Art Historians

Gerson, Horst

November 8, 2023April 19, 2024

**Image Credit:** University of Groningen

Full Name: Gerson, Horst

Other Names:

Horst Karl Gerson

Gender: male

Date Born: 1907

Date Died: 1978

Place Born: Berlin, Germany

Place Died: Groningen, Netherlands

Home Country/ies: Germany

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

Overview

Rembrandt scholar and authority on Netherlandish art, Director, Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie and professor of art history at Groning University. Gerson’s father was a medical doctor in Berlin. His mother, Gertrud Lilienfeld (d. 1943), was the sister of art historian Karl Lilienfeld. After initially studying the history of art in Vienna and Berlin, Gerson settled in The Hague in 1928 as an assistant to Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, who his uncle had also assisted. He chose the scholars at the university in Göttingen, the phenomenological esthetics of Moritz Geiger (1880-1937) and the art history of Georg Vitzthum von Eckstädt, Wolfgang Stechow and Nikolaus Bernard Leon Pevsner to complete his doctorate. Vitzthum supervised his dissertation in 1932 on the Dutch landscape painter Philips Koninck. Gerson and Hans-D. Gronau were among Vitzthum’s best students. Because of the increasing discrimination against Jews in Germany, he returned to The Hague. There, in the same year, 1932, he began his career at the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, an institution founded by his former mentor, Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, who had died in 1930. He married Ilse Nehrkorn in 1935. His dissertation was published in 1936. He received his Netherlandish citizenship just before the German invasion in 1940. At the Rijksbureau, he worked first under Hans Schneider, then J. G. van Gelder and A. B. de Vries. His work assisting the difficult Abraham Bredius with his Rembrandt catalogue raisonné, developed in him a critical and independent eye, separating the paintings of Rembrandt from those which were incorrectly attributed to the master, and resulting in a life-long interest in the investigation and documentation of the Rembrandt-oeuvre. In 1942 he published his important book, Ausbreitung und Nachwirkung der holländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts,1942. Beginning in 1951, he published the first of three survey books of Netherlandish painting (Hals, Rembrandt and Vermeer, and van Gogh) in a ten-year stretch. In 1954 he assumed the directorship of the Rijksbureau. Gerson also had a great admiration for Flemish painting. He especially enjoyed the Flemish section at the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, evident from his contribution to the Pelican History of Art (series) volume, which he co-authored with E. H. ter Kuile, The Art and Architecture in Belgium in 1960. In this period he acted as one of the co-editors of Kindlers Malerei Lexicon, also contributing a number of articles. In 1965 he was succeeded at the Rijksbureau by Sturla Gudlaugsson. From 1965 to 1975, Gerson lectured as professor in History of Art at the University of Groningen, succeeding Henk Schulte Nordholt. The following year he added to his duties the Head of the Art-Historical Institute. His 1966 inaugural lecture, “De taal van de kunsthistorikus,” (The Art Historian’s Language) criticized Johan Huizinga as a cultural historian unwilling to see art history as a stand-alone discipline. He validated Huizinga’s belief that art history writing was undermined by “guiding principles” or the imposition of overarching theories. His long research into autograph Rembrandt works culminated in his 1968 Rembrandt Paintings as well as a daring (and contested) revision of Bredius’ Rembrandt-catalogue (1969), which reduced the works of the master from 639 to 419, or even fewer. He returned to the topic of Huizinga in 1972 for the lectures “Johan Huizinga und die Kunstgeschichte” (Huizinga and art history), whose work he overall supported and admired. Gerson resigned in 1975 in order to revise his Ausbreitung book. However, he died suddenly at age 71 without completing it. A Horst Gerson lecture series was established in his memory at the University of Groningen. Gerson was at heart a connoisseur-style scholar–learned from his mentor Cornelis Hofstede de Groot–but one who blended an appreciation of documents, iconography, Geistesgeschichte and the Warburg Institute’s conceptual-style art history into a cohesive method. Like any synthesizer, he attracted critics from all sides. Max J. Friedländer a connoisseur of a generation before, paid Gerson the back-handed compliment by quipping that of all the people he rejected, Gerson was the least aggregious (“Von allen die verneinen, ist mir der Gerson noch am wenigsten zur Last”). If an older generation found him too willing to reject attributions, a younger generation found him not vigorous enough (van Gelder). The main goal of his teaching was to familiarize his students with the evaluation of style and the esthetic value of works of art (K. G. Boon). In his obituary, J. G. van Gelder noted tactfully that his ideas on connoisseurship did not allow for teamwork.

