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(b London, Dec 8, 1904; d New York, Nov 25, 1979).

American publisher and collector. He trained at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League in New York before working in publishing. In 1950 he set up his own publishing company, Harry N. Abrams Inc., one of the first American companies to specialize in art books. In 1968 he founded Abbeville Books. His collecting, which began in the mid-1930s, went through three distinct phases: his first interest was in such contemporary American painters as Milton Avery and Raphael Soyer. He continued to purchase such works into the 1950s, but from the mid-1940s his collecting began to be dominated by works by major 20th-century artists; he acquired, among other works, Marc Chagall’s Clock (1948), Pablo Picasso’s Motherhood (1921) and Georges Rouault’s Miserere (1939).

Abrams’s most notable period as a collector was the 1960s, when he became known as a major collector of new American art. His interest in this area was fuelled by the ...

[Rudolf]

(b Stollberg, Saxony, April 20, 1764; d Finchley, London, March 30, 1834).

English publisher and patron of German birth. He trained as a carriage designer in Paris and moved to England between 1783 and 1786. He established his own business as a carriage maker, undertaking major commissions in London and Dublin. In 1804 he designed Pius VII’s carriage for the coronation of Napoleon and in 1805 the funeral carriage of Horatio, Viscount Nelson. By 1800 Ackermann had built up a unique business at 101 The Strand, London, known as ‘The Repository of Arts’. This encompassed a drawing school with 80 pupils, the sale and loan of Old Master paintings and watercolour drawings, the publication of decorative prints and illustrated books and the manufacture of watercolour paints including a number of new chemical pigments.

In the early 19th century, Ackermann was an important and regular patron of English watercolour painters, employing William Henry Pyne, Augustus Charles Pugin, Thomas Heaphy, Frederick Mackenzie (1787–1854...

(b Holywood, County Down, Ireland, Jan 26, 1922).

Australian painter, printmaker, book designer, lecturer, collector, gallery director and publisher of limited edition artists’ books, of Irish decent. He worked as a draughtsman before entering war service in the British Admiralty from 1940 to 1949, including five years in Colombo, where he made sketching trips to jungle temples with the Buddhist monk and artist Manjsiro Thero. Between 1949 and 1951 Adams worked as an exhibition designer in London and studied wood-engraving with Gertrude Hermes in her evening class at the Central School of Arts and Crafts (now Central St Martin’s College of Art and Design). In 1951, after moving to Melbourne, Adams began a 30-year teaching commitment at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), where he instructed many of the younger generation of Australian printmakers, including George Baldessin and Jan Senbergs. A brief return to Britain and Ireland in 1957–8 provided experience with Dolmen Press, Dublin, which published his first book of engravings, ...

(b Maple, Ont., May 25, 1879; d Cherkley, nr Leatherhead, June 9, 1964).

British publisher, financier, politician, collector and patron, of Canadian birth. As Minister of Information during World War I, he was responsible for the War Records Office in London, through which Wyndham Lewis, Muirhead Bone, William Orpen, Christopher Nevinson, Augustus John and six Canadian artists, J. W. Beatty (1869–1941), Maurice Cullen, C. W. Simpson (1878–1942), Fred Varley, David Milne and A. Y. Jackson, received commissions to record Canada’s military contribution to the war effort. The Canadian War Memorials were deposited at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, in 1921, and since then all but the major canvases have been transferred to the Canadian War Museum, also in Ottawa.

Beaverbrook was instrumental in developing the National Gallery of Canada’s collection of historical pictures; he was directly responsible for the gift of Benjamin West’s The Death of Wolfe by the Duke of Westminster in 1918, and the acquisition of ...

(b Amsterdam, Aug 13, 1820; d Amsterdam, March 17, 1889).

