Place Born: Karlsruhe, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany
Home Country/ies: Germany
Subject Area(s): archaeology, architecture (object genre), and sculpture (visual works)
Overview
Architect and archaeologist primarily employed as director of offical construction in Baden. Engaged in long, scholarly argument with W. Dörpfeld over the construction of the temple to Hera at Olympia. Instrumental in restoring the Parthenon to architectural soundness after an earthquake in 1894.
Selected Bibliography
Die Baukunst der Griechen, 1881
Sources
Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 65-66.
Citation
"Durm, Josef." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/durmj/.
More Resources
Search for materials by & about this art historian:
Architect and archaeologist primarily employed as director of offical construction in Baden. Engaged in long, scholarly argument with W. Dörpfeld over the construction of the temple to Hera at Olympia. Instrumental in restoring the Parthenon to ar
Place Born: Anjoutey, Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, France
Home Country/ies: France
Subject Area(s): French (culture or style), Medieval (European), Romanesque, and Spanish (culture or style)
Overview
Professor of the history of medieval art at the University of Toulouse-Le Mirail, 1962-1978; specialist in Spanish and French Romanesque art. Durliat was the son of Auguste Durliat, a weaver, and of Céline Steffan. He attended the école normale at Vesoul and subsequently the école Normale Supérieure at Saint-Cloud, acting as its librarian during World War II, 1941 and 1945, and graduating in history in 1945 (agrégé d’histoire). In 1942 he married Antoinette Grossi. He was appointed professor at the Lycée of Perpignan in 1945, a position he held until 1954. In that year, the fourth volume of his publication on Romanesque sculpture in the Rousillon region appeared, La sculpture romane en Roussillon. For the next four years he worked as a researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). In 1958 he obtained a teaching position at the University of Toulouse-le Mirail. Between 1954 and 1962, he also served as conservateur des Antiquités et objets d’art des Pyrénées-Orientales. After receiving his doctoral degree (Docteur è Lettres) from the Sorbonne in 1961, he was appointed a professor of the history of medieval art at Toulouse-Le Mirail in 1962. His dissertation was L’art dans le Royaume de Majorque. A number of his books appeared in the Zodiaque series “La nuit des temps”. He retired in 1979. In 1982 L’art roman appeared, which is a comprehensive and critical study of the different manifestations of Romanesque art in Europe and beyond. Des Barbares à l’an mil followed in 1985. This was the year of Europalia 85 España, for which, among other events, an exhibition was organized in Ghent, Belgium, on the thousand years of pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. For this exhibition Durliat was a member of the editorial board of the catalog and a contributor. In 1990 he published a major synthesis on Romanesque sculpture along the route to Compostela, from France to Spain, La sculpture romane de la route de Saint-Jacques. De Conques à Compostelle. Durliat was honored with a Festchrift for his 75th birthday in 1992, De la création à la restauration. Travaux d’histoire de l’art offerts à Marcel Durliat. In the last contribution of this volume, “Un Saint-Sernin nouveau”, Henri Pradalier shared Durliat’s opposition to the controversial restoration of the church of Saint Sernin in Toulouse, a project that aimed at bringing the building back to its state prior to the restoration by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc in the nineteenth century. In the introduction to his study, La sculpture romane de la route de Saint-Jacques. De Conques à Compostelle, Durliat takes into account the different views of art historians, including Émile Bertaux, Manuel Gómez Moreno, A. Kingsley Porter, Paul Deschamps, and Georges Gaillard, regarding the origins of Romanesque art north and south of the Pyrenees. His synthesis adopted a chronological framework for the study of the history of Romanesque art and architecture in France and Spain along the pilgrims’ roads to Santiago de Compostella.
