BOISGOBEY, Fortune Abra ham du, French novelist : b. Granville, 11 Sept. 1821; d. February 1891. In 1811 18 he was pay master in the army at Algiers, and began to write in 1868, somewhat on the lines of Emile Gaboriau. His novels were popular, and in clude 'The Scoundrels' (Paris 1873) ; 'Chev alier Casse-Cou' (1873) ; 'The Mysteries of Modern Paris' (1876) ; 'The Demi-Monde Under the Terror' (1877) • 'The Old Age of M. Lecoq' (1878) ; 'The Cat's Eye' (1888) ; and 'The Cold Hand' (1879).
BOISSERgE COLLECTION, a number of pictures exhibited in Munich, which were collected by the brothers Sulpice (1783-1854) and Melchior Boisseree (1786-1851) and John Bertram, men who, animated by love of the arts, began, at the time of the destruc tion of the monasteries during and after the French Revolution, to purchase old pictures, and afterward completed their collection by the ad dition of many valuable paintings of the old German school. By this collection the brothers Boiseree and Bertram happily realized the idea of a historical series of old German paintings. It is to their endeavors that we owe the dis covery that Germany possessed, as early as the 13th century, a school of painters of much merit, which, like the Italian, proceeded from the old Byzantine school, but became, in the sequel, distinguished by excellences of its own.
We owe to these collectors, also, the restoration to favor of the forgotten Low German masters, and a just estimation of John van Eyck as the creator of the genuine German style of painting. The most distinguished connoisseurs and artists, including Goethe, Canova, Dannecker and Thor waldsen, have strongly expressed their admira tion of this collection. It was first brought together and exhibited at Heidelberg (1810), and afterward removed to Stuttgart, where the King of Wiirtemberg assigned it a suitable building. The collection remained there till 1828, when King Louis of Bavaria, having pur chased it in the previous year for 120,000 thalers ($90,000), removed it to Schleissheim, and in 1836 most of the paintings were sent to Munich. A lithographic work on this collection was published in 40 parts between 1821 and 1840. Consult (Sulpiz Boisseree' (a biography, 1862).