Page 24 - Bonhams Passkon and Philanthropy MET Mjuseum March 2024 Asia Week

Portrait of Mrs. S.P. Avery by Jean-Ernest Aubert.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Ann_Ogden_Avery

fruitful partnership, buying in France and selling in New York, and In 1879, the Museum purchased more than 1,200 ceramics,
splitting the profits. The international art market was just starting to predominantly Chinese, from the Avery Collection. He was also
take shape when Avery entered it in the 1860s. The volume of his instrumental in building the Museum's library and donated numerous
business was such that between 1864 and 1889, Avery sold more art books, including now-rare first editions of seventeenth- and
than 1,500 artworks to nearly 400 collectors through his auctions. eighteenth-century classics of art history as well as a collection of
His private clients included influential railroad magnates, bankers, and fine bookbinding’s. At the Metropolitan Museum, as well as at the
politicians, that included William Henry Vanderbilt (1821-1885), James New York Public Library, the Grolier Club, and the Union League
Jerome Hill (1838-1916), William Wilson Corcoran (1798-1888), and Club, he curated and lent to groundbreaking exhibitions of prints.
Edwin Denison Morgan (1811-1883). As the collecting of art occupied In 1900, he established the Print Collection of the New York Public
the minds of New York's social and civic communities, Avery became Library by donating a collection of 17,775 prints, including works by
increasingly active and prominent. He was an active committee Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-
member of the Union League, and when in 1868 their club president 1903), Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851), and Édouard
John Jay asked the art committee, on which Avery served as Manet (1832-1883). Avery’s prints included a strong holding of the
secretary, to pursue the idea of a national New York Art Museum, he prints of Francisco Goya that included a set of fine early impressions
was among fifty people chosen to draw up a scheme of organization. of the Caprichos, purchased from the collection of Dante Gabriel
The "General Committee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art" emerged Rossetti. Following the death of their son, Henry Ogden Avery
with John Taylor Johnston as president, and Avery was elected to the (1852-1890), Samuel and Mary Ann Avery established the Avery
Board of Trustees, on which he served until his death. Memorial Library (now the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library)

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