Art Historians

Hittorff, Jacques-Ignace

November 8, 2023April 25, 2024

Full Name: Hittorff, Jacques-Ignace

Other Names:

Jacques-Ignace Hittorff

Gender: male

Date Born: 20 August 1792

Date Died: 25 March 1867

Place Born: Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany

Place Died: Paris, Île-de-France, France

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): Ancient Greek (culture or style), archaeology, architecture (object genre), Classical, and sculpture (visual works)

Overview

Archaeologist, architect and architectural historian; first to publish the fact that classical Greek architecture was brightly colored. Hittorff studied at the Gymnasium in Cologne before being apprenticed to a stonecutter at age fifteen. He traveled to Paris in 1810 with his friend (and later Egyptologist) Franz-Christian Gau (1790-1853) where he trained in architecture. He received several royal commissions. After visits to England and Germany, he obtained a commission in 1822 from Louis XVIII to travel to southern France, Italy and Sicily. In Sicily, he and the architectural student Karl-Ludwig von Zanth (1796-1857) examined the classical monuments of Agrigento, Segesta, and Syracuse. When they unearthed a small heroön (martyrion) from temple B on the Selinontan acropolis, they concluded that Greek architecture must have been brightly painted. Hittorff may have been alerted that painted architectural ruins existed by the English architect and academic Thomas Leverton Donaldson. Two other British archaeologists, William Harris (d. 1823) and Samuel Angell had discovered fully polychromed metopes from temple C at Selinus the same year, but due to the death of Harris, had been unable to do more than announce their initial findings. Hittorff sent early letters to Die Kunstblatt announcing his disoveries in 1824. The notion of polychromy in Greek sculpture had been published by the leader of the French Academy, Antoine Quatremère de Quincy. Working separately, Hittorff hired another German architectural student working in Rome, Wilhelm Stier (1799-1856) to make drawings of their further exploits in Naples, Pompeii and Herculaneum. Hittorff returned to Paris in 1824, replete with the drawings and materials of his studies. Initially, he and Zanth recorded their investigations in Architecture antique de la Sicile in 1827. For the next twenty-five years, the dispute as to whether Greek architecture was painted raged in pamphlet debates, among scholars siding with Hittorff, Gottfried Semper. The debates fuelled questions everywhere. Hittorff was part of a committee including C. R. Cockerell and Donaldson, which met between 1836-1837 in London to determine whether the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum had originally been colored. In 1851 Hittorff published his Restitution du temple d’Empédocle à Sélinonte, ou l’architecture polychrome chez les Grecs, which, using the temple of Empedocles, at Selinus, Italy as the example, set out their findings of classical polychromy in full. The book contained for the first time anywhere a reconstruction of a temple with the brightly colored painting adorning it. Their work gained general acceptance and is considered the foundation to the color theory of Greek architecture. Hittorff’s primary career, however, was as an architect. His architectural commissions included the decorative design of the Place de la Concorde where he placed statuary and fountains to impressive result. Assigned the Champs-élysées, he likewise provided fountains and the rotunda of the Panorama based upon classical proportions. He was also responsible for the (second) Gare du Nord (1859-1865). He ended his career in Cologne. His library forms part of the city and university library of Cologne. His student, Stier, went on to become an eminent professor of architecture at Berlin.

Selected Bibliography

[first letters citing discoveries] Kunstblatt no. 28 (1824) and Kunstblatt no. 39 (1824); and Zanth, Ludwig. Architecture antique de la Sicile; ou, Recueil des plus inte´ressans monumens [sic] d’architecture des villes et des lieux les plus remarquables de la Sicile ancienne. Paris: Imprime´ chez P. Renouard, 1827; [essay in English by Hittorff, in] Grüner, Ludwig. Descriptions of the Plates of Fresco Decorations and Stuccoes of Churches and Palaces in Italy During the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, with an Essay On the Arabesques of the Ancients as Compared with those of Raphael and his School [by Hittorff]. London: J. Murray, 1844; Restitution du temple d’Empe´docle à Se´linonte, ou l’architecture polychrome chez les Grecs. Paris: Firmin Didot, 1851.

Sources

Neuf, Hans. “Ingres und die Familie Hittorff.” Pantheon 22, no. 4 (July 1964): 249-263; Hammer, Karl. Jakob Ignaz Hittorff: ein Pariser Baumeister 1792-1867. Stuttgart: A. Hirsemann, 1968; Schneider, Donald David. The Works and Doctrine of Jacques Ignace Hittorff, 1792-1867. 2 vols. New York: Garland Pub., 1977; Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, vol. 1, p. 594; Breton, E. “Hittorff, Jacques-Ignace.” National Biographie Generale 24: 807-811.