Selected Bibliography

[complete bibliography:] De Vries, L. “Lijst van publikaties van H.K. Gerson.” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek/Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art 23 (1972) Bussum: Fibula Van Dishoeck, 1972, pp. 513-520; Philips Koninck. Ein Beitrag zur Erforschung der Holländischen Malerei des XVII. Jahrhunderts. Berlin, 1936; Ausbreitung und Nachwirkung der holländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts. Haarlem: 1942; De Nederlandse Schilderkunst. vol. I. Van Geertgen tot Frans Hals. De schoonheid van ons land, 8. Amsterdam: Contact, 1951; De Nederlandse Schilderkunst. vol. II. Het tijdperk van Rembrandt en Vermeer. De schoonheid van ons land, 11. Amsterdam: Contact, 1953; De Nederlandse Schilderkunst. vol. III, Voor en na Van Gogh. De schoonheid van ons land, 17. Amsterdam: Contact, 1961; and Ter Kuile E. H. Art and Architecture in Belgium 1600-1800. The Pelican History of Art. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1960; De taal van de kunsthistoricus: rede aan de Rijksuniversiteit te Groningen. Groningen: J. B. Wolters, 1966; Rembrandt Paintings. New York, 1968; De Schilderijen van Rembrandt, Amsterdam, 1969; Rembrandt et son œuvre. Amsterdam, 1968; revised, A. Bredius, Rembrandt. The Complete Edition of the Paintings. London: Phaidon, 1969.

Sources

Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986 p. 388; Wendland, Ulrike. Biographisches Handbuch deutschsprachiger Kunsthistoriker im Exil: Leben und Werk der unter dem Nationalsozialismus verfolgten und vertriebenen Wissenschaftler. Munich: Saur, 1999, vol. 1: 190-194; Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999: 112-114; [Festschrift] Opgedragen aan Prof. Dr. H. Gerson. Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek/Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art 23 (1972). Edited by H.W. van Os and others. Bussum: Fibula Van Dishoeck, 1972; Grasman, Edward. Gerson in Groningen: een portret van Horst Gerson, kunstkenner en hoogleraar kunstgeschiedenis (1907-1978). Hilversum: Verloren, 2007; [obituaries:] Boon, K. G. “Horst Karl Gerson (2 maart 1907-10 juni 1978)” in Jaarboek van de Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen (1978). Amsterdam-Oxford-New York: B.V. Noord-Hollandse Uitgevers Maatschappij, 1979: 163-172; “Horst Gerson (1907-1978), in memoriam” Oud Holland 92, 4 (1978): 225-226;Van Gelder, J. G. “Horst Gerson (1907-78)” Burlington Magazine 120 November (1978): 756-759.

Contributors: Lee Sorensen and Monique Daniels

Gernsheim, Helmut

November 8, 2023April 19, 2024

**Image Credit:** International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum

Full Name: Gernsheim, Helmut

Gender: male

Date Born: 1913

Date Died: 1995

Place Born: Munich, Bavaria, Germany

Place Died: Castagnola, Ticino, Switzerland

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): photographs

Overview

Photography historian and photographer. Gernsheim was born to Karl Gernsheim a literary historian at the University of Munich and Hermina Scholz (Gernsheim). He completed his Abitur in 1933 and studied art history in Munich from 1933-1934. Despite his father’s conversion to Christianity, the younger Gersheim was forced to abandon his schooling when the Nazi government forbade those “non-Aryan descent” in universities. Between 1934-1936 Gernsheim retrained to a more practical occupation, photography, at the State Institute for Photography in Munich, graduating with a journeyman’s level. He specialized in color photography. He headed the portrait studio Pigorsch in Küstrin/East Prussia in 1936 and between 1936 and 1937 was a photographer for the company Uvachrom AG in Munich. He traveled to London in the summer of 1937 for photographs in the National Gallery and found he was unable to return to Germany. He first was a guest of an English family, then intermittently freelance for various companies. In July 1940 he was classified a ‘friendly enemy alien’ and interned first in England and then deported to detention camp at Hay, New South Wales, Australia. Freed from that status, he met and lived with Alison Eames (d. 1969) in 1942 (married 1946), with whom he collaborated on with many publications, and secured work for the Warburg Institute, London (through 1945) and the National Buildings Record where he created a photographic inventory of historic buildings and monuments in London, some before their imminent destruction by bombs. His first book, New Photo Vision, a collections of lectures he gave while an internee in Australia, appeared the same year. The influential American writer and historian, Beaumont Newhall, visited him in London in 1944 urging him to actively collect photographs, which he started in 1945. His war photos were exhibited in the Churchill Club, at the Courtauld Institute and at the National Gallery. Gernsheim gave up photographing completely to concentrate on the research and collecting of historical photographs. His research led to his 1952 discovery of the earliest known photograph, 1826, by Joseph Nicephore Niepce (1765-1833). He was the first to publish Lewis Carroll’s photos as well. The “Gemsheim Collection” was by this time so prestigious many were lent many museums in the USA and Europe, including “100 years of photography, 1839-1939”, which travelled throughout Germany (1959-1961). He published numerous articles on the history of photography. Beginning in 1953 he worked as co-editor of the Photography Yearbook. Together with his wife, he published a sweeping monumental History of Photography in 1955; it became a standard for photo history. During these years Gernsheim lobbied intensely for a national photography collection, but despite eminent supporters of the project, it never came to fruition. He sold his photography collection to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin. In 1966, he retired to Switzerland (Castagnola, Ticino). He re-married after his first wife died. In Switzerland he lectured on African art and photography until his own death in 1995.

