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(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 Glasgow, April 20, 1707; d Edinburgh, June 2, 1776).

Scottish printer and educator. He was of humble origin, but determined to become a printer. In 1739 he went to Paris where he purchased fine and rare books that he sold in London for a profit. Two years later he had established a bookshop in Glasgow and began to print with such success that in 1743 he was appointed printer to the university. Foulis’s Iliad (1757) and Odyssey (1758) are among the finest examples of 18th-century typography. From 1751–3 he travelled in France and the Netherlands purchasing prints and over 350 paintings to provide the nucleus of the teaching collection of an academy of fine arts that he intended to establish in Glasgow on his return. The Foulis Academy (founded 1753) was housed in the university and financed by loans from Glasgow merchants. Tuition was free and the academy was the first to award scholarships for foreign study. It also held the first public art exhibition in ...

(b Concarneau, June 29, 1890; d Cape Neddick, nr. Ogunquit, ME, April 20, 1970).

American sculptor and teacher of French birth. In 1901, the painter, writer, critic, gallery proprietor and publisher Hamilton Easter Field (1873–1922) brought Laurent to New York as his protégé and sponsored Laurent’s study of avant-garde art in Paris and Rome from 1905 to 1909. Laurent was intrigued by African art which he saw in Picasso’s studio, Cézanne’s paintings and the sculptures of Gauguin and Maillol. Except for a few painting lessons with Cubist Frank Burty Haviland (1886–1971), brother of Paul B. Haviland (associate editor of Camera Work), and American modernist Maurice Sterne, Laurent had little formal training. Field and Laurent founded a modern art school in Ogunquit, ME (1910), where Laurent taught each summer for the rest of his life. Field, Laurent and Marsden Hartley were among the first to collect folk art in Maine.

Laurent’s pioneering directly-carved wood sculptures include the primitivist relief ...

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 ...

Guides to every state in the Union (and some of the major cities) that were written under the auspices of the Federal Writers Project created by the Works Progress Administration/Federal Art Project during the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The idea was part of Roosevelt’s attempt to find work for the thousands of Americans who had been left jobless by the Great Depression of the 1930s. Published between 1937 and 1942, each one began with short chapters on subjects such as political history, the arts, architecture, labor movements, economics and education. These were followed by sections on major cities and their resources. About half of each guide was devoted to a series of tours that might be taken along country roads as well as major highways. They included details of small towns that are still valuable to scholars.

The Federal Writers Project hired some important authors, but few of them wrote for the guides. They were composed by people of lesser note such as unknown college professors, amateur naturalists and architecture buffs. The great majority of the researchers were people who had no training in gathering facts but who nevertheless pursued them with care. One also suspects that the high quality of the finished products was the result of the work of capable editors....