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

Hitchcock, Henry-Russell

November 8, 2023April 25, 2024

Full Name: Hitchcock, Henry-Russell

Other Names:

Henry-Russell Hitchcock

Gender: male

Date Born: 1903

Date Died: 1987

Place Born: Boston, Suffolk, MA, USA

Place Died: New York, NY, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre), Modern (style or period), and sculpture (visual works)

Career(s): educators

Institution(s): New York University

Overview

Architectural historian and Smith College professor; coined the term “International School” of modern architecture. Hitchcock attended the Middlesex School and Harvard University. At Harvard he wrote for the avant garde newspaper Hound & Horn which Lincoln Kirstein (1907-1996) had founded. There he also met the group of young intellectuals who would launch modernism in the United States. Among them were A. Everett Austin, Jr., Philip Johnson, the musicologist Virgil Thomson (1896-1989), and Eddie Warburg. Hitchcock received his A. B. in 1924 and M.A. in 1927. Alfred H. Barr, Jr., asked Hitchcock to mount a show on modern architecture at the Museum of Modern Art, together with Johnson. Johnson and Hitchcock traveled to Germany in 1930 to study modern architecture for the Museum of Modern art. The show, called “The International Style,” launched the term applied to Bauhaus-style architecture. The exhibition and book were revolutionary because it drew from social thinkers, such as Lewis Mumford as much as art and architectural (stylistic) theory. Hitchcock was director of the Smith College Museum of Art from 1949 to 1955. He was asked by Nikolaus Pevsner to write the volume on modern architecture for the Pelican History of Art series, which appeared as Architecture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries in 1958. In 1968, he moved to a town house on the Upper East Side of New York City, teaching at the New York University Institute of Fine Arts. His 1976 book, Temples of Democracy, written with the historian William Seale (1939-2019), was a critical/historical view of American state capitols. In 1984, he publicly and strongly criticized Peter Palumbo (b.1935) and his plan to build a Mies van der Rohe skyscraper in London. He died of cancer at age 83. His students included Vincent Scully, Jr., [the latter at Yale, though he did not have a permanent appointment there].

Hitchcock was a founding member of the Victorian Society and a former president of the Victorian Society of America. His books on Victorian architecture helped to rehabilitate a neglected field. As an architectural historian, he remained noticeable apart from the debates of post-modernism. David Watkin termed Hitchcock’s scholarly work “thorough and workman-like though lacking in the kind of conceptual or intellectual interest which characterizes the work of German-inspired art historians.” Hitchcock’s methodology viewed the individual as the shaper of architecture more than broad social forces. His architectural histories focused on the formal aspects of buildings rather than on political, economic or social phenomenon. Architectural history for him was genealogical, a linear progression architects, (both major and minor) directly influence each other and the discipline. Hitchcock was criticized especially in later years, for failing to situate buildings in their larger context. His methodology contrasted the ideological/political approach of contemporaries, such as Donald Drew Egbert.

Selected Bibliography

and Johnson, Philip. The International Style: Architecture since 1922. New York: W. W. Norton & company, 1932; The Architecture of H. H. Richardson and his Ttimes. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1936; In the Nature of the Materials: 1887-1941: The Buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright. New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1942; The Crystal Palace: the Structure, its Antecedents and its Immediate Progeny. Northampton, MA: Smith College, 1951; Architecture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Baltimore: Penguin Books 1958; Richardson as a Victorian Architect. Baltimore: Smith College/Barton-Gillet Co., 1966; German Rococo: the Zimmermann Brothers. London: Allen Lane, 1968; German Renaissance Architecture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981.

Sources

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. 51, 70 cited; Watkin, David. The Rise of Architectural History. London: Architectural Press, 1980, pp. 41-43, 173, 179; Goldberger, Paul. “Honoring an Inspirational Historian.” The New York Times March 20, 1983, p. 33, Summerson and Hitchcock: Centenary Essays on Architectural Historiography. New Haven, CT: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, Yale Center for British Art /Yale University Press, 2006; [obituaries:] The Times (London) March 9 1987; Giovanni, Joseph. The New York Times February 20, 1987, p. B 6.

