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 1-20 of 503 Results  for:

  • Patron, Collector, or Dealer x
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Article

Abbey, John Roland  

Jacqueline Colliss Harvey

Publication History:

Published online:
2003
Collection:
Grove Art Online

(b Brighton, Nov 23, 1894; d London, Dec 24, 1969).

English collector. Educated privately, he was commissioned to the Rifle Brigade in 1914. He was invalided home in November 1916 and made a director in his family’s brewing firm. He began his book collection in 1929, at first with an interest in modern bindings. In 1931 he commissioned Sybil Pye and R. de Coverley and Sons to produce a binding to his own design for Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs of an Infantry Officer. Consistently stressing the importance of appearance and condition, Abbey began buying antiquarian books in 1933 and manuscripts (of which he ultimately owned 143) in 1946, with advice from Sydney Cockerell. After World War II he had the largest private collection of his time, including 1914 18th- and 19th-century books of watercolour prints.

Auctions of his collection were held between 1965 and 1967 (buyers included Paul Mellon and the Landesbibliothek, Stuttgart) and, after his death, between 1970 and 1975...

Article

Abrams, Harry N(athan)  

A. Deirdre Robson

Publication History:

Published online:
2003
Collection:
Grove Art Online

(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 ...

Article

Ackerman, Phyllis  

Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom

Publication History:

Published online:
02 July 2009
Collection:
Grove Art Online

(b. Oakland, CA, 1893; d. Shiraz, Iran, 25 Jan. 1977).

American historian of Iranian art. While studying mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, Ackerman met and eventually married Arthur Upham Pope, with whom she had taken courses in philosophy and aesthetics. In 1926 she and Pope organized the first ever exhibition of Persian art at the Pennsylvania Museum and helped create the First International Congress of Oriental Art. In 1930 Ackerman was stricken with polio but taught herself to walk again. They were instrumental in preparing the 1931 Persian Art Exhibition at Burlington House, London, and the Second International Congress of Iranian Art and Archaeology, as well as the Third Congress in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in 1935 and the exhibition of Iranian art at the Iranian Institute in New York in 1940. She visited Iran for the first time in 1964, when the shah of Iran invited Pope to revive the Asia Institute; it was associated with Pahlavi University in Shiraz until ...

Article

Adams, Tate  

Publication History:

Published online:
2003
Collection:
Grove Art Online

(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, ...

Article

Addis, Sir John M(ansfield)  

Margaret Medley

Publication History:

Published online:
2003
Collection:
Grove Art Online

(b London, June 11, 1914; d Pembury, Kent, July 31, 1983).

English diplomat, collector and art historian. In 1947, as a member of the British Diplomatic Service, he was posted to Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, then the capital of the Nationalist Chinese government. He became interested in Chinese art and history and began a collection of porcelain, furniture and textiles at a time of political and economic uncertainty, when Chinese collectors were forced to sell. When he moved to the British embassy in Beijing in 1954 he continued his research into Chinese ceramic history with the help of specialists from the Palace Museum. In 1963 he became British ambassador to the Philippines and was largely responsible for organizing the Manila Trade Pottery Seminar (1968), to which he also contributed five of the nine discussion monographs. From 1972 to 1974, as British ambassador to China, he played an important part in promoting the Chinese archaeological exhibition The Genius of China, held in London at the Royal Academy in ...

Article

Aitken, William Maxwell, 1st Baron Beaverbrook  

Ian G. Lumsden

Publication History:

Published online:
2003
Collection:
Grove Art Online

(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 ...

Article

‛Alawi family  

Marianne Barrucand

Publication History:

Published online:
2003
Collection:
Grove Art Online

[‛Alawī; Filālī]

Islamic dynasty and rulers of Morocco since 1631. Like their predecessors the Sa‛dis, the ‛Alawis are sharīfs (descendants of the Prophet Muhammad), and both dynasties are sometimes classed together as the ‘Sharifs of Morocco’. From a base in the Tafilalt region of south-east Morocco, the ‛Alawi family was able to overcome the centrifugal forces exerted by the Berber tribes who had destroyed the Sa‛di state in the first half of the 17th century. To restore political authority and territorial integrity, Mawlay Isma‛il (reg 1672–1727) added a new black slave corps to the traditional tribal army. Although royal power was weak during the 19th century and the early 20th, when the French and Spanish established protectorates, the ‛Alawis’ power was fully restored after independence from the French in 1956.

‛Alawi building activities (see Islamic art, §II, 7(v)) were concentrated in the four cities that have served as their capitals: Fez and Marrakesh at various times from ...

