James Jackson Jarves

James Jackson Jarves (1818–1888) was an American newspaper editor, and art critic who is remembered above all as the first American art collector to buy Italian primitives and Old Masters.

Jarves was the editor of an early weekly newspaper in the Hawaiian Islands, the Polynesian (1840–48). During the 1850s, Jarves relocated to Florence, Italy where he served as the U.S. vice-consul and collected art. When in 1871, the Yale University Art Gallery purchased 119 early Italian paintings from Jarves, spanning the centuries from the tenth to the seventeenth, which had been refused by other American museums, they paid only $22,000. At the expiration of the loan, Yale prevented Jarves' intended auction of the works to another museum. The "Master of the Jarves Cassone", later discovered to be Apollonio di Giovanni di Tomaso, was named after him.

An honorary Hawaiian citizen, Jarves was awarded the order of Kamehameha I for his diplomatic services to Hawaii while empires fought to control it. The king of Italy appointed him Cavaliere della Corona d'Italia for his contribution to Italian art (source - Steegmuller).

His family includes Horatio, Chevalita, Flora (with first wife Elizabeth Swain - died) and Anabel and Italia (second wife Isabella Kast Hayden). Anabel became Mrs Walter Raleigh Kerr of England and Italia the Duchess del Monte, Marigliano of Italy.

Edith Wharton drew upon Jarves' well-known misfortunes in her novella False Dawn (The Forties).

Some of his works:

This list is incomplete.

...
Wikipedia