Henri van Abbe
Henri Jacob van Abbe was a Dutch tobacco industrialist and art collector. He is the founder of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven.Life
Henri Jacob van Abbe was born on 8 January 1880 in Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
He was a cigar manufacturer in Eindhoven, and in 1900 he started a small cigar factory in Amsterdam which grew into a prosperous business. An avid art collector and lover of art, he founded the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven in 1936, which he gave a major donation to.
With Tinus van Bakel, a colleague in tobacco and art, he regularly traveled to Belgium in the 1930s to buy art. One of the places they visited was the artists' colony of Sint-Martens-Latem.
Van Abbe died on 18 November 1940 in Eindhoven.
