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Robert H. Ellsworth

(1929 - 2014)

Robert H. Ellsworth - warmly titled the ‘King of Ming’ by city. From her, he learnt about Chinese porcelain, painting and
one newspaper - was a prominent dealer of Ming dynasty furniture. This knowledge would prove to be the cornerstone
furniture, Chinese painting, archaic jade and other examples of his career that placed him among the boldest, most prolific
of Asian art, who helped enlarge many of the major art and most prescient dealers of Asian art in the United States.
collections in the United States. Born in Manhattan in 1929 to Institutions which purchased from him include the Nelson-
an opera singer and a dentist, Mr. Ellsworth never graduated Atkins Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the
from high school. Yet his deep interest in China and antiques Cleveland Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art
led him to work for a Manhattan antiques gallery, where he and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
met Alice Boney, then the leading dealer in Asian art in the

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