Arthur William Heintzelman, printmaker, painter, lecturer, writer and museum curator, was born in Newark, New Jersey on 22 November 1891. He studied at the Rhode Island School of Design as well as in Holland, France, Belgium, Spain, England, and Scotland.

Heintzelman was a member of the Chicago Society of Etchers; the Brooklyn Society of Etchers; the Print Makers Society of California; the Salmagundi Club; the California Society of Etchers; the Providence Art Club; the Société Gravure Originale en Noir, Paris; the Associée Sociéte Nationale des Beaux Arts; the American Association of Museum Directors; and the National Academy of Design.

He taught at the Detroit School of Design and later at the Rhode Island School of Design. He was also the first Keeper of Prints at the Boston Public Library, a member of the Art Commission for the State of Massachusetts, a member of the board of the Rhode Island School of Design and served as director of the Print Council of America.

Heintzelman’s work is represented in the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri; the British Museum, London; the Metropolitan Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; the Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey; the National Academy of Design, New York; the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence; the Kemper Art Museum, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri; the Library of Congress, the National Gallery of Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

Arthur William Heintzelman died in Rockport, Maine on 4 April 1965.