Art Historians

Hall, Louise

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Hall, Louise

Gender: male

Date Born: 1905

Date Died: 1990

Place Born: Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England, UK

Place Died: Durham, NC, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre) and sculpture (visual works)

Overview

Professor of Art and Architecture, Duke University, 1931-1975. Hall received her B.A., from Wellesley College in 1927, continuing for a second bachelor’s degree (a B.S.) from MIT in 1930. She traveled to Paris for further study at the Institute of Art and Archaeology in 1931. She returned to the United States and joined the faculty at recently founded Duke University. Her appointment was in the Philosophy department because Duke as yet had no art department. Hall was responsible for the establishment of an art-history curriculum at Duke University. During the 1930s she assisted in the federal writers’ project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), writing a guide to the architecture of North Carolina in 1938. In 1942 a separate Department of Aesthetics, Art and Music was created at Duke with the esthetician Katharine E. Gilbert (1886-1952) as chair and Hall representing art and architectural history. Hall obtained a Ph.D. from Harvard (Radcliffe) in 1954. She continued to promote the idea of a specialized department of art for Duke, and, when one was created in 1959/60, Hall became its first chair. She was also instrumental in planning for the art museum at Duke, later founded by William S. Heckscher. She retired in 1975. Hall was one of the early female architectural historians in the United States.

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Artificer to Architect in America. Ph. D., Radcliffe, 1954; North Carolina Architecture: an Essay Contributed to the North Carolina Guide in the American Guide Series. [typescript copy] 1938; Early Books on the Building Arts in Four North Carolina Libraries. Durham, NC: s.n, 1957; “New Threat to Washington Landmark: Design of the Old Patent Office.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 15 (March 1956): 27-30; “Mills, Strickland, and Walter: their Adventures in a World of Science.” Magazine of Art 40 (November 1947): 266-71; “A Pivotal Group in Architecture: The Fourteen Women of MIT, Class of 1930.” Berkeley, Ellen Perry, ed. Architecture: A Place for Women. Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 1989, pp. 79-86.

Sources

Duke University archives.

Hall, James

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Hall, James

Gender: male

Date Born: 1918

Place Born: Letchworth, Hertfordshire, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): iconography, symbolism (artistic concept), and symbols

Overview

Amateur art historian and author of Dictionary of Symbols in Eastern and Western Art. Hall worked in various aspect of book publishing between 1946-72. In 1972 he became a the director of book production services company. His most famous book, a Dictionary of Subject and Symbols in Art first appeared in 1974. The book was subsequently translated into many eastern and western languages. In 2005 he published a biography of Michelangelo.

Selected Bibliography

Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art. New York: Harper & Row, 1974; A History of Ideas and Images in Italian Art. New York: Harper & Row, 1983, revised, Ehresmann, Julia M. The Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. 2nd ed. London: Murray, 1980; Michelangelo: Slave to the Flesh and Bone. London: Chatto & Windus, 2005

Sources

jacket cover biography

Amateur art historian and author of Dictionary of Symbols in Eastern and Western Art. Hall worked in various aspect of book publishing between 1946-72. In 1972 he became a the director of book production services company. His most famous

Hall, Isaac H.

November 8, 2023August 16, 2024

Full Name: Hall, Isaac H.

Other Names:

Isaac Hollister Hall
Isaac H. Hall

Gender: male

Date Born: 12 December 1837

Date Died: 02 July 1896

Place Born: Abbeville, Hauts-de-France, France [Norwalk, Connecticut, United States]

Place Died: New York, NY, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): Ancient Greek (culture or style), Antique, the, Christianity, sculpture (visual works), and Syriac Orthodox

Career(s): art historians and curators

Institution(s): Metropolitan Museum of Art

Overview

Authority on Oriental (i. e., Greek, Phoenician, Himyaritic) inscriptions; curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Hall, born in Norwalk, Connecticut in 1837, was named after his grandfather, Isaac Hollister. Hall’s father, Rev. Edwin Hall Sr, was pastor of the First Congregational Church for twenty-two years and later a professor of Christian theology. His mother was Fanny Hollister (Hall). He received his elementary education at a seminary in Norwalk where his father worked. Both his early education and his family influenced his future research on biblical manuscripts. He graduated from Hamilton College in 1859 and was a tutor there until 1863. He went on to the Columbia Law School and started a ten-year-long law career in New York City after graduating in 1865.

