Art Historians

Eastlake, Charles Lock, Sir

November 8, 2023April 10, 2024

Full Name: Eastlake, Charles Lock, Sir

Other Names:

Sir Charles Lock Eastlake

Gender: male

Date Born: 1793

Date Died: 1865

Place Born: Plymouth, Plymouth, City of, England, UK

Place Died: Pisa, Tuscany, Italy

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): painting (visual works)

Career(s): painters (artists)

Institution(s): The National Gallery

Overview

First Director of the National Gallery, London 1855-65; painter and scholar of artist’s materials. Son of a British Admiralty barrister at Plymouth, Eastlake attended local schools and, for a short time, Charterhouse, Surrey. He studied under the artist Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786-1846) beginning in 1809 and by 1815 was exhibiting. He traveled to France, visiting the Louvre (then known as the Musée Napoléon). His success as a painter allowed him to move to Rome in 1816. There he painted for the British elite staying in Italy, including Maria Graham (later Lady Callcott) and the artists Sir Thomas Lawrence and J. M. W. Turner. His journeys during this time took him to Naples and Athens where he met the German artistic communities there: the Nazarene painters and scholar proponents of the new discipline of art history. Eastlake continued to send paintings to England, showing at the British Institution and the Royal Academy, where his successes lead to his absentia admission in that body in 1827. Eastlake returned to England permanently in 1830, continuing to paint historic and biblical paintings set in Mediterranean landscapes. Eastlake became increasingly fascinated with art history as an intellectual pursuit. His conversancy in German allowed his to publish translations first of Goethe’s1840 Zur Farbenlehre (Color Theory) and the 1842 Handbuch der Geschichte der Malerei (Handbook of the History of Painting) by Franz Kugler. The second section included notes by Edmund Walker Head. These high-profile publications and his reputation as a painter led to Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel’s 1841 nomination of Eastlake as Secretary of the Fine Arts Commission, the body in charge of government art patronage. For some time, Eastlake had been unofficially advising the National Gallery on acquisitions. In 1843 the government made it official by naming him to the highest office in the Gallery, Keeper (curator). Though he reported to the Trustees, the administrative structure at the National Gallery thwarted leadership and lead to innumerable quarrels. Eastlake’s curatorial tenure at the National Gallery was stormy. Acquisition scandals and overcleaning of masterworks, most notably in the press by J. Morris Moore, writing under the pseudonym “Verax.” In 1846, he met Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake a translator of a German-language work on British art by Johann David Passavant. Eastlake resigned over his department’s controvercies, despite the support of the Trustees, in 1847. He returned to writing art history, producing his two most lasting books, Materials for a History of Oil Painting (1847) and the first volume of Contributions to the Literature of the Fine Arts (1848). In 1849 he married Rigby. Together, he and Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake formed Britain’s earliest serious art-history writing ventures. Eastlake was raised to the Presidency of the Royal Academy and knighted in 1850. The same year he commissioned the top connoisseur art historians, including Passavant, G. B. Cavalcaselle, and Gustav Friedrich Waagen to write opinions for the catalog of the Permanent collection of the Gallery in Liverpool. He was appointed the first President of the Photographic Society in 1853. Eastlake’s continual background lobbying for changes at the National Gallery were finally realized in 1855 Eastlake when he was named the its first Director. With this new position, Eastlake hired the artist and art historian Ralph Nicholson Wornum as Keeper (principal curator) and the German art historian and dealer Otto Mündler as “Travelling Agent” [for acquisitions]. In two short years Eastlake and Mündler acquired treasures for the museum mostly from Italy, but from the Netherlands and France as well until the petty criticisms of Lord Elcho, the future 10th earl of Wemyss (1818-1914) caused the dissolution of Mündler’s position in 1858. Eastlake continued to acquire works for the museum alone. He bought whole collections, including the Beaucousin collection (1860), from which Bronzino’s Allegory came, and the Lombardi-Baldi collection (1857), which held Uccello’s Rout of San Romano. Other Italian masterworks added by Eastlake include Perugino’s Virgin and Child (in 1856), Pollaiuolo’s Martyrdom of St. Sebastian (in 1857), Veronese’s the Family of Darius before Alexander (in 1857), Giovanni Bellini’s Madonna of the Meadow (in 1858), and Piero della Francesca’s Baptism (in 1861). Eastlake died while on one of his regular excursions in Italy in 1865. His will made provision for the Gallery to purchase paintings from his own collection at the same cost Eastlake had paid for them. Lady Eastlake also sold her husband’s rich art history book collection to the library. He was succeeded at the Gallery by William Boxall, a family friend who acted as one of his executors. His nephew, Charles L. Eastlake was also a keeper of the National Gallery, 1878-1898.

Eastlake’s combination of scholar, artist, and gentleman allowed him to make fundamental changes in the art community of England during his time. As a tastemaker, he and his wife were among the first to appreciate (“rediscover”) the so-called Italian primitives.

Selected Bibliography

A History of the Gothic Revival. London: Longmans, 1872; Hints on Household Taste in Furniture, Upholstery, and Other Details. London: Longmans, Green, 1868; Notes on the Principal Pictures in the Brera Gallery at Milan. London: Longmans and co., 1882; Notes on the Principal Pictures in the Louvre Gallery at Paris. London: Longmans and Co., 1883, [republished in the United States as] Notes on the Principal Pictures in the Louvre Gallery at Paris, and in the Brera Gallery at Milan. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1883; Notes on the Principal Pictures in the Old Pinakothek at Munich. London: Longmans and Co., 1884; Notes on the Principal Pictures in the Royal Gallery (R. Accademia di Belle Arti) at Venice. London: W. H. Allen & Co., 1888; Pictures in the National Gallery, London. 3 vols. Munich/London/New York: F. Hanfstaengel, 1896-1898; [reprinted papers from the Appendix to the Reports of the Fine arts commission] Contributions to the Literature of the Fine Arts. London: J. Murray, 1848; Materials for a History of Oil Painting. 2 vols. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1847-1869; The National Gallery: Observations on the Unfitness of the Present Building for its Purpose: in a Letter to the Right Hon. Sir Robert Peel, bart. London: W. Clowes and Sons, 1845; translated, Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. Theory of Colours. London: J. Murray,1840; Catalogue of Works of Art: sent in, Pursuant to the Notices Issued by Her Majesty’s Commissioners on the Fine Arts: for Exhibition in Westminster Hall. London: Printed for William Clowes and Sons, Stamford Street, 1844; translated and revised, Kugler, Franz. “General Literary Materials for the Study of Italian Painting.” The Italian Schools of Paintings. A Hand-book of the History of Painting: from the Age of Constantine the Great to the Present Time. [translation of Handbuch der Geschichte der Malerei von Constantin dem Grossen bis auf die neure Zeit.] 2 vols. London: J. Murray, 1842-1846, pp. xxiii-xxxii.

