Skip to content

Art Historians

Rose, Bernice

Full Name: Rose, Bernice

Other Names:

  • Bernice Rose
  • Bernice Berend
  • Bernice Berend Rose
  • Bunny
  • Bernice Harriet Berend Rose

Gender: female

Date Born: 07 October 1935

Date Died: 14 April 2023

Place Born: Miami, Miami-Dade, FL, USA

Place Died: New York, NY, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): Abstract Expressionist and Modern (style or period)

Career(s): art historians and curators

Institution(s): Menil Collection and Museum of Modern Art


Overview

Museum curator and gallerist who brought the study of drawing to the fore of study. Rose was born as Bernice Berend to Rose and Bert Berend. Her mother was a homemaker and her father sold electrical fixtures in Miami Beach. The family relocated to Brooklyn, New York, in 1941 when she was about six. In 1956, she married Herbert Bernard Rose (1929–2010), a lawyer to many prominent American charitable organizations.  Rose received a B.A. from Hunter College, City of New York, where she studied painting with Robert Motherwell and William Baziotes, two artists at the forefront of modern art. In 1965 she joined the Museum of Modern Art, New York, as a secretary in the department of painting and sculpture. Moving rapidly, she was given curatorial options.  Her first exhibition was “Jackson Pollock, Works on Paper,” 1969.  By 1971 she was named associate curator of the Museum’s newly created Drawings Department. She served under the tutelage of MOMA’s chief curator, William Lieberman, a curator known for his encyclopedic visual memory.  Through Lieberman she, too, developed an acute eye (Glueck).   As curator in the museum’s drawing department, Rose organized numerous exhibitions, including her 1976 landmark show, “Drawing Now: 1955-1975” featuring drawings by artists not known for that medium. In that show, Rose highlighted the way in which these artists were transforming drawing. Together with Jean Leymarie (1919-2006) director of the French Academy in Rome and French museum curator Geneviève Monnier (b. 1939), she published Drawing: History of an Art, the first major history of drawing, in 1979.  Another monumental show, “Cezanne Treasure: The Basel Sketchbooks” was launched in 1988.  In 1993 she transitioned to the gallery world, joining PaceWildenstein, where she led a department strictly devoted to drawings. There she was responsible for the 1995 “Picasso and Drawing,” featuring  a number of rarely seen works lent from private collections. By then she and her husband were living in Kips Bay Plaza, an early work of I. M. Pei in New York. When the Menil Drawing Institute and Study Center was founded, Rose was hired as its first Chief Curator in 2007.  She oversaw the foundation’s more that 1,200 works on paper as well as developing the study center’s mission.  She retired from the Menil in 2018.  Shortly after completing the six-volume Jasper Johns Catalogue Raisonné of Drawing in 2023, she died of pancreatic cancer at her home in Manhattan.   She is not related to the art historian Barbara Rose though the two knew each another.

 

Rose was one of the first curators to recognize that younger artists were creating drawings as a separate artistic form. She argued that contemporary drawing was as significant as the other media artists created, countering consensus in the 1960s and 1970s that it was of interest only as a study for a completed art work (Costello).


Selected Bibliography

  • and Geneviève Monnier. Drawing: History of an Art. New York: Rizzoli, 1979;
  • Jasper Johns: Catalogue Raisonné of Drawing. 6 vols. Houston: The Menil Collection, 2018-2023.

Sources



Contributors: Eileen Costello


Citation

Eileen Costello. "Rose, Bernice." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/roseb1934/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Museum curator and gallerist who brought the study of drawing to the fore of study. Rose was born as Bernice Berend to Rose and Bert Berend.

Abbott, Jere

Image Credit: Bowdoin

Full Name: Abbott, Jere

Gender: male

Date Born: 1897

Date Died: 1982

Place Born: Dexter, Penobscot, ME, USA

Place Died: Dexter, Penobscot, ME, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): American (North American) and Modern (style or period)


Overview

Americanist art historian; first associate director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Abbott was born to Arthur Abbott and Flora Parkman (Abbott). After attending Dexter High School, Abbott graduated from Bowdin College with a bachelor’s degree in science and attended graduate school at Harvard University in physics. At Harvard he met Alfred H. Barr, Jr., who would become the first director of the Museum of Modern Art. Barr and Abbott spent time in Paris studying art. Barr appointed Abbott to be his first associate director, taking care of much of the day-to-day operations of the museum. In 1932 Abbott accepted a position as Director, Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts where he remained until 1946. As director, Abbott was instrumental in acquiring modernist works such as Picasso’s cubist Table, Guitar, and Bottle (1919) as he had done for the Museum of Modern Art. He was adjunct faculty at Smith and taught courses in art history. He was a fellow of the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. After his retirement from Smith, Abbott moved to his hometown of Dexter, Maine, where his family operated the Amos Abbott Woolen Manufacturing Company. Abbott served as the treasurer for the Company. At his death, Abbott left a $4.3-million acquisition fund to the Colby College Museum of Art.


Selected Bibliography

Lautrec-Redon. Tenth Loan Exhibition. February 1-March 2, 1931. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1931.


Sources

Kantor, Sybil Gordon. Alfred H. Barr, Jr. and the Intellectual Origins of the Museum of Modern Art. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002; Marquis, Alice Goldfarb. Alfred H. Barr, Jr.: Missionary for the Modern. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1989; [obituaries:] New York Times July 22, 1982, p. D 19.