Gernsheim was one of the first (and certainly the most important early) photography historian. The Independent termed him “one of the most influential figures in the history of photography.” His work came under praise from Kenneth Clark and Nikolaus Bernard Leon Pevsner though through his ascerbic personality he delt other historians a very public ire. Chief among these was his disparagement of the Royal Photographic Society. At a time before the value of historical photographs was appreciated, he started collecting, researching and publishing about photography, preserving many forgotten photographers of the 19th century.

Selected Bibliography

New photo vision. London 1942

Twelfth-century wall paintings. 1947
Julia Margaret Cameron. Her life and photographic work. 1948, 2. rev. Aufl., London 1971, rev. u. erw. Neuauflage 1975
The man behind the camera. London 1948
Lewis Carroll – Photographer. 1949, 2. rev. Aufl. 1969
Focus on architecture and sculpture. An original approach. to the photography

of architecture and sculpture. London 1949
Beautiful London. 103 photographs. Vorwort von James Pope-Hennessy. London 1950, New York 1951
Masterpieces of Victorian photography. London 1951
with Alison Gernsheim und Quentin Bell: Those impossible English. 1952
with Alison Gernsheim: Roger Fenton. Photographer of the Crimean War. 1954, 2. Aufl. 1973

The history of photography. From the earliest use of the camera obscura in the eleventh century up to 1914. London 1955, 3. rev. u. erw. Aufl. u.d.
The history of photography from the camera obscura to the beginning of the modern era. 1969, New York 1985
with Randolph Churchill: Churchill His life in photographs. 1955
and Gernsheim, Alison. L. J. M. Daguerre. The world’s first photographer. New York 1956. Engl. Ausg. u.d.T. L. f. M. Daguerre. The history of the diorama and the daguerreotype. London 1956, 2. Aufl. 1968

with Alison Gernsheim: Victoria R. A biography with four hundred illustrations based on her personal photograph album. New York 1959. Engl. Ausg. u.d.T.: Queen Victoria. A biography in word and picture. London 1959
with Alison Gernsheim: The recording eye. A hundred years of great events as seen by the camera 1839-1939. New York 1969. Engl. Ausg. u.d.T.: Historie events, 1839-1939. London 1960
Creative photography. Aesthetic trends 1839-1960. New York 1962, rev. Neuaufl.1991
with Alison Gernsheim: Edward VII and Queen Alexandra. A biography in. word
and picture. 1962

with Alison Gernsheim: Creative photography. 1826 to the present. An exhibition from the Gernsheim Collection. (Ausst.kat. Wayne State University) 1963
Fashion and reality. 1963, 2. Aufl. 1981
with Alison Gernsheim: A concise history of photography. London 1965, 2. rev.
Aufl. London 1971, 3. Aufl. New York 1987
Hrsg. mit Alison Gernsheim, Einleitung: Alvin Langdon Coburn, photographer. An autobiography with over 70 reproductions of his work. New York 1966, 2. veränd. Aufl. 1978

The 150th anniversary ofphotography. In: Hist. Photogr. 1, 1977, H. 1, S. 3-8
The origins of photography. New York 1982
The rise of photography 1850-1880. The age of collodion. London, New York 1987 (= The history of photography. 2)

Sources

[obiturary] “Helmut Gernsheim” The Times (London), July 25, 1995, p.17; Wendland, Ulrike. Biographisches Handbuch deutschsprachiger Kunsthistoriker im Exil: Leben und Werk der unter dem Nationalsozialismus verfolgten und vertriebenen Wissenschaftler. Munich: Saur, 1999, vol. 1, pp. 187-9.