Selected Bibliography
“Bibliographie de Marcel Durliat établie jusqu’en 1991”. De la création à la restauration. Travaux d’histoire de l’art offerts à Marcel Durliat. Toulouse: Atelier d’histoire de l’art méridional, 1992, pp. 9-27; [dissertation:] L’art dans le royaume de Majorque; les débuts de l’art gothique en Rousillon, en Cerdagne et aux Baléares. Toulouse: Privately printed, 1962; La sculpture romane en Roussillon. 4 vols. Perpignan: La Tramontane, 1948-1954; Arts anciens du Roussillon, 1. Peinture. Perpignan: Conseil général des Pyrénées Orientales, 1954; Roussillon roman. La Pierre-Qui-Vire: Zodiaque, 1958; Pyrenées romanes. La Pierre-Qui-Vire: Zodiaque, 1969; Haut-Languedoc roman. La Pierre-Qui-Vire: Zodiaque, 1978; L’art roman. Paris: éditions d’art Lucien Mazenod, 1982; Des Barbares à l’an mil. Paris: Lucien Mazenod, 1985; Saint-Sernin de Toulouse. Toulouse: Eché, 1986; La sculpture romane de la route de Saint-Jacques. De Conques à Compostelle. Mont-de-Marsan: Comité d’études sur l’histoire et l’art de la Gascogne, 1990.
Sources
Who’s Who in France. Paris: éditions Jacques Lafitte, 1981-1982, pp. 526-527; [obituary:] Pradalier, H. “Marcel Durliat (1917-2006)” Bulletin Monumental 165 (2, 2007): 139-141.
Contributors: Monique Daniels
Citation
Monique Daniels. "Durliat, Marcel." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/durliatm/.
More Resources
Search for materials by & about this art historian:
Professor of the history of medieval art at the University of Toulouse-Le Mirail, 1962-1978; specialist in Spanish and French Romanesque art. Durliat was the son of Auguste Durliat, a weaver, and of Céline Steffan. He attended the école normale at
Subject Area(s): avant-garde and Impressionist (style)
Overview
First art historian of Impressionism; coiner of the term avant garde for art. Duret was raised in a privileged Charente family whose fortune derived from the cognac firm Duret et De Brie; the private means allowed him to pursue interests without concern of support. As early as 1855-1856 while in London he encountered Pre-Raphaelite painting. His encounter with the works of his countrymen, Courbet and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot in the collection of his cousin, Etienne Baudry in 1862 brought him to a serious interest in art. The same year he returned to London to attend the International Exhibition, reviewing it in the French periodical L’Indépendant de Saintes. Duret made attempts at politics in Saintes beginning in 1863, but was never elected. He continued to travel, representing his firm, to India, China and Japan as well as Egypt and the United States, collecting works of art. His meeting with Edouard Manet in Madrid in 1865 proved crucial for his understanding of Impressionism. Duret wrote Les Peintres français en 1867 in 1867 a book not entirely positive on Impressionism’s style, terming it “too rapid and hasty”. As Manet and Duret developed a stronger friendship, Duret came to appreciate Impressionism more. Duret launched a pro-Republic newspaper La Tribune française, with a group including Emile Zola in 1868. Manet painted Duret’s portrait (today Petit Palace, Paris) the same year. Duret began writing Salon reviews in 1870. His first, published in L’Electeur libre, now championed Manet’s work along with Camille Pissarro and Edgar Degas. The review revealed the nascent Impressionist aesthetic. Duret joined the Commune of 1871 and after its fall–and his near execution–fled to London. He and his friend, the banker and art collector Henri Cernuschi (1821-1896), embarked on an extended tour of Asia where Duret became an Asian art devotee. After his return in 1872 he focused on art and literature, relinquishing his business and political ambitions. He soon became an intimate of all the Impressionist artists purchasing their art and exhorting other buyers. In 1878 he published his most important book, Histoire des peintres impressionnistes, which accompanied the fourth Impressionist exhibition in Paris. His book on the Japanese print-maker, Hokusai Katsushika (1760-1849) led to major interest in that artists work. He met Lucien Pissarro and James McNeill Whistler duirng a London sojourn in 1883. The same year the first of two full-length portraits by Manet was painted (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). His collected essays, Critique d’avant-garde, appeared in 1885. Duret was acknowledged as an expert on Impressionism in his later years. In the 1890s, he coined the term avant-garde to refer to cutting-edge painters, perhaps his most lasting cultural legacy. When his business suffered financial troubles, Duret sold most of his collection in 1894. His collection of Japanese prints was given to the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris in 1900. Other artists who painted him include Whistler (“Arrangement in Flesh Color and Black: Portrait of Theodore Duret,” 1883) and a late portrait by Edouard Vuillard of 1912 is held at the National Gallery of Art, Washgington, D. C. In the twentieth century, Duret published monographs on individual Impressinist and a catalogue raisonné on Manet’s prints. Histoire des peintres impressionnistes was the earliest book to describe the development of Impressionism; it devotes individual chapters to each of the Impressionist painters and remains a primary account of Impressionism and contemporary reception. Duret’s interest as an art critic ranged widely from Manet, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Whistler to Richard Wagner and the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. He was a major figure in introducing Japanese art to France. His painting collection, dispursed to varioius museums, includes Manet’s “The Port of Bordeaux,” 1871 (Musee d’Orsay, Paris) and his portraits by Manet (National Gallery of Art, Washgington, D. C., and Musée de la Ville de Paris). His work was drawn upon by later seminal Impressionist historians, including Gustave Geffroy.
