History
Follow an entry through each of the five editions by clicking on the volumes
| The first of the three volumes of the Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs was published in 1911. The size of the project was such that the first publisher abandoned the task. Librairie Gr¸nd took it up at the beginning of the 1920s. The first edition, written by Emmanuel BČnČzit and a team of international specialists, provided both the amateur and the professional with the most important factual information about almost any painter, sculptor, engraver or draughtsman, from all corners of the globe, from Antiquity to the present day. Resolutely universal, the Benezit was the first of its kind. |
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In the subsequent eight-volume edition, published between 1948 and 1955, the total number of artists listed and the content of each entry increased considerably to include bibliographies, museum listings and prices fetched by works at public auction. By now an essential working tool, the Benezit gave not only biographical data, but also a general presentation of an artistís work. |
| The ten-volume Benezit, which appeared in 1976, took a team of specialists seven years to complete. This edition established the dictionary as the vital source of documentation for art historians and dealers. |
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The much-awaited 1999 edition of the Benezit was published in 14 volumes. Over a period of more than ten years, with the help of a new computerised database and more readily available source material, a team of art historians reworked and updated existing entries and created thousands of new entries to bring the dictionary right up to date. |
| The first English-language edition of Benezit was published in March 2006. This is the largest edition ever with over 170,000 entries, comprising over 20,000 pages in 14 volumes. Since the last publication in 1999, a team of 150 editors, art historians and translators, has been working to complete this monumental 2006 edition. Older entries have been updated and expanded, and new entries have been added, making the 2006 Benezit Dictionary of Artists even more compelling and useful to a wider audience than ever before. |
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In the summer of 2010, Oxford University Press acquired Benezit with plans to publish the Dictionary online for the first time. The Benezit will be available to institutions and individuals on the Oxford Art Online platform in the fall of 2011.
Coming soon to Oxford Art Online