Contributors: Cassandra Klos

Gerkan, Armin von

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Gerkan, Armin von

Other Names:

Armin von Gerkan

Gender: male

Date Born: 1884

Date Died: 1969

Place Born: Subbath, Kurland, Germany

Place Died: Hamburg, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

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

Overview

Greek and Roman architectural historian. Gerkan was born in a small town on the Baltic coast. He initially studied at Riga, Latvia, but during the insurgency with Russian in 1906, he switched to Dresden (though he received his diploma from Riga). He traveled to Greece and Asia Minor after graduation. Wilhelm Dörpfeld secured him a position at the excavations at Miletos, Didyma and Samos (1908-1914) under the direction of Theodor Wiegand. He served as a Russian officer during World War I and after 1918 volunteering in a German military unit. In 1920 he was appointed to the Berlin museum, where Wiegand was director of the Antiquities section and which had sponsored the pre-war excavations. Gerkan published the Miletos excavations in three volumes for the museum. He completed a dissertation at the university in Greifswald on city planning in ancient Greece (Griechische Stadteanlagen). In 1923 he accepted the post of Second Secretary of the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) in Rome. During these years he researched and publish the topography of ancient Rome and revived the archaeological course in Pompeii. He served as first secretary for the DAI in both Athens and Rome, but was passed over for the directorship in Athens for political reasons in favor of a Nazi candidate in 1936. Following the retirement (dismissal by the Nazi’s) of Ludwig Curtius in 1938, he assumed the provisional directorship of the DAI in Rome. He left Rome at its capture by the Allies in 1944. After the war, taught as a guest professor at the University of Bonn, 1948-1954 and at Göttingen, then at Cologne and Hamburg. Gerkan is a seminal figure in ancient architectural history. His Griechische Stadteanlage is still consulted today as a basic text for ancient city planning and his methodology has been widely adopted.

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Griechische Städteanlagen. Greifswald, 1924, published as, Griechische Städteanlagen: Untersuchungen zur Entwicklung des Städtebaues im Altertlum. Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1924; and Müller-Wiener, Wolfgang. Das Theater von Epidauros. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1961; and L’Orange, Hans Peter. Der spätantike Bildschmuck des Konstantinsbogens. Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1939; and Rehm, Albert. Die Stadtmauern. Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1935; Der Altar des Artemis-tempels in Magnesia am Mäander. Berlin: H. Schoetz, 1929; and Krischen, Fritz, and Drexel, Friedrich, and Neugebauer, Karl Anton, and Rehm, Albert, and Wiegand, Theodor. Thermen und Palaestren. Berlin,: H. Schoetz, 1928; Kalabaktepe, Athenatempel und Umgebung. Berlin: Verlag von Schoetz und Parrhysius, 1925; Das Stadion. Berlin: Vereiningung wissenschaftlicher Verleger, 1921; Der Poseidonaltar bei kap Monodendri. Berlin: G. Reimer, 1915.

Sources

Naumann, R. “Gerkan, Armin von.” Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 226-227; “Gerkan, Armin von.” Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, vol. 1, pp. 491, and mentioned 493.

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

Gerhard, Eduard

November 8, 2023April 18, 2024

Full Name: Gerhard, Eduard

Other Names:

