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Art Historians

Jaffe, Irma B.

Image Credit: Legacy

Full Name: Jaffe, Irma B.

Other Names:

  • Irma B. Jaffe

Gender: female

Date Born: c. 1918

Place Born: New Orleans, Orleans, LA, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): American (North American)

Career(s): educators


Overview

Americanist art historian and founder of the Department of Fine Arts, Fordham University. Irma Blumenthal was the daughter of Harry Blumenthal and Estelle (Levy) Blumenthal. She entered the University of Illinois at 17 but left school her sophomore year to marry Samuel B. Jaffe (d. 1987). Eighteen years later, at the time her daughter entered Radcliffe College in 1954, Jaffe elected to return to college at Columbia University’s School of General Studies. She graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa in 1958. She continued to graduate school at Columbia, receiving her M.A. in 1960. While pursing her Ph.D. she was appointed research curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1964. From the beginning, she had a strong interest in Italian art. The same year, 1964, she published her first article on Italian art history, on the so-called Barccacia fountain, the famous boat-shaped fountain in the Piazza di Spagna, near the Spanish Steps in Rome. She completed her Ph.D. in 1966 with a dissertation on the Italian-American painter Joseph Stella. She left the Whitney to establish a fine arts department at Fordham University. While developing the department and running it as chair, she published a revised version of her dissertation as Joseph Stella (Harvard University Press), 1970. She wrote and narrated a television series, “Project Now: Introduction to Art History,” for WABC-TV New York, NY, airing between 1969-1970. As department head at Fordham, she launched a symposium “Baroque Art: the Jesuit Contribution,” with the Baroque scholar Rudolf Wittkower. Jaffe wrote the volume on John Trumbull for the innovative books series analyzing a single work of an artist’s career, the Art in Context series. In 2002, she published Shining Eyes, Cruel Fortune: The Lives and Loves of Italian Renaissance Women Poets. She retired stepped down as chair in 1978, continuing as cultural consultant for the Italian Encyclopedia Institute of New York. Her research work led her to two volumes on Italian-Americans in art, The Italian Presence in American Art, spanning 1760 through 1920. The Italian government awarded her the title of Cavaliere in the Order of Merit of the Republic of Italy. Approaching her 90th year, she copublished a book on Giovanni Battista Zelotti’s frescoes at Cataio. She was also an active environmentalist.


Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Joseph Stella: An Analysis and Interpretation of his Art. Columbia, 1966; Joseph Stella. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970. and Wittkower, Rudolf, eds. Baroque Art: the Jesuit Contribution. New York, Fordham University Press, 1972; Trumbull: the Declaration of Independence. New York: Viking Press, 1976; The Italian Presence in American Art, 1760-1860. New York : Fordham University Press, 1989; The Italian Presence in American Art, 1860-1920. New York: Fordham University Press, 1992; preface. Favata, Daniel C. John Trumbull: a Founding Father of American Art. New York: Fordham University, 2001; and Colombardo, Gernando. Zelotti’s Epic Frescoes at Cataio: the Obizzi Saga. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008.


Sources

Phinney, Siobhan C. “Cav. Irma B. Jaffe, Ph.D.” The Owl Online (Columbia School of General Studies newsletter) Fall/Winter 2003, http://www.alumni.gs.columbia.edu/owlnet/fallwinter2003/jaffe.htm; Who’s Who in Art.




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"Jaffe, Irma B.." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/jaffei/.


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Americanist art historian and founder of the Department of Fine Arts, Fordham University. Irma Blumenthal was the daughter of Harry Blumenthal and Estelle (Levy) Blumenthal. She entered the University of Illinois at 17 but left school her sophomor

Jaffé, Hans L. C.

Image Credit: Wikidata

Full Name: Jaffé, Hans L. C.

Other Names:

  • Hans Ludwig Cohn Jaffé

Gender: male

Date Born: 1915

Date Died: 1984

Place Born: Frankfurt am Main, Hesse, Germany

Place Died: Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): Contemporary (style of art) and Modern (style or period)


