 April 1843, in Keeseville, New York; died 30 June 1942, in New York City.

Photographer, painter. Landscapes.

William Henry Jackson began his career in 1858 as a retoucher in a photography studio in Troy, New York, and soon moved on to a studio in Rutland, Vermont. Jackson enlisted in the Union Army in ...

(b Cologne, Sept 9, 1860; d Darmstadt, Jan 5, 1939).

German publisher, patron and collector. He was influential in the reform movements in art, in particular Jugendstil, the German version of Art Nouveau. Through his publications he hoped to free art from the constraints of the studio, elevate public taste and encourage the creation of a style that would be in keeping with an ideal modern culture. Trained as a printer, he started a magazine of the carpet trade, Tapetenzeitung, in 1888 and shortly afterwards, with only DM 100 as capital, established Verlagsanstalt Alexander Koch. The highly successful firm published periodicals, including Fachblatt für Innen-Dekoration (first issue 1890; since 1980 Architektur, Innenarchitektur, technischer Ausbau) and Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration (first issue 1897); catalogues, notably Grossherzog Ernst Ludwig und die Ausstellung der Künstler-Kolonie in Darmstadt von Mai bis Oktober 1901; and books, among them Handbuch neuzeitlicher Wohnungskultur (1912). He also published the Meister der Innenkunst, the series of prizewinning designs by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, M. H. Baillie Scott and Leopold Bauer for the competition ‘Haus eines Kunstfreundes’ of ...

(b Beire, Navarra, March 30, 1862; d Madrid, Dec 1, 1947).

Spanish collector, publisher and patron. He studied law in Barcelona and c. 1882 settled in Madrid, where his enthusiasm for art and literature rapidly developed. In 1888 he founded a publishing enterprise, España Moderna, and a journal of the same name containing contributions by such leading writers and intellectuals as Juan Valera and Emilia Pardo Bazán. Lázaro Galdiano used the journal to publish the most significant writings on Spanish art and translations of such books as Carl Justi’s Diego Velázquez und sein Jahrhundert, 2 vols (Bonn, 1888, rev. 1903). His publishing house also issued the Revista Internacional and several collections dealing with cultural and juridical matters. Over a period of 60 years he assembled one of the finest collections of art in Spain and in Europe, notable for its size and the quality and rarity of the works. Many pieces were acquired through his extensive travels, when he was accompanied by his wife, the wealthy Argentine Paula Florido. His collection included important illuminated manuscripts and engravings, as well as numerous examples of enamel work, from 10th-century Byzantine pieces to 16th-century Limoges enamel. He collected ivory, gold and silver objects of various periods and styles: Hellenistic, Roman, Islamic, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque. There were also many examples of fans, fabrics, pieces of lace, medals, armour and furniture in his collection. Among his paintings were examples of 15th- and 16th-century Flemish and Spanish work (e.g. ...

German, 19th – 20th century, male.

Born 2 October 1865, in Münster; died 8 October 1937, in Raron (Valais, Switzerland).

Painter (including glass), pastellist, illustrator, draughtsman, decorative designer, graphic designer, writer, publisher.

Melchior Lechter was initially apprenticed to a painter of cartoons for stained-glass windows in Münster, before enrolling at the Hochschule der Künste, Berlin in ...

(b Kiev, Sept 4, 1919; d Miami, FL, Nov 19, 1999).

American painter, photographer and publishing executive of Ukrainian birth. Raised in England and France, he received a degree in philosophy and mathematics from the Sorbonne in 1930. Connected to the Russian exile community in Paris, he was introduced to artists Aleksandr Yakovlev and Marc Chagall. In 1931, he studied painting with André Lhote and enrolled at the Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture, where he was a student of Auguste Perret. Later that year, he transferred to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. While studying architecture, he was apprenticed to graphic artist Cassandre through whom he found work at the newsweekly Vu, where he created photomontage covers with Russian Constructivist sensibilities and later rose to art director. At Vu he worked with imagery by pioneers of 35 mm photography Henri Cartier-Bresson, Brassaï and Erich Salomon. A prolific photographer since childhood, he enthusiastically identified with the candid documentary style of the 35 mm camera.

Arriving in New York in ...