Friedrich Wilhelm Eduard Gerhard

Gender: male

Date Born: 29 November 1795

Date Died: 12 May 1867

Place Born: Poznań, Greater Poland Voivodeship, Poland

Place Died: Berlin, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

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

Overview

Scholar of ancient Greek and Roman art; early creator of corpora; co-founder of the early group later to become the Deutsches archäologisches Institut. He was born in Posen, Prussia, which is present-day, Poznań, Poland. Gerhard studied philology at the universities of Breslau and Berlin, the latter under the classicist August Böckh (1785-1867). A trip to Italy in 1819-20 excited an interest in archaeology, which he continued at Bonn (1821). He returned to Rome the following year where he met fellow northern European classical scholars, including Theodor S. Panofka, August Kestner, and Otto von Stackelberg (1787-1837) with whom he formed a group known as the Roman Hyperboreans’ Association (Hyperboreisch-römische Gesellschaft). The result of his association with the Gesellschaft was Gerhard’s 1823 book on the Roman Forum, Della Basilica Giulia ed alcuni siti del Foro Romano, where he established the exact site of the basilica. He also made the Roman acquaintance of Christian Josias Bunsen (1791-1860), Carlo Fèa, the sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844). Sensing a need for a basic scholarly inventory of major archaeological collections, he and Panofka wrote the first volume of a corpus of sculptures in the Museo Archeologico in Naples, Neapels antike Bildwerke. Panofka cataloged the vases of the museum and Gerhard the classical sculpture. No further volumes, however, appeared. He also assisted in Bunsen’s Beschreibung der Stadt Rom, 1829. The success of the Hyperboreans suggested that they should open their membership to a larger audience. In 1829, too, the Instituto Corrispondenza Archeologica or Institut für archäologisches Korrespondenz (Institute for Archaeological Correspondence) was established. In 1831, Gerhard issued his “Rapporto intorno i vasi volcenti” in the organ for the Institute, the Annali dell’Istituto. In it, Gerhard described the Etruscan excavations at Vulci first-hand and suggested the outline of the four major vase types of Greek painted vases. The seminal publication also supported the analysis by Luigi Antonio Lanzi that the vases were Greek in origin, simply discovered in Etruscan tombs. Gerhard moved to Berlin in 1834 and began publishing the Berlins antike Bildwerke, a projected monographic series on the classical objects in that city. Two years later the first and only volume appeared. Gerhard was now occupied with an inventory of Greek vases, the Auserlesene griechische Vasenbilder, which began in 1839. In 1840 his corpus of Etruscan mirrors, Etruskische Spiegel, began. Vasenbilder appeared fully in his lifetime (four volumes, complete in 1858) and Etruskische Spiegel completed by colleagues. Gerhard was appointed professor of archaeology at the University in Berlin in 1843. In 1855 he assumed the duties of director of the sculpture collection (Antiquarium) of the Königliches Museum, Berlin. He wrote a Griechische Mythologie (1854, 55) during these final years. Upon his death in 1867 he was succeeded in Berlin by Ernst Curtius. His students included Alexander Conze and those who studied with him included Reinhard Kekulé. Gerhard continued the aestheticising tradition of Winckelmann in studying a wide range of ancient art. Gerhard’s commitment to intellectual institutions, such as his cofounding of the Institut für archäologisches Korrespondenz was significant for its later development into the German Archaeological Institute (Deutsches archäologisches Institut) in 1871. Gerhard served as Director of the IfAK for most of the first three decades of its existence. Among his many contributions, his dedication to publicizing antique objects, heretofore only know through first-hand acquaintance and much travel, remains paramount. Auserlesene griechische Vasenbilder and Etruskische Spiegel represent a serious systematic account and scholarly treatments of their subject. His arrangement and methodology because the basis by which most other classical and art-historical corpora were designed. His reliance on iconography and subject according to modern standards appears forced (Elliott).

Selected Bibliography

[complete bibliography:] “Eduard Gerhard, Verzeichnis seiner Schriften.” Dem Archäologen Eduard Gerhard 1795-1867 zu seinem 200. Geburtstag. Berlin: W. Arenhövel, 1997, pp. 16-24; and Panofka, Theodor. Monumenti inediti pubblicati dall’Instituto di corrispondenza archeologica. Rome: Institut de correspondance arche´ologique, 1829-1833; “Rapporto intorno i vasi volcenti.” Annali dell’Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica 3 (1831): 5-218; Thatsachen des archäologischen Instituts in Rom. Berlin: Gedruckt in der Druckerei der königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1832; Neuerworbene antike Denkmäler des Königlichen Museums zu Berlin. 3 vols in 1. Berlin: Druckerei der K. Akademie de Wissenschaften, 1836; Antike Bildwerke zum ersten Male bekannt gemacht. Stuttgart: J.G. Cotta, 1827; Berlins antike Bildwerke. Part I. Berlin: G. Reimer, 1836; Etruskische und kampanische vasenbilder des Königlichen museums zu Berlin. Berlin: G. Reimer, 1843; Etruskische Spiegel. 5 vols. Berlin: G. Reimer, 1843-1897; “über archaologische Apparate und Musseen.” in: AZ 16, nos. 116, 117 (August-September 1858); Trinkschalen und Gefässe des Königlichen Museums zu Berlin und anderer Sammlungen. 2 vols. Berlin: G. Reimer, 1848-1850; Griechische Mythologie. Berlin: G. Reimer, 1854-1855; über Orpheus und die Orphiker eine akademische Abhandlung. Berlin: Druckerei der Königl. Akademie der Wissenschaften (In Commission bei Dümmler), 1861.

Sources

Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 20-22; Kästner, Ursula, and Borbein, Adolf Heinrich. 150 Jahre Archäologische Gesellschaft zu Berlin. Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1993; Suzanne L. Marchand. Down from Olympus: Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750-1970. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996: 54-60; Elliott, John A. “Gerhard, Friedrich Wilhelm Eduard.” Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, vol. 1, pp. 489-491; Wrede, Henning, ed. Dem Archäologen Eduard Gerhard 1795-1867 zu seinem 200. Geburtstag. Berlin: W. Arenhövel, 1997;

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

Gere, John Arthur

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Gere, John Arthur Giles

Other Names:

J.A. Gere

Gender: male

Date Born: 07 October 1921

Date Died: 01 January 1995

Place Born: UK

Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Career(s): art historians

Institution(s): British Museum

Overview

British Museum curator and connoisseur of sixteenth-century Italian drawings. Gere was born to Edward Arnold, a British patent examiner, and Catherina Giles (Gere). His artistic interests and passion as a collector were strongly influenced by his upbringing. His father’s half-brother Charles March Gere (1869-1957), and two sisters were artists at the Birmingham school and his mother was associated with the Vorticist circle of Wyndham Lewis. Initially beginning his higher education at Winchester, he left in 1939 and joined the King’s Royal Rifle Corps––but he was forced to leave due to health complications. He entered Oxford University in 1940 receiving a BA in 1943 in English at Balliol. The Rosetti scholar John Bryson (1896-1976), who encouraged his scholarly interests in the Pre-Raphaelites. After finishing at Oxford, he volunteered at the Tate Museum until he quarreled with the cantankerous director, John Rothenstein.