Archives


Contributors: Emily Crockett and Lee Sorensen


Citation

Emily Crockett and Lee Sorensen. "Abbott, Jere." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/abbottj/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Americanist art historian; first associate director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Abbott was born to Arthur Abbott and Flora Parkman (Abbott). After attending Dexter High School, Abbott graduated from Bowdin College with a bachelor’s degre

Mitchell, Lucy Wright Myers

Full Name: Mitchell, Lucy Wright Myers

Other Names:

  • Lucy M. Mitchell
  • Lucy Myers Mitchell
  • Mrs. Lucy Wright Myers Mitchell

Gender: female

Date Born: 20 March 1845

Date Died: 10 March 1888

Place Born: Urmia, West Azerbaijan, Iran

Place Died: Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): Classical

Career(s): art dealers and authors

Institution(s): Art Institute of Chicago


Overview

Author of the first American survey of ancient sculpture, archaeologist, and historian of Classical Antiquity. Mitchell, then Myers, was the daughter of Christian missionaries working in Persia. Mitchell is one of two historians of Classical Antiquity in her family. Her brother, Johny Henry Wright studied the language, culture, and art of ancient Greece. From 1859 to 1864 she lived in America where she was educated at Mount Holyoke Seminary in Massachusetts, however, their documentation lists her as a non-graduate. She contributed to the American Journal of Archaeology. Myers either spoke or write in Syriac, German, French, Italian, and Arabic. While living in Tübingen she authored a dictionary of the ancient Syriac language, however, it was never published. In 1865 she served as a missionary for Mount Holyoke in Persia and Syria. She married artist Samuel P. Mitchell (1846-1925) in 1867. She and her husband moved to a variety of locations, one of which was Leipzig. While there she attended a series of lectures on classical archaeology taught by Professor Johannes Overbeck. It was here that her previous casual interest in antiquity became a full-time career. The Mitchells left Leipzig in 1876 and moved to Rome where they would stay until 1878. She spent her time in Rome lecturing to ladies in parlors on the history of classical antiquity, occasionally taking trips to Roman Collections. Her magnum opus, History of Ancient Sculpture, was published in 1883. In 1884 she testified against Luigi di Cesnola, Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in the Feuardent-Cesnola trial of 1883.; archaeologist Gaston L Feuardent(1843-1893) brought forward the accusation that Luigi Cesnola, director of the Metropolitan Museum, had restored the stolen collection inappropriately. (Altered Antiquities) Mitchell was brought on to discuss the state of the restoration specifically. In the same year, she was elected a member of the Imperial Archaeological Institute of Germany, the second woman to receive this honor. In 1886 she fell ill and unfortunately would not recover. She would die two years later.
Mitchell was one of the first women to study archaeology in the U.S. Her book, A History of Ancient Sculpture, was the first American survey of ancient sculpture. This book focused on sculpture from Dynastic Egypt to early Byzantium. This thought process for this book began with her lectures at various galleries in Rome. The book received several glowing reviews, one of the most notable cited being that Mitchell, “[gave] us here so important and valuable a contribution to the history of sculpture that we must regret that we are not able to give more than  a summary of its many excellent features.” Adolf Furtwangler (1853-1907), too, had high praise for the work, stating that, “the unwearied energy of an American lady had at last produced what had been long desired and much needed-a history of ancient art, which should present to the general reader the results of the latest researches and discoveries”.(The Critic) Her next project looked to be a promising one. The goal was to write a book on Greek Vase painting, including photography of various objects. Unfortunately, she became very ill shortly after.
Her Sculptures of the Great Pergamon Altar is short in length but rich in detail. She discusses Carl Humann’s (1839-1896) discovery of the altar’s fragments and how these pieces were very nearly destroyed. The tone used in her work speaks very much to the attitudes of the time, stating, “How much more of surpassing strength and beauty perished at the hands of ignorant natives can never be told.” (pg88) She noted the collaboration of Humann with Alexander Conze (1831-1914) to start excavating the space at Pergamon. The book includes images of the objects found on-site, what roles these various objects played in their lifetimes,  and a discussion on how they ended up in Berlin.
Her manuscript for the dictionary of ancient Syriac is now in possession of the University of Cambridge


Selected Bibliography


Sources


Archives


Contributors: Caitlin Childers


Citation

Caitlin Childers. "Mitchell, Lucy Wright Myers." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/mitchelll/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Author of the first American survey of ancient sculpture, archaeologist, and historian of Classical Antiquity. Mitchell, then Myers, was the daughter of Christian missionaries working in Persia. Mitchell is one of two historians of Classical Antiquit

Fasola, Giusta Nicco

Full Name: Fasola, Giusta Nicco

Other Names:

  • Giusta Maria Rosa
  • G. N. Fasola

Gender: female

Date Born: 23 February 1901

Date Died: 08 November 1960

Place Born: Alba, Cuneo, Tuscany, Italy

Place Died: Fiesole, Fierenze, Tuscany, Italy

Home Country/ies: Italy

Institution(s): Università di Genova


Overview

Anti-fascist, medieval, and Renaissance art historian. Giusta Nicco Fasola was born Giustina Maria Rosa to parents Marianna Rosa Cumino (Nicco) and Carlo Nicco in Turin. Giusta acquired her full education in the city of Turin attending the local schools for her elementary, high school, and undergraduate degrees. She graduated from the Università degli Studi di Torino in 1922 and 1924 acquired undergraduate degrees in philosophy and literature, respectively. At the University she studied under both Adolfo and Lionello Venturi and received a 110 cum laude on her final assessment, the highest one can receive under the Italian university grading scale. She began her career staying in Turin to teach at many institutions such as the Liceo Classico Vittorio Alfieri where she taught art history, the Istituto Nazionale delle figlie dei militari Villa Regina di Torino where she taught courses in philosophy and pedagogy, as well as other preparatory schools such as the Liceo Domenico Berti, il Regio liceo ginnasio Vittorio Gioberti di Torino, and il Liceo Classico Cavour. At the Cavour among her students was Giulio Carlo Argan. She remained a high school educator until 1927 when she focused on her role at the Università degli Studi di Torino until 1933 as a voluntary assistant to the chair of art history.

