Art Historians

Dean, Bashford

November 8, 2023April 5, 2024

Full Name: Dean, Bashford

Gender: male

Date Born: 1867

Date Died: 1928

Place Born: New York, NY, USA

Place Died: Battle Creek, Calhoun, MI, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): armor (protective wear), metal, and weapons

Career(s): biologists and scientists

Overview

Arms and Armor scholar at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and zoologist. Dean’s family hailed from Revolutionary War heroes (John Dean, 1754-1798). His father was William Dean, a lawyer, and his mother Emma Frances Bashford (Dean). Dean’s interest in armor stemmed from a boyhood visit to the personal collection of Carlton Gates (d. 1869) in Yonkers, NY. Dean started collecting at age 10 with the purchase of two daggers from the sale of the Cogniat collection in 1877. Dean graduated from the College of the City of New York in 1886 (he was 19) in zoology and by 1890 has his Ph.D., from Columbia in the same area. He and Henry Fairfield Osborn (1857-1935) founded the department of Zoology (where he lectured on arthropods) at Columbia University in 1891. He became curator of the Department of Reptiles and Fishes at the Museum of Natural History in New York. In 1893 he married the wealthy socialite Mary Alice Dyckman (1869-1950). The coupled moved into Wave Hill, a mansion overlooking the Hudson River (today a museum) and began to collect armor in earnest. In 1896 Metropolitan Museum director Luigi Palma di Cesnola enlisted Dean to install the Ellis collection at the Met. Dean spent an extended research trip in 1900 at the Imperial Biological Laboratory in Japan studying the frilled shark. This brought him an entree into Japanese society (including the Emperor) and a familiarity with Japan weapons. Within three years Dean had assembled the best Japanese armor collection outside Japan, which he lent to the Metropolitan for an exhibition in 1903. Dean was again enlisted to evaluate the first collection of armor bought by the Metropolitan, that of the French Duc de Dino, by then director Caspar Purdon Clarke. Dean was so effusive about the purchase (much of which had been purchased at the insistence of board chairman J. P. Morgan, 1837-1913), that Morgan charged Dean to write the catalog for the collection. In 1906 Morgan had Dean made honorary (i.e., unsalaried) curator of Arms and Armor. Dean, who through marriage and personal inheritance was independently wealthy, quit his professorship at Columbia to devote full time to his personal arms collecting and his duties at the Met. Dean continued to publish on natural sciences. Dean spent 1907 courting one of the most important American (expatriate) arms collectors, William H. Riggs (1837-1924). He hired Daniel Tachaux (1857-1928) from France to be the preparator (conservator) of armor at the Met. The Riggs collection only came to the museum in 1912, the same year the collection became a department unto itself. The collection was finally exhibited in 1914. During World War I Dean advised the army on protective armor designing a protective helmet for trench warfare and rising to major in the ordnance branch. His design for an American helmet, based on the Galiot de Genouilhac casqie, was rejected by the military. He resigned from the Museum in 1927 and was immediately made a trustee. While on a lecture in Michigan, he required emergency surgery and died in the procedure. He is buried in Sleepy Hollow cemetery, Tarrytown, NY. The Metropolitan was able to acquire most of his collection through will and purchase, founding a wing named in his honor. When the United States entered World War II, the army adopted a new helmet, known as the M-1, based on Dean’s designs for the previous war. Dean’s career was a much in the natural sciences as in art history. He was the only curator of the Metropolitan to hold a joint curatorship with the Museum of Natural History.

Selected Bibliography

“The Barberini Armor.” Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1926): 279-282; Catalogue of a Loan Exhibition of Arms and Armor: the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: The Museum, 1911; The Collection of Arms and Armor of Rutherfurd Stuyvesant, 1843-1909. New York: Printed privately/De Vinne Press, 1914; The Dyckman House, Built about 1783, Restored and Presented to the City of New York in MCMXVI. New York: Gilliss Press, 1916; “A Gift of Japanese Sword Guards.” Metropolitan Museum Bulletin 9 no. 6 (June 1914): 140-142; Catalogue of European Daggers: including the Ellis, De Dino, Riggs, and Reubell Collections. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1929; Catalogue of European Court Swords and Hunting Swords: including the Ellis, De Dino, Riggs, and Reubell Collections. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1929; Handbook of Arms and Armor: European and Oriental, including the William H. Riggs Collection. New York: The Gilliss Press, 1915.