Dutch writer, critic and collector. He was raised in a cultivated and artistic merchant family but preferred writing to commerce. In addition to serving as an editor of the Volksalmanak voor Nederlandsche Katholieken, he published the Dietsche Warande. His lifelong advocacy of Roman Catholic emancipation is reflected in many of his short stories (written under the pseudonym Pauwels Foreestier) concerning Catholic life in 17th-century Holland. In 1876 he was appointed professor of aesthetics and the history of art at the Rijksacademie voor Beeldenden Kunsten, Amsterdam. An architectural preservationist and an important critic of the art and architecture of his time, he asserted that art should serve a religious function, as it had during the Middle Ages. It should be social, idealistic and transcendental. In his ideal society the arts would form a harmonious unit under the heading of architecture. His brother-in-law P. J. H. Cuypers was the leading Dutch architect of the day, whose career was assisted by Alberdingk Thijm’s advocacy of Gothic Revivalism in architecture. Alberdingk Thijm was particularly opposed to the painters of the Barbizon and Hague schools, whose work he considered to have no underlying purpose. Rather, he preferred the Düsseldorf school, which displayed a knowledge of history and literature. His large collections reflected his philosophical orientation. His numerous 17th and 18th-century Dutch paintings, mostly by minor masters, represented all the genres. He also owned a large collection of drawings and prints, as well as books, manuscripts and religious art from the Middle Ages and Renaissance, which included a Gothic ciborium, a Byzantine crucifix and embroideries on silk, which were dispersed at auction after his death (Amsterdam, Muller, ...

Swiss family of collectors of German origin. Johannes Amerbach (b ?Amorbach, c. 1450; d Basle, Dec 25, 1513) gained his MA at the Sorbonne, Paris, and trained as a printer in Nuremberg and Venice. In 1482 he settled in Basle, where in 1484 he founded his own print shop and publishing house. He was in close contact with Albrecht Dürer during the latter’s stay in Basle (1491–2). Apart from works of art for personal use, for example ornamental daggers, he probably owned graphic and print blocks for woodcut illustrations by Dürer. Johannes’s son, Bonifacius Amerbach (b Basle, 11 Oct 1495; d Basle, 24 April 1562), a lawyer, professor at the University of Basle and syndic of the Basle council, was the heir and executor of Erasmus and owned paintings by the Holbein family and important gold and silver pieces, for example the well-known ‘...

(b Monceaux-sous-Paris, 1790; d 1849).

French dealer, print-publisher and collector, of English descent. His father, William Arrowsmith, was an agent for members of the Orléans family. Through his brother-in-law Louis Daguerre, John Arrowsmith was instrumental in negotiating the installation of the Diorama in Park Square East, Regent’s Park, London, opened in 1823 (see Diorama). In 1822, on one of his frequent visits to London, he saw Constable’s The Haywain (1821; London, N.G.) at the British Institution and shortly after began negotiations to buy it in order to exhibit it in Paris. He purchased it in 1824, along with View on the Stour near Dedham (San Marino, CA, Huntington Lib. & A.G.) and a smaller seascape, and in June 1824 exhibited them at his premises at 1, Rue Grange-aux-Belles, Paris. He sent the two larger landscapes to the Salon of 1824, as well as a view of Hampstead Heath. He was one of a small group of dealers attempting to specialize in the sale of works by living artists, and his contacts with England were particularly useful during the 1820s, when an enthusiasm for English literature and art was widespread among young French artists who were part of the Romantic movement. Between ...

(b New York, March 17, 1822; d New York, Aug 11, 1904)

American wood-engraver, art dealer, collector and philanthropist. Avery’s career as a wood-engraver and his involvement with the New York publishing trade began in the early 1840s. He worked for, among others, Appleton’s, the New York Herald and Harper’s and produced illustrations for trade cards, religious tracts, adventure stories and children’s books. By the early 1850s Avery had begun compiling humorous books and commissioning drawings from such artist-illustrators as Felix Octavius Carr Darley, John Whetten Ehninger, Augustus Hoppin (1827–96), Tompkins Harrison Matteson and John McLenan (1827–66). His business contacts led to close relationships with such artists as Frederick Church, John F. Kensett and William Trost Richards.