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

Hirt, Aloys

November 8, 2023April 25, 2024

Full Name: Hirt, Aloys

Other Names:

Aloys Ludwig Hirt

Gender: male

Date Born: 1759

Date Died: 1837

Place Born: Behla, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

Place Died: Berlin, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): ancient, Ancient Greek (culture or style), archaeology, architecture (object genre), art theory, Prussian, Roman (ancient Italian culture or period), and sculpture (visual works)

Overview

First professor of art theory and art history at University of Berlin (1810); responsible for the collection of antiquities of the King of Prussia from 1798; archaeologist of Greek and Roman architecture. Hirt came from a peasant family. After education by Benedictine monks and the Donauschingen Gymnasium, he studied philosophy in Nancy, France, with the intent of gaining a degree in law. He briefly studied law at Freiburg before switching to the university in Vienna, where between 1779 and 1782 he studied classics. For the next fourteen years he lived in Italy, visiting Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples, as well as Sicily. Hirt’s interest turned to art, partially after reading the work of Johann Joachim Winckelmann and partially given the wide variety of art available for public study there. In Rome, Hirt assimilated with the German expatriate community there, making the acquaintance of Goethe among others, and publishing a treatise on the Pantheon, Osservazioni istorico-architettoniche sopra il Panteon, in 1791. Hirt worked as an archaeologist and Roman tour guide in Italy until 1796 when he was summoned to Akademie der Wissenschaft und Künste in Berlin to teach the “theory of art.” The following year, he outlined in a public lecture plans for a public museum in Berlin which would contain the finest Prussian art treasures organizing them along art ‘schools’ for the edification of the art lover and public. King Frederick Wilhelm II accepted Hirt’s proposal and his successor, Frederick Wilhelm III took over patronage. Napoleon’s conquest of Europe delayed the building of the museum, but Hirt settled on a site ‘Unter den Linden’ (where today Schinkel’s Arsenal stands today). Hirt’s initial design, never built, was revolutionary, containing shutters to control light. Napoleon’s decisive victory over the Prussians in 1806 and the harsh Treaty of Tilsit relegated Hirt’s plans to the background. Hirt published his seminal Die Baukunst nach den Grundsätzen der Alten in 1809, arguing for a neoclassicism style in building. It became one of the dominant treatises for the movement. In 1810, Christian von Mechel (q.v.), the reorganizer of art in San-Souci which the French had left after their plunder, reminded Frederick Wilhelm III of the project to create an art museum in Berlin. That year, too, The University of Berlin was founded. Hirt was asked to be its first professor of art history. His students included the generation of German classical-style architects, Karl Friedrich Schinkel (from the Akademie der Wissenschaft und Künste days), Heinrich (von) Gentz (1764-1832) and Friedrich Weinbrenner (1766-1826). Weinbrenner went on to found his own architecture school in Karlsruhe, where he further spread the notion of classicism propounded by Hirt. In 1815 the Prussian works appropriated by Napoleon for his museum were return and mounted in a public exhibition at the Akademie der Wissenschaft. Frederick Wilhelm himself visited and, impressed with notion of a comprehensive history of art briefly created by Napoleon’s museum, ordered a committee to devise a Berlin art museum. Hirt once again was a committee member. But the art-historical community was changing. A young art history student who had studied the stolen works of Prussia in Paris, Gustav Friedrich Waagen, championed the pleasure of viewing art over edification. Together with Karl Friedrich von Rumohr they challenged Hirt’s argument that a museum was principally for national prestige and education. Waagen’s 1828 pamphlet spelled out the conflict in detail, asserting additionally that instead rigidly displaying most works owned by the state, only the better, most representative works of an era should be exhibited. Hirt dissented and finally left the committee. Hirt’s efforts had been substantial, however and the 1823-30 building designed by his student, Schinkel, known as the Altes Museum, was as much the product of Hirt’s efforts as Waagen. Hirt’s stance was neoclassicism was also being attacked, principally by Heinrich Hübsch (1795-1863), a student of in Weinbrenner’s from Karlsruhe. Hübsch’s 1828 book In welchem Style sollen Wir bauen? (In What Style Should We Build?) led to the new revivals of post-classical styles. In 1830, he examined the Berlin (later Darmstadt) version of Hans Holbein’s Burgomeister Meyer Madonna, now known to be the original. His opinion came to be part of the body of critical opinion considered in the so-called “Holbein convention” held in 1871.Hirt was one of the first to hang paintings in historical order, an idea he may have gotten from the installation at the Imperial gallery in Vienna. His Geschichte der Baukunst bei der Alten was instrumental for the classical revival in Germany and Europe. Goethe placed Hirt in his novella of 1799, Der Sammler und die Seinigen.