In 1934 she married Cesare Fasola (1886-1963), an art historian later known for his participation in the MFAA program in collaboration with, Monuments Man, Frederick Hartt. She subsequently changed her name to Giusta Nicco Fasola, the name she published under. They settled in Tuscany as a couple where they completed the rest of their careers specifically in Fiesole, outside of Florence.

The decade of the 1940s was marked not only by the Second World War, but also deeply personally for Nicco Fasola. As a staunch anti-fascist, she participated in many Italian resistance movements. It is, however, documented that Nicco Fasola was a member of the Partito Nazionale Fascista (PNF) from 1933 to 1943. However, these dates coincide with the parties controlling history and so her participation can be considered an effort to remain employed in Italy. The party ultimately dissolved in 1943 which is when her registration with the party ended. In reality, Nicco Fasola was in her words “denounced and monitored” by the PNF as she was the secretary of the Fiesole committee for the anti-German occupation group: the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale (CLN). Her main focus, however, was working in a similar organization to the CLN called the Comitato Toscano di Liberazione Nazionale where she carried out many jobs such as resettling illegal immigrants, distributing clandestine press, and organizing for the delivery of propaganda material and weaponry on behalf of the CLN. During the war, she was also a member of the anti-fascist group Partito d’Azione (PdA) which was a member party of the CLN in company with her husband since 1941. Nicco Fasola continued her political work becoming a member of the Commissione edilizia del Comune di Firenze where she helped house Jewish refugees for two years during the War. It was then in 1948 that she and her husband left the PDA committee to join the Partito Socialista Italiano. Nicco Fasola participated in many political parties and projects; her efforts as a partisan fighter were rewarded with the merit cross in April of 1950.

After the war, Nicco Fasola was able to return to her academic ambitions, teaching at multiple notable institutions in Italy. Starting in 1944 she taught momentarily at the University of Florence as well as the University of Padua, before settling at the University of Genoa as an art history professor within the Facoltà di Lettere, regarded to be a primary pioneer in developing the Institute of Art History. After more than a decade-long career, Nicco Fasola prematurely died on 8 November 1960 at age 59 in her home after a battle with an illness. In her sickness, she was surrounded by her husband and friends such as artist Antonio Bueno who commended her sense of loyalty to the teaching profession as she received students in her home when she became too ill to commute to the University of Genoa. She is buried in her family tomb in Bra, Italy.

Giusta Nicco Fasola’s art historical interest was primarily based in the Renaissance as she had a special interest in the works of Pontormo and Nicola Pisano. She produced monographs for each, Pontormo o del Cinquecento (1947) and Nicola Pisano: orientamenti sulla formazione del gusto italiano (1951). However, she also wrote on the subject of Renaissance architecture and particularly on the characteristics of Mannerism. She published Il Manierismo e l’arte Veneziana del ‘500 in 1956 and the article titled Giulio Romano e il Manierismo, in Salmi and Venturi’s art review journal, Commentari. Nicco Fasola’s work was frequently reviewed; in 1953 Rudolf Wittkower wrote of her article titled La Fontana di Perugia (1948-1949) praising her ability to make singular interpretations about Pisano and his son as artists based on the available documentation. Three years later the same work would be reviewed in Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, the German art history journal, by Harald Keller where he referred to her work as having “convinced us to throw errors overboard that for generations had been favored work hypotheses”. Her papers reside with her husband’s archive (the Cesare Fasola archival production) which includes papers from their time with the CLN and letters that Nicco Fasola exchanged with her mentor Lionello Venturi and politicians: Benedetto Croce (1866-1952),and Pietro Nenni (1890-1981). Her personal library was donated by her husband to the Institute of Art History of the University of Genoa when she died.


Selected Bibliography

  • Casalone, Carla Musso. “Bibliografia Di Giusta Nicco Fasola.” Arte Lombarda 10 (1965): 294–96. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43106118;
  • De prospectiva pingendi. Florence: G.C Sansoni, 1942;
  • Nicola Pisano : orientamenti sulla formazione del gusto italiano. Rome: F. lli Palombi, 1942;
  • Pontormo o del cinquecento. Florence: Arnaud, 1947;
  • Ragionamenti sulla architettura. Babri: Macrì, 1949;
  • La Fontana di Perugia. Con la relazione su i lavori di restauro del 1948-49. Rome: Libreria della Stato, 1952;
  • “Giulio Romano e il Manierismo.”  Commentari 11 no.1  (1960): 60-73;
  • Storiografia del manierismo. Rome: De Luca, 1956;

Sources


Archives


Contributors: Octavia Chilkoti


Citation

Octavia Chilkoti. "Fasola, Giusta Nicco." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/fasolag/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Anti-fascist, medieval, and Renaissance art historian. Giusta Nicco Fasola was born Giustina Maria Rosa to parents Marianna Rosa Cumino (Nicco) and Carlo Nicco in Turin. Giusta acquired her full education in the city of Turin attending the local scho