Article

Alba, Duques de family  

Marcus Burke

Publication History:

Published online:
2003
Collection:
Grove Art Online

[Alvárez de Toledo] [now Berwick y Alba]

Spanish family of politicians and collectors. The prominent role of the Alvárez de Toledo family in the history of Spain and the dynastic marriages that have joined many other titles into the house of Berwick y Alba have placed the Alba collection among the finest in Europe. Don Fernando Alvárez de Toledo (1507–82), the ‘Gran-Duque’ de Alba, Governor of the Netherlands (from 1567), commissioned paintings from Anthonis Mor and Titian (General Pardon Conceded to Flanders by the Duque de Alba; Christ in the House of Martha; portrait of Don Fernando Alvárez de Toledo, Duque de Alba, in Armour; all Madrid, Pal. Liria, Col. Duke of Alba). His namesake, Don Fernando Alvárez de Toledo, the 6th duke, returned to Spain in 1653 from an embassy in Italy with a large shipment of works of art. The family collection, which included an impressive holding of tapestries, was housed in the palace of La Abadia in Extremadura and at the former ducal seat in Alba de Tormes....

Article

(5) Alexander [Aleksandr Pavlovich], Emperor of Russia  

G. I. Vzdornov

In 

Collection:
Grove Art Online

Article

(7) Alexander II [Aleksandr Nikolayevich]  

G. I. Vzdornov

In 

Collection:
Grove Art Online

Article

(8) Alexander III [Aleksandr Aleksandrovich], Emperor of Russia  

G. I. Vzdornov

In 

Collection:
Grove Art Online

Article

Alexandre, Arsène  

Publication History:

Published online:
2003
Collection:
Grove Art Online

[Pierre Urbain]

(b Paris, 1859; d Paris, 1937).

French writer and collector. He wrote for a number of journals including Le Figaro, Le Voltaire and L’Evénement. He was the first to use the term Neo-Impressionism in a French publication (L’Evénement, 10 Dec 1886) after its use by Félix Féneon in September in Art moderne in Brussels. His attitude to the emerging Neo-Impressionist movement was somewhat equivocal. In Paris (13 Aug 1888) he wrote of Seurat as ‘the man of great achievements who is in some danger of having the paternity of his own theory wrested from him by ill-informed critics or unscrupulous colleagues’. Although he admired Seurat, he had grave doubts about the effect of his theories on other artists, claiming (in the same article) that they had ‘spoilt some great talents, painters like Angrand and Signac’. His comments particularly infuriated Paul Signac and caused tension within the group. He also wrote on the work of the ...

Article

Ali, Wijdan, Princess  

Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom

Publication History:

Published online:
2003
Collection:
Grove Art Online

[‛Alī Wijdān; Wijdan]

(b Baghdad, Aug 29, 1939).

Jordanian painter and art patron. She studied history at Beirut University College (formerly Beirut College for Women), receiving a BA in 1961. In 1993 she took a PhD in Islamic Art at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. After serving in the Jordanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and representing her country at United Nations meetings in Geneva and New York, Ali founded the Royal Society of Fine Arts in Jordan in 1979 and the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts in 1980 (see Jordan, Hashemite Kingdom of). In 1988 she organized in Amman the Third International Seminar on Islamic Art, entitled ‘Problems of Art Education in the Islamic World’, and in 1989 she organized the exhibition Contemporary Art from the Islamic World at the Barbican Centre, London. In 2001 she founded the Faculty of Arts and Design at the University of Jordan, and has received numerous awards in recognition of her work in the arts....

Article

(8) Alois (-Joseph [Josef]) II, Prince of Liechtenstein  

E. Castellani Zahir

In 

Collection:
Grove Art Online

Article

(6) Alois(-Joseph [Josef]) I, Prince of Liechtenstein  

E. Castellani Zahir

In 

Collection:
Grove Art Online

Article

Altman, Benjamin  

Lillian B. Miller

Publication History:

Published online:
2003
Collection:
Grove Art Online

(b New York, July 12, 1840; d New York, Oct 7, 1913).

American merchant and collector. He was the son of Bavarian Jewish immigrants who ran a small dry goods business in New York before the Civil War. About 1863 he entered into a business partnership with his brother; after Morris Altman’s death in 1876, Benjamin re-established the business and quickly developed it into a highly profitable enterprise. Altman’s aesthetic interests extended from European and Oriental decorative arts to Old Master paintings. A self-educated connoisseur, Altman depended a great deal on the advice of dealers such as Duveen, Agnew, Gimpel and Wildenstein, but also developed a fine discrimination as a result of a few short trips to Europe and the accumulation of a valuable art library. As he became more deeply involved in art, he began to devote his entire time to its study. Although never a recluse, he did not participate actively in New York society, never married and insisted on privacy....