In 1875, Hall taught at the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut. While teaching, Hall discovered a valuable Syriac manuscript of the Philoxenian version of a part of the New Testament. In 1876, he assisted in the excavation of Luigi Palma di Cesnola in Cyprus and established a close working relationship and friendship with Cesnola. (Recco) In 1883 he received a Ph.D degree from Hamilton College. Upon his return to the States in 1877, Hall aligned himself with The Sunday School Times in Philadelphia. According to another source, he possibly worked as an editor for the publication. In the same year, he started the column of Biblical research in the New York Independent. In 1883, his book American Greek Testaments: A Critical Bibliography of the Greek New Testament as Published in America was released. In 1884, he published his work on the Syrian manuscript of the Gospels, Acts, and most of the Epistles that he discovered and deciphered in Syria.

Meanwhile, he was a lecturer on New Testament Greek at Johns Hopkins University. Hall joined Cesnola in working at the newly founded Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1885 and served as the first curator of sculptures, antiquities, and objects. He was awarded the degree of Bachelor of Literature from Columbia College (modern Columbia University) and University College Dublin, respectively, in 1888 and 1889. Hall continued working at the Met until he died in 1896 from oral cancer, in New York.

Isaac Hall was an eminent authority on Oriental [i.e., Middle Eastern] inscriptions as well as a member of various archaeological and Biblical societies. He was the first man to read the entire inscription in Cypriote, making him critical in identifying and deciphering Cypriot objects. Most of his publications centered on Cesnola’s collection and other Middle Eastern objects in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Hall was also dedicated to preserving the physical history of Cyprus. Some of the objects Hall acquired in Cyprus are now housed at the Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College. Additionally, he was an excellent linguist who published an important series of articles on the Cypriote language and inscriptions.

Selected Bibliography

“Cypriote inscriptions of the Di Cesnola collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York City.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 10 (1875): 201-218;
American Greek Testaments: A Critical Bibliography of the Greek New Testament as Published in America. Philadelphia: Pickwick and Co., 1883
“On a Manuscript Syriac Lectionary.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 11 (1885): 287–325. https://doi.org/10.2307/592195.
The Stone Sculpture of the Cesnola Collection of Cypriote Antiquities in Halls 5 and 3. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1895;
and Dobbins, Frank S., and Williams, S. Wells. Story of the World’s Worship. Chicago: Dominion Co., 1901;

Sources

“OBITUARY RECORD.” New York Times (1857-1922), 1896 Jul 03.
Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography. – Rev. Ed. – New York: Appleton, 1888-1889. – 6 vols
Tomkins, Calvin. Merchants and Masterpieces: The Story of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2nd. ed. New York: Henry Holt, 1989, p. 79.
Brown, John Howard. The Cyclopædia of American Biographies. Comprising the Men and Women of the United States Who Have Been Identified with the Growth of the Nation. 1903.
“1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Hall, Isaac Hollister – Wikisource, the Free Online Library.” Accessed June 11, 2024. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Hall,_Isaac_Hollister.
“Rev Edwin Hall Sr. (1802-1877) – Find a Grave…” n.d. Accessed June 11, 2024. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/51865134/edwin-hall.
“Hall, Edwin, D.D” n.d. Accessed June 12, 2024. McClintock and Strong Biblical Cyclopedia Online. https://www.biblicalcyclopedia.com/H/hall-edwin-dd.html.
Recco, Ianna. Unpacking the Past: General Luigi Palma di Cesnola”, “Unpacking the Past: Colleagues at the Metropolitan Museum of Art – Wellin Museum.” and “Unpacking the Past: Letters from Cyprus.” Welliin Museum. n.d. Accessed June 12, 2024. https://my.hamilton.edu/wellin/wellinformed/unpacking-the-past-general-luigi-palma-di-cesnola

Haidt, Johann Valentin

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Haidt, Johann Valentin

Other Names:

John Valentine Haidt

Gender: male

Date Born: 1700

Date Died: 1780

Place Born: Gdańsk, Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland

Place Died: Bethlehem, Northampton, PA, USA

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): painting (visual works)