Selected Bibliography

Die Geschichte der Baukunst bei der Alten. 3 vols. Berlin: G. Reimer, 1821-1827; Die Geschichte der bildenden Künste bei den Alten. Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 18331833; Bilderbuch für Mythologie, Archäologie und Kunst. 2 vols. Berlin: In Commission bey I. D. Sander, 1805-1816; Der Tempel der Diana zu Ephesus. Berlin: J. F. Weiss, 1809; Die Baukunst nach den Grundsätzen der Alten. Berlin: In der Realschulbuchhandlung, 1809; Osservazioni istorico-architettoniche sopra il Panteon. Rome: Pagliarini, 1791; Kunstbemerkungne auf einer reise über Wittenberg und Meissen nach Dresden und Prag. Berlin: Verlag von Duncker & Humblot, 1830; Die Lehre der Gebäude bei den Griechen und Römern. Berlin: Reimer, 1827; Von den ägyptischen Pyramiden überhaupt, und von ihrem Baue insbesondere. Berlin: G. C. Nauck, 1815; Heinrich Hübsch über griechische Baukunst, dargestellt. Berlin: s.n., 1823; “Ueber die Baue Herodes des Grossen überhaupt, und über seinen Tempelbau zu Jerusalem ins besondere.” Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin. Historisch-philologische Klasse. (1816-17): 1-24; “Ueber die Bildung des Nackten bei den Alten.” Abhandlungen der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Berlin 7 (1820-21): 289-304; “Ueber die Gegenstände der Kunst bei den Aegyptern.” Abhandlungen der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Berlin 7 (1820-21):115-174.

Sources

Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 12-13; Sheehan, James J. Museums in the German Art World: From the End of the Old Regime to the Rise of Modernism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 54-55, 79-80; Kultermann, Udo. The History of Art History. New York: Abaris, 1993, p. 145; Sedlarz, Claudia, and Johannsen, Rolf Hermann. Aloys Hirt: Archäologe, Historiker, Kunstkenner. Hannover-Laatzen: Wehrhahn, 2004.

Hirschfeld, Gustav

November 8, 2023April 25, 2024

Full Name: Hirschfeld, Gustav

Other Names:

Oscar Gustav Hirschfeld

Gender: male

Date Born: 1847

Date Died: 1895

Place Born: Pyrzyce, West Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland

Place Died: Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): ancient, Ancient Greek (culture or style), archaeology, ceramic ware (visual works), Geometric (Greek culture or style), Greek pottery styles, and pottery (visual works)

Overview

Archaeologist and scholar of Greek geometric pottery; namesake of the Greek Hirschfeld painter. He was born in Pyritz, Pomerania, which is present-day Pyrzyce, Poland. Hirschfeld was born to a Jewish merchant family in Pyrtiz, Pomerania, then part of the Germany. He studied under Ernst Curtius in Berlin as well as in Tübingen and Leipzig. His dissertation, written under Curtius in 1870, was titled “De Titulis Statuariorum Sculptorumque Græcorum Capita Duo Priora,” and expanded and issued as Tituli Statuariorum Sculptorumque Græcorum cum Prolegomenis, 1871. That same year he secured a traveler’s stipend from the DAI (Deutsches archäogisches Institut or German Archaeological Institute) which he used to travel to Greece, Italy and Asia Minor (through 1877). During these years he published important writing on Etruscan art (Marzabotto, and the Certosa in Bologna) and geometric pottery. In 1872 Hirschfeld published an article on a monumental pedestal krater (Athens, National Archaeological Museum 990), discovered in the Dipylon cemetery. In 1875 he was a participant in the first German excavations of Olympia and again in 1877. At the time of the discovery of the Hermes of Praxiteles, Hirschfeld was directing the dig and personally lifted the statue out of the ground. He was instrumental in the discovery of the Temple of Zeus including many of its friezes, and the statue of Nike by Paionios. Hirschfeld subsequently traveled to London and Paris before his habilitation. In 1877 Hirschfeld converted to Christianity, and the following year appointed assistant professor of archeology at the university in Königsberg. Two years later he was full professor. A promising career was cut short by an untimely death in 1895. He died in Königsberg, Germany, which is present-day Kaliningrad, Russia.The important krater he excavated at the Dipylon is named after him (Hirschfeld Krater) as is the painter of that and other geometric vases. Another example is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] De Titulis Statuariorum Sculptorumque Græcorum Capita Duo Priora. Berlin, (Friedrich Wilhelm University) 1870, expanded and reissued as, Tituli Statuariorum Sculptorumque Græcorum cum Prolegomenis. Berlin: 1871;”Athena und Marsyas.” Programm zum Winckelmannsfest der archäologischen Gesellschaft zu Berlin 32 (1872); Knidos, Halikarnassos and Branchidae. The Collection of Ancient Greek Inscriptions in the British Museum, part 4. Oxford: Clarendon, 1874-1916; “Die Entwickelung des Stadtbildes.” Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin 25, 1890, [also issued as a special reprint], Berlin, 1890; Die Felsenreliefs in Kleinasien und das Volk der Hitteter: zweiter Beitrag zur Kunstgeschichte Kleinasiens. Berlin: Kœnigl. Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1887; Heinrich Schliemann: Ein Nachruf. Königsberg, [s. n.], 1891; “über die griechischen Grabschriften, welche Geldstrafen anordnen.” Königsberger Studien 1 (1887): 83-144; [Hirschfeld’s first publication of ANM 990]. Annali dell’Istituto di corrispondenza archeologica 44 (1872): 142 ff.

