Jean Adhémar

Jean Adhémar (1908–1987) was a French art historian, curator, archivist, and scholar. A leading specialist in nineteenth-century French art and printmaking, Adhémar played an important role in expanding art historical methodologies in France by incorporating broader cultural, literary, and social perspectives . He became internationally recognized for his scholarship on engraving, lithography, popular imagery, and Impressionism.

He spent most of his career at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, serving as curator and later director of the Cabinet des Estampes, where he significantly expanded the institution’s engagement with photography and print culture. He also founded the influential journal Nouvelles de l’estampe in 1963 and served as editor of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts.

A prominent figure within Parisian intellectual and museum circles, Adhémar moved within overlapping networks of historians, curators, collectors, and artists connected to the postwar French art world.