Overview

Professor of the History of Modern and Contemporary Art. Jaffé was born of Jewish parents in Frankfurt am Main. In 1933, he left Nazi Germany and immigrated to The Netherlands. Shortly before, he had finished high school at the Goethe Gymnasium in Frankfurt. The same year he began studying art history at the University of Amsterdam. Among his teachers was Ferrand Whaley Hudig (1883-1937) who died the year Jaffé finished his study under the supervision of I. Q. van Regteren Altena. Between 1935 and the German occupation of the Netherlands, he worked at the Stedelijk Museum (Municipal Museum) of Amsterdam, first as a volunteer. Before the war, he also taught history of art at the Nieuwe Kunstschool in Amsterdam. In 1942 Jaffé fled to Lucern, Switzerland, where his parents lived in exile. In 1944, he served in the army of the Allies as an officer for the preservation of the arts. Jaffé began his post-war career as curator of the Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam in 1947. In 1953, he became deputy director under Willem Jacob Henri Berend Sandberg (1897-1984). One of the exhibitions he organized was on the Dutch art movement of De Stijl. It became for Jaffé the starting point for further research in this field. In 1956, he obtained a doctoral degree with his dissertation: De Stijl 1917-1931: the Dutch Contribution to Modern Art. His adviser was again Van Regteren Altena. With this publication, written in English, Jaffé won international fame. In 1958, he accepted a position as privaatdocent at the University of Amsterdam with a public lecture on “Het probleem der werkelijkheid in de beeldende kunst der twintigste eeuw” (The problem of reality in twentieth-century modern art). In 1961, he gave up his deputy directorship at the Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum, and two years later he was appointed as extraordinarius professor of the history of modern and contemporary art at the University of Amsterdam. His inaugural lecture was entitled: “Het beeld en het woord” (The Image and the Word). His engaging style of teaching attracted many students who were eager to hear about his view on modern art, which for him was not a play of forms, but the expression of a worldview. Jaffé also pointed out to his students the importance of being in close contact with art objects before studying their deeper content. For several years he served as the chairman of the Dutch section of the international association of art critics (A.I.C.A.). As the first professor of modern art in the Netherlands, he played an important role as the promoter of twentieth-century art. When he retired, in 1984, his students and colleagues dedicated to him an Album studiosorum: Met eigen ogen (With One’s Own Eyes). Jaffé was in an advanced stage of illness at that time and he died a week before the date of his official retirement. In the introduction to his book on De Stijl, Jaffé wrote: Art history in its present stage and after having passed through a period of descriptive cataloguing of phenomena, is now mainly concerned with one ever recurring question: the research into the reason of artistic expression, into the conditions under which the several styles were able to develop in the course of time. Jaffé was strongly influenced by the scholarly research of the art historian Max Dvořák, who is known for the concept of Geistesgeschichte in art history. Jaffé also wanted to see the artist as the representative of a specific group within society. In 1964, in a lecture: Spinoza en het beeldend denken, he elucidated the relationship between Spinoza’s understanding of the world as a cosmic unity of nature and mankind and certain currents of artistic expression, such as the romanticism of the painter Philipp Otto Runge (1777-1810) and the abstract De Stijl movement. In the same lecture he pointed to the dialectic poles in art, the Apollonian and Dionysian, as described by Nietzsche. Jaffé established a link between Apollonian art and the worldview of Spinoza, assuming that the ideas of his favorite philosopher would be dominant in the art of the new generation. In 1986, Evert van Uitert, Jaffé’s former student and successor, delivered his inaugural lecture Het geloof in de moderne kunst (the Belief in Modern Art), in which he criticized Jaffe’s and others’ personal involvement in art and in the artist’s world. Van Uitert suggested that the art historian should rather occupy an outsider’s position as a critical observer.


Selected Bibliography

[For a complete list of publications, see:] Beeld (1984,3); De Stijl 1917-1931 – the Dutch Contribution to Modern Art. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1956; Het probleem der werkelijkheid in de beeldende kunst der twintigste eeuw. (Openbare les gehouden bij de opening van zijn colleges als privaatdocent in de geschiedenis en de waardering van de beeldende kunst in de XXe eeuw aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam op 13 mei 1958). Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1958; Inleiding tot de kunst van Mondriaan. Assen: Born, 1959; De schilderkunst van de twintigste eeuw. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1963; Het beeld en het woord (Inaugurele rede uitgesproken bij de aanvaarding van het ambt van buitengewoon hoogleraar in de geschiedenis der moderne en hedendaagse kunst aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam). Amsterdam: 1964; Pablo Picasso. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1964; Spinoza en het beeldend denken. (Mededelingen XXI vanwege het Spinozahuis) Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1965; Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Painting. New York: Dell Pub. Co., 1968; Willink. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff/Landshoff, 1969; Piet Mondrian. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1969; De wereld van de impressionisten: Kunstenaars die schilderden uit pure levensvreugde. Amsterdam: De Geïllustreerde Pers, 1969; The World of the Impressionists: the Artists who Painted with Delight in Being Alive. Maplewood, N.J.: Hammond Inc., 1969; Paul Klee. Florence: Sansoni, 1971; Vordemberge-Gildewart. Mensch und Werk. Köln: DuMont Schauberg, 1971; The History of World Painting. New York: Alpine Fine Arts Collection, 1980; Theo van Doesburg. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff/Landshoff, 1983; Reinink, Adriaan Wessel, Voolen, Edward van, and others Over utopie en werkelijkheid in de beeldende kunst: verzamelde opstellen van H.L.C. Jaffé (1915-1984). Amsterdam: Meulenhoff/Landshoff, 1986.


Sources

Beeld (1984, 3); Gribling, Frank. Hans Jaffé The Burlington Magazine 127 (February 1985): 92-93; Hodin, J. P. Art & Artists 220 (January 1985): 6; Halbertsma, Marlite. Hans Jaffé, zijn visie op moderne kunst en moderne kunstgeschiedenis Jong Holland 4 no. 2 (1988): 22-31; Lambers, Rob. Hans Jaffé, kunsthistoricus en promotor van de moderne kunst. Onder professoren. Kunstlicht 14 no.1 (1993): 10-14; Hecht, Peter; Stolwijk, Chris; Hoogenboom, Annemieke, eds. Kunstgeschiedenis in Nederland. Negen opstellen. Amsterdam: Prometheus, 1998, pp. 98, 100, 101, 104, 165, 190 mentioned. [Festschrift:] Adang, M.; Brandhof, M. van den; Nieuwstraten, R.; Stokvis, W., and Vries, J. de. eds. Met eigen ogen. Opstellen aangeboden door leerlingen en medewerkers aan Hans L. C. Jaffé. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1984.



Contributors: Monique Daniels


Citation

Monique Daniels. "Jaffé, Hans L. C.." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/jaffeh/.