Sources

Robertson, David. Sir Charles Eastlake and the Victorian Art World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978; Ernstrom, Adele. M. “‘Equally Lenders and Borrowers in Turn:’ the Working and Married Lives of the Eastlakes.” Art History 15 (1992): 470-85; Klonk, Charlotte.” Mounting Vision: Charles Eastlake and the National Gallery of London.” Art Bulletin 82 no. 2 (June 2000): 331-47; Howard, Jeremy. “Renaissance Florence: Inventing the 1470s in the Britain of the 1870s.” British Art Journal 1 no. 1 (Autumn 1999): 75-7; Robertson, David. “Sir Charles Eastlake.” Dictionary of Art .

Eastlake, Charles L.

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Eastlake, Charles L.

Other Names:

Charles Eastlake

Gender: male

Date Born: 1833

Date Died: 1906

Place Born: Plymouth, Plymouth, City of, England, UK

Place Died: Bayswater, City of Westminster, London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

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

Career(s): curators

Institution(s): The National Gallery

Overview

Keeper of the National Gallery, London, 1878-1898 and Gothic architecture writer, nephew of Elizabeth and Charles Lock Eastlake. Eastlake was the son of George Eastlake (b. 1785), an Admiralty law agent and judge-advocate, and the nephew of the painter and future first director of the National Gallery, London, Charles Lock Eastlake. As his then unmarried uncle had no children, the painter spent much time with the younger Eastlake, seeing that he attended Westminster School. Eastlake studied under the architect Philip Hardwick (1792-1870), attending the Royal Academy Schools in 1853. Three years later he married Eliza Bailey (d. 1911). He abandoned architecture shortly thereafter in favor of art history, spending the next two years studying art and buildings in Europe. He was caught up in the nineteenth-century’s renewed interest in the Gothic style. By this time his uncle had married the art writer Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake, Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake, and become the director of the National Gallery, London. The younger Eastlake wrote articles for Cornhill Magazine, Building News, Punch, and the London Review as a freelance journalist on a variety of topics. However, interior design was his greatest interest. After a series of pieces on taste in the journal The Queen, he published a highly popular book on the topic, Hints on Household Taste, in Furniture, Upholstery and other Details in 1868. The title went through many British editions and an American edition appeared in 1881. Eastlake was appointed secretary of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1866. A second book, A History of the Gothic Revival in England, appeared in 1872. His lectures on decorative art and workmanship for the Social Science Congress appeared in published form in 1876. His writings led the Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield (1804-1881), to appoint Eastlake keeper and secretary of the National Gallery in 1878. He was an attentive curator, with a modern view toward conservation, placing many works under glass to protect them from the sooty London air. His sensitivity toward the public resulted in his making the museum more welcoming to art students and copyists and devoting several galleries devoted to the works on paper of J. M. W. Turner. As an historian, Eastlake reorganized all the paintings of the Gallery into schools or intellectual groupings, which he called “scholastic subdivisions.” As a curator, Eastlake published small books evaluating the principal pictures in foreign galleries. These included the Brera Gallery in Milan, 1883, the Louvre, 1883, the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, 1884, and the Accademia in Venice, 1888. When Frederic William Burton retired in 1894, Eastlake was passed over as director of the Gallery, along with Charles Fairfax Murray, in favor of Edward John Poynter, a great disappointment to him. He published an anecdotal autobiography, Our Square and Circle, in 1895, retiring from the Gallery in 1898. Spending his remaining years at his Bayswater, London, home where he died in 1906. He is buried in Kensal Green cemetery.

Eastlake’s art history was most influential in taste-making. Hints on Household Taste espoused “simplicity, rectangularity, and honest craftsmanship” in opposition to the popular rococo and neo-Renaissance style of the day. He encouraged the public to “furnish their houses picturesquely, without ignoring modern notions of comfort and convenience.” His ideas had a direct affect on contemporary furniture design and in the United States in particular, the verb “to Eastlake” a home was synonymous with the new style. Though not a scholar, his understanding of art history advanced the principles for the British public. The similarities in the names and vocations of him and his uncle has resulted in some confusion between the two in contemporary references.

Selected Bibliography

A History of the Gothic Revival: an Attempt to Show How the Taste for Mediæval Architecture, which Lingered in England during the Two Last Centuries. London: Longmans, Green, 1872; London: Longmans, Green, 1868, [1st American ed.] Boston: J. R. Osgood and Company, 1872; Notes on the Principal Pictures in the Brera Gallery at Milan. London: Longmans and Co., 1883; Notes on the Principal Pictures in the Old Pinakothek at Munich. London: Longmans, 1884; “Picture Hanging at the National Gallery.” Nineteenth Century 22 (1887): 817-826; “The Administration of the National Gallery: a Retrospect.” Nineteenth Century and After 54 (December 1903): 926-946.

Sources

Spielmann, Marion H. The History of “Punch.” London: Cassell and Co., 1895, p. 362; Eastlake, Charles Locke. Our Square & Circle, or, the Annals of a Little London House. New York: Macmillan, 1895; Crook, J. Mordaunt. “Introduction.” Eastlake, Charles Locke. A History of the Gothic Revival. Leicester, UK: Leicester U. P., 1970, pp. i-xviii; Robertson, David. Sir Charles Eastlake and the Victorian Art World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978, pp. 401-402; Scherr, B. L. “The Gothicist, Shades of Charles Locke Eastlake.” Connoisseur 213 (July 1983): 75-79; Gibson, F. W., and Brunskill, Charlotte L. “Eastlake, Charles Locke.” Dictionary of National Biography; [obituary:] Art Journal 69 (January 1907): 31-32.

Dworschak, Fritz

November 8, 2023April 10, 2024

**Image Credit:** Lexikon der Osterreichischen Provenienz Forschung

Full Name: Dworschak, Fritz

Other Names:

Friedrich Dworschak

Gender: male

Date Born: 1890

Date Died: 1974

Place Born: Krems an der Donau, Niederösterreich, Austria

Place Died: Krems an der Donau, Niederösterreich, Austria

Home Country/ies: Austria

Subject Area(s): medals, metal, metalwork (visual works), metalworking, and numismatics

Overview

Numismatist, director of the medals collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna; assisted in Nazi looting of art treasures. Though he had not been previously politically active, Dworschak joined the Nazi party (NSDAP) at the annexation (Anschluss) of Austria in 1938, perhaps at the instigation of Rudolf Noll, an assistant in the antiquity section of the Museum, and was appointed director of the Münzkabinet (medals collection) of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in 1940. Hans Posse, the newly appointed supervisor of the proposed Führermuseum, set him in charge of numismatics collection of the Führermuseum. He collaborated with the Gestapo to identify collections of “enemies of the Reich,” mostly Jews, for dispersal into several museums, including his own Kunsthistorisches. The included the collections of Rudolf Gutmann, Serena Lederer, Viktor Ephrussi and David Goldmann. He became director of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in 1941.{

Selected Bibliography

edited. Die Gotik in Niederösterreich, 1963

Sources

Petropoulous and other say this happened in 1938]. Dworschak developed popular public-outreach tools, akin to the Berlin State Museums, such as the “art object of the month” and the radio program, “Ten minutes of the museum.” After Posse’s death in 1942, Dworschak oversaw the safe housing of art treasures from the Klosterneuburg Monastery to the Museum, and, in 1944 headed the securing of the Kunsthistorisches Museum objects. He was relieved of his position at the Kunsthistorisches in 1945 with the Allied capture of the city. He returned to his native Krems to head the Kulturamts (Culture Authority) and Stadtarchiv (City archives) from 1947 to 1958. In retirement, he headed the “Kunst der Donauschule” (Art of the Danube School) exhibition in St. Florian in 1965. Kühnel, Harry. “Fritz Dworschak.” Mitteilungen des Kremser Stadtarchivs 23-25, 1985; Haupt, Herbert. Das Kunsthistorische Museum: Die Geschichte des Hauses am Ring. Hundert Jahre im Spiegel historischer Ereignisse. Vienna: 1991; Petropoulous, Jonathan. The Faustian Bargan: The Art World in Nazi Germany. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 179.