Murray, Margaret Alice

Full Name: Murray, Margaret Alice

Other Names:

  • M. A. Murray
  • Margaret A. Murray

Gender: female

Date Born: 13 July 1863

Date Died: 13 November 1963

Place Born: Calcutta, West Bengal, India

Place Died: Welwyn, Hertfordshire, UK

Subject Area(s): Egyptian (ancient) and folklore (culture-related concept)

Career(s): art historians

Institution(s): University College London


Overview

Archaeologist and historian of Egyptian Art. Murray took great interest in both the art of ancient Egypt, and the folklore and religious practices in witchcraft. Murray’s childhood involved a considerable amount of relocating; including locations in England, India, and Germany. She would learn much from her time in these countries, either from the influence of family or instructors. The most notable moment of this exposure included a love of archaeology from her Uncle John and the mastery of the German language. Murray initially wanted to be a nurse, however, her plans changed due to a rejection from Calcutta General Hospital.(Uphill) She instead began her education at University College London in 1894. Her first published article came about because of her professor, Flinders Petrie (1853-1942). She was employed by Petrie to create illustrative reproductions of reliefs he had unearthed in Egypt. Seeing her talent, Petrie suggested she additionally trace the property ownership in the Old Kingdom. This research was published in Publications of the Society of Biblical Literature between 1894-1895. After this, she was responsible for teaching University College London’s hieroglyphics class while Petrie was excavating in Egypt. Upon proving herself as a reliable lecturer she was employed as a junior lecturer in 1898 (Cohen). A year later she was brought on as a lecturer on salary (Cohen). Murray accompanied Petrie to Egypt in 1902, excavating Abydos. She took time to copy inscriptions found in the temples onsite. These included hieratic, demotic, and Coptic graffiti. In 1914 any overseas excavations were put on hold due to World War I. She attempted to work as a nurse at the time but was unfortunately unable to do so because of her health. She instead spent her time tending to her health and researching connections between ancient Egypt and the Holy Grail. She also consistently submitted articles to Petrie’s journal, Ancient Egypt.(Cohen) This work would continue until 1919. In 1922 Murray became a Fellow of University College. Throughout her life Murray was involved in a number of excavations including; Malta from 1921-1923, Minorca from 1930-1931, and Petra in 1937. On her return home from these excavations she moved to Cambridge where she would remain for the entirety of World War II. Afterward, she returned to London to continue her original work. She assisted Petrie at an excavation in Palestine in 1938. Murray was president of the Folklore Association in London. [The years of this presidency vary depending on the source, however, it is known it was between 1952 to 1955.] In 1963 she published what would be her final book, My First Hundred Years. She died at the age of 100 shortly after. (Cohen)

Her book, Egyptian Sculpture, was written as a guide for students of Egyptology. The true value of this book lies in the inclusion of the object illustrations. However, as noted in some reviews, not every illustration has a coordinating description available. The notes section also has tremendous use value but likewise has sections of missing information. A startling discovery noted in this book is several examples of the use of chiaroscuro by Egyptians prior to its use by ancient Greeks.(G. D. H.)

Legends of Ancient Egypt is one of many examples of Murray’s interest in folklore. Her book is a collection of short stories focusing on various ancient Egyptian gods. Included alongside the short stories are brief introductions to each of the gods. This book, like Egyptian Sculpture, was written with the average student or layperson in mind.

Murray’s best-selling book, The Splendour that was Egypt, details various aspects of ancient Egyptian life. These aspects include art, language, and science. and of course the religious practices of Egypt. Her stance on these various religions is one that is debated by reviewers of her book. Reviewer Thomas Brady claims her assertions on Egyptian religion to be “[bold] generalizations.” Despite this controversy, the book has a strong reputation because of its well-managed translations and illustrations of various works.


Selected Bibliography

  • “12. Evidence for the Custom of Killing the King in Ancient Egypt.” Man 14 (1914): 17–23;
  • “Egyptian Finger-Counting Rhymes.” Folklore 36, no. 2 (1925): 186–187;
  • “269. The Horned God.” Man 32 (1932): 237–38;
  • “Female Fertility Figures.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 64 (1934): 93–100;
  • “The Divine King in Northumbria.” Folklore 53, no. 4 (1942): 214–15;
  • “94. Cowries Representing Eyes.” Man 42 (1942): 144–144;
  • “Wax or Clay Images.” Folklore 57, no. 2 (1946): 93–93;
  • “The Serpent Hieroglyph.” The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 34 (1948): 117–18;
  • “Folklore in History.” Folklore 66, no. 2 (1955): 257–66;
  • “Ancient and Modern Ritual Dances in the near East.” Folklore 66, no. 4 (1955): 401–409;
  • “Mediaeval Stone Mould and Leaden Clamp.” Folklore 66, no. 4 (1955): 412–13;
  • “Burial Customs and Beliefs in the Hereafter in Predynastic Egypt.” The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 42 (1956): 86–96;
  • “12. Egypt and Africa.” Man 61 (1961): 25–26;
  • My First Hundred Years. United Kingdom: W. Kimber, 1963.