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Professor of the History of Modern and Contemporary Art. Jaffé was born of Jewish parents in Frankfurt am Main. In 1933, he left Nazi Germany and immigrated to The Netherlands. Shortly before, he had finished high school at the Goethe Gymnasium in

Jacobsthal, Paul

Image Credit: Oxford Jewish Heritage

Full Name: Jacobsthal, Paul

Gender: male

Date Born: 1880

Date Died: 1957

Place Born: Berlin, Germany

Place Died: Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, England, UK

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): ancient, Ancient Greek (culture or style), Antique, the, archaeology, Celtic (culture), ceramic ware (visual works), Classical, Greek pottery styles, pottery (visual works), and vase


Overview

Greek vase painting scholar; and later scholar of Celtic art. Jacobsthal studied at the Universities of Berlin and Göttingen before completing his degree at Bonn, writing his dissertation under Georg Loeschcke in 1906. In 1912 he published his catalog on the vase collection Göttingen, Göttinger Vasen, and was appointed Ordinarius Professor at the University of Marburg, 1912. He remained at Marburg until 1935, increasing the level of the archaeological department and adding a prehistoric studies concentration. With J. D. Beazley, he began publishing in 1930 an early inventory of Greek vases, known as Bilder griechischer Vasen. In 1935, he was forced to leave Germany because of Nazi persecution of Jewish-heritage citizens. Jacobsthal became lecturer at Christ Church College, Oxford, 1937-1947, where he continued to collaborate with Beazley on Greek vase series and the Oxford Monographs in Classical Archaeology, such as Greek Pins (1956). He added Celtic studies to the repertoire of his adopted country. He delivered the Sir John Rhys memorial lecture at the British academy in 194l and becoming University Reader in Celtic Archaeology at Oxford University from 1947-1950. His book on the Celts (1944) examines their relationship with the Greeks. His Greek Pins and their Connections with Europe and Asia appeared in 1956. His students included Karl Schefold. Throughout his career, Jacobsthal was associated with the other major connoisseur-scholar of Greek vases during this time, J. D. Beazley.


Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Der Blitz in der orientalischen und griechischen Kunst (bis zum Einsetzen des rotfigurigen Stiles). Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1906, also simultaneously published in an expanded form as, Der Blitz in der orientalischen und griechischen Kunst: ein formgeschichtlicher Versuch. Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1906; Göttinger Vasen. Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1912; Ornamente Griechische Vase. Berlin: Frankfurter Verlags-Anstalt, 1927; “Probleme des Ornaments in der Gegenwart.” Neue Schweizer Rundschau 25 (1925): 1ff.; Die Melischen Reliefs. Berlin-Wilmersdorf: H. Keller, 1931; Early Celtic Art. Oxford, The Clarendon press, 1944; “Imagery in Early Celtic Art,” Proceedings British Academy 27 (1941): 1 ff.; Greek Pins and their Connections with Europe and Asia. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956. 1956; and Beazley, J. D. Bilder griechischer Vasen (series). Berlin-Wilmersdorf: H. Keller, 1930ff.; and Langsdorff ,Alexander. Die Bronzeschnabelkannen: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Vorrömischen Imports nördlich der Alpen. Berlin: Heinrich Keller, 1929; Imagery in Early Celtic Art. Sir John Rhŷs Memorial Lecture, British Academy, 194l. London: Humphrey Milford Amen House, 1942; “Zur Kunstgeschichte der griechischen Inschriften.” in, Charites [Greek letters]: Friedrich Leo zum sechzigsten Geburtstag dargebracht. Berlin: Weidmann, 1911, pp. 453-465; and Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Ulrich von, editor. Nordionische Steine. Berlin: Akademie der Wissenschaften, in Kommission bei Georg Reimer, 1909.


Sources

Schefold, Karl. Paul Jacobsthal. Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 1-2; “Jacobsthal, Paul.” Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, vol. 1, p. 615.




Citation

"Jacobsthal, Paul." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/jacobsthalp/.


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Greek vase painting scholar; and later scholar of Celtic art. Jacobsthal studied at the Universities of Berlin and Göttingen before completing his degree at Bonn, writing his dissertation under Georg Loeschcke in 1906. In

Ivins, William M., Jr.

Image Credit: Wikipedia

Full Name: Ivins, William M., Jr.

Other Names:

  • William Mills Ivins Jr.

Gender: male

Date Born: 1881

Date Died: 1961

Place Died: White Plains, Westchester, NY, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): prints (visual works)

Career(s): curators


Overview

Prints historian; Curator and founder of the Prints Department at the Metropolitan Museum Art. Ivins’ father was a prominent New York utilities lawyer, William Mills Ivins, sr., (1851-1915). The younger Ivins graduated from Harvard University in the class of 1901. After a year of study at the University in Munich, he attended Columbia Law School where he received his law degree in 1907. He was admitted to the bar and practiced law for nine years. In 1916 Ivins was asked by the Metropolitan to take charge of what was then a relatively small collections of prints. He built the collection into one of the premiere American Museum holdings. A 1930 publication, Notes on Prints, which started as the text of a graphics exhibition, became one of the textbooks for the modern study of prints and when through many subsequent editions. In 1932 he hired a relatively inexperienced art historian, A. Hyatt Mayor, to be his assistant curator. Ivins helped shape Mayor but gave him comparatively free reign to learn the collection and become an authority on prints. From 1933-38 Ivins was assistant director of the Museum and then acting director. In 1938 he published a book on linear perspective in art history–one of the earlier examples, On the Rationalization of Sight. In 1940 he was appointed Director. He retired from the Museum in 1946 and was succeeded by Mayor. In 1948 his wife Florence Wyman Ivins died. Ivins was interested in the phenomenon of prints as a graphic medium to disperse knowledge. He authored a number of books on subject of geometry and perspective, both of which were employed in early printed books to disperse that knowledge. His Rationalization of Sight was eventually replaced in 1958 by The Birth of Pictorial Space by John White.


