PASSINGS / Leonard E.B. Andrews

Leonard E.B. Andrews, 83, the collector who caused a sensation in the art world when he bought 240 previously unknown works by the artist Andrew Wyeth, died Jan. 2 of prostate cancer at his home in Malvern, Pa.

The collection of paintings and sketches of Helga Testorf, some of them nudes, were done in secret by the artist over a 15-year period. Andrews paid $6 million for the collection in 1986 and sold them three years later -- along with hundreds of other Wyeth works he owned -- to a Japanese buyer for more than $40 million. The collection was subsequently sold to an American collector in 2005.

A native of Nacogdoches, Texas, Andrews was born March 31, 1925. He joined the Army Air Forces, serving as a pilot during World War II and the Korean War.

He attended Southern Methodist University and later moved to New York, where he published an interim newspaper during the city’s massive newspaper strike in 1962.

He formed Andrews Publications, which eventually published 23 bimonthly reports concerning litigation proceedings, and Andrews Communications, which published trade magazines.

He also wrote a column of meditative poems that, for a time, was published in the New York Daily News and Philadelphia Inquirer.