Sources

  • G. D. H. Review of 117, by Margaret Alice Murray. Man 30 (1930): 146–47;
  • Brady, Thomas A. The Splendour that was Egypt: A General Survey of Egyptian Culture and Civilisation. By Margaret A. Murray, Fellow of University College, London. (New York: Philosophical Library. 1949. Pp. xxiii, 354. $10.00.), The American Historical Review, Volume 55, Issue 4, July 1950, Pages 878–879;
  • Uphill, Eric Parrington., Dawson, Warren Royal. Who was who in Egyptology …. Kiribati: Egypt Exploration Society, 1972.;
  • O’Brien, Alexandra A. Journal of Near Eastern Studies 62, no. 3 (2003): 214–15.;
  • Cohen, Getzel M., and Joukowsky, Martha Sharp, eds. 2006. Breaking Ground : Pioneering Women Archaeologists. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Accessed January 27, 2023. ProQuest Ebook Central.;

Archives

  • Petrie Museum London, England (Cohen)

Contributors: Caitlin Childers


Citation

Caitlin Childers. "Murray, Margaret Alice." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/murraym/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Archaeologist and historian of Egyptian Art. Murray took great interest in both the art of ancient Egypt, and the folklore and religious practices in witchcraft. Murray’s childhood involved a considerable amount of relocating; including locations in

Surtees, Virginia

Full Name: Surtees, Virginia

Other Names:

  • Virginia Bell, Lady Clarke, Virginia Craig

Gender: female

Date Born: 09 January 1917

Date Died: 22 September 2017

Place Born: London, Greater London, England, UK

Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): Pre-Raphaelite

Career(s): art historians

Institution(s): Victoria and Albert Museum


Overview

Art historian and leading scholar of the Pre-Raphaelite art movement; produced the definitive reference book for Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Born Virginia Bell in London to Bertha Bell (1891–1974) and Edward Bell (1882–1924). Her father, a Harvard graduate and friend of Franklin D. Roosevelt, was appointed chargé d’affaires of the U.S. in Beijing in 1922. Therefore, Virginia and her older sister Evangeline (1914-1995) spent their early childhood in China. After Edward’s early death in 1924, Virginia’s mother remarried a British diplomat, Sir James Dodds (1861–1935), a Britisher, who was posted by England to Tokyo in 1937. Surtees married Henry Ashley Clarke (1903–1994), a colleague of her stepfather at the British Embassy in Tokyo. After the couple moved back to London in the early 1950s, Surtees spent three years at the Victoria and Albert Museum working on Gabrielle Enthoven’s theater collection, also known as “the theatrical encyclopedia.” Surtees bought a Rosetti painting Rosa Triplex in 1951 for just £285.  Her husband was appointed to Rome and while there she met and had an affair with David Leonard Craig (1914–1996). She and Clarke divorced and married Craig in 1960. She divorced Craig in 1962, moving back to London, taking her maternal grandfather’s surname, Surtees, in order to inherit Mainsforth Hall, a country house in County Durham. Surtees began her Dante Gabriel Rossetti collection when her grandmother, the daughter of the artist’s model Louisa Ruth Herbert (1831–1921), bequeathed her many of the artist’s works. Free to pursue her interest while living on her own, Surtees spent ten years compiling a complete catalogue raisonné of Rossetti with assistance from art historian John Gere. The Paintings and Drawings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) was published in 1971 in two volumes and dedicated to Sir Sydney Cockerell, who supported Surtees’s accomplishment of this arduous task. She published Sublime and Instructive, in 1972, collecting the letters between John Ruskin and the artist Louisa Waterford (1818–1891). In 1973, Surtees curated the first modern retrospective of Rossetti at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. The exhibition included paintings, drawings, and watercolors that reintroduced Rossetti as an artist to the public who had hitherto only known him as a poet.  In 1991, Surtees curated an exhibition of Rossetti’s portraits of his wife, Elizabeth Siddal (1829–1862), at the Ashmolean Museum. She never married again living in one of the city’s most affluent neighborhoods, South Kensington, until she entered a nursing home in 2014 and died in 2017.

As a prolific writer, Surtees published over a dozen of biographies, memoirs, and collected letters. For example, a book on Charlotte Canning, Lady-In-Waiting to Queen Victoria (1817-1861) in 1975. Surtees possessed a substantial collection of Rossetti’s work, the most important of which was auctioned at Christie’s in 2014. Her painting Rosa Triplex, which she purchased in 1951 for £285, sold for  for £902,500. The rest of her collections were given to the British Museum, the Bristol City Art Gallery, the Ashmolean Museum, the Fitzwilliam Museum, and the Bristol City Museum. 

Surtees was an amateur historian, and the first draft of Surtees’ catalogue raisonné required considerable editorial effort from the Oxford University Press and John Gere. Nevertheless, the book was warmly received and praised as indispensable for a full exploration of the nature and significance of Rossetti’s art and “the first catalogue raisonné devoted to the work of an English painter of the period.” Surtees’ meticulous archival research resulted in the publication of collected letters and biographies based entirely on primary sources (Ormond).


Selected Bibliography

  • The Paintings and Drawings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882): A Catalogue Raisonné. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971;
  • ed., Sublime & Instructive; Letters from John Ruskin to Louisa, Marchioness of Waterford, Anna Blunden and Ellen Heaton. London: Joseph, 1972;
  • Charlotte Canning: Lady-In-Waiting to Queen Victoria and Wife of the First Viceroy of India 1817-1861. London: J. Murray, c1975;
  • Rossetti’s portraits of Elizabeth Siddal: a Catalogue of the Drawings and Watercolours. Aldershot [England]: Scolar Press, in association with Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 1991.