Selected Bibliography

Prints and Visual Communication. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953; Notes on Prints; Being the Text of Labels Prepared for a Special Exhibition of Prints from the Museum Collection. New York, 1930; On the Rationalization of Sight; with an Examination of three Renaissance Texts on Perspective. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1938; How Prints Look. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1943; Art & Geometry. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1946; Prints and Books, Informal Papers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1926; [facsimile] The Dance of Death, Printed at Paris in 1490: a Reproduction Made from the Copy in the Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection, Library of Congress. Washington, DC: Rare Books Division of the Library of Congress, 1945.


Sources

Panofsky, Erwin. “The History of Art.” In, The Cultural Migration: The European Scholar in America. Introduction by W. Rex Crawford. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1953, p. 88, mentioned; Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Research Guide to the History of Western Art. Sources of Information in the Humanities, no. 2. Chicago: American Library Association, 1982, p. 97; Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, p. 73; [obituary] William Ivins, Jr. Museum Curator.” New York Times June 16, 1961, p. 33; Mayor, A.Hyatt. “William Mills Ivins, jr. 1881-1961.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 21 (February 1963): 193-201; Mayor, A.Hyatt. [obituary.] Art Quarterly 24 no. 3 (Autumn 1961): 308.




Citation

"Ivins, William M., Jr.." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/ivinsw/.


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Prints historian; Curator and founder of the Prints Department at the Metropolitan Museum Art. Ivins’ father was a prominent New York utilities lawyer, William Mills Ivins, sr., (1851-1915). The younger Ivins graduated from Harvard University in t

Isham, Samuel

Image Credit: Wikipedia

Full Name: Isham, Samuel

Other Names:

  • Samuel Isham

Gender: male

Date Born: 12 May 1855

Date Died: 12 June 1914

Place Born: New York, NY, USA

Place Died: East Hampton, Suffolk, NY, USANew York, NY, USA [Maidstone Club, East Hampton]

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): American (North American)

Career(s): art historians, artists (visual artists), and authors

Institution(s): Yale University


Overview

First art historian to write a complete history of American art; art critic, lawyer, painter. Samuel Isham, born in New York in 1855, was the son of William B. Isham, a leather merchant and banker, and Julia Burhans (Isham). After preparing at Phillips Academy, Massachusetts, he went to Yale and Graduated with a B.A. degree in 1875. While at Yale, Isham studied drawing under John H. Niemeyer (1839-1932), a former student of Louis Jacquesson de la Chevreuse (1839-1903). After graduation, Isham started a three-year sojourn in Europe and learned drawing after Chevreuse. Upon his return to the States, he entered Columbia Law School and then began a law career in New York. A few years later, his partial deafness led him to give up his career.

In 1885, he went to Paris again to pursue what he had left behind and focus on seeing and drawing. After learning painting at the Académie Julian under Gustave Boulanger (1824-1888) and Jules Joseph Lefebvre (1836-1911), he returned to New York to work as an artist in 1887. Isham was elected to the Society of American Artists in 1889, and he became an associate member of the National Academy of Design in 1900. These two organizations merged later at Isham’s instigation, and he became a full member in 1906. In 1901, he received a B.F.A at Yale. In the same year, he became a member of the Art Jury at the Pan-American Exposition in New York. In 1905, his most accomplished written work, The History of American Painting, was published. He became a full member of the National Academy. Caused by an aneurysm, Isham died on the Maidstone Club golf course in East Hampton, New York, in 1914. After his death, Isham’s sister Julia distributed his paintings and collections to museums, Yale University, and the National Academy of Design. Among the items, over 200 Japanese woodblock prints were donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Isham was not a prolific painter, partly due to his father’s wealth, which freed him from financial burdens and allowed him to pursue novice ideas. He created the avant-garde work The History of American Painting, the third volume in the History of American Art series. This work is notable for being the first comprehensive American art history that introduced painting with professional criticism. Upon its release, the Chicago Daily Tribune praised Isham as a “liberal-minded critic” who judged each painting on its merits, appreciating both sentiment and public appeal. Isham is one of three pioneers, alongside Lorado Taft and Sadakichi Hartmann, who authored the first significant American art histories.

In addition to painting and writing, Isham lectured on art history and criticism at the Academy Schools and Columbia University between 1900 and 1909. He served as a trustee of the Fine Arts Society and was a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the Society of American Artists. His active engagement with various art institutions and interactions with painters significantly contributed to his influential work on the history of American painting.


Selected Bibliography

The History of American Painting… with Twelve full-page Photogravures and One Hundred and twenty-one Illustrations in the Text. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1905.


Sources

  • [obiturary]: “ARTIST DIES ON GOLF LINKS.: SAMUEL ISHAM BURSTS AN ARTERY AT MAIDSTONE CLUB — HIS CAREER.” New York Times, 1914 Jun 13, p.9.
  • Obituary Record of Graduates of Yale University. Yale University(2015). p.798-799. https://books.google.com/books?id=y2w_AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA798#v=onepage&q&f=false
  • Story of American Painting.: Samuel Isham Writes a Chronicle of the Art.” Chicago Daily Tribune, 1905 Dec 02, p.10.
  • The Collector and Art Critic 4, no. 3 (1906): 86–86.
  • “WILLIAM B. ISHAM,” New-York Tribune, March 24, 1909.
  • Men and women of America: a biographical dictionary of contemporaries. New York City: L.R. Hamersly & Company, 1910. p.878.
  • “Art Museum Gets Two New Pictures: “Ernesta,” by Cecelia Beaux, And “Cornelia,” by H. G. Dearth, Charming Works. A Rare Panel by Jacopi 236 Japanese Color Prints, The Late Samuel Isham Collection, Are Also On View.” New York Times (1857-1922), 1915 Jul 12, p.7.
  • Earle, Helen L. Biographical sketches of American artists. compiled by Helen L. Earle. 5th ed. Charleston, S.C: Garnier, 1972. p.168-169.
  • Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art : de Vasari à nos jours. A. Michel, 1986, p. 539
  • “Century Archives – The Century Association Archives Foundation.” n.d. Accessed June 18, 2024. https://centuryarchives.org/caba/bio.php?PersonID=1505.
  • “Samuel Isham.” n.d. Accessed June 18, 2024. https://nationalacademy.emuseum.com/people/810/samuel-isham.