Overview

German immigrant painter who wrote an early, unpublished history of art. He was born in Danzig, Prussia which is present-day Gdańsk, Poland. Haidt descended from a family of goldsmiths in Augsburg, Germany. His grandfather was a Danzig jeweller. When he was two years old his father was appointed royal Prussian goldsmith and the family to Berlin. The younger Haidt trained as a goldsmith at the newly founded Berlin Akademie der Bildenden Künste (academy of fine arts). Beginning in 1714, he spent ten years traveling in Europe, living in Rome around 1720. Devout and Protestant, Haidt joined a group of pietistic Lutherans in the city, eventually moving to England where he set up a studio. He converted to the Mährische Einheit group there, the Jednota Bratrska (Moravians) and began preaching. Haidt returned to Germany and the Moravian communities in Hernhag and then to Herrnhut, Germany where he became a painter. The Moravians, known as the Herrenhutter for their settlement of Herrnhut, Germany, could live only in Saxony where the group’s (re-)founder, Count Zinzendorf (1700-1760), ruled. The strict limitations in Germany on the group eventually led to Haidt’s return to England and then to the American colonies in 1754. Haidt settled in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. There he proselytize for the sect, becoming the town’s Gemeinmaler (chief painter). He taught painting and produced portraiture and landscapes. Haidt studied further Benjamin West in 1755 in Philadelphia. Beginning in 1762 (through 1770) Haidt wrote a treatise on art (in German), including a section on the history of art penned (and extent today) in the hand of an assistant. The 37-page manuscript covered proportion, perspective, and basics. The art history section decries Roman painting’s failure to last after antiquity and lauds Italian Renaissance painting as exemplary. Haidt failed to publish or distribute his writing and it remained unknown until the twentieth century. Haidt had no students who worked after him in the United States. Haidt’s manuscript is preserved, though unpublished, in the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem PA. Haidt’s brief account of art history is important as it predates that of Johann Joachim Winckelmann. It’s closest model might be that of Joachim von Sandrart. Like Haidt, Sandrart’s section on art history is also just a portion of a larger work (in Sandrart’s case, lives of artists). Haidt’s remarks on art history common with other writings on art of the time. However, considering the

horizon of understanding that existed before Winckelmann, whose tracts he probably could not have known, Haidt may therefore also be considered to be an art historian. Thus he may be regarded as the first German art historian, also as the first German art historian in exile, who worked in the United States.” (Kaufmann).

Selected Bibliography

[manuscript]

Sources

Fabian, Monroe H. “Haidt, John Valentine.” Dictionary of Art 14: 50; Kaufmann, Thomas DaCosta. “The American Voice: German Historians of Art and Architecture in Exile in the United States.” in International Journal of Architectural Theory 12 no. 1 (August 2007), http://www.tu-cottbus.de/Theo/Wolke/eng/Subjects/071/DaCostaKaufmann/dacosta-kaufmann.htm

Hahnloser, Hans R.

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Hahnloser, Hans Robert

Other Names:

Hans Robert Hahnloser

Gender: male

Date Born: 13 December 1889

Date Died: 07 November 1974

Place Born: Winterthur, Zürich, Switzerland

Place Died: Bern, Bern, Switzerland

Home Country/ies: Switzerland

Subject Area(s): Medieval (European)

Overview

Medievalist art historian at the University in Bern, 1934-1968. Hahnloser’s father was a physician with an appreciation for modern art. The young man grew up knowing the modern Swiss artists of his day, including Pierre Bonnard, Vuillard, Felix Vallotton, Giovanni Giacometti, and Ferdinand Hodler. He studied art history at the university in Basle under Friedrich Rintelen. Beginning in 1921 he entered the university in Vienna working under Julius von Schlosser. This group of Schlosser students–all classmates–would later become the major art historians of their time: Hans Sedlmayr, Otto Pächt, Charles de Tolnay, E. H. Gombrich and Ernst Kris. Schlosser’s personality, his strength, philosophical/historic analysis of sources and outlook became formative for Hahnloser (Betthausen/Metzler). After graduation in 1926 and military service, he returned to Vienna as a privatdozent and Schlosser’s assistant. The two became close friends; Hahnloser, a gifted violinist, toured Europe with Schlosser as cellist as part of a string quartet. In 1933 at the 13th International Congress of the History of Art, Stockholm, he traveled with a group of medievalists including Richard Hamann, Kenneth John Conant and Paul Frankl, lead by Johnny Roosval, to see the discovery of the only gothic church still with its wooden arch scaffolding remaining (Frankl). Hahnloser took the photos. In 1934 at the death of Bern art historian Arthur Weese Hahnloser was called to succeed him. The following year he published his dissertation research on the “sketchbook” (guild book) of Villard de Honnecourt (1220-1230). A masterful philological and art-historical examination of the book, it was the first German-language translation. Before and during World War II, when travel was limited, Hahnloser devoted himself to the history of early Swiss art. He organized the excavation of the Cluniac cloister in Rüeggisberg bei Bern (completed 1947). He served as Rector of the University for the 1956-1957 year. As president of the Association for Swiss Art History (Gesellschaft für schweizerische Kunstgeschichte) in 1957, he inaugurated and update of Hans Jennys’ 1934 guide to art in Switzerland, now called the Kunstführer durch die Schweiz. A noted scholar on medieval glass, he led the Gesellschaft to commission the issuing of the Corpus vitrearum Medii Aevi (the corpus cataloging for medieval stained glass) in Switzerland. The first volume on the treasure of San Marco in Venice appeared in 1965. He retired emeritus in 1968. Hahnloser was ever fascinated with the conceptual image as the dominant impulse for medieval art. As he had began with his dissertation on Villard de Honnecourt, he returned to this. His students included Marcel Georges Roethlisberger.

