Page 23 - Bonhams Passkon and Philanthropy MET Mjuseum March 2024 Asia Week

Samuel Putnam Avery, painted by Charles Loring Elliott in 1863.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Putnam_Avery

Samuel Putnam Avery (1822-1904)

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Samuel Putnam Avery (1822-1904) was born 17 March 1822 in New By 1844 he was married to the artist, collector, and benefactor,
York City, a son of a leather merchant, Samuel Avery, and Hannah Mary Ann Ogden (1825-1911), and launched a new chapter of
Parke Avery. In 1832 his father died in a cholera epidemic, leaving the his career the following year as an art dealer. He built a solid
family in poverty. By 1840 he and his brother Benjamin Parke were reputation over the next twenty years and in 1867 was appointed
apprenticed to learn engraving on copper and were both employed Commissioner in charge of the American Art Department of the
by the American Bank Note Company. He and his brother then Exposition Universelle in Paris, an important and prominent position.
turned to wood engraving for leading publishers in New York. In the Avery and his wife travelled to Europe annually to acquire historical
1840s newspaper illustrations were rare, but the Mexican War of and contemporary paintings, prints, and books, and to commission
1845-47 created a demand for wood engravings of battle scenes, works by living artists for either sale thought their gallery or to
encampments, people and views in the war areas. Avery engraved keep as part of their personal collection. In this endeavor he was
many of the illustrations in the Weekly Herald and the New York initially sponsored by William T. Walters (1820-1894), a Baltimore
Herald. businessman and founder of the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore,
with whom he had a long and

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