Selected Bibliography
Les Peintres français en 1867. Paris: E. Dentu, 1867, Histoire des peintres impressionnistes. Paris: 1878, H. Floury 1906 [?];. L’Art japonaisles livres illustrés, les albums imprimés: Hokousaï. Paris: A. Quantin, 1882; Critique d’avant-garde. Paris: G. Charpentier et cie., 1885; Histoire de J. McN. Whistler et de son oeuvre. Paris: H. Floury, 1904; Histoire des peintres impressionnistes: Pissarro, Claude Monet, Sisley, Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Cézanne, Guillaumin. Paris: H. Floury, 1906, English, Manet and the French impressionists: Pissarro, Claude Monet, Sisley, Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Cézanne, Guillaumin. London: G. Richards; Philadelphia, J.B. Lippincott Co., 1910; Histoire de Édouard Manet et de son oeuvre: avec un catalogue des peintures et des pastels. Paris: Bernheim-Jeune, 1926.
Sources
Rewald, John. The History of Impressionism. 4th ed. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1973, pp. 191-192, 334-336; [avant garde as a term] Encyclopedia Britannica. “Western Painting — Origins in the 19th century.”; Spencer, Robin. “Whistler, Manet, and the tradition of the avant-garde.” Studies in the History of Art 19 (1987):. 47-64; Inaga, Shigemi. Théodore Duret (1838-1927) du journaliste politique à l’historien d’art japonisant contribution à l’étude de critique artistique dans la deuxième moitié du XIXe et au début du XXe siècles. 3 vols. [dissertation] Lille 3: ANRT, 1989 Nessler, Marie-Chantal, and Royer, Françoise. Théodore Duret: entre négoce de cognac et critique d’art. Saintes: Le Croît vif, 2010.
First art historian of Impressionism; coiner of the term avant garde for art. Duret was raised in a privileged Charente family whose fortune derived from the cognac firm Duret et De Brie; the private means allowed him to pursue interests
Art critic; first to write an insightful analysis of Impressionism. Duranty was rumored to have been the illegitimate child of the writer Prosper Mérimée (1803-1870). He studied briefly at the Collège Chaptal in Paris. In 1856 he co-founded the monthly journal Réalisme with Jules Assézat (1832-1876) and Jean-Baptiste-Henri Thulié (1832-1916), but the magazine folded after only six issues. Duranty focused his Realist energies into the closely-related literary movement of Naturalism. In the 1860s he wrote several novels in the Realist-Naturalist style more dogmatic than literary (Moffit). Duranty habituated the Parisian cafes of Café Guerbois and Café de la Nouvelles Athènes, the haunts of the intellectuals gathered about Realist art critic Champfleury, meeting among them, the artist Gustave Courbet. He encountered Emile Zola (1840-1902) in 1863 who introduced him to the painters of Impressionism; he became good friends with Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas. Writing in the Paris-Journal in 1870, Duranty praised the Impressionist group, attacking academic paintaing–Ingres in particular. The same year, however, Duranty challenged Manet to a duel, fought with swords in the Forest of Saint-Germain-en-Laye after Manet slapped Duranty at the Guerbois for a minor review of Manet’s work. With Zola acting as Manet’s second and the journalist Paul Alexis (1847-1901) as Duranty’s, Duranty was wounded but the affront settled; the two remained friends in future years. Duranty’s fiction writing during this time included an 1873 novel on the baroque artist Duquesnoy. In 1876, Duranty wrote his important work on art, a thirty-eight page pamphlet on the second group show of the Impressionist painters La nouvelle peinture: à propos du groupe dàrtistes qui expose dans les galeries Durand-Ruel, the first serious attempt to set the Impressionist painters in an intelligable context. In it, Duranty attacked the criticisms the new style by Eugene Fromentin, who had supported academic painting. Drawing from quotations of Charles Robert Leslie in Leslie’s book on Constable, Duranty set forth Impressionism as a painting phenomenon which discarding previous notions of art (Isaacson). For Duranty, the prime Impressionist was his friend, Edgar Degas (though he does not mention him by name in La nouvelle peinture): the skilled draftsman relating the figure to the context with equal attention. In 1879 Duranty refined his social-scientific theory of the emergence of modern artists in an article in Chronique des arts, “La Quatrième Exposition faite par un groupe d’artistes indépendents.” La nouvelle peinture has been hailed today as “the first cogent attempt to deal with the salient characteristics of avant-garde painting as a whole during the 1870s” (Moffit). Duranty avoided the term “Impressionism” popularized by the press and initially a satirical term, preferring to call it as the “new painting.” He also omitted the names of the Impressionsists in the essay. Duranty’s thinking was largely influenced by the painting of Degas, the Realist writing tradition and the aethetics of Hippolyte Taine. Though his art history has “serious shortcomings” (Moffit), he placed “the new painting in an objective context in which stylistic innovation was related to contemporary social and scientific advances” (Marcussen).
