Montefiore - Levi, Georges

Identity

Category

Person (Male)

Alternative name or descriptor

Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules

Status

  • Amateur

Details

Life dates

London - Streatham [GB], 1832 - Brussels, 1906

Activity

1854 - 1906 + Bruxelles
° 8.2.1832; + 24.4.1906. Engineer, industrialist, senator and philanthropist. Manufacturing engineer educated at the "Ecole Centrale de Bruxelles" and the "Ecole des Mines de Liège" (1852). Calotypes in 1854, including a view of the turret of the hydraulic machine for pumping water to the centre of Brussels. Invented an "apparatus for rapidly unclosing and covering lenses" (Journal of the Photographic Society of London, 1854, pp. 162-163). Devised a tent for processing collodion negatives in the field (Journal of the Photographic Society of London, 1857, pp. 43-44).
Proprietor of works for phosphor bronze smelting and wire-drawing in Brussels - Anderlecht and Saint-Denis (Paris). Naturalised Belgian in 1882. President of the International Monetary Conference, 1892. Creator of the first electro-technical institute in the world, named after him; the Montefiore Institute is incorporated into the University of Liège. Member of the ABP from 10.11.1874. President of the ABP from 1877 until 1880. Also lived at Rond-Chêne castle in Esneux.
Three of Georges' brothers living abroad were also amateur photographers. His brother Octavius Montefiore (c. 1834 - 1893), a merchant and amateur photographer in Sydney, Australia, was a corresponding member of the ABP, 1878-1889. Another brother, Eliezer Levi Montefiore (° Bridgetown [Barbados], 1820; + Sydney [AUS], 22.10.1894), also resident in Sydney, was a corresponding member of the ABP, 1875-1894, whereas Edouard Levi Montefiore (° London [GB], 7.3.1826; + ?, 1907), an engineer resident in Paris, was a corresponding member of the ABP, 1874-1885.

Locations

1854 - 1906 + Bruxelles

Exhibitions

London, 1858 (four subjects from collodion negatives).

Genres / subject matter

Techniques

Bibliography/Webography

STOCKMANS, François. "Georges Montefiore-Levi" in Biographie nationale, vol. 38, supplement vol. 10, Brussels, Emile Bruylant, 1973, col. 596-616.
HUDSON, Hugh. "Amateur Photography in the Nineteenth-Century Jewish Diaspora: The Colonial, National, and Transnational Aspects of a Montefiore Family Album", History of Photography, vol. 43 no. 3 (2019), pp. 266-283.

Context

Affiliations

Affiliated entity

Association belge de Photographie

Type of affiliation

Member of

Dates of affiliation

1874 - 1906

Description of relationship

Management

Record source

DIRECTORY_1997#3122

Status

Level of detail

Dates of creation/revision

SFJ revised 2.5.2018, 31.5.2018, 8.12.2018, 1.1.2019 & 8.7.2020; SFJ revised 24.3.2020 based on information supplied by M. Demaeght

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Script(s)

Sources

Maintenance notes

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