Archives

Brooklyn Museum of Art Library Collections. Clark S. Marlor artist files.


Contributors: Yuhuan Zhang


Citation

Yuhuan Zhang. "Isham, Samuel." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/ishams/.


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published first work on the history of American artistic movements, schools, and aesthetics

Isarlo, Georges

Full Name: Isarlo, Georges

Gender: male

Date Born: unknown

Date Died: unknown

Place Born: Iran

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): French (culture or style) and painting (visual works)

Career(s): art collectors


Overview

collector and researcher; published a history French painting comprised soley of lists (in the manner of Berenson)


Selected Bibliography

La Peinture en France au XVIIth siècle. 1906.


Sources

Bazin 486




Citation

"Isarlo, Georges." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/isarlog/.


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collector and researcher; published a history French painting comprised soley of lists (in the manner of Berenson)

Isaacson, Joel

Full Name: Isaacson, Joel

Gender: male

Date Born: 1930

Date Died: unknown

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): French (culture or style), Impressionist (style), and painting (visual works)

Institution(s): University of Michigan


Overview

Painter; Monet scholar and professor of the history of Art, University of Michigan. Isaacson initially pursued a career as a painter.  He entered the Design Department of Brooklyn College in 1949 where his teachers included Stanley William Hayter, Mark Rothko, and Clyfford Still.  After graduating in 1952, he served two years in the U.S. army.  Isaacson was discharged and spent the years 1954-1955 at the Slade School of Fine Arts in London. He returned to the United States, attending Oberlin College, graduating in 1957 with an MFA.  As a painter, he moved to San Francisco, exhibiting in group shows for the next two years. Drawn to the history of art, he entered the University of California, Berkeley, writing his dissertation on Claude Monet’s early stylistic development, under Herschel B. Chipp. Isaacson joined The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1964 as an assistant professor.  In 1972 Isaacson published one of the volumes in Alan Lane’s ground-breaking, single-work-of-art book series Art in Context. His topic was Monet’s le déjeuner sur l’herbe.  He followed this with another monograph on Monet, Claude Monet: Observation and Reflection in 1978.  Together with the French nineteenth-century studies scholar Jean-Paul Bouillon (b.1941), he curated a show for the University of Michigan Museum of Art, “The Crisis of Impressionism, 1878-1882,” issuing an accompanying catalog.  Isaacson remained his entire career at Michigan, becoming emeritus in 1995.  He returned to Berkeley in early 1996, pursuing painting once again.

 


Selected Bibliography

  • [dissertation:] The Early Paintings of Claude Monet.  University of California, Berkeley, 1967
  • Monet: le déjeuner sur l’herbe. New York: Viking Press, 1972.
  • Claude Monet, Observation and Reflection. Oxford: Phaidon, 1978.
  • and Bouillon, Jean-Paul. The Crisis of Impressionism, 1878-1882.  Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Museum of Art, 1980.

Sources

Joel Isaacson webpage, https://www.isaacsonpaintings.com/bio.html



Contributors: Lee Sorensen


Citation

Lee Sorensen. "Isaacson, Joel." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/isaacsonj/.


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Author of the Art in Context volume on Monet.

Immerzeel, Johannes, Jr.

Image Credit: Wikidata

Full Name: Immerzeel, Johannes, Jr.

Other Names:

  • J. Immerzeel

Gender: male

Date Born: 1776

Date Died: 1841

Place Born: Dordrecht, Gemeente, South Holland, Netherlands

Place Died: Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands

Home Country/ies: Netherlands

Subject Area(s): Dutch (culture or style) and Flemish (culture or style)

Career(s): art critics, authors, poets, and publishers


Overview

Writer of a dictionary of Dutch and Flemish artists; art and book dealer; publisher and poet. Immerzeel was the third son of Johannes Immerzeel, a merchant in food, and Elizabet Steenbus. In his youth, Immerzeel studied drawing and painting with Pieter Hofman (1755-1837), but he had to give up this vocation because of his weak eyes. A self-educated man, he spoke several languages and dedicated himself to music and poetry. In 1795, he served as secretary to the court martial of Dordrecht. In 1800, he moved to The Hague with his wife, Adelaïde Louise Françoise Charlotte Cera (1781-1850) and their son. He then was an employee in the governmental administration of the Bataafsche Republiek (Batavian Republic, 1795-1806). He also published poetry. In 1804, Immerzeel started a firm as bookseller and publisher in The Hague, which he later, in a joint venture with the medical doctor J.L. Kesteloot, expanded to Amsterdam and Rotterdam. After its foreclosure in 1811, Immerzeel dedicated himself to writing novels and poetry. Between 1817 and 1826, he was active as an independent publisher, book and print seller, and auctioneer in Rotterdam He then moved his business to The Hague and subsequently, in 1832, to Amsterdam. Following his retirement in 1835, he began composing his three-volume work on the lives and works of Dutch and Flemish painters, sculptors, engravers, and architects, from the beginning of the fifteenth century up to the mid-nineteenth century. It is an impressive collection of biographies, in alphabetical order, of a considerable number of male and, to a lesser degree, female artists. In 1838 he wrote an encomium on Rembrandt, Lofrede op Rembrandt, and he played an important role in the project for erecting a statue of this painter in Amsterdam, which was realized in 1852. He also wrote an encomium on Rubens, on the occasion of the unveiling of his statue, in August, 1840.