Dwelshauvers, Jean Jacques

November 8, 2023April 10, 2024

Full Name: Dwelshauvers, Jean Jacques

Other Names:

Hildegard Rebay
Hilla Rebay
Baroness Rebay von Ehrenwiesen
Hildegard, Baroness Rebay von Ehrenwiesen

Gender: male

Date Born: 1872

Date Died: 1940

Place Born: Brussels, Brussels-Capital Region, Belgium

Place Died: Montmaur-en-Diois, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France

Home Country/ies: Belgium

Subject Area(s): anarchism, anarchists, Florentine, Italian (culture or style), Italian Renaissance-Baroque styles, and Renaissance

Overview

Anarchist and scholar of Florentine Renaissance art. Dwelshauvers studied classics and medicine at the university in Brussels. He continued medical study in Bologna. He published important anarchist pamphlets, Le movement anarchiste in 1895 and in 1901 Le mariage libre. As an anarchist, he hated militarism and the political authority of the church. In 1897 he returned to Belgium where he met anarchist and geographer Elisée Reclus. He returned to Florence to receive his medical degree, but never practiced. Instead he remained in Florence to pursue historical studies in self-imposed isolation, away from the urban blight of the poorer classes with whom he identified. He met a colleague of Reclus, Clara Koetlitz, who became his companion. From 1894 onward, he published his art history under the pseudonym “J. Mesnil.” In Italy, Dwelshauvers was a close friend of Aby M. Warburg and Giovanni Poggi. Between 1894 and 1914 Dwelshauvers as Mesnil contributed to a number of Italian, Belgian and French periodicals, including Il Pensiero, Miscellanea dell’ Arte, Le Mercure de France, La Société nouvelle, Le Temps nouveaux and Van nu en straks. At the start of World War I he returned to Belgium. After the war Dwelshauvers associated with communist activities. His intent was to write a book on the whole of Tuscan history during the time of Botticelli. However, in 1938 he published his Botticelli, a work praised by Saxl for the introspection he read into Botticelli’s people. In later years he was a friend of Romain Rolland. As the Germans invaded western Europe at the beginning of World War II, Dwelshauvers fled, ultimately to a monastery in France were, in the words of Fritz Saxl, “he died a refugee in a monastery on a bed of straw.” Whether he took his own life or died naturally was never clear. Dwelshauvers’ (or Mesnil’s) book on Botticelli comprised one of the major 20th-century research on the quattrocento master, together with Herbert P. Horne. It was Dwelshauvers who determined that the “Adoration of the Magi” (Uffizi) was commissioned by Guasparre and not Giovanni del Lama. Ellis K. Waterhouse termed Dwelshauvers’ Botticelli “a worthy successor to Horne.” Dwelshauvers’ economic approach to social history–he understood the social factors of artistic production–was well received by art historians.

Selected Bibliography

“L’e´ducation des peintres florentins au XVe siècle.” Revue des Ide´es (1910): 1-14; L’art au nord et au sud des Alpes à l’époque de la renaissance: études comparatives. Brussels: G. van Oest & cie, 1911; and Bertaux, E´mile. Italie du Nord: Pie´mont, Ligurie, Lombardie, Ve´nt´ie, E´milie, Toscane. Paris: Hachette, 1916; Masaccio et les débuts de la renaissance. The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1927; Frans Masereel. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Printed Privately by the Oriole Pr. 1934 [Excerpted from, Ishill, Joseph. Free Vistas: an Anthology of Life & Letters. vol. 1. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Oriole Press, 1933]; Botticelli. Paris: A. Michel, 1938; “On the Artistic Education of Botticelli.” Burlington Magazine 78, no. 457 (April 1941): 118-123; Raphaël. Paris: Braun, 1943?

Sources

Saxl, Fritz. “‘Three “Florentines:’ Herbert Horne, Aby Warburg, Jacques Mesnil.” Lectures, vol. 1. 1957, pp. 342-44; Bonet, M.-N. “Dwelshauvers, Jean-Jacques.” Dictionnaire biographique du mouvement ouvrier francais 12: 135-136.

Dvořák, Max

November 8, 2023April 10, 2024

Full Name: Dvořák, Max

Gender: male

Date Born: 04 June 1874

Date Died: 08 February 1921

Place Born: Roudnice, Ústecký Kraj, Czech Republic

Place Died: Hrušovany nad Jevišovkou , Jihomoravský Kraj, Czech Republic

Home Country/ies: Austria

Subject Area(s): art theory

Overview

One of the pillars of “Vienna-School” of art history; employed a Geistesgeschichte methodology (cf. Dilthey). Dvořák was the son of a archivist and librarian for the Palace of Roudnice, Bohemia. He was born in Raudnitz, Bohemia, which is present-day Roudnice, Czech Republic. He began his education in Prague, migrating to Vienna in 1895 where he completed a doctorate in history at the Institut für österreichische Geschichtsforschung in 1897 in Vienna. While in Vienna he became intrigued with the works of Aloïs Riegl and Franz Wickhoff the latter also a graduate of the Institut. In 1901 he completed his Habilitation on thirteenth- and fourteenth-century manuscript illumination in Bohemia. He became Wickhoff’s assistant, and by 1902 a lecturer (Privatdozent) at the University of Vienna. Riegl died in 1905 and Dvořák, with the help of Julius Alwin von Schlosser, was appointed to Riegl’s position as curator of public monuments in Austria, part of the teaching staff of the University. When Dvořák was appointed a full professor in 1909, the appointment touched off the great schism among the art faculty at Vienna. The decidedly pro-Germanic camp resented the Czech Dvořák’s elevation; their retribution erupted at Wickhoff’s death when the group succeeded in appointing the maverick and nationalist ideologue Josef Rudolf Thomas Strzygowski from Graz, an art historian much criticized by Wickhoff, Riegl and Schlosser. Josef Rudolf Thomas Strzygowski set up his own, competing art history institute, known as the Wiener Institut, resulting in Dvořák and Strzygowski teaching from different art history “centers” within the same University. Dvořák took his position as public monuments curator seriously, helping save many Austrian art treasures for post-World War I war reparation. He published a guideline for conservation, the Katechismus der Denkmalpflege (1916), continuing the publication of the Kunstgeschichtliches Jahrbuch der Zentralkommission für die Erhaltung der Kunst- und historischen Denkmale, and the establishment of an inventory of Austrian and Hungarian monuments, österreichische Kunstopographie in 1907. Dvořák’s lectures on baroque art of 1905-1906 constructed a history of modern art beginning with Tintoretto and running through Velázquez, Rembrandt and the impressionists. Though in later years his conception of art would often be viewed a set of tensions, idealism vs. naturalism, etc., his allegiance to art of all periods remained. He was one of the early writers to deal in an objective way with Italian Mannerism, a style still condemned by many art historians (cf. Wölfflin) as degenerate. It occupied his 1918-20 lectures. Donald Posner characterized Dvořák’s 1920 one on El Greco and Italian Mannerism, in which he analyzed the subjective and expressionistic motives of the style as a “spiritual crisis” as brilliant. One of his Dvořák’s publications was a forward to a 1921 picture facsimiles by Oskar Kokoschka. He died in Grusbach, Czech Republic, which is present-day Hru’ovany nad Jevi’ovkou, Cezch Republic. He is buried in the cemetery at Grußbach bei Znaim (Hrušovany) in a traditional grave, although Adolf Loos had designed a modernist mausoleum for him.