(Vasil’yevich)

(b Nizhny Novgorod, 1861; d Leningrad [now St Petersburg], Oct 14, 1934).

Russian painter, patron, musician, writer and publisher. He pursued a highly original line of artistic thought and practice and developed an organic perception of the world, deriving his inspiration from nature rather than machines, unlike many of his Russian Constructivist contemporaries.

Matyushin trained initially as a musician at the Moscow Conservatory (1878–81) and played the violin in the Court orchestra in St Petersburg from 1881 to 1913. In 1889 he began to attend the School of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts in St Petersburg, where he studied painting with Yan Tsionglinsky (d 1914). In Tsionglinsky’s studio he met the artist and writer Yelena Guro, whom he married. Later (1906–8) he studied with the World of Art (Mir Iskusstva) painters Léon Bakst and Mstislav Dobuzhinsky at the Zvantseva School of Art in St Petersburg.

In 1909 Matyushin briefly joined the circle around Nikolay Kul’bin and the following year he founded the ...

German family of publishers. In 1620 the family was in Liège and in 1784 moved to Cologne. The earliest significant member is Marcus DuMont (1784–1831) who ran the publishing firm from 1805 to 1831. Shortly after 1805 he married Katharina Schauberg (1779–1845) who came from a printing and publishing concern in Cologne dating back to 1736, and from then on the publishing house bore the name ‘DuMont Schauberg’. A later family member, Christine DuMont (1836–1903), married August Libert Neven (b Cologne, 13 Aug 1832; d Hohwald bei Schlettstadt, 7 Sept 1896) in 1856, and he took over and successfully ran the publishing house, from which date it was called Neven DuMont. Their sons, Josef Neven DuMont (b Cologne, 13 Aug 1857; d Cologne, 30 Oct 1915) and Alfred Neven DuMont (b Cologne, 20 Feb 1868; d Cologne, 8 Dec 1940...

(b Venice, July 18, 1842; d St Moritz, Aug 21, 1911).

Italian publisher. He was first an employee and later the manager of the Münster bookshop in the Piazza San Marco, Venice. From 1877 he was involved in an extraordinary series of 43 publications about Venetian art history, which made liberal use of photography. In these works he employed, and was among the very first to do so in Italy, the new ...

(b Bohdanów, nr Vilna [now Vilnius, Lithuania], Dec 10, 1870; d Bohdanów, Oct 30, 1936).

Polish painter, printmaker and stage designer. In 1890–92 he studied law at the University of St Petersburg, but from the autumn of 1892 dedicated all his time to painting classes at the Academy of Fine Arts. He was a student of the Russian landscape painters Ivan Shishkin and Arkhip Kuindzhi. During his studies Ruszczyc went twice to the Crimea (1894 and 1895) to paint seascapes. In 1896 and 1897 he went to the Baltic islands of Rügen and Bornholm and to the southern coast of Sweden to paint studies of northern landscape. He also went several times to Berlin, where he first saw works by German Symbolist painters. The influence of Arnold Böcklin may be detected in works on fantastical themes, while Spring (1897; Moscow, Tret’yakov Gal.) recalls Kuindzhi’s luminism and the lyrical Russian landscape tradition. After graduation Ruszczyc made an extensive tour of western Europe, thus substantially enlarging his knowledge of contemporary European art. At the end of his journey (...

American family of Philadelphia printmakers, printers, painters, and educators. John Sartain and his children, Emily and William, played an important role in the art world of Philadelphia for over a century. Their influence on American art lies primarily in the impact of their work example and leadership on others, and somewhat less from the value placed on their own artistic output. The patriarch, John Sartain (b London, 24 Oct 1808; d Philadelphia, PA, 25 Oct 1897), arrived in Philadelphia at the age of 22. By 1850 he was the city’s premier engraver of illustrations for a wide range of publications. His brilliant mezzotint engravings, often reproducing the work of others, brought graphic art into the homes of all classes. Reproductive engravings, either framed or in books, were widely popular before the advent of photography. Many writers promulgated the display of such prints as a means to refine and enlighten society. Sartain’s most successful endeavours in this field were his large and elaborate framing prints, commissioned by painters, collectors, and publishers to disseminate important works. The finest of these is ...