De levens en werken offers an impressive amount of information, though the sources are only occasionally mentioned. Immerzeel relied on existing artists’ biographies as well as on unpublished manuscripts and documents. In addition, he gathered his own information, particularly for contemporary artists. He mentioned the place where works of art were preserved, in private collections, art cabinets, or museums, and he frequently added prices, culled from catalogs of auctions and inventories. He also included entries on art collectors and on important museum collections. He did not comment on the qualities of contemporary artists, but he was eager to redress the negative reputation of some major artists of the past. More than once he accused Arnold Houbraken for having written false stories about Frans Hals, Jan Steen, Rembrandt, and others. Toward the end of his life, Immerzeel complained that his eyes grew weaker while he was writing and reading from dawn to sunset. When he died, in 1841, he left his work unfinished. Two of his sons, Charles Henri (1803-1878) and Christiaan (1808-1886), a painter, completed and published the manuscript. They added a number of biographies, mostly of contemporary artists. The brothers also took care of the many woodcuts of artists’ portraits and also included a full page portrait of their father, after a painting by Nicolaas Pieneman (1809-1860). The monograms of a number of artists appear at the end of the dictionary, mostly culled from the 1832-1834 edition of the Dictionnaire des Monogrammes etc. by François Brulliot (1780-1836).

Immerzeel’s remarkable work was updated between 1857-1864 and complemented by another dictionary, written by Christiaan Kramm, De levens en werken der Hollandsche en Vlaamsche kunstschilders, beeldhouwers, graveurs en bouwmeesters van den vroegsten tot op onze tijd.


Selected Bibliography

and Immerzeel, C. H., and Immerzeel, Christian, eds. De levens en werken der Hollandsche en Vlaamsche kunstschilders, beeldhouwers, graveurs en bouwmeesters, van het begin der vijftiende eeuw tot heden. Amsterdam: J.C. van Kesteren, 1842-1843. [second edition:] Amsterdam: Gebroeders Diederichs, 1855; Lofrede op Rembrandt. Amsterdam: by den schryver, 1941.


Sources

[obituaries:] Van Duyse, Prudens. [“In memoriam J. Immerzeel, Jr.”] Kunst- en Letterblad 2 (1841): 54-55; Van Duyse, Pr. “Levensschets van Johannes Immerzeel Jr.” De Noordstar 2 (1841): 255-262; Beets, N. “Johannes Immerzeel, Junior.” Nederlandsche Muzenalmanak voor 1842: 167-170; Belinfante, J.J. “Johannes Immerzeel, Jr.” De beeldende kunsten 3 (1842): 49-63; Van der Aa, A.J. Biografisch woordenboek der Nederlanden 9 (1860), pp. 18-20; Zuidema, R. “Immerzeel (Johannes) Jr.” Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek 6 (1924), p. 829; Dongelmans, B.P.M. “Biografische schets” in Johannes Immerzeel Junior (1776-1841): het bedrijf van een uitgever-boekhandelaar in de eerste helft van de negentiende eeuw. Amstelveen: Ernst, 1992, pp. 19-42.



Contributors: Monique Daniels


Citation

Monique Daniels. "Immerzeel, Johannes, Jr.." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/immerzeelj/.


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Writer of a dictionary of Dutch and Flemish artists; art and book dealer; publisher and poet. Immerzeel was the third son of Johannes Immerzeel, a merchant in food, and Elizabet Steenbus. In his youth, Immerzeel studied drawing and painting with P

Imdahl, Max

Image Credit: Situation Kunst

Full Name: Imdahl, Max

Gender: male

Date Born: 1925

Date Died: 1988

Place Born: Aachen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany

Place Died: Bochum, Lower Saxony, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): German (culture, style, period) and Modern (style or period)