Sources

  • Dorment, Richard. “Virginia Surtees Obituary.” The Guardian. 5 Dec 2017;
  • ​​——. “Surtees [née Bell], Virginia (1917–2017), Art Historian and Biographer.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 14 Jan 2021;
  • Greene, Michael. “The Paintings and Drawings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882): A Catalogue Raisonné.” The Georgia Review, 27, p. 601–605. 1973;
  • Ormond, Richard. “The Paintings and Drawings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882): A Catalogue Raisonné.” Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 120, no. 5185, p. 45. 1971;
  • Reynolds, Graham. “The Paintings and Drawings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1828-1882 at Catalogue Raisonne.” Apollo: The International Magazine of Art & Antiques, 95, p. 70. Jan 1972;
  • Roberts Keith. “Virginia Surtees (1917-2017).” The Burlington Magazine. Feb 2018.

Archives


Contributors: Siyu Chen


Citation

Siyu Chen. "Surtees, Virginia." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/surteesv/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Art historian and leading scholar of the Pre-Raphaelite art movement; produced the definitive reference book for Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Born Virginia Bell in London to Bertha Bell (1891–1974) and Edward Bell (1

Pillsbury, Edmund

Full Name: Pillsbury, Edmund Pennington

Other Names:

  • Edmund P. Pillsbury
  • Ted Pillsbury

Gender: male

Date Born: 28 April 1943

Date Died: 01 April 2010

Place Born: San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA

Place Died: Kaufmann, TX USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): museums (institutions)

Institution(s): Kimball Art Museum


Overview

Director of the Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth, 1980-1998; masterful acquisitions assembler.  Pillsbury’s father was Edmund Pennington Pillsbury (1913-1951) and his mother Priscilla Adele Keator (Pillsbury) (1915-2011).  He was the child of two major American industrial families, great-grandson to  Charles Alfred Pillsbury (1842-1889), founder of the Pillsbury Flour and through his mother the to Deere machinery fortune.  Pillsbury, graduated from Yale University where he was a noted athlete.  He received his M.A., and Ph.D, both from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of  London and both on the topic of the Renaissance artist Jacopo Zucchi.

Pillsbury was appointed curator of European painting and sculpture at his alma mater, the Yale University Art Gallery.  When Paul Mellon (1907-1999) funded the project for what would become the Yale Center for British Art in 1966, Pillsbury was appointed its first director, beginning 1977.  At the 1980 death of another first director, Richard Brown, of the Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth, TX, Pillsbury became its second.  At the Kimball, he built his own and the Museum’s reputation.  He completed Brown’s negotiations to acquire Georges de La Tour’s Cheat With the Ace of Clubs (late 1620s).  This began his success in buying masterworks for the small museum.  These included On the Pont de l’Europe (1876/1877) by Gustave Caillebotte, then a relatively unknown artist to the public, 1982, The Apostle Saint James Freeing the Magician Hermogenes (1426-29) by Fra Angelico, 1986, The Cardsharps (c.1594) by Caravaggio, 1987, the acquisition for which he is perhaps best known. His skill at acquiring skills were so distinguished that in 1986, the National Gallery in London offered him the director position, the first non-Briton.  It caused a furor in the United Kingdom, Pillsbury declined, and the position was given to Michael Levey..

In 1989, Pillsbury announced a plan to build an addition onto the Louis Kahn museum building with architect Romaldo Giurgola. An international outcry arose–including the architect’s family– and the project was revised to be an adjacent building, this one to be designed by architect Renzo Piano.  By 1998 Pillsbury and the Museum Board found themselves in major disagreements and he resigned. He collaborated with the Dallas branch of the Gerald Peters Gallery, renamed to be Pillsbury & Peters Fine Art.  The partnership dissolved in 2003;  Pillsbury accepted the directorship of the Meadows Art Museum at Southern Methodist University in its new building. In 2005 he declined an offer from the Getty Museum to instead join Heritage Galleries as “consultative director.” There he created a fine arts- and museum services department. At Heritage he expanded their art auctions into a $50 million business. His final position was director of the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art in Las Vegas.

Pillsbury always remained close to the Kimball; in 2009 he alerted then director Eric Lee (b.1965) to an early Michelangelo painting on the market, The Torment of Saint Anthony (1487), which Lee acquired.  It is the only Michelangelo in the United States.  He died of a heart attack after visiting a client in Kaufman County, TX.

The art historian Richard Brettell described Pillsbury as “one of the latter 20th century’s most important museum directors . . . He was, in some ways, single-handedly responsible for turning the Kimball from an institution with a great building into one whose collection matched its architecture in quality.”  He declined many offers of positions, including editor of the Burlington Magazine.  He published no monographs; the exhibition catalogs he contributed to were always with others.


Selected Bibliography

  • [theses and dissertation:] Jacopo Zucchi: New Paintings and Drawings. M.A., Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 1967;
  • Jacopo Zucchi: His Life and Work. PhD, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 1973;
  • Drawings by Vasari and Vincenzo Borghini for the Apparato in Florence in 1565.” Master Drawings 5, no. 3 (Autumn, 1967): 281-283, 330-331;
  • “Three Unpublished Paintings by Giorgio Vasari,” Burlington Magazine 112 no .803 (1970): 94–101;
  • “Ammannati and the Villa Medici in Rome: An Unknown Letter.”Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 19. Bd., H. 2 (1975), pp. 303-306;
  •  

 


Sources

  • [obituaries:] Lee, George T. “In Memoriam: Edmund ‘Ted’ Pennington Pillsbury: 1943–2010, B.A. 1965.”Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin  (2010), pp. 24-25;
  • Nixon, Diane A and Whitney, Wheelock. Master Drawings 48 no. 2 (Summer 2010): 261-262;
  •  Fox,  Margalit.  “Edmund P. Pillsbury, Director at Kimball, Dies at 66”  New York Times March 31, 2010;

 




Citation

"Pillsbury, Edmund." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/pillsburye/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Director of the Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth, 1980-1998; masterful acquisitions assembler.  Pillsbury’s father was Edmund Pennington Pillsbury (1913-1951) and his mother Priscilla Adele Keator (Pillsbury) (1915-2011).  He was the child of two maj

Liedtke, Walter

Full Name: Liedtke, Walter Arthur, jr.