Selected Bibliography
“Ceux qui seront les peintres (A propos des derniers salons).” in, Desnoyers, Fernand, ed. Almanach parisien pour 1867. Paris: Pick, 1867, pp. 13-14; Les combats de Françoise du Quesnoy. Paris: E. Dentu, 1873; La nouvelle peinture: à propos du groupe dàrtistes qui expose dans les galeries Durand-Ruel. Paris: E. Dentu, 1876, English, “The New Painting: Concerning the Group of Artists Exhibiting at the Durand-Ruel Galleries.” The New Painting, Impressionism, 1874-1886: an Exhibition Organized by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco with the National Gallery of Art. Washington. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1986, pp. 38-49; “La Quatrième Exposition faite par un groupe d’artistes indépendents.” Chronique des arts (1879): 126-128; Le pays des arts. Paris: G. Charpentier, 1881.
Sources
[complete bibliography:] Crouzet, Marcel. Un méconnu du réalisme: Duranty (1833-1880): L’homme, le critique, le romancier. Paris: Librairie Nizet, 1964, pp. 735-761; Tabary, Louis Edouard. Duranty, 1833-1880: étude biographique et critique. Paris: Les Belles-Lettres, 1954; Moffit, Charles. “[introduction to] The New Painting: Concerning the Group of Artists Exhibiting at the Durand-Ruel Galleries.” The New Painting, Impressionism, 1874-1886: an Exhibition Organized by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco with the National Gallery of Art. Washington. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1986, p. 37; Marcussen, Marianne. “Duranty, Louis-Edmond.” Dictionary of Art 9: 425-426; Isaacson, Joel. “Constable, Duranty, Mallarmé, Impressionism, Plein Air, and Forgetting.” Art Bulletin 76, no. 3 (September 1994):427-450; Fried, Michael. Manet’s Modernism, or, The Face of Painting in the 1860s. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996, pp.
Contributors: Lee Sorensen
Citation
Lee Sorensen. "Duranty, Edmond." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/durantyl/.
More Resources
Search for materials by & about this art historian:
Art critic; first to write an insightful analysis of Impressionism. Duranty was rumored to have been the illegitimate child of the writer Prosper Mérimée (1803-1870). He studied briefly at the Collège Chaptal in Paris. In 1856 he co-founded the mo
Place Born: Cervera, Asturias, Principado de Asturias, Spain
Place Died: Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
Home Country/ies: Spain
Career(s): art historians
Institution(s): Museu d'Història de Barcelona
Overview
Art historian, archivist and archaeologist. In Barcelona, he studied Law and Letters, and in Madrid, he received his doctorate in Law. In 1914, he became an archivist at the Cervera Municipal Archive. In 1917, he was appointed municipal archivist of the city of Barcelona. With his efforts as director, the History Archive of the City of Barcelona was opened in 1921. This organization would later (in 1943) gather various groups related to the history of the city under the name of the Municipal Institute of History of Barcelona: the Museum of History of the City, along with the Excavation Service and the Spanish People’s Museum (among others). In addition to his work as an archivist and historian, he was a humanist and in favor of the spread of cultural policies (Eulàlia Duran). In 1929, he organized a pavilion which was the first reckoning of the future Museu d’Història de Barcelona (MUHBA) (History Museum of Barcelona).