Methodologically, the early work of Dvořák is close to that of Riegl’s. He used Riegl’s evolutionary model of art history, describing (in his Habilitation, for example) the “great stream of artistic development.” He employed a strongly formal analysis of objects, arguing, as for example in Das Rätsel der Kunst der Brüder Van Eyck for a linear progression of art based upon stylistic analysis. In Das Rätsel, Dvořák discounted the naturalism of the van Eyck as a sudden appearance, tracing instead the continuous progression from quattrocento realism through French manuscript illumination to northern Renaissance painting. His later work increasingly demonstrates his belief that the intellectual content, discerned from subject mater and form, is the key to understanding it. Instead of a close, connoisseurship reading of individual works, Dvořák’s later writing opts for broader historical principles. This Geistesgeschichte method is best demonstrated in his Idealismus und Naturalismus in der gotischen Skulptur und Malerei (1917, English, 1967), where he argues among other things, that the degree of verisimilitude of an art object reflects an artist’s personal expression, not a struggle between abstraction and naturalism. The work of Otto Benesch and Hans Tietze both build on this method. Dvořák’s view of Italian Mannerism, that it was an angst-ridden time whose incongruous art reflected a chaotic society was adopted by subsequent art historians of Mannerism. The notion that Dvořák’s art-historical writing verged on the popular, sensational and grandiose has been disputed recently (Rampley). Edwin Lachnit described the Vienna School methodology as a triangle of Dvořák, a history-based approach; Wickhoff, stylistic; and Riegl/Schlosser, the linguistic-historical standpoints. Together these four make up the principal fame and direction of the Vienna school of the early 20th century. Dvořák’s students included Dagobert Frey, Guido Kaschnitz von Weinberg, Karl Maria Swoboda, Josef Borovicka Eugen Dostál Jan Gebauer, Jaroslav Helfert, Antonín Matejcek, Jaromír Pecírka, Oskar Pollak, Zdenek Wirth, Frederick Antal, Richard Offner, Emil Kaufmann Heinrich Schwarz and Robert Hedicke; Ludwig Münz wrote his dissertation under Dvořák but Dvořák’s death precluded its approval. His archives, much of which are still unpublished, are housed at the University of Vienna. In Italy, his method was popularized in the writings of Lionello Venturi.

Selected Bibliography

[habilitation:] “Die Illuminatoren des Johann von Neumarkt.” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses (1901): 35-127; “Idealismus und Naturalismus in der gotischen Skulptur und Malerei.” Historische Zeitschrift 119 (1918): 1-62, 185-246. [Also published in Kunstgeschichte: Studien zur abendlichen Kunstwicklung, below]; Idealism and Naturalism in Gothic Art. Preface by Karl Maria Swoboda. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1967; “Das Rätsel der Kunst der Brüder Van Eyck.” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhochsten Kaiserhauses 24 (1904): 161-317; Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kunstgeschichte. edited (posthumously) by Karl Maria Swoboda and Johannes Wilde. Munich: Piper, 1929; Kunstgeschichte als Geistesgeschichte: Studien zur abendländischen Kunstentwicklung. Munich: R. Piper, 1924, English, The History of Art as the History of Ideas. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984; “Vorwort.” Oskar Kokoschka: Variationen über ein Thema. Vienna: Richard Lányi, 1921, “über Greco und den Manierismus.” [in Kunstgeschichte als Geistesgeschichte volume], abridged English, “El Greco and Mannerism.” Coolidge, John, trans. The Magazine of Art 46 no. 1 (1953): 14-23.

Sources

Frey, Dagobert. “Max Dvořáks Stellung in der Kunstgeschichte.” Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 1 no. 15 (1923): 1-21; Benesch, Otto. “Max Dvořák: Ein Versuch der historischen Geisteswissenschaften.” Reportorium für Kunstwissenschaft 44 (1924): 159-97, reprinted in Otto Benesch: Collected Writings. Vol. 4. London: Phaidon, 1973, 267-303; Benesch, Otto. “Max Dvorák (1874-1921).” In Große Österreicher/Neue Österreichische Biographie ab 1815. 10 (1957): 189-198, reprinted in Otto Benesch: Collected Writings. Vol. 4. London: Phaidon, 1973, 304-314; Posner, Donald. “Introduction.” Friedlaender, Walter. Mannerism and Anti-Mannerism in Italian Painting. 2nd ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 1965, pp. xii-xiii; Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. “Geistesgeschichte and Art History.” Art Journal 30, no. 2 (Winter, 1970): 148-153; 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. 21 mentioned, pp. 95-97; Rokyta, Hugo. “Max Dvořák und seine Schule in den Böhmischen Ländern.” Österreichische Zeitschrift für Kunst und Denkmalpflege 28 no. 3 (1974): 81-89 [entire issue devoted to Dvořák]; Busse, Hans-Bertold. Kunst und Wisenschaft, Untersuchung zur Asthetik und Methodik der Kunstgeschichtswissenschaft. Mittenwald: Mäander Kunstverlag, 1981: 85-108; Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Research Guide to the History of Western Art. Sources of Information in the Humanities, no. 2. Chicago: American Library Association, 1982, pp. 152-153; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, p. 163; German Essays on Art History. Gert Schiff, ed. New York: Continuum, 1988, pp. xlix-lii, 279; Schwarzer, Mitchell. “Cosmopolitan Difference in Max Dvořák’s Art History.” Art Bulletin 74 (December 1992): 669-678; Edwin Lachnit, “Max Dvořák.” The Dictionary of Art 9: 472-3 (1996); Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 65-68; Rampley, Matthew. “Max Dvorák: Art History and the Crisis of Modernity.” Art History 26 no. 2 (April 2003): 214-237; Aurenhammer, Hans. “Max Dvořák and the History of Medieval Art.” Journal of Art Historiography 2 (2010) https://arthistoriography.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/media_152487_en.pdf