Sources

Tomkins, Calvin. Merchants and Masterpieces: The Story of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1970, pp.149-164, 188; Shor, Elizabeth N. “Dean, Bashford.” American National Biography; [obituary:] “Bashford Dean Dies After Operation.” New York Times December 8, 1928. p. 15.

de Ridder, André

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: de Ridder, André

Gender: unknown

Date Born: 1868

Date Died: 1921

Subject Area(s): ancient, Ancient Greek (culture or style), Antique, the, archaeology, and Classical

Overview

Greek art scholar; social history; de Ridder may only be a social historian, and Deonna may be art historian

Selected Bibliography

and Deonna, Waldemar. L’art en Grece. Paris: Renaissance du Livre, 1924. Art in Greece. Translated by V. C. C. Collum. New York: Knopf, 1927.

Sources

KRG, 123; KMP, 84

Greek art scholar; social history; de Ridder may only be a social historian, and Deonna may be art historian

de Montor, Artaud

November 8, 2023April 9, 2024

Full Name: de Montor, Artaud

Gender: male

Date Born: 1772

Date Died: 1849

Home Country/ies: France

Overview

follower of d’Agincourt

Selected Bibliography

Considérations sur l’état de la peinture (1808). third ed. entitled, Peintures primitifs (1840)

Sources

KGK 153

de Montebello, Philippe

November 8, 2023April 5, 2024

Full Name: de Montebello, Guy Philippe Henri Lannes

Other Names:

Philippe de Montebello
Guy Philippe Henri Lannes de Montebello

Gender: male

Date Born: 16 May 1936

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

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): museums (institutions)

Career(s): directors (administrators) and museum directors

Overview

Metropolitan Museum of Art director, 1977-2008. Montebello was born to Count André Roger Lannes de Montebello (1908-1986) and Germaine Wiener de Croisset (de Montebello) (1913-1975). His family traced its roots back to Jean Lannes, Duc de Montebello, (1769-1809), a Marshall of France under Napoleon. Other relatives are thought to have been models for characters in Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu, for example the Duchesse de Guermantes and the playwright Bloch. As a boy, his aunt, the Surrealism patron Marie-Laures Noailles (1902-1970) introduced him to Picasso. During World War II, the family lived in Grasse, France, where his father was part of the Resistance. The Montebellos immigrated to the United States in 1950 when Philippe was age 14. He attended the exclusive Lycée Français de New York (LFNY). At graduation, De Montebello became an American citizen in 1955, serving in the U.S. Army, serving 1956-1958 rising to second lieutenant. Montebello entered Harvard University, graduating magna cum laude (thesis on Delacroix) with a B.A. in 1961, marrying Edith Bradford Myles (b. 1939) the same year. He continued graduate study at New York University in 1961 on a Woodrow Wilson fellowship where he focused on French painting under the scholar Charles Sterling.

In 1963, before completing any degree at NYU, he interviewed for a curatorial assistant position with Theodore Rousseau, Jr., at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the Department of European Paintings. Rousseau hired him immediately. At Rousseau’s advancement to Assistant Director in 1969, Montebello had had enough experience to be appointed to the directorship of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX, though he still lacked any graduate degree. In Houston, Montebello gained the reputation for disapproving of modern art, something that particularly rankled Houston’s major collectors, John and Domnique de Menil. At Rousseau’s death in 1973 he was recalled to the Met to succeed him as assistant to Director Thomas Hoving in 1974. He completed his M.A. from NYU in 1976. Hoving’s relationship with the Met board and staff grew stormier. At Hoving’s departure, Montebello became acting director in 1977 and Director the following year. The museum’s board reformed the bylaws after the Hoving experience, making Montebello’s new director position report to the President of the Trustees.

Montebello defined much of his tenure to contrast his predecessor. He refrained from splashy acquisitions or appearing in print on controversial issues. One exception was during the 1999 Brooklyn Museum’s art exhibition “Sensation” which included excrement art. City officials denounced the show and Montebello wrote a letter to the New York Times. Though he claimed it to be a plea for quality in art, the statement was largely taken as yet again an attack on modern art. The same year the Board made the director and president positions equal. In 2002, de Montebello signed on the Met’s behalf the Declaration on the Importance and Value of Universal Museums, a document affirming museum’s right to hold world art against claims of national patrimony. Duccio’s “Madonna and Child” was acquired by the Met under his aegis for $45 million. Montebello oversaw the dramatic growth of many collections, as well as the completion of the Master Plan that had begun under Hoving, ultimately doubling the Museum’s size. He retired from the Metropolitan in 2008. In retirement, he was named the first Fiske Kimball Professor in the History and Culture of Museums at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.