Overview

Art professor instrumental in the establishment of modernist art history in Germany after World War II. Imdahl studied both (studio) painting and art history, archaeology and Germanistik beginning in 1945 at the University of Münster. His painting skills were good enough to win him the Blevin-Davis Prize in 1950. A year later he wrote his dissertation on the treatment of color in late Carolingian book illustration (“Farbenprobleme spätkarolingischer Buchmalerei”) under Werner Hager. He tutored for a year under Hager at the Aaseehaus-Kolleg, rising to assistant professor at the University of Münster. His 1961 habilitationsschrift was Ottonische Kunst (Ottonian Art). Imdahl was a guest professor at the University of Hamburg before joining the newly-founded Ruhr University at Bochum, Germany (Ruhr-Universität Bochum) as its first professor of art history (Ordinarius für Kunstgeschichte) in 1965. Imdahl was a member of the Akademie der Künste (German Academy of Arts) from 1986 until his death. Although a scholar trained in the traditional periods of medieval, renaissance and baroque, Imdahl set about creating a department whose courses would examine the most modern art. This was a radical shift since traditional art history study in German universities generally ended at 1945. He participated in the Documenta exhibition planning for 1966-68. In 1969 his monograph on Robert Delaunay was published in English. Imdahl began advising the modern art collection of Ruhr University in the 1970s. He was engaged in promoting modern art outside the university as much as within. In the 80s he launched seminars on modern art for the employees of the Bayer Pharmaceuticals plant in Leverkusen, Germany. They became a model of art pedagogy. In 1980 his book on the Arena chapel frescoes of Giotto appeared, employing both the subject-oriented approach to iconography and iconology of Erwin Panofsky and the form-based concept of Heinrich Wölfflin and Fiedler. In 1985, Imdahl participated in the celebrated Fachschaft Kunstgeschichte (Division of Art History) lectures at the University in Munich. He taught at the Kunstgeschichtliches Institut at Bochum until his death. His position fostered many personal friendships with modern artists, including Norbert Kricke and Günter Fruhtrunk in Germany and Richard Serra in the United States. The Archiv für Kunstvermittlung – Max Imdahl was created by the art historic institute (Kunstgeschichtlichen Institut) of the Ruhr-Universität. Imdahl formulated a methodology he called “the Iconic.” He used the structure of the work to determine its significance, an approach akin to the work of Konrad Fiedler and Adolf von Hildebrand. He diverged from the iconographic approach of Panofsky, asserting that Panofsky’s was too complex (entailed too many views), suggesting that his “iconic” treatment provided a more focused approach. In his analysis of Giotto’s frescoes at the Padova Chapel (1980), Imdahl concentrated himself on the questions of choreography, forms and motives of the work. He saw the written understanding of a work as performance (“Aufführung”) of the work. His color analysis is characteristic of his approach. Whenever possible Imdahl focused on an analysis of an individual painter. Imdahl affirmed that looking (Augenarbeit) was the primary way to interpret art. He disagreed with Hans Sedlmayr that background information on the artwork enhanced appreciation. “Schools” designations or causality based on the artist’s early influences rarely appear in his analysis. Instead, individual objects were treated as masterworks, disparaged by some critics as a “canonized approach” to his works. In the age of machine reproduction of works of art, Imdahl emphasized engagement with the real object.


Selected Bibliography

[complete bibliography:] Boehm, Gottfried, and Stierle, Karlheinz, and Winter, Gundolf, eds. Modernität und Tradition: Festschrift für Max Imdahl zum 60. Geburtstag. Munich: W. Fink, 1985, pp. 309-314; Janhsen-Vukicevic, Angeli, and Winter, Gundolf, and Boehm, Gottfried, eds. Max Imdahl: gesammelte Schriften. 3 vols. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1996; “Die Zeitstruktur in Poussins ‘Mannalese’.” in, Fruh, Clemens, and Rosenberg, Raphael, and Rosinski, Hans-Peter, eds. Kunstgeschichte, aber wie?: zehn Themen und Beispiele. Berlin: Reimer, 1989; Farbe: kunsttheoretische Reflexionen in Frankreich. Munich: W. Fink, 1987; Giotto: Arenafresken: Ikonographie, Ikonologie, Ikonik. Munich: W. Fink, 1980; and Vriesen, Gustav. Robert Delaunay: Licht und Farbe. Cologne: DuMont Schauberg, 1967, English, Robert Delaunay: Light and Color. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1969; and Hager, Werner, and Fiensch, Günther. Studien zur Kunstform. Munster: Böhlau, 1955.


Sources

Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 185-7; Max Imdahl, 1925-1988: akademische Trauerfeier 10 Februar 1989. Bochum: Ruhr-Universität, 1989; Hesse, Michael. “Kunstsammlungen der Ruhr-Universität Bochum.” Kunstchronik 45, no. 11, (November 1992): 589-591; Kunisch, Norbert, ed. Erläuterungen zur modernen Kunst: 60 Texte von Max Imdahl, seinen Freunden und Schülern/Kunstsammlungen der Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Bochum: Kunstsammlungen der Ruhr-Universität, 1990; Jauß, Hans Robert. “In Memoriam Max Imdahl.” Max Imdahl: gesammelte Schriften. vol. 3. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1996, pp. 644-52; [obituary:] Hoppe-Sailer, Richard. Das Kunstwerk 41 (January 1989): 194-5.




Citation

"Imdahl, Max." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/imdahlm/.


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Art professor instrumental in the establishment of modernist art history in Germany after World War II. Imdahl studied both (studio) painting and art history, archaeology and Germanistik beginning in 1945 at the University of Münster. His

Hymans, Henri

Image Credit: Wikidata

Full Name: Hymans, Henri

Other Names:

  • Henri Hymans

Gender: male

Date Born: 08 August 1836

Date Died: 23 January 1912

Place Born: Antwerp, Flanders, Belgium

Place Died: Brussels, Brussels-Capital Region, Belgium

Home Country/ies: Belgium

Subject Area(s): lithographs, lithography, and prints (visual works)

