Search Results

(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 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 ...

(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 ...

(b Leipzig, Feb 27, 1786; d Berlin, June 5, 1870).

German woodcutter, draughtsman, writer and publisher. He was taught the technique of woodcutting by his father, Johann Christoph Gubitz (1754–1826), and first exhibited prints in 1800 at an exhibition of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. He became a member of the Akademie in 1805 and succeeded Johann Friedrich Gottlieb Unger (1753–1804) as a teacher of woodcutting and block-cutting, becoming Professor in 1812. He published several periodicals, including Der Gesellschafter (1817–1848), Das Jahrbuch der deutschen Bühnenspiele (1822–65) and the Deutscher Volkskalender (1835–69). He produced many commissioned pieces for these journals and did numerous woodcuts. Until 1829 he principally used the grain from the length of the block to produce designs in the manner of Thomas Bewick’s wood-engravings. Many of his early woodcuts look like copper engravings. From 1829 he preferred the grain from the end of the block. He also printed coloured woodcuts: one of his best-known is the portrait of ...

(fl 1839; d Paris, c. 1889).

French publisher and furniture designer. He was an important disseminator of historical and contemporary designs in 19th-century France. After 1839 he published a constant stream of lithograph designs for furniture, both his own designs and illustrations of the products of commercial firms, which provide an important source for the study of furniture of the period. His chief work was the journal Le Garde-meuble ancien et moderne, which he edited from 1844 to 1882. After 1846 he also published a supplement, L’Ameublement et l’utilité, which soon merged with the parent publication: lithographic designs of seat furniture, case furniture and hangings were reproduced, aimed at both tradesmen and clients. The plates also include general views of interiors and plans of furniture layouts, which give a comprehensive view of the development of styles. Guilmard produced albums recording the furniture shown at the Expositions Universelles of 1844, 1849 and 1855 in Paris and a long series of albums showing designs for particular types of furniture, woodwork fittings or upholstery. He was an important figure in the developing study of historical ornament and design: as early as ...

(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 ...

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 Cambuslang, Lanark [now Strathclyde], April 8, 1783; d London, December 14, 1843).

Scottish garden designer and writer. The son of a farmer, he was first apprenticed to a nurseryman and landscape gardener, moving to London in 1803 to set himself up as a garden designer. That year he published his ‘Hints…[on] Laying Out the Grounds of the Public Squares in London’ in the Literary Journal (ii/12, 31 Dec 1803, cols 739–42), advocating a judicious mixture of deciduous and evergreen plants. He also carried out work for the Duchess of Brunswick at Brunswick House, Blackheath, London, and the following year spent some time in his native Scotland, improving the estates of several aristocratic clients. The same year he exhibited three drawings at the Royal Academy and published his first book, Observations on…Ornamental Plantations. In it he emphasized his adherence to Picturesque principles and those of Uvedale Price in particular. From this time on, and in addition to several forays into architectural design, Loudon’s career as a garden designer was inseparable from his vast publishing enterprises, by which he disseminated his advice and ideas....

(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 ...

(b Walthamstow [now in London], March 24, 1834; d London, Oct 3, 1896).

English designer, writer and activist. His importance as both a designer and propagandist for the arts cannot easily be overestimated, and his influence has continued to be felt throughout the 20th century. He was a committed Socialist whose aim was that, as in the Middle Ages, art should be for the people and by the people, a view expressed in several of his writings. After abandoning his training as an architect, he studied painting among members of the Pre-Raphaelites. In 1861 he founded his own firm, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. (from 1875 Morris & Co.), which produced stained glass, furniture, wallpaper and fabrics (see §3 below). Morris’s interests constantly led him into new activities such as his last enterprise, the Kelmscott Press (see §5 below). In 1950 his home at Walthamstow became the William Morris Gallery. The William Morris Society was founded in 1956, and it publishes a biannual journal and quarterly newsletter....

(b Nuremberg, Aug 6, 1733; d Nuremberg, April 8, 1811).

German publisher, writer and art historian. After obtaining a doctorate in law from the University of Altdorf, he travelled (1756–7) to Strasbourg, the Netherlands and England, where he met well-known figures in science, art and politics. In 1758 he set off again from Nuremberg to Vienna and northern Italy. Besides his employment as a Nuremberg weighmaster and customs official from 1760, Murr wrote about German art history and culture. He also published various magazines such as the weekly Der Zufriedene (Nuremberg, 1763–4), the Journal zur Kunstgeschichte und zur allgemeine Litteratur (Nuremberg, 1775–89) and the Neues Journal zur Literatur und Kunstgeschichte (Nuremberg, 1798–9). Stimulated by his wide-ranging correspondence with leading figures within and outside Europe, these contained many articles on the art history and culture of other countries. His work also encompassed linguistic surveys, political and historical subjects and writings about the Jesuit order. He was the author of 82 titles, though his own literary experiments remained insignificant. Murr became a member of the Königliches Historisches Institut, Göttingen, in ...

(b London, Sept 25, 1829; d London, Feb 5, 1919).

English civil servant and critic, brother of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. In 1845 he entered the Excise Office, becoming Assistant Secretary in 1869. On the recommendation of his brother he became a non-artistic member of the PRB and served as its secretary and as editor of its magazine, The Germ. The diary he kept from 1849 to 1853 is an important documentation of the activities of the Brotherhood. From 1850 to 1878 he contributed art notices to more than a dozen newspapers and journals; these are notable for their informed treatment of the Pre-Raphaelites. He increasingly emphasized ‘the total power of productive execution’ in the judgement of works of art (Fine Art, Chiefly Contemporary, p. ix). He demanded that a work display above all the artist’s ‘delight in a thing as an object of sight’ (Sat. Rev., 15 May 1858). George Du Maurier wrote that Rossetti was ‘the ...

American, 19th century, male.

Born 8 November 1817, in Plattsburgh, New York; died 24 June 1897, in St Louis, Missouri.

Photographer, writer, editor, publisher.

Born into a military family, H. H. Snelling lived as a child in what is now known as Fort Snelling, Minnesota. By ...