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White, Christopher, Sir

    Full Name: White, Christopher, Sir

    Other Names:

    • Sir Christopher White

    Gender: male

    Date Born: 1930

    Place Born: London, Greater London, England, UK

    Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

    Subject Area(s): Baroque, Dutch (culture or style), Dutch Golden Age, and Netherlandish Renaissance-Baroque styles


    Overview

    Scholar of the Dutch baroque and Director of the Paul Mellon Center, 1973-85. White was the son of Gabriel Edward Ernest Francis White (1902-1988) and Elizabeth Grace Ardizzone (White) (d. 1958). He was educated at the University of London, (BA), an MA at Oxford University, and Ph.D., at the Courtauld Institute, University of London. He joined the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum in 1954 as assistant Keeper. In 1957 he married Rosemary Katharine Desages. White became director of the old masters art sales gallery Colnaghi, London, in 1965, remaining there until 1971. Between 1971-73 he was curator of graphic arts for the National Gallery of Art in Washgington, D. C. He became director of the Paul Mellon Center for British Art in London and associate director of the Yale Center for British Art, both in 1973. White was appointed director of the Burlington Magazine in 1981. In 1985 he left these positions to direct the Ashmolean Museum as a fellow of Worcester College, Oxford. He added the appointment of Professor of Arts of the Netherlands, Oxford in 1992. He retired from the Oxford positions in 1997, accepting appointment as Trustee, Victoria and Albert Museum the same year. He is Vice-Chairman of the British Institute in Florence, a Member of the National Art Collections Fund Committee, and a Trustee of the Mauritshuis in The Hague. He is Director emeritus of the Ashmolean Museum.


    Selected Bibliography

    [Ashmolean Museum] Catalogue of the Collection of Paintings: Dutch, Flemish, and German Paintings before 1900 (Excluding the Daisy Linda Ward Collection). New York : Oxford University Press, 1999; and Buvelot, Quentin. Rembrandt by Himself. London: National Gallery Publications, 1999; Anthony van Dyck: Thomas Howard, The Earl of Arundel. Malibu, CA: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1995; and Crawley, Charlotte. The Dutch and Flemish Drawings of the Fifteenth to the Early Nineteenth Centuries in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994; Rembrandt as an Etcher: a Study of the Artist at Work. 2 vols. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press,1969; The Drawings of Rembrandt. London, Trustees of the British Museum, 1962; The Dutch Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982; Peter Paul Rubens: Man and Artist. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987; and Alexander, David, and D’Oench, Ellen. Rembrandt in Eighteenth Century England. New Haven, CT: Yale Center for British Art, 1983; and Coldwell, Paul. Edward Ardizzone’s World: the Etchings and Lithographs: an Introduction and Catalogue Raisonné. London: Unicorn Press/Wolseley Fine Arts, 2000.


    Sources

    People of Today. London: Debrett’s Peerage Limited, 2003, p 2137; CODART “Prof. Christopher White.”




    Citation

    "White, Christopher, Sir." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/whitec/.


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