Montebello was not a scholar; he published little outside the introductions to exhibition catalogs. Hired in part to consolidate the building and acquisition strides the Hoving era had made, he helped redefine the nature of the Met’s blockbuster exhibitions program (now a staple of large museums) and heal lingering animosity toward the curatorial staff. His connoisseurship approach as a principal art criteria added to his anti-modernist reputation. He nevertheless presided over the large addition of the Met’s modern art (Lila Wallace) wing.

Selected Bibliography

The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide: Works of Art Selected by Philippe de Montebello. New York: The Museum, 1983;
“The Met and the New Millennium: A Chronicle of the Past and a Blueprint for the Future.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, New Series 52, No. 1, (Summer, 1994): 1, 4-90;
“The Richard A. F. Penrose Lecture: The Changing Landscape of Museums.” Journal of the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 147, No. 3 (September 2003): 259-272;

Sources

Mellow, James R. “The Fine Art of Directing the Museum.” New York Times (November 3, 1985): 30-35;
Danziger, Danny. Museum: Behind the Scenes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: Viking, 2007;
Houghton, James R. Philippe de Montebello and the Metropolitan Museum of Art: 1977-2008. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art/Yale University Press, 2009.

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

de Montabert, Paillot

November 8, 2023April 5, 2024

Full Name: de Montabert, Paillot

Gender: male

Date Born: 1771

Date Died: 1849

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): Romantic (modern European styles) and romanticism (form of expression)

Overview

influenced by d’Agincourt; Romantic art historian

Selected Bibliography

Dissertation sur les peintures du moyen âge et sur celles qu’on appelées gothiques extrait d’un ouvrage inédite sur la peinture (1812).

Sources

KGK 153

de Holanda, Francisco

November 8, 2023April 5, 2024

Full Name: de Holanda, Francisco

Other Names:

Francesco de Hollanda

Gender: male

Date Born: 1517

Date Died: 1585

Home Country/ies: Portugal

Subject Area(s): biography (general genre) and Italian (culture or style)

Institution(s): Court of King João III of Portugal

Overview

wrote book of conversations with artists of Rome; d’Olland in Portugese?

Sources

KGK, 35; SKL

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

wrote book of conversations with artists of Rome; d’Olland in Portugese?

de Gruyter, Josiah Willem Jos

November 8, 2023April 5, 2024

Full Name: de Gruyter, Josiah Willem Jos

Gender: male

Date Born: 1899

Date Died: 1979

Place Born: Singapore, Singapore, Republic of Singapore

Place Died: Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands

Home Country/ies: Singapore

Career(s): art critics and curators

Institution(s): Groninger Museum

Overview

art critic; director of the Groninger Museum (1955-1963); chief curator of the Gemeentemuseum The Hague (1963-1965). Between age five and ten, de Gruyter lived in the Dutch East Indies. His father then served in the Koninklijke Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij. In 1909 he quit this position to become an independent writer and he moved with his family to Haarlem, in the Netherlands. During the next four years, the young de Gruyter continued his primary and secondary school education. He felt attracted to drawing, stimulated by his contacts with artists, including the painter and art writer Just Havelaar (1880-1930). At the outbreak of World War I, the family settled in England. In London, de Gruyter received further formal education from his father, while also attending the Beckenham School of Arts and Crafts and the Royal College of Art in London. He stayed in England after his parents’ return to The Netherlands. In 1922 he received his diploma of etching. A year later he joined his parents in Amersfoort. He renewed his friendship with Havelaar, then art critic for Het Vaderland, who inspired him to become an art writer. In 1926 he published an essay on Thijs Maris and Vincent van Gogh in De Nieuwe Gids, as well as booklets on Van Gogh, Rodin, and Käthe Kollwitz. In the same year he married the painter Margaritha Feuerstein (1893-1986). After a stay in Italy and France, the couple settled in The Netherlands. De Gruyter became art critic for the Utrechtsch Dagblad, as the successor of Abraham Marie Wilhelmus Jacobus Hammacher, and in 1930 he was appointed editor visual arts for Het Vaderland in The Hague. In addition, between 1930 and 1932, he served as the editor of Elsevier’s Geïllustreerd Maandschrift. In 1935 his major work appeared, a monograph on the essence and development of European Painting after 1850: Wezen en ontwikkeling der Europese Schilderkunst na 1850. After his divorce, he remarried Catharina Meijer in 1951. He was appointed director of the Groninger Museum in 1955 as the successor of Alphonsus Petrus Antonius Vorenkamp. Dedicated to modern and contemporary art, de Gruyter played an innovative role in the museum, in a fruitful interaction with the art history institute of the University of Groningen, headed by Henk Schulte Nordholt. He began building up the collection with a focus on the Groningen artists’ association De Ploeg (the plow), founded in 1918. Among the initiators of this group were the artists Johan Dijkstra (1896-1978) and Jan Wiegers (1893-1959). The latter introduced expressionism in Groningen in the 1920s. A number of the prints of the Groningen artist Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman (1882-1945) also became part of the collection. De Gruyter’s 1956 show on 35 year modern art in Groningen attracted much attention in the museum world. His approach was a great stimulus for the artistic climate in Groningen. In the course of eight years de Gruyter organized more than 80 exhibitions on Dutch modern art as well on a number of foreign artists, including Paula Modersohn Becker (1958) and Edvard Munch (1959). The need for more space became urgent, but the plans for a new museum were not realized during his directorship. In 1963 de Gruyter chose to leave the Groninger Museum to become chief curator of the Gemeentemuseum at The Hague. In 1964 he received a doctorate honoris causa from Groningen University. In the same year, a collection of his catalog introductions appeared: Beeld en interpretatie (Image and interpretation). In 1965, he retired from his position in The Hague. In 1968 he published a two volume monograph on the Hague School, De Haagse School. Reflecting on his life, he began writing his autobiography, Bewust leven, which was not ready for publication when he died in 1979. In 2004, it posthumously appeared under the title, Zelfportret als zeepaardje: Memoires van W. Jos de Gruyter. In 2004/5 the Groninger Museum celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the 1955 appointment of its former director with an exhibition on his innovative acquisition policy, Keerpunt: keuze uit het aankoopbeleid van W. Jos de Gruyter 1955-1963.