Gender: male

Date Born: 28 August 1945

Date Died: 03 February 2015

Place Born: Plainfield, Union, NJ, USA

Place Died: Valhalla, Westchester, NY, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): Dutch (culture or style)

Institution(s): Metropolitan Museum of Art


Overview

Scholar of Dutch Baroque painting, principally Vermeer.  Liedtke was born in Plainfield, New Jersey to Walter Liedtke, Sr, and Elsa Liedtke.  The family moved to nearby Livingston, New Jersey where he was raised.  After entering Rutgers University as an undergraduate he became interested in art history and, following his BA in 1967 entered Brown University, where he achieved his MA in 1969. Liedtke chose the Courtauld Institute of Art at the University of London for his Ph.D.  While working on his dissertation, he taught at Florida State University (1969-1971). His dissertation, focused on the role of architecture (largely interior churches) in Delft painting, was accepted in 1974, supervised by Michael Kitson.  Liedtke accepted an appointment at Ohio State University where he taught between 1975 and 1979.  There he met and married Nancy B. Nitcher (b.1947), later a mathematics teacher.  Awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in 1979 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art he left academics for the museum where he studied under the supervision of Sir John Pope Hennessy.  Pope Hennessy offered Liedtke the position of Curator of Seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish Painting at the Met the following year.  He remained Curator of Northern European Painting at the museum for the remaining thirty-five years of his life.  In 1983 he helped form The Historians of Netherlandish Art. His first duties at the Mueseum were to compile catalog of the Met’s holdings in Netherlandish art.  He published the Flemish catalog in 1984.  However, as Liedtke’s curational profile grew, the Dutch catalog waited.

As a curator, Liedtke produced some of the most innovative and successful exhibitions at the Met.  His “Rembrandt/Not Rembrandt, 1995-1996, showed Rembrandts in the Met which were authenticated by the Rembrandt Research Project (RRP) and those in the collection it disattributed.  Liedtke in fact disagreed with the RRP in some cases, writing an article in Oud Holland about the Berensteyn paintings of Rembrandt’s early career.  It caused the RRP to change its opinion.  The twenty-first century marked his museum interest to Vermeer.  A 2001 exhibition, A View of Delft: Vermeer and his Contemporaries, resulted in a catalgo of over 600 pages. The following year he launched Vermeer and the Delft School exhibition which brought praise for relating the artist to his city.  The catalogue raisonne of the Dutch collection at the Museum by Liedtke appeared in 2007.  His dedication to Vermeer capstone into a in a 2008 monograph and catalogue raisonné on the artist, considered by many to be his mature understanding of the artist (Brown).

Liedtke’s work was based on a knowledge of Dutch and Flemish theoretics.  His dissertation and 1982 book examined how the painters Gerard Houckgeest, Hendrick van Vliet, Emanuel de Witte rendered and altered their painting of church interiors.  His approach was one of traditional connoisseurship (which pleased Pope Hennessy enough to offer him his job) with broad knowledge of the literature of the time.  An experiential historian, he visited many of the venues and church interiors which Netherlandish artists painted, so he could write about the works more effectively.

Throughout his career, Liedtke stated his opinions forcefully.  His counterpart at the National Gallery of Art, Arthur Wheelock, and he diverged in their views frequently and publicly on Dutch art.  However Liedtke and Wheelock produced the exhibition for the Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome, Liedtke’s last, Vermeer and the Golden Age of Dutch Art, 2012. In later years he taught occasional courses for the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, as well as lecturing.  He utilized the internet for publicize the Museum and his work with videos on Youtube. In 2015, the commuter train he was riding in wrecked at a crossing near Vallhala, NY, and Liedtke, working in the “quiet car” in the front of the train was killed along with six others.


Selected Bibliography

  • [complete bibliography:] “Bibliography of Complete Publications of Walter Liedtke.”  Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 9 no. 1 (Winter 2017): 1-12, 12p; 
  • [dissertation:] Architectural painting in Delft: 1650-1675.  University of London (Courtauld Institute of Art),  1974;
  • Architectural painting in Delft: Gerard Houckgeest, Hendrick van Vliet, Emanuel de Witte. Doornspijk, the Netherlands: Davaco, 1982; 
  • Flemish paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: Metropolitan Museum, 1984;
  • Rembrandt/not Rembrandt in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Aspects of Connoisseurship. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Ar, 1995; 
  • A View of Delft: Vermeer and his Contemporaries. Zwolle: Waanders Publishers, 2000;
  • and  Plomp, Michiel C. and Rüger, Axel. Vermeer and the Delft School.  New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001;
  • Dutch paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2007; 
  • Vermeer: the Complete Paintings.  Ghent, Belgium: Ludion Press, 2008;
  • The Milkmaid by Johannes Vermeer. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2009; 
  • And Bandera, Sandrina, and Wheelock, Arthur K. Vermeer: il secolo d’oro dell’arte olandese. Milan: Skira, 2012.
  • Rembrandt.  New York, NY: Phaidon Press, 2015. 