By the late 1850s Avery had begun to collect drawings and small cabinet pictures by local artists. Other art collectors, notably William T. Walters, asked Avery’s advice when commissioning works of art. In 1864 he turned his engraving practice over to ...

[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...

Italian family of typographers, engravers, publishers and print dealers. Members of the family were active in Venice and Padua in the 16th century and the early 17th. Most notable among them were Luca Bertelli (fl Venice, c. 1560; fl Padua, 1594), Orazio Bertelli (fl Venice, 1562–88), who was possibly Luca’s brother, and Ferdinando (Ferrando, Ferrante) Bertelli (fl Venice, 1561–72). It is difficult to determine the extent of Luca Bertelli’s participation in the execution of the prints he published; they were mainly historical, religious and mythological. Orazio Bertelli probably encouraged Agostino Carracci’s visit to Venice in 1582. Orazio’s engravings included the works of Federico Barocci, Domenico Tibaldi and Paolo Veronese, notably a Pietà (De Grazia, p. 125, no. 102). Ferdinando Bertelli was best known for his publication of a vast number of maps, by both Italian and foreign cartographers.

[Alphonse]

(b St Omer, Pas-de-Calais, April 5, 1828; d Paris, 1875).

French dealer and print publisher. He was the son of an innkeeper and joined the army in 1848. After spending several years in Lyon, he returned to St Omer and in 1859 married the sister of the printmaker and painter François Chifflart. In that year he gave up his modest position with a railway company and set up in Paris in the Rue de Richelieu as a print dealer and print publisher. His first publication appeared in May 1859 and was an album of Chifflart’s works illustrated with photographs, lithographs and etchings. He also launched two illustrated periodicals, Paris mystérieux (1861) and Paris qui s’en va (1859; only one issue published). In 1861 he went into partnership with the photographer Félix Chevalier, and in August of that year they held an exhibition of photographs of the principal pictures of the Salon, as well as an exhibition of paintings that included landscapes by ...

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 Lyon, May 28, 1699; d Paris, April 14, 1771).

French printmaker, print publisher and print-seller. Early in his life his family removed to Paris. His father, Jean-François Cars (1661–1730), an engraver and publisher, was his first teacher. He next studied painting under Joseph Christophe (1662–1748) and François Lemoyne and then completed his studies in engraving under Nicolas-Henry Tardieu. In 1729 he was approved (agréé) by the Académie Royale and on 31 December 1733 was received (reçu), on presentation of the engraved portraits of Michel Anguier after Gabriel Revel and of Sébastien Bourdon after Hyacinthe Rigaud. From 1750 he gradually abandoned engraving in favour of print-selling, particularly those of his father’s collection. In 1757 he was appointed a Conseiller. His work included nearly 190 prints; he engraved portraits, historical and mythological subjects after Lemoyne, such as Hercules and Omphale and the Bath of Iris, and genre subjects after Watteau, such as Figures de différents caractères...

(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 Blois, March 20, 1680; d Paris, April 15, 1729).

French engraver, print publisher and print-seller. He was the son of a joiner and was trained in Girard Audran’s workshop in Paris. In 1715 he was accepted (agréé) by the Académie Royale and was received (reçu) in 1718 with his engraving after a Self-portrait by Louis Boullogne (i) (Roux, no. 28). In that same year he bought Girard Audran’s business, called Les Deux Piliers d’Or, from his widow, and with it part of its stock of plates. He published chiefly high-quality prints and was one of the first to be interested in engravings after Watteau. He was esteemed as an engraver, even though his oeuvre comprises only 56 finished plates. Although Chéreau engraved some paintings on sacred subjects after such artists as Domenichino, Guido Reni (Crucifixion, r 4) and Raphael (St John the Baptist in the Wilderness, r 2, for the Recueil Crozat), he chiefly engraved portraits, a genre in which, according to Pierre-Jean Mariette, only the Drevet family could rival him. Most of the portraits are engraved after ...

