Emmanuel Benezit Artwork valuations, appraisals and auction estimates

Emmanuel Bénézit was born in Jersey in 1854 and was a French art writer. He immediately cultivated a passion for art, which led him to start working on the project that would become the famous Dictionary of painters, sculptors, draughtsmen and engravers of all times and of all countries known by the name of Bénézit. Read the full biography

Emmanuel Bénézit was born in Jersey in 1854 and was a French art writer. He immediately cultivated a passion for art, which led him to start working on the project that would become the famous Dictionary of painters, sculptors, draughtsmen and engravers of all times and of all countries known by the name of Bénézit. The dictionary, which contains biographies of numerous artists from all times and places, was written by a team of specialists. The first two volumes of Bénézit's dictionary were published in 1911 and 1913, but the project was abandoned by the original publisher Roger & Chernoviz. After Bénézit's death in 1920, Marcelle Bénézit and Edmond-Henri Zeiger-Viallet completed the third and final volume, which was published in 1923 by Librairie Gründ. Over the course of the century, Gründ published three more editions of the dictionary, in addition to the first English edition in 2006. Bénézit was an art enthusiast and himself an amateur painter. The idea of ​​compiling a comprehensive list of artists, from all eras and places, arose from the need to satisfy the growing demand for information on art history and art from around the world. Europeans' renewed interest in non-Western artistic traditions and the flurry of contemporary activity in various artistic circles were among the stimuli that led Bénézit to pursue his project.