Duverger, Jozef

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Duverger, Jozef

Gender: male

Date Born: 1899

Date Died: 1979

Place Born: Sint-Niklaas-Waas, Liège, Wallonia, Belgium

Place Died: St.-Amandsberg, East Flanders, Flanders, Belgium

Home Country/ies: Belgium

Overview

Professor of Art History at Ghent. Duverger attended high school in his birthplace and studied history at the Catholic University of Louvain, where he obtained his doctoral degree in 1923. In 1924, he became a teacher at the Royal Atheneum in Ghent. He held this position for more than 20 years. In the meantime, he studied art history at the Hoger Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis en Oudheidkunde, at the Rijksuniversiteit (State University) in Ghent, where he obtained his second doctoral degree in 1930, with a dissertation on the artists who worked in the Southern Netherlands under the patronage of Margaret of Austria, Margareta van Oostenrijk en de kunstenaars. His adviser was Domien Roggen. In 1933, he published a study on sculptors who worked in Brussels, along with an appendix on Klaas Sluter, who was active in Dijon, De Brusselsche steenbickeleren der XIVde en XVde eeuw, met een aanhangsel over Klaas Sluter en zijn Brusselsche medewerkers te Dijon. In the same year, he received an award from the Académie Royale de Belgique for his monograph on the sculptor Conrat Meijt, ca 1480-1551, which was published in 1934. Another study on Brussels as an artistic center followed in 1935, Brussel als kunstcentrum in de XIVde en XVde eeuw. All these and most of his later publications are based on extensive archival research. In the 1930s, Duverger temporarily taught at the Ghent Institute for Art History and Archeology. His courses included sources, bibliography, and historiography of Flemish art, and history of tapestry. In 1941, he obtained a regular teaching position. In 1945, he published a critical study on the authenticity of the dedicatory inscription on the frame of the Ghent Altarpiece, Het grafschrift van Hubrecht van Eyck en het quatrain van het Gentsche Lam Gods-retabel [etc.]. This was a response to the 1933 publication of Émile Renders, Hubert van Eyck, personnage de légende. This Belgian connoisseur and banker had argued that the quatrain on the Ghent Altarpiece was a forgery, and that Hubert van Eyck never existed. Duverger convincingly refuted this theory, which by that time had aroused much controversy under art historians. In 1949, he was appointed professor at the faculty of Arts of Ghent University. He specialized in the field of decorative and applied arts, in particular tapestry. Between 1949 and 1951, and between 1963 and 1966, he was the president of the Institute for art history and archeology. He was the founder of the Centrum voor de Geschiedenis der textiele kunsten (1951), and the Interuniversitair Centrum voor de Studie van de Tapijtkunst (Interuniversity Center for the History of Flemish Tapestry). He wrote an introductory overview of the history of Flemish tapestry for the 1960 publication by Roger-Adolf d’Hulst, Vlaamse wandtapijten van de XIVde tot de XVIIde eeuw. As an active member (since 1948) of the Fine Arts Division of the Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van België he was involved in the organization of several symposia, “Het herfsttij van de Vlaamse tapijtkunst” (1959), “De Bloeitijd van de Vlaamse tapijtkunst” (1961), and “Rogier van der Weyden en zijn tijd” (1964). He also was involved in creating the Nationaal Biografisch Woordenboek, a publication of the Koninklijke Academiën van België. He was the editor of the first eight volumes, which appeared between 1964 and 1979. Although Duverger wrote almost all his works in Dutch, he established an international reputation. In 1964, he became a member of the Comité international d’Histoire de l’Art (CIHA). In 1968, his former students, friends, and colleagues honored him with a volume of 69 contributions, Miscellanea Jozef Duverger. In 1982, Duverger was posthumously honored by the Academy. On that occasion, the tenth volume of Artes Textiles, dedicated to Duverger, was offered to his widow. It contains articles on tapestry by specialists in Belgium and abroad, celebrating the legacy of a person who played a major role in the Flemish art history. His son, Erik Duverger, also an art historian, wrote the Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw, beginning in 1984.

Selected Bibliography

[bibliography to 1968, and later, see] Onghena, M.J. in Miscellanea Jozef Duverger, 1968, 1, pp 13-23, and Onghena, M.J. “In memoriam Jozef Duverger.” Artes Textiles. 10 (1980); De Brusselsche steenbickeleren der XIVde en XVde eeuw, met een aanhangsel over Klaas Sluter en zijn Brusselsche medewerkers te Dijon. Ghent, 1933; Conrat Meijt; ca 1480-1551. Brussels: Palais des Académies, 1934; Brussel als kunstcentrum in de XIVde en XVde eeuw. Antwerp-Ghent, 1935; Het grafschrift van Hubrecht van Eyck en het quatrain van het Gentsche Lam Gods-retabel [etc.] Brussels: AWLSK, 1945; and van Gelder, H.E. Kunstgeschiedenis der Nederlanden van de Middeleeuwen tot onze tijd. Utrecht: W. de Haan, 1954-56; “Geschiedenis van de Vlaamse Tapijtkunst.” in D’Hulst, R.-A. Vlaamse wandtapijten van de XIVde tot de XVIIde eeuw. Brussels, Arcade, 1960, pp. IX-XXXI; “Brusselse patroonschilders uit de XIVde en de XVde eeuw.” De Bloeitijd van de Vlaamse Tapijtkunst, Colloquium, Brussels, 1961. Brussels: AWLSK, 1969: 205-226; “Enkele gegevens betreffende Rogier van der Weyden en zijn kring.” Internationaal Colloquium Rogier van der Weyden en zijn tijd, 1964. Brussels: AWLSK, 1974: 83-102.

Sources

De Seyn, Eug. Dictionnaire biographique des Sciences, des Lettres et des Arts en Belgique. 1. Brussels: éditions L’Avenir, 1935, p. 429; Onghena, M.J. “Prof. Dr. Jozef Duverger.” Miscellanea Jozef Duverger. Bijdragen tot de Kunstgeschiedenis der Nederlanden. Ghent: Vereniging voor de Geschiedenis der Textielkunsten, 1968. 1, 7-12; D’Hulst, R.-A. “Jozef Duverger, kunsthistoricus en hoogleraar.” Nationaal Biografisch Woordenboek. 9 (1981): 225-230; Onghena, J. “In memoriam Jozef Duverger.” Artes Textiles 10 (1980); Steppe, J. “Leven en werk van Prof. J. Duverger” Academiae Analecta. Mededelingen van de Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België. Klasse der Schone Kunsten 44 (1983) 2: 1-8.

