Souvenirs of a Veteran Collector: The Samuel Putnam Avery Collection

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. To honor Avery and his gift, the Library will mount an exhibition culled from this rich and varied collection. 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.



The exhibition 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.