Andrea Levy grew up in Wilmington knowing she wanted to be an artist. What she didn’t know was that her love of art would evolve to include helping others to discover the pleasures of a fine vintage lithograph or contemporary graphic—or the thrill of owning one-of-a-kind treasures: a letter handwritten by Longfellow in 1878, or a piece of 200-year-old wallpaper inspired by a French tapestry.

After earning a BFA degree from New York’s Parsons School of Design and an MFA in printmaking from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Levy worked for a while in Manhattan before returning to Wilmington to follow her heart into teaching. Along the way she was responsible for bringing the work of renowned New York graphic artist Milton Glaser to a show in Philadelphia; it was the first time he had exhibited locally.

Two years ago, with the help of partner Mike Abel, she opened the Seven Arts Gallery in the lower level of a house in Stonewold, off Centreville Road in Greenville. Sales are via the gallery’s website or through a few private shows held seasonally.

“My goal was to introduce Delawareans to good art without a prohibitive cost,” Levy explains. Call it sophisticated taste meets bargain prices; some of the prints in the gallery collection are priced as low as $35. “The secondary goal is to find artwork for discriminating buyers who lack the sources and the knowledge to find it themselves, essentially helping them build a collection.”

Levy’s taste is admittedly European, but the gallery also features contemporary prints and a lot of Asian-inspired work. “We rotate our inventory constantly with work that I purchase primarily in France or Spain,” she explains. Recent trips to Paris have been particularly fruitful. Her sources there—among them the Paris Flea Market and Gallery Documents in Paris—provided a series of Parisian etchings, matted vintage postcards from Versailles dated 1890, and vintage Miro posters that are real lithographs, along with a Toulouse Lautrec lithograph.

Levy credits an aunt, Anna Sosenko, with honing her appreciation for the charm and beauty of vintage art and objects. Sosenko was an extraordinary collector and New York icon for more than 70 years. She ran the original Seven Arts Gallery in a basement-level shop on West 63rd Street, where she regaled clients with colorful stories and presided over an astounding array of manuscripts, art, and memorabilia.

“You never knew who you would bump into there—it could be nobody, or it could be Jacqueline Susann or Leonard Bernstein buying a gift,” says Levy. “She kept her prices low, another thing I learned from her. I really want people to be able to afford good art.”

She holds up a portfolio of original posters, circa 1900, advertising a production of Hamlet in Philadelphia. “It’s also nice to be able to tell people about the history of a piece and the artist,” she adds.