Contributors: Monique Daniels

Duverger, Erik

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Duverger, Erik

Gender: male

Date Born: 1932

Date Died: 2004

Place Born: Ghent, East Flanders, Flanders, Belgium

Place Died: Ghent, East Flanders, Flanders, Belgium

Home Country/ies: Belgium

Career(s): archivists and researchers

Overview

Art historian; archival researcher: Erik Duverger was the son of historian and art historian, Jozef Duverger, and a Hungarian mother, Terez Belazy. The young Duverger was raised in his birthplace. After graduation from high school at Ghent Sint-Pauluscollege, he studied art history and archaeology at Ghent University, where his father had been professor since 1949. In his father’s footsteps, Erik specialized in the study of textile arts, particularly Flemish tapestry. Beginning in 1956, he contributed articles regularly in the periodical Artes Textiles. He graduated in 1957. His thesis was on art collections and art trade in Ghent in the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century. In 1958, a travel award brought him to France, where he did archival research in Lille and Paris. During the summer he studied at Munich University, becoming a junior researcher at the Belgian Research Council (Nationaal Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek, NFWO). He married Denise Van de Velde, also an art historian. In his publications, Duverger continued to focus on tapestry, as well as on art trade. In 1960 he received an award from the Koninklijke Academie van België voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten for his study on the history of private art collections in the Duchy of Flanders. In 1961 he earned his doctor’s degree with a broader study in this field, Kunsthandel en Kunstverzamelingen te Gent omstreeks de jaren 1600 tot 1850 (Art trade and art collections in Ghent between 1600 and 1850), which he never published. He remained an employee of the Belgian Research Council, obtaining in 1973 a permanent position, which he held until his retirement in 1997. From 1964 onward he was a regular contributor to the Nationaal Biografisch Woordenboek, a publication of the Koninklijke Academiën van België, for which his father served as editor between 1964 and 1979 (vol. 1 to 8). In 1969 he presented a paper in Budapest on art trade between Flanders and Central Europe in the seventeenth century, and, in 1975, a conference in Warsaw on relations with Poland in the seventeenth century. When the section of Fine Arts of the Koninklijke Academie created a committee for the publication of art historical sources in the (historical) Netherlands in 1982, Duverger committed himself to setting up a series dedicated to archival sources concerning seventeenth-century inventories of Antwerp art collections and household inventories in the Antwerp City Archives. This decision had a huge impact on Duverger’s scholarly career. For the next 20 years he published the (ultimately) twelve-volume Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw, in the series Fontes Historiae Artis Neerlandicae. The first volume appeared in 1984. In 1992 Duverger was elected a corresponding member, and, in 1995, an active member, of the Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie voor Wetenschappen en Kunsten. In 1996, he became a member of the Committee of the Nationaal Biografisch Woordenboek. He was co-editor of the 16th volume, published in 2002. Between 1992 and 1998, Duverger held a guest professorship at Ghent University, where he taught the history of applied arts, art and art trade, and the history of tapestry. He published an impressive amount of articles on weavers and merchants of tapestry and their international contacts, most frequently in Artes Textiles. From 1983 onward he also was a regular contributor to the Allgemeines Künsterlexikon. He was involved in the organization of several tapestry exhibitions and in the publication of catalogs. With Guy Delmarcel, he coauthored the catalog, Brugge en de tapijtkunst/Bruges et la tapisserie in 1987. For the 1996 edition of the Dictionary of Art Duverger wrote entries on important centers for tapestry production, such as Antwerp, Bruges, Brussels, Ghent, Oudenaarde, and Tournai. After his retirement, Duverger remained active in his field. In 2000 he presented a paper in Budapest on “Les Tapisseries flamandes en Hongrie.” He died in 2004. His documentation on the Antwerp tapestry merchant Cornelis de Wael appeared posthumously, Documenten betreffende de Antwerpse tapijthandelaar Cornelis de Wael, erfgenaam van de firma Wauters, prepared for publication by his wife. Duverger’s Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw is an important primary-source collection of documents, reflecting Duverger’s belief in that approach to art history. Extensively used by art historians of the 17th century, it has been praised by many, including Hans Vlieghe in his Burlington Magazine review of 1986, as a foundational work.

Selected Bibliography

[complete list:] “Publicaties van Erik Duverger” in Liber Memorialis Erik Duverger. Bijdragen tot de kunstgeschiedenis va de Nederlanden. Wetteren: Universa Press, 2006, pp. xvii-xxxvi; Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw. (Fontes Historiae Artis Neerlandicae.) 14 vols. Brussels: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, 1984-2006; Documenten betreffende de Antwerpse tapijthandelaar Cornelis de Wael, erfgenaam van de firma Wauters. (Fontes Historiae Artis Neerlandicae IV) vol. 1 and 2, Brussels: Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van België voor Wetenschappen en Kunsten, 2008.

Sources

Pauwels, Henri. “In memoriam Erik Duverger 3 augustus 1932 – 19 maart 2004” in Pauwels, Henri, van den Kerkhove, André, Wuyts, Leo (eds). Liber Memorialis Erik Duverger. Bijdragen tot de kunstgeschiedenis va de Nederlanden. Wetteren: Universa Press, 2006, pp. I-V; Dewettinck-Bourgois, Maria. “Erik Duverger, de mens en de navorser” ibidem, pp. vii-xvi; [review:] Vlieghe, Hans in Burlington Magazine 128, no. 1004 (Nov. 1986): 832-833.

Duthuit, Georges

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Duthuit, Georges

Other Names:

Georges Duthuit

Gender: male

Date Born: 04 June 1891

Date Died: 09 August 1973

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

Place Died: Aix-en-Provence, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): Byzantine (culture or style), Medieval (European), and Modern (style or period)