To Duran i Sanpere, the archive itself was both a place for conservation and a living center with a connection to the public. The archive center planned other activities such as the Excavation Service in 1912. Additionally, Duran i Sanpere founded the Montjuïc Ethnographic Museum. He was drawn to local archeology, and took part in various excavations. He worked as municipal commissioner of Excavations from 1943 to 1957 as part of the Municipal Institute of History. Moreover, he spent years organizing the Barcelona Municipal Institute of History. During the Spanish Civil War, Barcelona became the operating center for the recovery of historical archives located in the city and throughout Catalonia. This was largely thanks to Duran i Sanpere, who knew that archives were especially at risk for being captured or destroyed during such conflict. In 1936, the Catalan Government appointed him as Director of the Archival Section of the Historical, Artistic and Scientific Heritage Department; he was responsible for recovering the archives and keeping them safe. Additionally, Duran i Sanpere directed publication of the first volume of Història de Barcelona De la Prehistòria al segle XVI. There was no sequel, unfortunately, since he died the same year it was published: 1975. Still, Duran i Sanpere’s representative work is the three volumes of Barcelona and its history that were released, published by Curial between 1972 and 1975. These volumes are notable for the presence of short histories, singular events, and descriptions of monuments. These descriptions are all rigorously documented and “embrace many political, social and artistic aspects” (Eulàlia Duran). Duran i Sanpere’s work on Catalan Gothic in the 14-volume History of Spanish Painting, (1930-1966) is considered some of his most important writing.
Duran i Sanpere dedicated himself to the history and art history of Barcelona and Medieval and Gothic Spanish art (La Casa de la Ciudad de Barcelona, Per a la història de l’art a Barcelona; glosses a documents dispersos). Duran is remembered as a historian of the city of Barcelona. He also directed the rescue of Catalan archives on behalf of the Generalitat. He tended to approach writing about the city and its surroundings in a poetic way (Eulàlia Duran). His historiographical approach used archival, archaeological and artistic information weaving it into a city as a living entity. Duran i Sanpere helped promote a revitalization of the medieval past, one that inspired more interest in that history. Interest was especially clustered around the Gothic period, as in 1950, Duran i Sanpere published his first guide: El Barrio Gótico y su historia. Ultimately, though, his contributions to the city of Barcelona are what infuse his work and legacy. His home is now a museum, the Casa Duran i Sanpere de Cervera.
Selected Bibliography
La Casa de la Ciudad de Barcelona. Barcelona, Librería Francisco Puig, 1927;
Llibre de les Solemnitats de Barcelona. Barcelona, Institució Patxot, 1930;
Els retaules de pedra. Barcelona, Editorial Alpha, 1932-1934;
Los retablos de piedra. Barcelona, Editorial Alpha, 1932-1934;
La peinture catalane à la fin du moyen âge; conférences faites à la Sorbonne en 1931. Paris, E. Leroux, 1933;
La Casa de la ciudad, historia de su construcción guía para su visita. Barcelona, Ediciones Aymá, 1943;
La fiesta del Corpus. Barcelona, Ediciones Aymá, 1943;
El Gremio de los maestros zapateros. Barcelona, Ediciones Aymá, 1944;
El barrio gótico de Barcelona. Barcelona, Aymá, 1952;
La catedral de Barcelona. Barcelona, Aymá, 1952;
Centenario de la Librería Bastinos, 1852-1952. Barcelona, J. Bosch, 1952;
Ars Hispaniae: historia universal del arte hispánico. 8, Escultura gótica. Madrid, Editorial Plus-Ultra, 1956;
Barcelona i la seva història. Barcelona, Curial, 1972;
Llibre de Cervera. Tàrrega, F. Camps Calmet, 1972;
Pels camins de la història [per] A. Duran i Sanpere. Barcelona, Fundació Salvador Vives Casajuana, 1973;
Barcelona i la seva història 1, La Formació d’una gran ciutat. Barcelona, Curial, 1973;
Història de Barcelona. Barcelona, Editorial Aedos, 1975;
Llibre de Cervera. Barcelona, Curial, 1977;
Jacint Verdaguer: “Príncep dels poetes catalans”. Barcelona, Ajuntament de Barcelona, Delegació de Cultura, 1977;
Els Gremis a la Barcelona medieval. Barcelona, Ajuntament de Barcelona, Delegació de Cultura, 1978;
La Passió de Cervera: misteri del segle XVI. Barcelona, Curial Edicions Catalanes, 1984;
La Passió de Cervera: misteri del segle XVI. Barcelona, Curial, 1984.