(b Antwerp, c. 1560; d Antwerp, June 29, 1618).

Flemish draughtsman, engraver, print publisher and dealer. He was probably trained by the engraver and publisher Philip Galle, whose daughter Justa (d 1616) he married in 1586, and with whom he collaborated. In 1580 Adriaen was admitted to the Antwerp Guild of St Luke as a master’s son; in 1596 and 1597 he was respectively assistant dean and dean. Collaert produced a notable and extensive oeuvre of c. 600 engravings, including various series after his own drawings of birds, fish and animals (e.g. Animalium quadrupedum, Hollstein, nos 596–615; and Avium vivae icones, 1580; Hollstein, nos 616–47). Also after his own designs are the series of engravings of the Four Elements (pubd by himself; Hollstein, nos 453–6) and Flowers (pubd by Theodoor Galle; Hollstein, nos 679–702). All these rather uneven compositions are characterized by the faithful representation of nature. Collaert’s own compositions often include decorative borders consisting of flowers, animals and grotesques. This suggests he was important as a designer of ornament. However, by far the majority of his work comprises engravings after other Netherlandish artists, including ...

(b ?Nancy, c. 1610; d Rome, bur Jan 18, 1687).

French engraver, print-seller and publisher, active in Italy. After a four-year apprenticeship sometime between 1622 and 1630 in the studio of Jacques Callot, he went to Rome to finish his training as an engraver. Collignon is chiefly known as a print-seller and publisher, however. After a modest start in Paris, he settled in the Parione district of Rome. Details of his estate, posthumously published, reveal that he was a major figure in publishing and print-selling. Sometime after 1650 he and Giovanni Giacomo Rossi were the joint publishers of Pietro Testa’s engravings, and Collignon also published plates by Cornelis Bloemaert (ii) after Pietro da Cortona, Nicolas Poussin and Charles Le Brun. He also handled engravings by Simon Vouet and François Spierre as well as large numbers of prints by Nicolas Pérelle and Jean Le Pautre. On Collignon’s death, his business was bought up by the Antwerp dealer Arnold van Westerhout (...

(b Leicester, 1797; d Oxford, Oct 29, 1872).

English publisher and patron. He was one of the earliest patrons of the Pre-Raphaelites, and his bequest of their works to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, is notable among collections formed in the 19th century in that it remains largely intact. (Unless otherwise stated, all works mentioned are in the Ashmolean.) In 1838 Combe became Superintendent of the Clarendon Press at Oxford University, a post he held until his death. Under his management, the Press, hitherto run at a loss, became a source of revenue; Combe’s own substantial share in the profitable business of printing Bibles and prayer books enabled him to acquire a considerable personal fortune. He was a genial, hospitable man of strong religious convictions, a friend and ardent supporter of the Tractarians; John Henry Newman officiated at his marriage in 1840. Combe and his wife Martha (1806–93) were active in many forms of charitable work, and Combe, who edited ...

(b New York, Jan 24, 1919; d Key West, FL, May 7, 1996).

American dealer, patron, and painter. Born into a newspaper-publishing family, he responded to his upper-class establishment upbringing by seeking out ambivalence in art and life. Copley established the Copley Galleries in Los Angeles in 1948 with John Ployardt as partner and showed Magritte, Max Ernst, Roberto Matta, Man Ray, Yves Tanguy, and Joseph Cornell, as well as younger local artists. He regularly purchased a work from each show and built up his collection. Self-taught as a painter, in 1951 he closed the gallery to paint and moved to Paris, where he bought directly from the Surrealists. He returned to the USA in 1963, living and working in Roxbury, CT. He regularly exhibited at the Phyllis Kind Gallery, New York, and elsewhere in the USA and Europe. He used Magritte’s method of ‘assembling images’ in his own narrative figurative paintings. As in some Surrealist works, eroticism is the guiding force in brightly coloured and witty paintings. He compared ...

(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 ...