Career(s): art historians and biographers

Institution(s): École du Louvre

Overview

Writer, Byzantinist and Matisse scholar. Duthuit’s father was a Parisian architect and his mother from landowning family in Auvergne. Both parents succumbed to tuberculosis when Duthuit was twelve and he was sent to live with an indifferent and brutally strict uncle. He learned to live by his wits, developing an engaging personality. As a school he discovered the art of Matisse in the Salon des Indépendents of 1907. At age 19 he met the enigmatic British art cognocenti Matthew Stewart Prichard at a Left-bank vegitarian cafe; Duthuit became Prichard’s most brilliant pre-war disciples (Spurning). An aderhent of Bergsonian esthetics, Prichard advised the young Duthuit that the purest principles of art were to be found in Byzantine art, Mozart and Matisse (Apollo). Duthuit had completed nearly three years of an eight-year military stint when the First World War broke out; as a seasoned soldier, he was among the first to be sent into action. He spent his military leaves at Issy, the home of the artist Henri Matissee. There he met the artist’s daughter, Marguerite Matisse (1895-1982). After the war, he abandoned plans to study architecture in favor esthics. Duthuit believed that civilization was at a point similar to that during the time of the sacking of Constantinople by the Franks. He planned to write a thesis on the lost art of the Byzantine Copts. Duthuit married Matisse’s daughter in 1923 and published a book on Renoir. He accompanied Matisse himself on a 1925 trip to Sicily. He lectured as an adjunct professor at the École du Louvre, assisting the head of the Oriental section, Georges Salles, in a book on Byzantine art. His research took him to the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum in Berlin Bernheims, the gallery representing Matisse, encouraged his son-in-law to write a major book on him in 1928. Duthuit spent years researching it as well as a thesis on Coptic art. In the early 1930s he published two books on Coptic art, hoping for a government posting in Cairo, which never materialized. Meanwhile, the Matisse book, which the artist hoped would become a catalogue raisonne, was relinguished of his publishers until Christian Zervos, an art historian and publisher of Cahiers d’art took it over. Duthuit frequently travelled to England, joining the Gargoyle Club in London, the Bohemian bar run by Prichard-ite David Tennant. In 1933 Duthuit was exposed for having an affair with the wife of Sacheverell Reresby Sitwell, Georgia Sitwell (1905/6-1980); Matisse forbade him to continue writing about him. Duthuit published a survey of the Fauves painters in 1949, reviving interest in this group which had long been neglected. After Matisse’s death in 1954, Duthuit took as his assistant a young literature scholar, Pierre E. Schneider (b. 1925) to again publish a monograph. Duthuit never finished the book, but Schneider became the major Matisse scholar of the following generation, publishing a catalogue raisonné from much of what Duthuit uncovered. In 1956 Duthuit issued a castigation of André Malraux and Malraux’s book Le musée imaginaire in his Le musée inimaginable (Unimaginable Musuem). He and the poet Pierre Reverdy (1889-1960) issued a book on Matisse’s final works, Dernières oeuvres de Matisse, 1950-1954 in 1958. In later years he became known as a scholar of the playright Samuel Beckett (1906-1989). Duthuit wrote on the lesser artists Riopelle, Bram Van Velde and Nicolas de Staël, and the work of Matisse. Yves Bonnefoy edited his writings after his death. Duthuit, along with E. H. Gombrich, virulently objected to Malraux’s concept of an art history/theory where context would be secondary to the psychological forms themselves, as Malraux stated in his book Voices of Silence. Clever, disrespectful and exceedingly funny and handsome (Spurling), his art histories are seldom consulted today.

Selected Bibliography

Byzance et l’art du XIIe siècle. Paris: Stock, 1926; La sculpture copte: statues–bas-reliefs–masques. Paris:G. Van Oest, 1931; and Volbach, Wolfgang, and Salles, Georges. Art byzantin; cent planches reproduisant un grand nombre de pièces choisies parmi les plus représentatives des diverses. Paris: A. Lévy, 1933; Mystique chinoise et peinture moderne. Paris: Chroniques du jour, 1936; English, Chinese Mysticism and Modern Painting. London: A. Zwemmer 1936; Les fauves: Braque, Derain, Van Dongen, Dufy, Friesz, Manguin, Marguet, Matisse, Puy, Vlaminck. Geneva: Éditions des Trois Collines, 1949, English, The Fauvist Painters. New York: Wittenborn, Schultz, 1950; Le musée inimaginable. 3 vols. Paris: J. Corti, 1956; and Reverdy, Pierre. Dernières oeuvres de Matisse, 1950-1954. Paris: Éditions de la Revue Verve, 1958, English, The Last Works of Henri Matisse. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1958; L’image et l’instant. Paris: J. Corti, 1961.

Sources

“Georges Duthuit.” Apollo 78 (July 1963): 68-69; Bonnefoy, Yves, ed. Représentation et présence: premiers écrits et travaux, 1923-1952. Paris: Flammarion, 1974; Labrusse, Rémi. Georges Duthuit: écrits sur Matisse. Paris: Ecole nationale supérieure des beaux-arts, 1992; Spurling, Hilary. Matisse the Master. London: Hamish Hamilton, 2005, pp. 257-265, 291; Labrusse, Rémi. “Notice Biographique.” Autour de Georges Duthuit. Aix-en-Provence: Galerie d’Art du Conseil Général des Bouches-du-Rhône/Actes Sud, 2003, pp. 87-91; [obituary:] “Georges Duthuit.” L’Oeil no. 219 (October 1973): 55.

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

Dussler, Luitpold

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Dussler, Luitpold

Gender: male

Date Born: 1895

Date Died: 1976

Place Born: Munich, Bavaria, Germany

Place Died: Munich, Bavaria, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): Italian (culture or style), Italian Renaissance-Baroque styles, and Renaissance

Overview

Scholar of Italian Renaissance artists, especially Michelangelo. Dussler attended the university in Munich. He served as a soldier in World War I. Afterward, Dussler worked in the Bavarian State Museums. He received a scholarship from the German Institute in Florence, completing his habilitation in 1929, qualifying as a lecturer at the Technische Hochschule in Munich. He advanced to associate professor in 1934. With the rise of the Nazis in Germany, Dussler became a National Socialist (Nazi) denouncing Jews working in Bavarian academics, among them his colleague August Liebmann Mayer. After World War II, Dussler was appointed full professor in 1947.

Selected Bibliography

Benedetto da Majano, ein Florentiner bildhauer des späten quattrocento. Munich: H. Schmidt, 1924; Signorelli, des Meisters Gemälde. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1927; Giovanni Bellini. Frankfurt a. Main: Prestel-verlag, 1935; Sebastiano del Piombo. Basel: Holbein-verlag, 1942; Francesco Guardi. Munich-Pasing: Filser, 1948; Das sienesische Madonnenbild. Aschaffenburg: P. Pattloch, 1948; Giovanni Bellini. Vienna: A. Schroll, 1949; Die Incunabeln der deutschen Lithographie (1796-1821). Heidelberg, R. Weissbach, 1955; Die Zeichnungen des Michelangelo; kritischer Katalog. Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1959; Raphael: a Critical Catalogue of his Pictures, Wall-paintings and Tapestries. New York: Phaidon, 1971; Michelangelo-Bibliographie, 1927-1970. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1974.

Sources

Deutsche biographische Enzyklopädie. Munich: K.G. Saur, 1995ff. vol. 2: 657; Wendland, Ulrike. “Mayer, August Liebmann.” Biographisches Handbuch deutschsprachiger Kunsthistoriker im Exil: Leben und Werk der unter dem Nationalsozialismus verfolgten und vertriebenen Wissenschaftler. Munich: Saur, 1999, vol. 1, pp. 429.