videos


Sources

  • [obituaries:]  “Walter Liedtke.” JHNA 9:1 (Winter 2017);
  • Walter Liedtke (1945-2015).” HNA Newsletter April 2015;
  • Wolkoff, Julia. Art in America. 103 no. 4 (April 2015):128;
  • Christiansen, Keith, and Meagher, Jennifer.  “In Memoriam: Walter Liedtke.” Metropolitan Museum Journal, 50 (2015):  10-11;
  • Brown, Christopher.  “Walter Liedtke (1945-2015).” Burlington Magazine 157 no. 1345, (April 2015): 268-269;
  • Ducos, Blaise. “Walter Liedtke (1945-2015).” Revue de L’Art, no. 188, 2015: 87; 
  • Turner, Simon.  “Metropolitan Museum of Art European Paintings curator Walter A. Liedtke (1945-2015).” Art in Print, March/April 4 no. 6 (2015): 58;
  • Kennedy, Randy.  “Walter Liedtke, 69, Met Curator and Vermeer Scholar.” The New York Times. February 5, 2015: 18.


Contributors: Lee Sorensen


Citation

Lee Sorensen. "Liedtke, Walter." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/liedtkew/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Scholar of Dutch Baroque painting, principally Vermeer.  Liedtke was born in Plainfield, New Jersey to Walter Liedtke, Sr, and Elsa Liedtke.  The family moved to nearby Livingston, New Jersey where he was raised

Puttrich, Ludwig

Full Name: Puttrich, Ludwig

Gender: male

Date Born: 30 April 1783

Date Died: 02 September 1856

Place Born: Dresden, Saxony, Germany

Place Died: Leipzig, Saxony, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre)


Overview

Early art historian.  His 1852 Denkmale der Baukunst des Mittelalters in Sachsen became the model for many art historians, including Wilhelm Lübke.






Citation

"Puttrich, Ludwig." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/puttrichl/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Early art historian.  His 1852 Denkmale der Baukunst des Mittelalters in Sachsen became the model for many art historians, including Wilhelm Lübke.

Gerke, Friedrich

Full Name: Gerke, Friedrich

Gender: male

Date Born: 15 November 1900

Date Died: 23 August 1966

Place Born: Uelzen, Lower Saxony, Germany

Place Died: Mainz, Rhineland Palatinate, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): Classical


Overview

Theologian and later art historian in Universität Mainz.  Gerke studied at the universities of Hamburg, Marburg and Berlin between 1924 and 1928, focusing on theology, art history and archaeology.  He published a qualifying thesis on the writing of Pope Clement I in 1931, Die Stellung des ersten Clemensbriefes innerhalb der Entwicklung der altchristlichen Gemeindeverfassung und des Kirchenrechts, granting his Ph.D from Berlin.  Gerke’s habilitation was granted in 1934, also by Universität Berlin, “Die ein- und zweizonigen Reihensarkophage der Tetrarchenzeit.”  After only a year as a privatdozent, he was appointed Außerordentlicher Professor in Berlin in 1935 and as director of the  Institut für Christliche Archäologie und Kunstgeschichte at the same time.  Between the years 1940 and 1942 he was a visiting lecturer in Budapest.  As World War II waged on, the Nazi government formed the infamous Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, a civilian and military unit to identify important works of art and loot them for Reich officials and planned German museum.  Gerke worked as a researcher for two months in the Occupied Territories division of the ERR, under the notorious Hans Reinerth in the Crimean.  He fought as a solidier between 1943 and 1945 in Greece and the Dolomites.  After the War, Gerke founded the Association for Fine Arts in Mainz (Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst Mainz) in 1947.  He was appointed Ordentlicher Professor, at the University of Mainz, (Universität Mainz) and director of the University’s Kunstgeschichtliches Institut,  He was named a member of the  Deutsches Archäologisches Institut in 1949.  He was instrumental in sheparding several book collections to the Mainz Institute of Art History.  He retired in 1966.  The following year, his Spätantike und frühes Christentum appeared.

 His students included Elisabeth Alföldi Rosenbaum.


Selected Bibliography

  • [dissertation:] Die Stellung des ersten Clemensbriefes innerhalb der Entwicklung der altchristlichen Gemeindeverfassung und des Kirchenrechts, Berlin, 1931, published, Leipzig, Hinrichs, 1931.
  • Spätantike und frühes Christentum.   Kunst der Welt vol. 2. (Die Kulturen des Abendlandes). Baden-Baden: Holle, 1967

Sources

“Friedrich Gerke.” Verzeichnis der Professorinnen und Professoren der Universität Mainz 1477-1973.  Guten Biogragraphics. https://www.gutenberg-biographics.ub.uni-mainz.de/personen/register/eintrag/friedrich-gerke.html (accessed 1/30/2023.


Archives

  • Friedrich Gerke, Universitätsarchiv der Humboldt-Universität Berlin
  • Friedrich Gerke, Universitätsarchiv Mainz, NL 51

Contributors: Lee Sorensen


Citation

Lee Sorensen. "Gerke, Friedrich." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/gerkef/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Theologian and later art historian in Universität Mainz.  Gerke studied at the universities of Hamburg, Marburg and Berlin between 1924 and 1928, focusing on theology, art history and archaeology.  He published a qualifying thesis on the writing o