Sources
Eulàlia Duran. Agustí Duran i Sanpere (1887-1975): història urbana. Barcelona Quaderns d’història, Núm. 20, 2014, p. 247;
Ripoll i Perelló, E. «Prof. Agustí Duran I Sanpere (1887-1975). Empúries: Revista De món clàssic I Antiguitat Tardana, Núm. 41, 2008;
M. Teresa Salat i Noguera. Agustí Duran I Sanpere. Historiador a Cervera. Miscel·lània Cerverina, Núm. 14, 2009;
Montse Graells i Vilardosa. Agustí Duran i Sanpere i el Museu Comarcal. Miscel·lània Cerverina, 2001;
Dolors Montagut i Balcells. Agustí Duran i Sanpere i l’Arxiu Històric de Cervera. Miscel·lània cerverina, Núm. 14, 2001;
Àgata Alegre Batlle. Agustí Duran i Sanpere i la Biblioteca Popular de Cervera. Miscel·lània Cerverina, 2001;
Marcel Dubliat. Art barcelonais: Duran i Sanpere (Agustí), Per a la histórica de l’art a Barcelona, Barcelone, 1960. Annales du Midi, Volume 73, Issue 54, 1961;
Jaume Sobreques, Coll Alertorn i Altres. Història de Barcelona De la Prehistòria al segle XVI. Barcelona, Aedos, 1975.
Archives
Archives Casa Museu Duran Sanpere https://museudecervera.cat/en/c/museum-25
Contributors: Lee Sorensen and Sophia Cetina
Citation
Lee Sorensen and Sophia Cetina. "Duran I Sanpere, Agustí." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/duranisanperea/.
More Resources
Search for materials by & about this art historian:
Art historian, archivist and archaeologist. In Barcelona, he studied Law and Letters, and in Madrid, he received his doctorate in Law. In 1914, he became an archivist at the Cervera Municipal Archive. In 1917, he was appointed municipal archivis
Inspecteur général des monuments historiques; wrote the Gothic art volume with Cesare Gnudi, (1954) for the Great Centuries of Painting series (Skira). He was involved the 1960 Poussin exhibition in France which instituted the long-running debate about the chronology and authenticity of the early works of that artist. The show, launched by Michel Laclotte, and assisted by Germain Bazin, Charles Sterling, René Varin and Jacques Thuillier.
Sources
Sewell, Brian. “The Blunt Truth about Poussin?” Evening Standard (London) February 2, 1995, p. 30;
Citation
"Dupont, Jacques." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/dupontj/.