Sources

Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 88-89; Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, vol. 1, pp. 592-93; Singer, Isidore, and Frankfurter, Salomon. “Hirschfeld, Gustav.” Jewish Encyclopedia; Curtius, Ernst. “Zur Erinnerung an Gustav Hirschfeld.” Deutsche Rundschau 84 (1895): 377.

Hirmer, Max

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Hirmer, Max

Gender: male

Date Born: unknown

Date Died: unknown

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): Classical

Overview

Art book publisher and classicist. Hirmer was the son of Albert Hirmer und Irmgard Ernstmeier-Hirmer, photographers and photo-documenters. After World War II, Hirmer founded his publishing firm in 1948 principally as a way to publicize art using the most advanced photo technology. The firm was an outgrowth of a society for the advancement of study photographs, (“Gesellschaft für wissenschaftliches Lichtbild”), which his parents had amassed.

Selected Bibliography

and Doerig, Jose, and Fuchs, Werner and Boardman, John. Die griechische Kunst. Munich: Hirmer Verlag, 1966, English, Greek Art and Architecture. New York: Abrams, 1967, [British title:] The Art and Architecture of Ancient Greece. London: Thames & Hudson, 1967.

Sources

“Der Hirmer Verlag [History].” http://www.kunstbuecher-online.de/hirmer/verlag/.

Hinz, Sigrid

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Hinz, Sigrid

Date Born: unknown

Date Died: unknown

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): Marxism

Overview

Marxist art scholar of CD Friedrich

Selected Bibliography

contributor, Hofmann, Werner; Fleischer, Inge. Caspar David Friedrich und die deutsche Nachwelt: Aspekte zum Verhältnis von Mensch und Natur in der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft. Essays by I. Fleischer, R. Mattausch, S. Hinz, et al. Edited by W. Hofmann. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1974; Caspar David Friedrich in Briefen und Bekenntnissen. Berlin: Henschelverlag Kunst und Gesellschaft, 1968.

Sources

KRG, 139 mentioned

Marxist art scholar of CD Friedrich

Hinks, Roger P.

November 8, 2023April 25, 2024

Full Name: Hinks, Roger P.

Other Names:

Roger Packman Hinks

Gender: male

Date Born: 1903

Date Died: 1963

Place Born: London, Greater London, England, UK

Place Died: Paris, Île-de-France, France

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): ancient, Ancient Greek (culture or style), Antique, the, Classical, and Roman (ancient Italian culture or period)

