: Robert Devlin Schwarz, 61, of Gladwyne, took the antiques
business founded by his father in 1930 and turned it into one of
the most respected art galleries in the United States. In the
early 1970s he helped foster a renewed interest in Nineteenth
Century European and American paintings and the fine and
decorative arts of Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century
Philadelphia.
Schwarz's 1987 catalog A Gallery Collects Peales is
considered a standard reference, as is the gallery's 150 Years
of Philadelphia Still Life Painting, the first comprehensive
survey of the subject.
Schwarz's father Frank had an antiques shop on the boardwalk in
Atlantic City. With the grand hotels blacked out during the
Second World War, he brought his wife, the former Marie Devlin,
and their fraternal twins, Richard and Robert, to Philadelphia in
1942. Setting up a shop - with the family's home above it - in a
townhouse at 1806 Chestnut Street, near Rittenhouse Square, he
expected to return to Atlantic City after the war. Fifty years
later, his son Robert celebrated the firm's golden anniversary in
that location with a special catalog, Fifty Years on Chestnut
Street.
Robert Schwarz was a graduate of Philadelphia's Episcopal Academy
and earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Dickinson College in
1964. He studied the fine arts at the University of Vienna and
the Barnes Foundation. Following college, he joined his father's
firm and began to work with prints and paintings. As curator of
the Stephen Girard Collection at Girard College from 1970 to
1980, he documented that important historical collection in a
scholarly catalog. Subsequently, he published more than 70
informative catalogs in conjunction with the gallery's
exhibitions.
The Schwarz Gallery has sold paintings and other works of art -
American and European - to a wide range of private collectors as
well as many of the country's major museums, including the Art
Institute of Chicago, the Brandywine River Museum, the National
Museum of Women in the Arts, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the
Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Timken Museum of Art and the
Winterthur Museum. Robert Schwarz was a longtime member of the
Art Dealer's Association of America, The Art and Antique Dealers
League of America and La Confédération Internationale des
Négociants en Oeuvres d'Art (CINOA).
His oldest son, Rob Jr, joined the family business in 2002 and
has paid tribute to his father by successfully learning the
workings of the art world.
Robert Schwarz married Pamela Pillion of Philadelphia in 1972.
Their children are Robert D. Schwarz, Jr, a graduate of Villanova
University, an art dealer at the Schwarz Gallery; Elizabeth, now
a graduate student at Georgetown University; and Jonathan, 14, a
student at the Vanguard School. His is also survived by his
mother Marie, sister Frances Echague, and brother Richard D.
This past January, Robert Schwarz, Sr, his mother Marie and his
son Robert, Jr, exhibited for the 13th time at the 50th annual
Winter Antiques Show in New York. This year will mark the firm's
17th appearance at the Philadelphia Antiques Show in the 33rd
Street Armory (April 17-20). Marie and Robert Schwarz, Jr, will
also continue to exhibit at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine
Arts' USArtists show (also held in the 33rd Street Armory), as
they have every autumn since 1994.
Robert is remembered as an honest man who was adored by all who
met him. His charisma allowed him to charm and impress all. His
love of his family will always be remembered.
An April 1 memorial service will take place at the Pennsylvania
Academy of the Fine Arts at Broad and Cherry streets in
Philadelphia. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that
donations be made in Robert's memory to the Abramson Cancer Fund,
University of Pennsylvania, 1226 Penn Tower, 34th and Spruce
streets, Philadelphia PA 19104-4282 or University of Pennsylvania
Cancer Center, Attn: Dr Dan Haller, 16 Penn Towers, 3460 Spruce
Street, Philadelphia PA 19104.
