NEW YORK CITY.- In 1900, the dealer, collector, and patron of the arts Samuel Putnam Avery presented his collection of nearly 18,000 prints to The New York Public Library, thereby establishing the first public print collection in New York City. The vast majority of the prints are works by Avery’s American and European contemporaries, including some whose names remain familiar, such as Mary Cassatt, Camille Corot, Edouard Manet, and James McNeill Whistler, as well as others, such as the now more obscure but no less talented Félix Bracquemond, François-Nicolas Chifflart, Norbert Goeneutte, and Charles Jacque.
To honor Avery and his gift, the Library will mount Souvenirs of a Veteran Collector: The Samuel Putnam Avery Collection at The New York Public Library, an exhibition culled from this rich and varied collection. The exhibition will be on view from April 5 through June 29, 2002, at The New York Public Library’s Humanities and Social Sciences Library in the Prints and Stokes Galleries on the third floor.
Souvenirs of a Veteran Collector highlights the close personal connections Avery maintained with many of the artists whose work he collected, and documents aspects of late 19th-century taste in print collecting as practiced by an enlightened professional. His passionate search for multiple and variant states of individual prints, for example, is exemplary of 19th-century collecting, while copious numbers of personal and explanatory inscriptions on the prints themselves suggest his very active role in the process of collecting.
Comprising more than 230 objects, primarily prints, the exhibition will be installed salon-style in the galleries. A survey of Manet’s prints exemplifies the changes that were occurring in the role of printmaking in the 19th century. While he participated in the traditional use of prints as reproductions of works of art, Manet, like many artists of his time, also began to rediscover the other tradition of printmaking -- prints as discrete works of art in and of themselves.
The north hallway will be devoted to the countryside where landscapes will hang with images of peasant life. Especially well-represented are painters of the Barbizon School including Corot, Jean-François Millet, and Théodore Rousseau, as well as Charles Jacque and Charles Daubigny. As modernity encroached more and more aggressively on the rural landscape, many artists became interested in recording the vanishing peasant culture. While some artists, such as Adolphe Hervier and Willem Witsen addressed social issues and presented a more realistic portrayal of the hardships of peasant life, many tended to idealize their subjects in bucolic settings.
At the same time, the city and urban life provided a vibrant focus for artists and printmakers. The south hallway will be devoted to this theme, and will include urban and marine views by Whistler, Charles Meyron, and Camille Pissarro, as well as numerous portraits of artists and artists at work, including self-portraits by Corot and Pissaro and a portrait of Bracquemond by Manet. This portion of the exhibition will also include examples of Japonisme and Symbolism, as well as prints on religious themes.
A dealer and collector, Samuel Putnam Avery specialized in American art until his appointment as Commissioner of Fine Arts in the American section of the Paris 1867 Exposition, when his focus shifted to contemporary European art. The prints, books, letters, and ephemera in the accompanying cases will illuminate Avery’s life and the Parisian art scene of the late 19th century.