Hahnloser’s methodology was a complex combination of Vienna-School (Schlosser) documents analysis and visual analysis. Hahnloser’s use of the Gedankenbild (mental construct) can be traced to the concept of Gedächtnisbild (image of memory) of the Viennese archaeologist Emanuel Löwy. He also employed a psychoanalytic art history. In 1960 Frankl termed Hahnloser’s work on Villard the most comprehensive treatment of the topic. Throughout his life he contributed reminiscences on the artists he knew. He left a personal art collection of many of these artists in addition to works on paper by van Gogh and others.

Selected Bibliography

and Vaillant, Annette, and Cassou, Jean, and Cogniat, Raymond. Bonnard: ou, Le bonheur de voir. Neuchatel: Éditions Ides et Calendes, 1965, English, Bonnard; with a Dialogue Between Jean Cassou and Raymond Cogniat. Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1966;
and Volbach, Wolfgang. Il Tesoro di San Marco. 2 vols. Florence: Sansoni, 1965-1971;
“Gedankenbild im Mittelalter und seine Anfänge in der Spätantike.” Actes du XVIIme Congrès international d’histoire de l’art (1955): 592;
Das Gedankenbild im Mittelalter und seine Anfänge in der Spätantike. Rome: Accademia nazionale dei Lincei,1968 pp. 256-266;
[art collection:] “Werke aus der Sammlung Hahnloser.” [special issue of] Du no. 11 (November 1956)

Sources

Frankl, Paul. The Gothic: Literary Sources and Interpretations through Eight Centuries. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960, p. 15, n. 20; Wölfflin, Heinrich. Heinrich Wölfflin, 1864-1945: Autobiographie, Tagebücher und Briefe. Joseph Ganter, ed. 2nd ed. Basel: Schwabe & Co., 1984, p. 492; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, p. 536; Betthausen, Peter. “Hahnloser, Hans Robert.” Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. 2nd. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2007, pp. 153-155. Schweizer biographisches Archiv. Keller, Willy, ed. Zürich: Verlag Internationaler Publikationen, 1952-1958.

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

Hahn, Hanno

November 8, 2023April 24, 2024

Full Name: Hahn, Hanno

Gender: male

Date Born: 1922

Date Died: 1960

Place Born: Berlin-Dahlem, Germany

Place Died: Mars-la-Tour, Grand Est, France

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre), Medieval (European), and sculpture (visual works)

Institution(s): Bibliotheca Hertziana

Overview

Architectural historian of medieval architecture at the Herziana, Rome. Hahn was the son of Otto Hahn (1879-1968), a Nobel-prize-winning Chemist, and Edith Junghans (Hahn) (1887-1968), an artist. He attended the humanistic Arndt-Gymnasium entering Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin in 1940 studying theater, German studies and philosophy. In 1942 he enlisted in the German army, commissioned as a lieutenant and fought on the eastern front as a Panzer (tank) leader. Heavily decorated, he was badly wounded in 1944 at Pietrow, requiring an arm amputation. While recovering, he met and later married his attending nurse, Ilse Pletz (1920-1960), wed in 1945. After the war, Hahn resumed his studies at the University of Tübingen and later University of Frankfurt am Main studying art history, archeology, philosophy and Italian philology. While at the Scuola Normale Superiore and the University in Pisa he became fascinated in medieval architecture. He returned to Frankfurt, writing a dissertation on Cistercian architecture under Harald Keller. After briefly volunteering at the Städelschen Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt he was appointed to the Bibliotheca Hertziana (Rome) in 1955 with a scholarship. While at the Hertziana another scholar, Heinrich M. Schwarz, was killed in an auto accident in 1957. Hahn assumed Schawrtz’ editing duties a Festschrift for Leo Bruhns, Franziskus Wolff Metternich and Ludwig Schudt. That same year Hahn’s magisterial Die frühe Kirchenbaukunst der Zisterzienser (Early Cistercian Church Architecture) appeared, notably positing, among other things the proportional scheme of Cistercian architecture. In 1959 he and his father were part of the first German delegation to visit Israel since the World War II, opening up what would later be formal diplomatic relations. While on a study trip in France, Hahn and his wife were killed at Mars-la-Tour (Lorraine) in an auto accident in 1960. The festschrift was left incomplete for a second time (ironically for the same reason as the first). Hahn’s doktorvater, Keller, was assigned to complete the volume. Hahn’s second book, Hohenstaufenburgen in Süditalien (South Italian Castles of the Hohenstaufen Era) appeared posthumously in 1961, edited by Gerda Soergel (b. 1920) (later Panofsky, who married Erwin Panofsky some years later).