In 1946, Gere was appointed an Assistant Keeper in the Department of Prints and Drawings under the supervision of the Keeper Edward “Teddy” Croft-Murray (1907-1980). He made his debut as an author in 1948 when he co-authored with Robin Ironside (1912-1965) on the “Pre-Raphaelite Painters,” published in Alphabet and Image and the same year an article in the The Burlington Magazine. His preliminary work revolved assisting Keepers A. E. Popham and Philip Pouncey on preparing for the revision and publication of the catalog of the early Italian drawings in the British Museum. Gere and Pouncey further collaborated to compile more catalogs of the department’s drawings and published Raphael and his Circle in 1962. These catalogs were commended for their original judgment, precision, and concision, which set new standards in the connoisseurship of their fields. His early education and success with the catalog inspired his original research on the drawings of Taddeo Zuccaro. In the 1960s, he published a series of articles in The Burlington Magazine to the catalog. and selection of the exhibition reviews Disegui degli Zuccari at the Uffizi 1966, Dessius de Taddeo et Federico Zuccaro at the Louvre in 1969, and the publication of Taddeo Zuccaro: His development studied in his drawings, also in the same year. Being the first to define a corpus of work by Taddeo, Gere’s convictions provided a study to distinguish Taddeo’s compositions from those by Federico, his previously better-known brother, and being a key moment in sixteenth-century art. Gere also assisted Virginia Surtees with her catalogue raisonné on Rossetti which appeared in 1971.

After serving his role as Assistant Keeper for twenty years, he became Keeper in 1973 at the retirement of Croft-Murray. He was responsible for the acquisition in the field of Italian drawings was of the highest quality (Mantegna, Bronzino, and Sebastiano del Piombo among them). Keeper Nicholas Turner (b. 1947) and Gere collaborated to assemble the great exhibitions of drawings by Michelangelo in 1976, and by Raphael in 1983. Gere retired from the Museum in 1981, but he continued to supplement his research and collaborate with colleagues. He worked once more with Pouncey to co-author Artists Working in Rome c. 1550 to 1640 in 1983. He continued to collect and curate art until his death in 1995.

Selected Bibliography

Pre-Raphaelite Drawings. Alphabet and Image 6. 1948.;and Ironside, Robin. Pre-Raphaelite Painters. London: Phaidon Press, 1948;
British Museum A. E Popham Philip Pouncey Johannes Wilde John A Gere and Nicholas Turner. 1950. Italian Drawings in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum. London;
Mostra Di Disegni Degli Zuccari : (Taddeo E Federico Zuccari E Raffaellino Da Reggio). Florence: L.S. Olschki. 1996;
Taddeo Zuccaro His Development Studied in His Drawings. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969;
and Nicholas Turner. Drawings by Raphael: From the Royal Library the Ashmolean the British Museum Chatsworth and Other English Collections. London: Trustees of the British Museum by British Museum, 1983;.
The Study of Italian Drawings: The Contribution of Philip Pouncey. London: Trustees of the British Museum by British Museum Press, 1994;
and Nicholas Turner. Pre-Raphaelite Drawings in the British Museum. London: Trustees of the British Museum, British Museum Press, 1994;

Sources

Gere, J. A. “Taddeo Zuccaro as a Designer for Maiolica.” The Burlington Magazine 105, no. 724 (1963): 306–304;
Penny, Nicholas. “John Gere (1921-95).” The Burlington Magazine 137, no. 1106 (1995): 319–21;
White Christopher. “John Arthur Giles Gere 1921-1995.” Proceedings of the British Academy 90,Lectures and Memoirs:1995 1996.