More Resources
Search for materials by & about this art historian:
Inspecteur général des monuments historiques; wrote the Gothic art volume with Cesare Gnudi, (1954) for the Great Centuries of Painting series (Skira). He was involved the 1960 Poussin exhibition in France which inst
Curator Print Room Bibliothèque nationale; self-trained specialist in the history of engraving. The father of Duplessis was Pierre Alexandre Gratet-Duplessis (1792-1853), who had held positions of recteur at the academies of Douai and Lyon between 1827 and 1830. After his retirement, in 1841, he settled in Paris, where he devoted himself to the education of his son. The younger Duplessis had an exceptional passion for images and prints. He attended the Lycée Saint-Louis in Paris. After his father’s death, in 1853, he entered the Print Room of the Bibliothèque nationale as an intern. His first years of service in this institution already were significant. As soon as 1855 he published a new edition of Le Livre des peintres et graveurs par Michel de Marolles, abbé de Villeloin (1600-1681). With Anatole de Montaiglon he co-authored a study on the French sculptor Jean Antoine Houdon in the Revue universelle des arts (1855-1856), and he was an art critic for engraving at the 1855 Salon. His catalog of the oeuvre of the seventeenth-century French engraver Abraham Bosse appeared in the Revue universelle des arts (1859). Duplessis was a contributor to the Gazette des Beaux-Arts and Magasin pittoresque. In addition to the edition of several catalogs and inventories, he wrote a number of monographs on engraving, his main field of interest. Duplessis earned the Prix Bordin from the Académie des Beaux-Arts for his 1861 study, Histoire de la gravure en France. He then traveled to Rome. He wrote an overview on historic costumes for a two-volume plate book of engravings after drawings by Edward Lechevallier-Chevignard, published in 1867, Costumes historiques des XVIe, XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. In 1869 a more popularizing book followed, Les merveilles de la gravure, which appeared in an English translation a year later. In the tumultuous year of the occupation of Paris (1870) Duplessis was appointed librarian. He held the position of secretary of the Société française de gravure (1873) and of the Société nationale des antiquaires de France (1874). The latter association elected him president in 1882. For the second time, in 1875, Duplessis won the prix Bordin for his monograph De la gravure de portrait en France. He published a monograph on the French caricaturist Paul Gavarni (1804-1866) in 1876, together with fourteen unpublished drawings of the artist. Under Henri Delaborde Duplessis obtained, in 1876, the position of deputy curator of the Print Room. Between 1877 and 1884 he published the five-volume inventory of the print collection of Michel Hennin (d. 1865). Duplessis published a series of albums of the oeuvre of famous etchers and engravers, such as Van Dyck, Potter, Lorrain, Dürer, Mantegna, Schongauer, and Lucas van Leyden. At the invitation of Maison Hachette, Duplessis wrote a critical overview of the history of engraving in Western Europe, which was published in 1880. It is considered his most important work. Particularly interested in iconography he studied Andrea Alciati’s emblemata, Les livres à gravures du XVIe siècle. Emblèmes d’Alciat. He was appointed curator of the Print Room in 1885. With Henri Bouchot he co-authored the Dictionnaire des marques et monogrammes de graveurs. In 1891 Duplessis was elected a membre libre of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. He retired in 1897 due to poor health and succeeded by Bouchot, who was appointed deputy curator in 1898. Duplessis died in 1899. His widow, who died in 1926, bequeathed the library of her husband to the Académie des Beaux-Arts.
Selected Bibliography
[complete bibliography] “Ouvrages de M. Georges Duplessis” in Bouchot, Henri. M. Georges Duplessis ..., pp 47-48; Le Livre des peintres et graveurs par Michel de Marolles, abbé de Villeloin. Paris: P. Jannet, 1855; La gravure française au Salon de 1855. Paris: E. Dentu, 1855; Histoire de la gravure en France. Paris: Rapilly, 1861; Costumes historiques des XVIe, XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, dessinés par E. Lechevallier-Chevignard, gravés par A. Didier, L. Flameng, F. Laguillermie, etc. Paris: Lévy, 1867; Les merveilles de la gravure. Paris: Hachette, 1869, English, The Wonders of Engraving. New York: C. Scribner & Co, 1871; Eaux-fortes de Antoine van Dyck. Paris: Amand-Durand, 1874; De la gravure de portrait en France. Paris: Rapilly, 1875; Eaux-fortes de Claude Lorrain. Paris: Amand-Durand, 1875; Eaux-fortes de Paul Potter. Paris: Amand-Durand, 1875; Oeuvre de Albert Durer. Paris: Amand-Durand, 1877; Inventaire de la collection d’estampes relatives à l’histoire de France, léguée en 1863 à la Bibliothèque nationale par Michel Hennin. 5 vols. Paris: H. Menu, 1877-1884; Oeuvre de A. Mantegna. Paris: Amand-Durand, 1878; Histoire de la gravure en Italie, en Espagne, en Allemagne, dans les Pays-Bas, en Angleterre et en France, suivie d’indications pour former une collection d’estampes. Paris: Librairie Hachette et Cie, 1880; Oeuvre de Martin Schongauer. Paris: Amand-Durand, 1881; Oeuvre de Lucas de Leyde. Paris: Amand-Durand, 1883; Les livres à gravures du XVIe siècle. Emblèmes d’Alciat. Paris: Librairie de l’Art, 1884; and Bouchot, Henri. Dictionnaire des marques et monogrammes de graveurs. Paris: J. Rouam, 1886-1887.
