James Jackson Jarves

James Jackson Jarves, an American newspaper editor and art critic, is well known as the first American art collector to purchase Italian primitives and Old Masters. Jarves was the editor of The Polynesian, an early weekly newspaper in the Hawaiian Islands (1840-1848). Jarves moved to Florence, Italy, in the 1850s to serve as the vice-consul of the United States and to acquire art. After other American institutions declined to purchase Jarves' collection, Yale University extended him a loan with...See more

James Jackson Jarves, an American newspaper editor and art critic, is well known as the first American art collector to purchase Italian primitives and Old Masters. Jarves was the editor of The Polynesian, an early weekly newspaper in the Hawaiian Islands (1840-1848). Jarves moved to Florence, Italy, in the 1850s to serve as the vice-consul of the United States and to acquire art. After other American institutions declined to purchase Jarves' collection, Yale University extended him a loan with the collection as security. Jarves married Elizabeth Russell Swain in 1838. Jarves married Isabella Kast Heyden in 1862, a year after his first wife died. She died in 1887. Jarves died of jaundice in 1888, and he was interred in Rome's English Cemetery. Jarves and his second wife are Lady Elizabeth Marian Frances Kerr's great-grandparents through their daughter Annabel. Lady Elizabeth is the wife of Richard Scott, 10th Duke of Buccleuch, and mother of the ducal heir. They are also the great-great-grandparents of Henry Oliver Charles FitzRoy, 12th Duke of Grafton, whose mother is Lady Clare Amabel Margaret Kerr, widow of James FitzRoy, Earl of Euston, and sister of Lady Elizabeth Marian Frances Kerr. See less