Hahn’s reputation was established with his Cistercian church book where he theorized the “Laws” (his word) of Cisterican architectural proportion. Based on the first plan of the monastery at Eberbach and others, he stated a series of mathematical relationships that Cictercian builders employed extensively, if not rigorously.

Selected Bibliography

Die frühe Kirchenbaukunst der Zisterzienser: Untersuchungen zur Baugeschichte von Kloster Eberbach im Rheingau und ihren europäischen Analogien im 12. Jahrhundert. Verlag Gebr. Mann, Berlin 1957; “Paul Bril in Caprarola: Zur Malerwerkstatt des Vatikan und zu ihren Ausstrahlungen 1570–1590.” Miscellanea Bibliothecae Hertzianae. Munich: Verlag A. Schroll, 1961, pp. 308–323; and Albert Renger-Patzsch (photographer). Hohenstaufenburgen in Süditalien. Ingelheim am Rhein: C.H. Boehringer Sohn, 1961; edited partially, Miscellanea Bibliothecae Hertzianae zu Ehren von Leo Bruhns, Franz Graf Wolff Metternich [und] Ludwig Schudt. Munich: A. Schroll, 1961.

Sources

[Obituaries:] Battisti, Eugenio. “Hanno Hahn (in memoriam).” Palladio. New series 12 (1962): 63-64; Franz, Graf Wolff-Metternich. “Hanno Hahn gestorben.” Kunstchronik 14, (1961): 254–256; Hahn, Dietrich. Hanno und Ilse Hahn in Memoriam: Ein Gedenkblatt zum 20. Todestag. Special publication, 1980.

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

Hahland, Walter

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Hahland, Walter

Gender: male

Date Born: 1901

Place Born: Vichtenstein, Scharding, Austria

Home Country/ies: Austria

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

Overview

Greek classical vase scholar; selected to be the first volume in the important Bilder griechischer Vasen series by J. D. Beazley and Paul Jacobsthal. Hahland graduated from the Staatsgymnasium in Linz in 1922. He studied at Heidelberg under Ludwig Curtius, Carl Neumann and Bernhard Schweitzer; Marburg under F Wolters; and Kiel. He received his Ph.D. from Philipps-Universität in Marburg, writing his dissertation on Attic vase painting under Jacobsthal.

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Studien zur attischen Vasenmalerei um 400 vor Christi. Philipps-Universität, Marburg, 1928, published 1931; Vasen um Meidias. Bilder griechischer Vasen 1. Berlin: H. Keller, 1930; “Neue Denkmäler des attischen Heroen- und Totenkultes.” in, Festschrift für Friedrich Zucker zum 70. Geburtstage. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1954; and Langlotz, Ernst. Bildkataloge [of the] Martin von Wagner-Museum der Universität Würzbunghrsg I, Griechische Vaser. Munich: Verlag J. B. Obernetter, 1932.

Sources

“Lebenslauf.” in Studien zur attischen Vasenmalerei um 400 vor Christi. Philipps-Universität, Marburg: 1931, p. 80.

Greek classical vase scholar; selected to be the first volume in the important Bilder griechischer Vasen series by J. D. Beazley and Paul Jacobsthal. Hahland graduated from the Staatsgymnasium in

Hager, Werner

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Hager, Werner

Gender: male

Date Born: 1900

Date Died: 1997

Place Born: Dresden, Saxony, Germany

Place Died: Oberhausen, Bavaria, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

Overview

His students included Max Imdahl, whom he outlived by nearly a decade.

Sources

Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 141-3.

His students included Max Imdahl, whom he outlived by nearly a decade.