Sources
Limouzin-Lamothe, R. “Georges Duplessis” in Dictionnaire de biographie française, vol. 12, 1970, p. 395; Bouchot, Henri. M. Georges Duplessis, membre de l’Institut, conservateur des estampes à la Bibliothèque nationale, 1834-1899. Paris: Impr. de Lahure, 1899; Müntz, Eugène. Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de Paris et de l’Ile-de-France 26 (1899): 74-75; Durand, R. Procès-verbaux de la Société archéologique d’Eure-et-Loir (1901): 138; Martin, Henri. “Notice nécrologique sur Georges Duplessis” Bulletin Société nationale des Antiquaires de France (1904): 79-91.
Contributors: Monique Daniels
Citation
Monique Daniels. "Duplessis, Georges Victor Antoine." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/duplessisg/.
More Resources
Search for materials by & about this art historian:
Curator Print Room Bibliothèque nationale; self-trained specialist in the history of engraving. The father of Duplessis was Pierre Alexandre Gratet-Duplessis (1792-1853), who had held positions of recteur at the academies of Douai and Lyo
First American to write a book on the history of art in the United States, A History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States, 1834. Dunlap was the only child of a New Jersey housewares merchant, Samuel Dunlap and his wife, Margaret Sargent (Dunlap). The family moved to New York city in 1777 where the father, a Loyalist, was sought refuge (New York was British headquarters at the time). The younger Dunlap was largely self-educated. Despite losing sight in one eye in an accident, he became a professional portrait painter at sixteen, achieving modest fame with two paintings of George Washington. He traveled to London in 1784 to study with Benjamin West where the London theater impressed him as much as the graphic arts. Back in the United States in 1787, Dunlap continued as a portrait painter, yet his true interest was the theatre. In 1787 Dunlap began writing plays. He married Elizabeth “Nabby” Woolsey in 1789. He joined his father’s business, continuing to paint and write. In 1796 he became a partner and manager of the theatrical concern, the American Company and, although several of his plays were produced, none was a success. He left the company, painting to support himself, before returning to the theater in 1806 as manager of T. A. Cooper’s theatrical interests, including the Park Theater. Dunlap left theater managing permanently in 1811 to pursued painting in earnest. He joined the American Academy of the Fine Arts and later through the National Academy of Design organizing exhibitions and working as a professor of historic painting. In 1812 he started the journal Monthly Recorder, a fine arts and literary periodical. He published The Memoirs of George Fred. Cooke, Esq., Late of the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden in 1813 and The Life of Charles Brockden Brown in 1815. His important article on the early history of the American stage, “The History of the American Theatre” appeared in 1832. In 1834 Dunlap self-published his History of the Rise and Development of the Arts of Design in the United States, a biographical dictionary of early American artists with commentary. Though the book is full of errors and prejudice (Rowland), it provides a valuable record of the period. Other histories by Dunlap included The History of New York, for Schools (1837) and volume one of The History of the New Netherlands, the Province of New York, and State of New York in 1839, the year of his death. History of the Rise and Development of the Arts was the first book to trace the emergence of the visual arts tradition in the United States (Lyons). He conceived of his book as “a reverse Gibbon,” referring to the book Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon (1737-1794). Dunlap worked throughout his life toward diversifying an American taste in art and drama, which were still largely British-centric. Many theater historians regard as the father of the American drama. The History as a relatively random assembly of biographies. More recently, Maura Lyons asserted Dunlap’s accomplishment was to create a “partisan tract shaped by competing professional, regional and commercial interests..
Selected Bibliography
[complete art bibliography:] “Anotated Bibliography of William Dunlap’s Published Writins on the Visual Arts.” in Lyons, Maura. William Dunlap and the Construction of an American Art History. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005, pp. 167-172; A History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States. New York: [self published] printed by George P. Scott, 1834.
Sources
Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art: de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, p. 538; The American Vasari: William Dunlap and His World. Exhibition catalog with essay by Arlene Katz Nichols. Hirsch & Adler Galleries, New York, 1999; mentioned, Rowland, Jr. Benjamin. “Introduction.” Jarves, James Jackson. The Art-idea. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1960, p. xxvii; Lyons, Maura. William Dunlap and the Construction of an American Art History. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005.
First American to write a book on the history of art in the United States, A History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States, 1834. Dunlap was the only child of a New Jersey housewares merchant, Samuel Dunlap a