Contributors: Doriz Concepcion

Gerdts, William

November 8, 2023April 18, 2024

Full Name: Gerdts, William

Other Names:

William H. Gerdts

Gender: male

Date Born: 1929

Place Born: Jersey City, Hudson, NJ, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): American (North American)

Overview

Americanist art historian. Professor, Graduate Center, City University of New York. Gerdts attended Amherst College beginning in 1945 where fellow student Walter Spink (later professor of art, University of Michigan) encouraged him to take classes with Charles Morgan. Morgan, a classicist, taught American and 19th-century European art history as a subspecialty. Morgan instilled in his students an appreciation for all of the art of a period, not just the currently acclaimed masters. According to Gerdts, Morgan and Louise Dresser, curator of the Worster Art Museum, developed in him an early appreciation of American art. He received his BA from Amherst College(1949). Although enrolled in Harvard Law School, Gerdts switched to the Department of Fine Arts where he studied under Benjamin Rowland, Jr. He achieved both master’s degree (1950) and Ph.D., (1966). After graduation, he was curator at the Norfolk Museum of Art and Sciences (now, Chrysler Museum) between 1953-54 and the Newark [N. J.] Museum (1954-66). From 1966-69 he taught as associate professor, University of Maryland, then Brooklyn College 1971-74, and as full professor at Brooklyn College 1974-85. In 1985 he became professor, Graduate Center, City University of New York. He received an honorary doctor of fine arts from Syracuse University (1996).

Selected Bibliography

American Luminism: a Benefit for The Lighthouse, the New York Association for the Blind, October 25th to November 25th, 1978. New York: Coe Kerr Gallery, 1978; American Impressionism. New York: Abbeville Press, c1984; American Neo-Classic Sculpture; the Marble Resurrection. New York: Viking Press, 1973; American Still-Life Painting.(with Russell Burke). New York: Praeger, 1971. 0.DOA

Sources

C. McGee. “Lost in Americana.” New York 23 (September 10, 1990): 25; Who’s Who in American Art 22 (1997-98): 425; William H. Gerdts. “A Personal Re-Collection.” For Beauty and For Truth: The William and Abigail Gerdts Collection of American Still Life. Amherst, MA: Mead Art Museum, 1998, pp. 10-30.

Gelli, Giovanni Battista

November 8, 2023April 18, 2024

Full Name: Gelli, Giovanni Battista

Gender: male

Date Born: 1498

Date Died: 1563

Home Country/ies: Italy

Subject Area(s): biography (general genre) and Florentine

Overview

wrote work about Florentine artists (1550), (published in 1896)

Sources

KGK 34, Bazin 37

wrote work about Florentine artists (1550), (published in 1896)

Geldzahler, Henry

November 8, 2023April 18, 2024

Full Name: Geldzahler, Henry

Gender: male

Date Born: 1935

Date Died: 1994

Place Born: Antwerp, Flanders, Belgium

Place Died: Southampton, Suffolk, NY, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): Modern (style or period)

Career(s): curators

Overview

Modernist art historian and curator, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Geldzahler was born to Belgian parents Joseph and Charlotte Geldzahler. His father was a diamond dealer. The family emigrated to New York in 1940 at the beginning of World War II. At age 15, Geldzahler attended the 1951 exhibition of Arshile Gorky’s work at the Whitney, an experience that won him over to modern art, although the initial experience he recalled made him ill. Geldzahler graduated from Yale University in 1957 and entered Harvard with the intention of pursuing a Ph.D. in art history. He left Harvard in 1960 to join the staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His close involvement with contemporary artists in New York at first rankled the some of the Board of Trustees at the Met. In 1966 he was appointed United States Commissioner for Art at the Venice Biennale, the international show exhibiting the best art from all countries. Geldzahler took a leave of absence that same year to be the first director of the Visual Arts program for the National Endowment for the Arts. Working through the Endowment, he was responsible for many $5000 grants to fledgling artists. Geldzaher was promoted to direct a newly created department of contemporary arts, later changed to the Department of Twentieth-century Art at the Metropolitan. In 1969, at age 33, he mounted the blockbuster exhibition “New York Painting: 1940-1970” effectively launching a salvo at the Museum of Modern Art that the Met could be a leader in contemporary art. Mayor Ed Koch appointed Geldzahler the Cultural Affairs Commissioner in 1977, a position he held until 1982. He was succeeded at the Metropolitan by Thomas B. Hess. As commissioner, he successfully attracted private corporations to fund city art funds. After leaving city government in 1982, Geldzahler worked as a private curator, most notably for New York’s P.S. 1 and later for the Dia Art Foundation’s Bridgehampton’s gallery in Long Island. He died of cancer at age 59. Geldzahler’s personal rapport with many of the artists he selected for exhibition gave him special insight into their work. David Hockney’s 1969 double portrait of Geldzahler and Geldzahler’s then partner Christopher Scott remains an important work of Hockney’s oeuvre. Other Geldzahler portraits include those by Alice Neel, Frank Stella, Andy Warhol and Larry Rivers, sculptural portraits by Marisol and George Segal. Andy Warhol produced a 90-minute film consisting nothing more than Geldzahler smoking a cigar. His written work focused exclusively on contemporary artists and much of his writing is more criticism than art history.