Hagen, Oskar

November 8, 2023April 24, 2024

Full Name: Hagen, Oskar

Other Names:

Oskar Frank Leonard Hagen

Gender: male

Date Born: 1888

Date Died: 1957

Place Born: Wiesbaden, Hesse, Germany

Place Died: Madison, WI, USA

Home Country/ies: Germany

Overview

Spanish studies scholar; founded the department of Art and the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Hagen’s father was a German, Nestor William Hagen and his mother, Ellen Marion Owen-Snow (Hagen), a British subject. His father worked in the United States as one of the early members of the New York Symphony Orchestra and was later naturalized. The younger Hagen attended grammar schools in Weisbaden and Ihlfeldt before entering college. Hagen studied music and music composition under Carl Schuricht and in Berlin at the Königliche Hochschule für Musik under Engelbert Humperdinck. He also pursued art history at the Universities of Berlin and Munich before receiving his doctorate from the University of Halle in 1914 under Wilhelm Waetzoldt. His dissertation was on Correggio attribution. The same year as his degree, he married a Danish opera singer, Thyra Leisner (d. 1938). Hagen initially took at job at the applied arts museum (Kunstgewerbemuseum) in Halle, where he remained until 1918. Specializing in German Renaissance art, he became a privatdozent in 1918, rising to associate professor of art history department at the University in Göttingen. At Göttingen he revived an interest in performing the operas of George Frederick Handel, the first in Germany, beginning in 1920. Hagen directed the Göttingen Handel Festival until his departure to the United States. Internationally, he was much better known for his revival of Handel than for art history. He visited the United States in 1924 as the Carl Schurz Visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The following year he accepted a full-time position at the University, where he founded an art history department and later the University’s art collection. Hagen served as the Department’s director for twenty-three years. He set out on a strong publishing program, beginning with a pedogical survery, Art Epochs and their Leaders: a Survey of the Genesis of Modern Art published in 1927. An interest in Spanish art led to another English-language book Patterns and Principles of Spanish Art in 1936. The same year, he assisted the art historian Wolfgang Stechow who was fleeing Nazi Germany in securing a position in the United States, while the Nazi government, through the university at Göttingen, awarded him an honor as an outstanding German scholar abroad. Hagen declined the offer to attend in Hitler’s presence. Hagen developed American art-history courses and issued his The Birth of the American Tradition in Art in 1940. After the death of his first wife in 1938, Hagen remarried in Boston to a Swiss woman, Beatrice Bentz. In 1944, he returned to music and music composition, writing several works. His pieces were given some of their first performances in post-war Germany beginning in 1945. He remained chair of the UW Art history department until his death in 1957. His papers are held at the University of Wisconsin. Hagen’s daughter was the actress Uta Hagen (1919-2004). Hagen’s teaching in the fledgling Wisconsin department was influential. A number of art scholars named him as inspiring, including the Goya scholar Fred Licht, whose 1973 book on the artist’s sources was dedicated to Hagen.

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Correggio Apokryphen: eine kritische Studie über die sogenannten Jugendwerke des Correggio. Halle, 1914, and published, Berlin: Hyperionverlag, 1915; chapters 1 and 2 published as, Die Madonna mit dem heiligen Franziskus und die sogenannten Jugendwerke des Antonio da Correggio. 1914, Art Epochs and their Leaders: a Survey of the Genesis of Modern Art. New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1927; Hans Baldungs Rosenkranz, Seelengärtlein, Zehn Gebote, Zwölf Apostel. Munich: R. Piper, 1928; Patterns and Principles of Spanish Art. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1936; The Birth of the American Tradition in Art. New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1940.

Sources

“Hagen, Oskar (Frank Leonard).” Nation Cyclopedia of American Biography 47:248; Oxford Music Online [New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians] “Handel, George Frederic, §23: Handel and Posterity.”; “Goettingen Cites Three Americans, Two Get Honorary Degrees at Reich Fete.” New York Times June 28, 1937, p. 19; [obituary:] Waltrous, James S. “Oskar Frank Leonard Hagen (1888-1957).” College Art Journal 17 no. 2 (Winter, 1958): 195-196.

Hagen, Ernst August

November 8, 2023April 24, 2024

Full Name: Hagen, Ernst August

Gender: male

Date Born: 1791

Date Died: 1880

Place Born: Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia

Place Died: Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia

Home Country/ies: Germany

Overview

Born in Königsberg, Germany, present day Kaliningrad, Russia.

Sources

Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 139-140.

Born in Königsberg, Germany, present day Kaliningrad, Russia.

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