Overview

Art historian and Assistant keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities, British Museum. Hinks was the son of Arthur Robert Hinks (1873-1945), one time secretary to both the Royal Astronomical Society and the Royal Geographical Society. After attending Westminster School, Hinks graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge in 1923, where he showed a gift for languages and classical studies. He spent 1924 at the British School in Rome, where he worked with, and was deeply influenced by the classical scholar Eugénie Sellers Strong. From Strong he learned the connections of Roman history to art, relationships which had been de-emphasized by the prominent Vienna School historians (Franz Wickhoff, Josef Rudolf Thomas Strzygowski). His appreciation for other German writing evidenced itself in a translation of a travelogue by the art historian Julius Meier-Graefe. In 1926 Hinks was appointed to the British Museum as Assistant Keeper in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities. There he set about publishing authoritative (if austere) catalogs of the Greek coins and antique paintings and mosaics. Hinks’ museum handbook of 1935, Greek and Roman Portrait Sculpture was a highly respected work. Portraiture represented a life-long interest for him and the handbook was a blend of interpretation and iconographic analysis. Hinks followed this in 1937 with Carolingian Art, which traced the classical tradition through the art of Charlemagne, noting its absence as well as its presence. A second edition in 1962 refined some of the terms he had initially employed in the work. The same year (1937), Hink’s “Classical and Classicistic” article in Kritische Berichte appeared, affirming his presence as a medievalist. In 1939 Hinks was implicated in a disastrous “cleaning” of the Elgin (Parthenon) marbles for the new Duveen gallery. Anxious to make a positive impression to Lord Duveen (1869-1939), the benefactor of a gallery he had sponsored, the Parthenon sculptures were chiseled and scrubbed to a brilliance which removed trace surface material from the statue. News of the cleaning reached Parliament and the British press, and a scandal ensued. Hinks was formally reprimanded for dereliction of duty and demoted ten years in seniority and in salary by John Forsdyke, director. Hinks subsequently resigned. Bernard Ashmole was asked to take charge of the Greek and Roman Antiquities in an honorary capacity. Hinks was offered a position at the Warburg Institute in 1939. There he published Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art, lectures and expanded texts he delivered at the Warburg. During World War II, Hinks was assigned to the British Embassy in Stockholm. After the war, he joined the British Council and was appointed Head of the British Institute in Rome, 1945-49. There developed an appreciation for Caravaggio. Hinks followed this with a term as a British Council representative in the Netherlands, 1949-54. He lectured at the University of Utrecht replacing J. G. van Gelder during his absence. He delivered a talk on Caravaggio at the University of Durham in 1952 and a monograph appeared in 1953. Hinks was moved by the Council in Athens in 1954, but once again trouble arose. This time, the political tensions in the claim for Cyprus forced a reassignment to Paris in 1959. Hinks returned to his classical interests in France. Hinks collapsed in his Paris apartment of a cerebral hemorrhage, and died a week later without having regained consciousness. A lifelong homosexual, Hinks had a long-term relationship with a person who appears in his journals simply as “j”.

Selected Bibliography

and Rodenwaldt, Gerhardt, and Hege, Walter. Olympia. London: Sidgwick and Jackson, ltd., 1936; Catalogue of the Greek, Etruscan and Roman Paintings and Mosaics in the British Museum. London: British Museum, 1933; Greek and Roman Portrait-Sculpture. London: British Museum, 1935; Carolingian Art. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1935, 2nd ed. with new introduction, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,1962; Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio: his Life, his Legend, his Works. London: Faber and Faber, 1953; Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art. London: The Warburg Institute, 1939; translated, Meier-Graefe, Julius. Pyramid and Temple. New York: The Macaulay Company, 1930; “Portrait of Tiberius.” The Journal of Roman Studies 23 (1933): 34-5; “History of the Portland Vase.” International Studio 93 (May 1929): 33-6.

Sources

The Gymnasium of the Mind: the Journals of Roger Hinks, 1933-1963. John Goldsmith, ed. Salisbury, UK: Michael Russell, 1984; Jenkins, Ian. “THE 1930S CLEANING OF THE PARTHENON SCULPTURES IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM.” http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/parthenon/index; [obituarires:] “Mr. Roger Hinks, Art History and the British Council.” The Times [London] June 12, 1963, p. 15; “Roger Hinks.” Burlington Magazine 105 no. 4738 (September 1964): 423-24.

Hind, Arthur Mayger

November 8, 2023April 25, 2024

Full Name: Hind, Arthur Mayger

Gender: male

Date Born: 1880

Date Died: 1957

Place Born: Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire, England, UK

Place Died: Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): drawings (visual works) and prints (visual works)