Durrieu, Paul, Comte

November 8, 2023April 10, 2024

Full Name: Durrieu, Paul, Comte

Other Names:

Jean-Marie Paul Simon Durrieu, Comte

Gender: male

Date Born: 1855

Date Died: 1925

Place Born: Strasbourg, Grand Est, France

Place Died: Durrieu à Larrivière, France

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): manuscripts (documents) and Medieval (European)

Career(s): archivists and researchers

Overview

Archivist and illuminated manuscripts specialist; assistant keeper at the Louvre Department of Painting, 1885-1902. Durrieu attended high school in Paris at the Lycée Condorcet. After his law studies he continued his education at the école des Chartes between 1874 and 1878. He then went to Italy, where he attended the école française d’archéologie de Rome. In Naples, he researched the archives of the House of Anjou, on which he published a two-volume study in 1886-87, Les archives angevines de Naples: étude sur les registres du roi Charles Ier (1265-1285). In 1885, Durrieu accepted a position in Paris at the department of paintings and drawings of the Louvre. This marked the beginning of his career as an art historian. In 1888 he was appointed assistant keeper at the Louvre (to 1902), where he was responsible for early French painting and book illumination. In 1889 he married Françoise Duchaussoy (d. 1949). He began researching illuminated manuscripts, in which field he became a specialist and the author of numerous publications. He himself was a collector of fifteenth-century manuscripts, early painting, and French tapestries. In 1892 he wrote a monograph, including a critical catalog, on Jacques de Besançon, a book illuminator in fifteenth-century Paris. From 1887 onwards, he studied the Heures de Turin, preserved in Italy, at the Biblioteca Nazionale in Turin. This Book of Hours originally had been an unfinished part of the Très Belles Heures de Notre Dame of the Duke of Berry (1340-1416). Durrieu was the first to notice a close similarity between some of the miniatures in the Turin Hours and the paintings of the Van Eyck brothers. In June 1901, he communicated this finding to his fellow members of the Société nationale des Antiquaires de France (published in the 1901 Bulletin of this association). A year later, his documentary study of the Turin Hours appeared, along with black and white reproductions of the miniatures. This publication, an initiative of the Société de l’Histoire de France and of the Société de l’école des Chartes, was dedicated to Léopold Victor Delisle. These societies, however, did not allow Durrieu to reveal in this study the possible Eyckian authorship of some of the miniatures. In 1903, Durrieu proudly published his observations on this question in two installments of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts. In this article he also referred to another fragment of the same manuscript, kept at the Biblioteca Trivulziana in Milan, and he attributed at least one miniature in this part of the book to the Van Eyck brothers. His Belgian colleague Georges Nicolas Marie Hulin de Loo apparently was interested in the same question, and as early as 1902 he corroborated Durrieu’s findings. However, the Eyckian authorship of certain miniatures in the Turin-Milan Hours has been debated and questioned by scholars ever since. Durrieu’s lasting interest in the history of the original manuscript led to further studies, including his 1922 publication, Les Très Belles Heures de Notre Dame du duc Jean de Berry, which dealt with the miniatures in the oldest part, preserved in Paris, at the Bibliothèque nationale. In 1902, Durrieu quit his position at the Louvre in order to devote himself entirely to the field of medieval painting and manuscript illumination. He frequently visited the department of manuscripts at the Bibliothèque nationale, then headed (until 1905) by his master, Delisle. In 1904, Durrieu wrote an elaborate monograph on a different Book of Hours of Jean de Berry, illuminated by the Limbourg brothers, Les très riches Heures de Jean de France, duc de Berry. In 1903, he published an article on this manuscript in the Bulletin de la Société d’histoire et d’archéologie de Gand which Hulin had studied. This interest in illuminated manuscripts, shared by the two scholars competing with one another, was stimulated by two memorable exhibitions, one held in Bruges, in 1902, on Early Flemish Painting, and the other in Paris, in 1904, on the so-called French Primitives. Durrieu was involved in the Paris exhibition, mounted in the Louvre and the Bibliothèque nationale, and he wrote his 1904 monograph, La peinture à l’exposition des Primitifs français on that occasion. In 1907 and 1911 he was one of the contributors to the multi-volume Histoire de l’Art, edited by André Michel, with two essays on French painting from 1350 up to the sixteenth century. In various studies, Durrieu focused on the French painter and illuminator Jean Foucquet (ca 1420-ca 1480). In 1907, Durrieu became a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, and of the Institut de France. He was the president of the Société de l’école des Chartes and a member of various other learned societies. After a long illness, Durrieu died in his family estate in Durrieu à Larrivière. Durrieu was held in high esteem by his peers, including Millard Meiss and Charles Sterling. The latter qualified Durrieu, in 1973, as the seigneur de l’histoire de l’art médiéval, and, in 1987, as the grand Durrieu (Suau, 1989).

Selected Bibliography

[Complete bibliography:] De Laborde, Alexandre. Le Comte Paul Durrieu, membre de l’Institut 1855-1925: sa vie – ses travaux. Paris: A. Picard, 1930, pp. 29-139; Un grand enlumineur Parisien au XVe siècle. Jacques de Besançon et son œuvre. Paris: H. Champion, 1892; Communication Bulletin de la Société nationale des Antiquaires de France (1901): 208-209, 227-228; Heures de Turin. Quarante-cinq feuillets à peintures provenant des Très belles Heures de Jean de France, duc de Berry. Paris: Musée du Louvre 1902; Les débuts des van Eyck. Gazette des Beaux-Arts 29 (1903): 5-18, 107-120; Les Très riches Heures du duc de Berry, conservées à Chantilly, au Musée Condé, et le Bréviaire Grimani. Bibliothèque de l’école des Chartes 64 (1903): 321-328; Les très riches Heures de Jean de France, duc de Berry. Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1904; La peinture à l’exposition des Primitifs français. Paris: Librairie de l’Art ancien et moderne, 1904; Les ‘Très Belles Heures de Notre Dame’ du duc Jean de Berry. Revue archéologique 16 (1910): 30-51, 246-279; Les Antiquités judaïques et le peintre Jean Foucquet. Paris: Plon, 1908; Le Boccace de Munich. Munich: J. Rosenthal, 1909; La miniature flamande au temps de la cour de Bourgogne (1415-1530), ouvrage publié avec le concours de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (Fondation Piot). Brussels: G. van Oest et cie, 1921; Les Très Belles Heures de Notre Dame du duc Jean de Berry. Paris: Société française de reproductions de manuscrits ápeintures, 1922; Livre d’heures peint par Jean Foucquet pour maître Etienne Chevalier: le quarante-cinquième feuillet de ce manuscrit retrouvé en Angleterre. Paris: Société française de reproduction de manuscrits à peintures, 1923; [très riches Heures article] Bulletin de la Société d’histoire et d’archéologie de Gand 11 (1903): 178 ff.

Sources

Panofsky, Erwin. “The History of Art.” In The Cultural Migration: The European Scholar in America. Introduction by W. Rex Crawford, 82-111. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1953, p. 85; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art: de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, pp. 253 ; De Laborde, A. Le Comte Paul Durrieu, membre de l’Institut 1855-1925: sa vie – ses travaux. Paris: A. Picard, 1930; Chatelet, Albert. Avant-propos. Heures de Turin. Quarante-cinq feuillets a peintures provenant des Très Belles Heures de Jean de France, Duc de Berry. Turin : Bottega d’Erasmo, 1967, pp. v-xx ; Suau, J.-P. Un grand ‘seigneur de l’art médiéval’: le comte Paul Durrieu (1855-1925). Bulletin de la Société de Borda 114, 416 (1989): 673-684.

Contributors: Monique Daniels

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General Citation

License

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