Sylvester Rosa Koehler (11 February 1837

Leipzig Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...

- 15 September 1900

Littleton, New Hampshire Littleton is a town in Grafton County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 6,005 at the 2020 census. Situated at the northern edge of the White Mountains, Littleton is bounded on the northwest by the Connecticut River. The main vil ...

) was a German-born American author and museum

curator A curator (from , meaning 'to take care') is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the particular ins ...

. He was the first curator of prints at the

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the list of largest art museums, 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 painting ...

Biography

His grandfather was a musician and composer of note, and his father an artist. Koehler emigrated to the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

in 1849 after he had received the rudiments of a classical education. He moved to the Boston area in 1868, residing for a time in

Roxbury, Massachusetts Roxbury () is a Neighborhoods in Boston, neighborhood in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Roxbury is a Municipal annexation in the United States, dissolved municipality and one of 23 official neighborhoods of Boston used by the city for ne ...

, and became a technical manager at L. Prang & Company for 10 years. He edited the ''American Art Review'' while it existed (1879–81). He commissioned original etchings for it. He made many contributions on art to periodicals in the

and

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. He published translations of von Betzold's ''Theory of Color'', edited by Prof. 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 its History, with Some Remarks on Collections and Collecting'' (New York, 1885). Koehler wrote the text for ''Original Etchings by 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 engaged in writing a history of color painting. Through his work on the ''American Art Review'', his writings, and exhibitions he organized, he helped foster a revival of etching in the

in the 1880s. He became acting curator for the prints department at the MFA, Boston, in 1885 and regular curator in 1887. He was curator of graphic arts at the Smithsonian in

Washington, D. C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

, from 1886 to 1900. He gave a series of eight lectures on "Engraving" for the

Lowell Institute The Lowell Institute is a United States educational foundation located in Boston, Massachusetts, providing both free public lectures, and also advanced lectures. It was endowed by a bequest of $250,000 left by John Lowell Jr., who died in 1836. T ...

's 1893–94 season.Harriet Knight Smith
''The history of the Lowell Institute''
Boston: Lamson, Wolffe and Co., 1898. He bequeathed his considerable library and print collection to the MFA.

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* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Koehler, Sylvester Rosa 1837 births 1900 deaths Writers from Boston American art curators American male writers Emigrants from the Kingdom of Saxony to the United States Cultural history of Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Smithsonian Institution people