Selected Bibliography

American Painting in the Twentieth Century. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art,1965; Andy Warhol: Portraits of the Seventies and Eighties. London: Thames and Hudson, 1993; Charles Bell: the Complete Works, 1970-1990. New York: Abrams, 1991; New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940-1970. New York, Dutton,1969.

Sources

Tomkins, Calvin. “Profiles: Henry Geldzahler.” New Yorker 47 (November 6, 1971): 58-60; “Barbaralee Diamonstein interviews Henry Geldzahler.” [videorecording] WNYC-TV program recorded July 7, 1978; Inside New York’s Art World. [Henry Geldzahler interviewed by Barbaralee Diamonstein] [videorecording] 1986? ; [obituary:] Goldberger, Paul. “Henry Geldzahler, 59, Critic, Public Official And Contemporary Art’s Champion, Is Dead.” New York Times. Aug 17, 1994. p. B11.

Geist, Sidney

November 8, 2023April 18, 2024

Full Name: Geist, Sidney

Gender: male

Date Born: 1914

Place Born: Paterson, Passaic, NJ, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): Modern (style or period) and sculpture (visual works)

Overview

Sculptor; wrote catalogue raisonné on Constantine Brancusi. Geist studied at Stephen’s College, and then at the Art Students League under William Zorach of the Art Students League and Ossip Zadkin. He taught (studio) sculpture at the Pratt Institute between 1961-65, and then founding and directing the New York Studio School in 1964, before becoming instructor at Vassar College, 1968-81. In 1967 he published Brancusi: A Study of the Sculpture. The book was favorably received; reviewers applauded Geist’s use of his sculptor’s sensibilities to explain Brancusi’s work, in addition to a general account of Brancusi’s philosophies and life. Geist was a guest curator of the Brancusi retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago betwee 1969 and 1970. His book Constantin Brancusi, 1876-1957, was the catalog for that exhibition. He was awarded a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship for 1975-76. Vermont Studio School, instructor in sculpture, 1987. He was given a 1992 retrospective exhibition of his sculpture. His later work on Brancusi included Brancusi: The Sculpture and the Drawings (1975) a catalogue raisonné of the artist’s work, and Brancusi: The Kiss (1978). In 1988, he wrote an analytical work on Paul Cézanne, Interpreting Cezanne, explaining that artist’s paintings in terms of hidden images Geist believed Cézanne intentionally incorporated into them. Geist contended that “cryptomorphs” representing particular individuals and verbal and visual puns were the key to Cézanne interpretation. Art historians received these theories coolly (Wollheim, Flam) when not outright decrying them (Elkins). Among the art historians who were influenced by Geist writing was Albert E. Elsen.

Selected Bibliography

Constantin Brancusi, 1876-1957: a Retrospective Exhibition. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 1969; Brancusi: The Kiss. New York: Harper & Row, 1978; Interpreting Cézanne. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988; Brancusi: the Sculpture and Drawings. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1975; Brancusi: a Study of the Sculpture. New York: Grossman, 1968.

Sources

“Elsen, Albert.” Contemporary Authors Online; Interpreting Cézanne. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988 (cover flap biography); Elkins, James. Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles? Routledge, 1999.

Sculptor; wrote catalogue raisonné on Constantine Brancusi. Geist studied at Stephen’s College, and then at the Art Students League under William Zorach of the Art Students League and Ossip Zadkin. He taught (studio) sculpture at the Prat

Geisberg, Max

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Geisberg, Max

Gender: male

Date Born: 1875

Date Died: 1943

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): Dutch (culture or style), Netherlandish, and prints (visual works)

Overview

Scholar of Netherlandish prints. The professor of Art History at Utrecht University, J. G. van Gelder, described Geisberg’s work as one of the praiseworthy graphic studies of Netherlandish of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Selected Bibliography

Der Meister der berliner Passion und Israhel van Meckenem: Studien zur Geschichte der westfälischen Kupferstecher im fünfzehnten Jahrhundert. Strassburg: J. H. Ed. Heitz, 1903; Geschichte der deutschen Graphik vor Dürer. Berlin: Deutscher Verein für Kunstwissenschaft, 1939; Die Kupferstiche des Meisters E. S. Berlin: B. Cassirer, 1924; Der deutsche Einblatt-Holzschnitt in der ersten Hälfte des XVI. Jahrhunderts. 43 vols. Munich: H. Schmidt, 1923-1929.

Sources

van Gelder, Jan G. [Forward.] Hollstein, F. W. H. Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, ca 1450-1700. vol. 1. Amsterdam: Menno Hertzberger, 1949, p. [i].

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