Overview

Prints and drawings authority (especially Italian); Keeper of the Department of Prints, British Museum, 1933 -1945. Hind’s father was Henry Robert Hind, a school principal, his mother, Sarah Mayger, and his grandfather the illustrator Robert Neal Hind (1817-1879). After attending the City of London School he entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge University, graduating with honors in 1902. Though music was a serious option, Hind chose the study of prints. He traveled to Dresden to study under the engraving history scholar Max Lehrs. Hind joined the Department of Prints and Drawings of the British Museum as an assistant (today termed assistant keeper) under Sidney Colvin, the Keeper. He assisted Colvin on the volume for engravers in England between the time of Henry VIII to the Commonwealth held in the department. The Museum published this catalog in 1905. In 1908 Hind wrote A Short History of Engraving and Etching, a highly popular primer which would run into numerous editions. In 1910 Colvin’s department issued the important Catalogue of Early Italian Engravings in the British Museum, nearly completely produced by Hind. He undertook a catalog of Rembrandt’s etchings in 1912 (a revised edition appearing in 1923) and the same year married Dorothy Alice Pakington (b. 1881/2). Hind also nurtured an interest in drawings. He conceived of catalogs documenting the Dutch and Flemish holdings in the British Museum, publishing a volume on Rembrandt and his school in 1915. During World War I, he served in the Army Service Corps in France between 1915 and 1918, rising to the rank of major. Hind was Slade professor of fine art at Oxford University from 1921 until 1927. The second volume on the Dutch and Flemish drawings, on Rubens and his school, appeared in 1923. Hind published a plates volume (illustrations) of the Museum’s holdings of Claude Lorrain drawings in 1925, publishing an annotated list, among the first of such studies, a year later. For the 1930-1931 academic year he was Charles Eliot Norton professor at Harvard, delivering the Norton lectures on landscape design and Rembrandt. He was named Deputy Keeper in 1931. The following year his Rembrandt lectures at Harvard were published. Hind set out to write a companion volume to the Short History of Engraving and Etching on woodcuts, but the work grew so large that he issued it as a separate text, Introduction to a History of Woodcut, 1935, covering up until the fifteenth century in two volumes. In 1933 Laurence Binyon retired as keeper of the department and Hind succeeded him. He returned to his initial Italian catalog compiling a complete illustrated corpus Italian engravings of the fifteenth century in 1938. The second of the three volumes of his illustrated corpus Italian engravings was delayed by the war and only appeared in 1948. During World War II, Hind moved the bulk of the print collections of the Museum to the designated place of safekeeping in Aberystwath, Wales. Hind retired from the Department in 1945 and was succeeded by Hugh Popham, receiving an honorary LL. D. at Glasgow and appointed a Leverhulme research fellow the same year. Immediately he began researching his Engraving in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries; volume one appeared in 1952 but the set was not completed until after his death. Hind died at a nursing home in 1957. Hind was an acknowledged print scholar most famous, somewhat ironically, for his introductory book on prints, which contained artist’s biographies as well as a narrative history. It was the entry point for most students of art foraying into print study for most of the 20th century. Although many of Hind’s judgments in his print catalogs have been modified, Hind’s conclusions still form the basis for scholarship in print research. The final chapter of Hind’s 1932 book on Rembrandt includes an essay on Hind’s artistic beliefs.

Selected Bibliography

Early Italian Engraving: A Critical Catalogue with Complete Reproduction of All the Prints Described. 7 vols. London: M. Knoedler, 1938-48; and Colvin, Sydney. Catalogue of early Italian Engravings Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum. London: British Museum, 1910; and Popham, Arthur E. Catalogue of drawings by Dutch and Flemish artists preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum. 5 vols. London: British Museum, 1915-32; Rembrandt’s etchings: an Essay and a Catalogue, with Some Notes on the Drawings. London: Methuen 1912, [American edition:] Rembrandt, with a Complete List of his Etchings. New York: F. A. Stokes, 1912; Rembrandt, being the Substance of the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures Delivered Before Harvard University, 1930-1931. London: Oxford University Press/H. Milford, 1932; A Short History of Engraving & Etching for the Use of Collectors and Students. London: A. Constable & Co., 1908.

Sources

Griffiths, A. ed., Landmarks in Print Collecting: Connoisseurs and Donors at the British Museum Since 1753. London: British Museum Press, 1996; [obituary:] Times (London) May 23 1957; [obituary:] Popham, Arthur E. “Arthur M. Hind.” Burlington Magazine 99 (1957): 242.

Himmelmann, Nikolaus

November 8, 2023April 25, 2024

Full Name: Himmelmann, Nikolaus

Other Names:

Nikolaus Himmelmann-Wildschütz

Gender: male

Date Born: 1929

Home Country/ies: Germany

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

Overview

Historian of classical Greek vases. Himmelmann studied at Marburg, Basel and Munich. His dissertation, completed in 1956, was on the Ilissos grave stele from the Kerimeikos. He taught at the universities of Marburg and Saarbrücken. In 1966 he moved to the university in Bonn. He retired from Bonn emeritus in 1994.

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Studien zum Ilissos-Relief. Munich: Prestel 1956; [collected essays, English:] Reading Greek Art. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998; Die private Bildnisweihung bei den Griechen: zu den Ursprüngen des abendländischen Porträts. Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag, 2001; Attische Grabreliefs. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1999; Alexandria und der Realismus in der griechischen Kunst. Tübingen: E. Wasmuth, 1983; edited, Festschrift für Friedrich Matz. Mainz: Zabern, 1962; Ideale Nacktheit. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1985; über Hirten-Genre in der antiken Kunst. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1980; Tieropfer in der griechischen Kunst. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1997.

