Robert Hatfield Ellsworth (July 13, 1929 – August 3, 2014) was a Manhattan-based American art dealer of Asian paintings and furniture from the Ming dynasty.
[2] Ellsworth had a difficult relationship with his father, whom he described as the dentist who invented root canal treatment[6][7] and perfected the porcelain capping of teeth,[2] and who also married six times.
[1] Other clients included Sir Joseph Hotung, Herbert Irving, the co-founder of Sysco[2] and socialite Brooke Astor, after whom a room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is named.
[6] He published Chinese Furniture: Hardwood Examples of the Ming and Early Ch'ing Dynasty in 1970; it was reprinted in 1997.
[1] In 1993,[10] Ellsworth founded the Hong-Kong based Chinese Heritage Art Foundation, a non-profit organization whose aim is to restore Ming and Qing dynasty-era architecture in Huizhou District of Huangshan, Anhui Province, China.
[1][2][6] He was named an "honorary citizen of China" that same year,[2] reputedly only the fourth person to be so honored as of that time.
[1] He lived for forty years with a companion, Masahiro Hashiguchi, a Japanese restaurateur with whom he co-owned Gibbon, a former restaurant on the Upper East Side.