Career(s): art critics and curators


Overview

Chief curator Bibliothèque royale de Belgique; professor of art history; art critic lithographer. Hymans’ father was a medical doctor, who moved from the Northern Netherlands to Brussels, shortly before Belgium became independent (1830), and later to Antwerp, where the young Hymans was born. His mother was Sophie Hymans, née Josephs. She gave the young Hymans his first art initiation in the Antwerp museums. While attending high school, Hymans took drawing classes with Edward Dujardin (1817-1889) at the Antwerp Academy of Fine Arts. After his father’s death, in 1849, the family moved to Brussels. Hymans continued taking drawing classes in Brussels under François Stroobant (1819-1916), who introduced him to lithography. In 1857 Hymans began his career at the print section of the Bibliothèque royale de Belgique in Brussels, first as a volunteer, under chief curator Louis Alvin (1806-1887). His first task was to compile the inventory of the artists whose works were kept in the collection. The print section opened to the public in April 1959. In 1860 Hymans obtained a permanent position. He studied the collection and put together a complete catalog. He was awarded a grant for his lithographs from the Jury of the Brussels 1860 exhibition, but nevertheless decided to discontinue working as an artist. In 1867 he married Fanny Cluysenaar. In 1875 the print section of the Bibliothèque royale became a separate department under Hymans’ directorship. In 1877, at the celebration in Antwerp of the tercentenary of the birth of Rubens, Hymans was actively involved, together with Maximilian Rooses and others, in organizing the Rubens exhibition and in compiling the catalog. In December of the same year Hymans was appointed professor of esthetics and art history at the Antwerp Academy of Fine Arts. He subsequently traveled to Italy, where he studied print collections during several months, benefiting from the closure of the print room due to restoration work. The officially re-opening of the print room took place in 1879. During the following years, Hymans enriched the collection and devoted himself to the arrangement and the furnishing of additional rooms. As a participant in a competition, issued by the Académie royale de Belgique, Hymans wrote a study on the engravers active in the school of Rubens. This important work, Histoire de la gravure dans l’école de Rubens, was crowned by the Académie and published in 1879. In 1883, Hymans was elected a corresponding member of the Académie’s Classe des Beaux-Arts. One year later he was appointed professor of art history at the Antwerp Institut supérieur des Beaux-Arts (to 1909). In 1884 and 1885 Hymans’ two-volume French translation and critical study of the Schilder-boeck of Karel Van Mander appeared, Le livre des peintres de Carel van Mander. Hymans translated Van Mander’s original Dutch text into French. He revised and updated Van Mander’s work with additional research and commentary for the life of each painter, and he added a biography of Van Mander himself. In 1885 Hymans was elected a member of the Académie royale de Belgique. He soon became a regular contributor to the Biographie nationale, a publication of this institution. In Antwerp, in 1887, he was elected president of the Académie d’Archéologie de Belgique. In 1886 he joined the Paris based Gazette des Beaux-Arts, as a correspondent for Belgium. During 25 years he commented on the actual art scene and on ongoing exhibitions, including the 1899 Van Dyck exhibition in Antwerp and the acclaimed 1902 exhibition of the Flemish Primitives in Bruges. He wrote biographies of artists such as Quinten Matsys (1888) and Pieter Brueghel the elder (1890-1891). In 1893 Hymans published his monograph on the engraver Lucas Vorsterman, Lucas Vorsterman. Catalogue raisonné de son oeuvre précédé d’une notice sur la vie et les ouvrages du maître. From 1904 until his retirement in 1909 he served as chief curator of the Bibliothèque royale de Belgique in Brussels. In 1910 he published a monograph on the sixteenth-century portraitist Antonio Moro, Antonio Moro. Son oeuvre et son temps. In 1911 he edited a fifteenth-century block book, La légende de S. Servais. Livre xylographique flamand; this consisted of a series of woodcuts representing the legend of Saint Servatius, the fourth-century bishop of Maastricht, accompanied with handwritten commentaries in French. Hymans explained these commentaries against the background of the development of the original legend. The block book was published in Berlin with an additional title in German, Die Servatius-legende. Ein Niederländisches Blockbuch. Hymans was also a contributor to foreign periodicals and serial works. From 1907 to 1911, his entries on Flemish painters were published in the first six volumes of the Allgemeines Lexicon der bildenden Künstler by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker. Hymans died in 1912, “la plume à la main” (with the pen in his hand) (Rooses, 1912). In collaboration with Fanny Hymans-Cluysenaar his complete works were published in four volumes, in 1920-1921. Hymans was an outstanding authority in art history, especially in the field of engraving. The Rubens scholar Maximilian Rooses praised, in 1912, the scholarly quality and the solid character of his research.


Selected Bibliography

Oeuvres de Henri Hymans. (Preface by Fanny Hymans-Cluysenaar) Brussels: M. Hayez, 1920-21; Histoire de la gravure dans l’école de Rubens. Brussels: J. Olivier, 1879; Le livre des peintres de Carel van Mander. 2 vols. Paris: J. Rouan, 1884-1885; Lucas Vorsterman. Catalogue raisonné de son oeuvre précédé d’une notice sur la vie et les ouvrages du maître. Brussels: Bruylant-Christophe & cie, 1893; L’exposition des Primitifs flamands à Bruges. Paris: Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1902; Les Van Eyck. Paris: H. Laurens, 1907; Antonio Moro. Son oeuvre et son temps. Brussels: G. Van Oest & cie, 1910; (ed) Die Servatius-legende, ein Niederländisches Blockbuch. (= La légende de S. Servais. Livre xylographique flamand.) Berlin: Bruno Cassirer, 1911.


Sources

Martens, Mina. Biographie nationale 30, suppl., 2 (1959), pp. 466-470; Solvay, Lucien. Notice sur Henri Hymans. Brussels: M. Hayez, 1922; Solvay, Lucien. “Notice sur Henri Hymans” Annuaire de l’Académie (1922-1923): 41-100; De Seyn, Eug. Dictionnaire biographique des Sciences, des Lettres et des Arts en Belgique. 2. Brussels: Éditions L’Avenir, 1936, p. 586; [obituary:] B[autier], P. ” In memoriam Henri Hymans” L’art flamand et hollandais (April, 1912): 93-97; Rooses, Max. Henri Hymans (1836-1912). Notice biographique et bibliographique. Antwerp: J. van Hille-de Backer, 1912 (Bulletin Académie royale d’archéologie de Belgique (1912, Livre 2): 123-156).



Contributors: Monique Daniels


Citation

Monique Daniels. "Hymans, Henri." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/hymansh/.


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Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Chief curator Bibliothèque royale de Belgique; professor of art history; art critic lithographer. Hymans’ father was a medical doctor, who moved from the Northern Netherlands to Brussels, shortly before Belgium became independent (1830), and later