Sources

Childs, William. “Preface,” and “Introduction.” Reading Greek Art. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998, pp. xv-xvii, and 3-21; [transcript] Nikolaus Himmelmann. Interviews with Art Historians, 1991-2002. Getty Research Institute, Malibu, CA.

Hill, George Francis, Sir

November 8, 2023April 25, 2024

**Image Credit:** National Portrait Gallery

Full Name: Hill, George Francis, Sir

Gender: male

Date Born: 1867

Date Died: 1948

Place Born: Berhampur, Orrisa, India

Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): museums (institutions)

Career(s): directors (administrators) and museum directors

Overview

Director, British Museum, 1931-36 and specialist in renaissance medals. Hill’s grandfather, Micaiah Hill, founded the London Missionary Society’s outpost in Berhampur, India, where his father, Samuel John Hill, was stationed and where Hill was born. He attended Blackheath (later known as) Eltham College and then University College, London and finally Merton College. There he studied under Percy Gardner, achieving firsts in his examinations of classical studies and who also instilled in him a love of numismatics. In 1893 he joined the British Museum in the department of Coins and Medals. At that time, the Department was the center of study of Greek coins. Hill continued the publishing work of Reginald Stuart Poole and Barclay Vincent Head, issuing in 1897 the first volume of the important Greek coin catalog. In the next twenty-five years, Hill produced major catalogs on most areas of the museums holdings. He also edited the Journal of Helenic Studies. In 1912 he became Keeper of the Department. In 1924 he married Mary Paul (d. 1924), whose parents had settled in Rome. Hill’s family excursions deepened an interest in Italian art and painting. His work on Pisanello and his Corpus on Italian Medals before Cellini are in part the result of this influence. In 1931 he was appointed Director and principal librarian to the British Museum. As director, he purchase the Codex Sinaiticus fromt he Soviet Union and, together with the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Eumorfopoulus collection of Oriental antiquities. He was knighted in 1933. Hill retired in 1936, succeeded by the classicist John Forsdyke. In retirement he wrote a history of Cypress, of which three volumes were completed before his death.

Selected Bibliography

Catalogue of the Greek Coins of Cyprus. London: British Museum, 1904; Catalogue of the Greek Coins of Lycaonia, Isauria, and Cilicia. London: British Museum, 1900; Catalogue of the Greek Coins of Lycia, Pamphylia, and Pisidia. London: British Museum, 1897; Catalogue of the Greek Coins of Palestine (Galilee, Samaria, and Judaea). London: British Museum/Longmans, 1914; Catalogue of the Greek Coins of Phoenicia. London: British Museum, 1910; A Guide to the Exhibition of Historical Medals in the British Museum. London: British Museum, 1924; Italian Medals of the Renaissance in the British Museum. 2 vols. London: British Museum, 1915; and Hicks, Edward Lee. A Manual of Greek Historical Inscriptions. Oxford: Clarendon press, 1901; A Corpus of Italian Medals of the Renaissance Before Cellini. 2 vols. London: British Museum, 1930; A Handbook of Greek and Roman Coins. New York: Macmillan, 1899 [numerous subsequent editions]; Historical Roman Coins: from the Earliest Times to the Reign of Augustus. London: Constable & Co., 1909; Pisanello. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1905; Renaissance Medals. volume 1 of Samuel H. Kress Collection of Renaissance Bronzes. Flushing, NY: Paul A. Stroock, 1960; and Reinach, Théodore. Les monnaies juives. Paris: E. Leroux, 1887, English: Jewish Coins. London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1903.

Sources

[obituary:] Sir George Hill, Deep And Wide Learning. The Times (London), October 20, 1948, p. 7.

« Previous
1
…
152
153
154
155
156
…
252
Next »

Art Historians

Overview

Selected Bibliography

Sources

Citation

More Resources

Overview

Selected Bibliography

Sources

Citation

More Resources

Overview

Selected Bibliography

Sources

Citation

More Resources

Overview

Selected Bibliography

Sources

Citation

More Resources

Overview

Selected Bibliography

Sources

Citation

More Resources

Overview

Selected Bibliography

Sources

Citation

More Resources

Overview

Selected Bibliography

Sources

Citation

More Resources

Overview

Selected Bibliography

Sources

Citation

More Resources

Overview

Selected Bibliography

Sources

Citation

More Resources

Overview

Selected Bibliography

Sources

Citation

More Resources

General Citation

License

Sponsored by

General Citation

License

Sponsored by