Article

Arenberg  

Publication History:

Published online:
2003
Collection:
Grove Art Online

Flemish (Belgian) family of collectors and patrons. The ancient county of Arenberg, situated between the duchy of Juliers, archbishopric of Cologne and county of Blankenheim, was raised to a principality in 1576 and a duchy in 1664. Members of the family played important roles in the politics of the Netherlands, France and Germany. Louis Engelbert, 5th Duke of Arenberg (1750–1820), made major acquisitions of prints and drawings, especially of views, towns and statues, during visits to France, Italy and Switzerland. He also acquired drawings by Lambert Lombard, 400 of which form part of the Arenberg Album (Liège, Cab. Est. & Dessins), and commissioned painters and sculptors. His brother, Auguste-Marie-Raymond, 6th Duke of Arenberg (1753–1833), was a connoisseur and a great bibliophile and was the first member of the family to create a gallery of paintings. By 1808 he had begun to purchase works of art at sales in Holland, London and Paris, as well as through such dealers as ...

Article

Arensberg  

Naomi Sawelson-Gorse

Publication History:

Published online:
2003
Collection:
Grove Art Online

American collectors and patrons. Walter (Conrad) Arensberg (b Pittsburg [now Pittsburgh], PA, 4 April 1878; d Los Angeles, CA, 29 Jan 1954) and his wife, Louise [née Mary Louise Stevens] (b Dresden, 15 May 1879; d Los Angeles, CA, 25 Nov 1953), lived in New York from 1914 to 1921. During this period their apartment at 33 W. 67th Street was an unofficial salon for the American Dada movement, where French expatriate artists such as (Henri-Robert-)Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia mingled with American writers, artists, musicians and others. Although Walter Arensberg enjoyed financial comfort for a while, owing to financial assistance from his father, this soon ended. Walter’s support of such journals as Others and Blind Man and of the Marius de Zayas Gallery was short-lived and ended in financial failure. In contrast, his wife, Louise (whom he had married in 1907), had inherited substantial wealth from her parents, which provided the means to acquire the majority of works the couple amassed from the 1920s....

Article

Arman  

Alfred Pacquement

Publication History:

Published online:
2003
Collection:
Grove Art Online

[Fernandez, Armand]

(b Nice, Nov 17, 1928; d New York, Oct 22, 2005).

American sculptor and collector of French birth. Arman lived in Nice until 1949, studying there at the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs from 1946 and in 1947 striking up a friendship with the artist Yves Klein, with whom he was later closely associated in the Nouveau Réalisme movement. In 1949 he moved to Paris, where he studied at the Ecole du Louvre and where in an exhibition in 1954 he discovered the work of Kurt Schwitters, which led him to reject the lyrical abstraction of the period. In 1955 Arman began producing Stamps, using ink-pads in a determined critique of Art informel and Abstract Expressionism to suggest a depersonalized and mechanical version of all-over paintings. In his next series, the Gait of Objects, which he initiated in 1958, he took further his rejection of the subjectivity of the personal touch by throwing inked objects against the canvas.

Arman’s willingness to embrace chance was indicated by his decision in ...

Article

Armitage, Merle  

Roy R. Behrens

Publication History:

Published online:
30 October 2007
Collection:
Grove Art Online

(b Mason City, IA, Feb 13, 1893; d Yucca Valley, CA, March 15, 1975).

American book designer, writer, art collector and impresario . The son of an innovative cattle farmer, Elmer Armitage (the son’s name is an anagram of the father’s), he had a childhood fascination with locomotives and Parkard automobiles, whose sleek and smart advertising he collected. After working briefly in civil engineering and stage design, he became an impresario for world-famous opera, concert and ballet performers, including Anna Pavlova, Feodor Chaliapin, Rosa Ponselle, Amelita Galli-Curci and the Diaghilev Ballet, in New York and then Los Angeles. While living in southern California he became an influential force in the promotion of cultural opportunities as co-founder and manager of the Los Angeles Grand Opera Association, manager of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Auditorium and regional director of the Works Progress Administration. During those years ‘Armitage had more single influence on the arts in Los Angeles than anyone else’ (Dailey).

Having concluded that lowbrow advertising could be used effectively to promote highbrow art events, Armitage began to design all his own advertising layouts. Always an avid art collector (his collection included works by Paul Gauguin, Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh and Paul Klee), in ...