Item 73: Bookplate, Museum of Fine Arts, Print Department, gift by S[ylvester]. R[osa]. Koehler, no date

Item — Box: 20, Folder: 73

Staff Only

Bookplate, Museum of Fine Arts, Print Department, Gift of S.R. Koehler, no date

Dates

Created: no date

Disclaimer for Name and Subject Authorities

Some of the name and subject authority tags have been assigned by educated guessing and estimation of persons and subjects by region, age, profession, and familial relationships. They have been thoroughly researched by using primary and secondary sources available digitally, and named in each description, or in some cases linked directly to the person tag.

Access:

All series and subseries within this collection are open for research, with the exception of a few files within the Academia series that are restricted. The Academia series contains financial and sensitive institutional records from Wilkes College, and financial report records from Princeton University that will remain restricted for 80 years upon creation.

Extent

1 items

Language of Materials

From the Collection: English

Additional Description

Type of Material:

Bookplate

Condition Note:

Great, no issues.

Measurements:

5 9/16 in. x 8 ⅜ in.

Title:

Gift of S.R. Koehler

Description:

A lithograph depicting a drawing of a table containing art supplies and the words, Museum of Fine Arts. Boston Mass. Print Dept. Gift of S.R. Koehler. Sylvester Rosa Koehler was born on February 11, 1837 in Lezpig, Germany. He was an author and museum curator. He was the first curator of prints at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He came to the United States after school in 1849 and relocated to Boston and Roxbury. He was a technical manager at L. Prang and Company for a decade. “He made many contributions on art to periodicals in the United States and Europe. He published translations of Von Betzold’s Theory of Color, edited by professor Edward C. Pickering (Boston, 1876), Lalanne’s Treatise on Etching, with notes (1880), and was the author of Art Education and Art Patronage in the United States (1882), and Etching, An Outline of its Technical Processes and History, With Some Remarks on Collections and Collecting (1885). He also wrote the text for Original Etching for American Artists (1883), Twenty Original American Etchings (1884), and American Art (in press, 1887). He also edited the United States Art Directory and Year Book for 1882 and 1884. In 1887, he was invested in writing a history of color painting. He edited the American Art Review while it was still going for two years and made original sketches for it. Because of his contributions to the American Art Review, writings, and exhibitions he helped put together, he helped usher in an etching renaissance in the United States during the 1880s. In 1885 he started out as an interim curator at the prints department for MFA in Boston, and two years later he became a full-time curator. The next year, he became a curator at the Smithsonian and did this for fourteen years. He also gave lectures on “Engraving” at the Lowell Institute in the 1893-94 year. He gave his big collection of “library and print” collection to the MFA.