Louis R. Ehrich

Louis R. Ehrich (January 23, 1849 – October 23, 1911) was an American businessman, art dealer, and politician. He was active in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century politics, with ties to the Anti-Imperialist to Gilded Age art collectors, including the industrialists Henry Clay Frick and Henry E. Huntington. He went on to study at the University of Berlin, and divided his time between New York and Europe for much of the 1870s and 1880s, studying the Renaissance and Baroque paintings that would become his livelihood. often publishing op eds on the subject. In 1896, he was the sole delegate from the Rocky Mountain Region at the 1896 Democratic National Convention, also known as the Gold Convention of 1896. He wrote and published The Question of Silver to further explicate his views on the Free Silver issue. Despite his early opposition to William Jennings Bryan because of their differing opinions on the Gold Standard, Ehrich reconciled with him by the date of the 1900 election, largely thanks to Bryan's firm stance against the American annexation of the Philippines. Ehrich's judgement was purportedly esteemed by well-known art expert Bernard Berenson. He provided art to individuals such as Samuel Untermyer, and Archer M. Huntington. Paintings from the Ehrich Galleries were sometimes donated to or purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or became part of private collections. Ehrich Galleries remained open after Ehrich's death in 1911. Ownership passed to his sons, Harold and Walter Ehrich, who donated some of its holdings to the Yale University Art Gallery in memory of their father Louis. Under Harold and Walter's leadership, the galleries began to incorporate a greater number of modern and American paintings in the 1920s and 1930s.

It merged with the Newhouse Galleries in 1934, becoming the Ehrich-Newhouse Galleries. The galleries continued to exhibit and sell art until Walter Ehrich's death in 1936, and a member of the Yale Club, the American Jewish Historical Society, and the Mozart Choral Society of Colorado Springs.