The ''Benezit Dictionary of Artists'' (in French, ''Bénézit: Dictionnaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs et graveurs'') is an extensive publication of bibliographical information on

painters Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...

sculptors Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable s ...

designers A designer is a person who plans the form or structure of something before it is made, by preparing drawings or plans. In practice, anyone who creates tangible or intangible objects, products, processes, laws, games, graphics, services, or exp ...

and engravers created primarily for art museums, auction houses, historians and dealers. It was published by Éditions Gründ in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

but has been sold to

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

. First published in the

French language French ( or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages. French evolved from Gallo-Romance, the Latin spoken in Gaul, and more specifically in No ...

in three volumes between 1911 and 1923, the

dictionary A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by radical and stroke for ideographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies, p ...

was put together by Emmanuel Bénézit (1854–1920) and a team of international specialists with assistance from his son the painter Emmanuel-Charles Bénézit (1887–1975), and daughter Marguerite Bénézit. After the elder Bénézit's death the editors were Edmond-Henri Zeiger-Viallet (1895–1994) and the painter Jacques Busse (1922–2004), the younger Bénézit having already left Paris and moved to Provence. The next edition was an eight-volume set published between 1948 and 1955, followed by a ten-volume set in 1976 and a 14-volume set in 1999. In 2006, an English-language edition was published for the first time. A 14-volume set, it has more than 20,000 pages, with over 170,000 entries.

Online biographies

Since 2011, for a fee, the content of the ''Benezit'' can be accessed online at

Oxford Art Online Oxford Art Online is an Oxford University Press online gateway into art research, which was launched in 2008. It provides access to several online art reference works, including Grove Art Online (originally published in 1996 in a print version, ''T ...

.Oxford Art Online
Free access is available for members of some UK public libraries.

Editions

French

* (14 volumes) * (14 volumes) * (10 volumes)

English

* (14 volumes) * (14 volumes) *''The Benezit Dictionary of British Graphic Artists and Illustrators'' (Oxford University Press, 2012, two volumes)

Notes and references

External links

Official web site

Table of contents
Art and architecture dictionaries Art history books Biographical dictionaries Biographies about artists Benezit Oxford University Press reference books {{art-bio-book-stub