Selected Bibliography

[list of important writings:] Dubois, Pierre H. Josiah Willem (Jos) de Gruyter. Singapore 28 augustus 1899 – Amsterdam 30 juli 1979. Jaarboek van de Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde (1981), pp. 152-153; Wezen en ontwikkeling der Europese Schilderkunst na 1850. Amsterdam: H. J. Paris, 1935; A New Approach to Maya Hieroglyphs. Amsterdam: H. J. Paris, 1946; Het vrouwsportret in de Nederlandsche en Vlaamsche schilderkunst. Amsterdam: Van Holkema & Warendorf, 1947; Beeld en interpretatie. The Hague: Daamen, 1964; De Haagse School. 2 vols. Rotterdam: Lemniscaat, 1968-1969; Twentieth Century Dutch Graphic Art. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1969.

Sources

Swart, Arth. Eredoctor Willem Josiah de Gruyter. Een leven, boordevol van kunst Vrij Nederland (19 September 1964); Colenbrander, A. et al. Nalatenschap: kunst en cultuur in de ogen van W. Jos. De Gruyter (1899-1979). Groningen: Instituut voor Kunst en Architectuurgeschiedenis, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, 1995; Van Veen, H. Th. Naar een artistiek mecenaat. Ontwikkeling van de kunstzin aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. in Boom, Eva and Ten Bruggencate, Carolien, eds. Vruchten der Verbeelding: vier eeuwen kunst en kunstzin aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen/Fruits of Imagination Four Centuries of Art and Artistic Sense at the University of Groningen. Groningen: Dienst Interne Externe Betrekkingen der Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, 1999, pp. 7-21; Ebbink, Hans. Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederland 5. The Hague: Instituut voor Nederlandse geschiedenis, 2001, pp. 152-154; De Gruyter, Josiah, and Ebbink, Hans et al. Zelfportret als zeepaardje. Memoires van W. Jos de Gruyter. Bussum: Thoth, 2004; [obituary:] Dubois, Pierre H. Josiah Willem (Jos) de Gruyter. Singapore 28 augustus 1899 – Amsterdam 30 juli 1979. Jaarboek van de Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde (1981), pp. 144-153.

Contributors: Monique Daniels

De Borchgrave d’Altena, Joseph A. P. M. Ch., Comte

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: De Borchgrave d'Altena, Joseph A. P. M. Ch., Comte

Other Names:

Comte Joseph De Borchgrave d'Altena

Gender: male

Date Born: 31 March 1895

Date Died: 04 July 1975

Place Born: Horion-Hozémont, Liège, Wallonia, Belgium

Home Country/ies: Belgium

Career(s): curators

Overview

Chief curator Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire/Koninklijke musea voor Kunst en Geschiedenis, Brussels. De Borchgrave was the son of Frédéric de Borchgrave d’Altena (1864-1932) and Marie-Clémentine Blanckart (1869-1960). The family lived in the castle of Lexhy in Horion-Hozémont, near Liège. De Borchgrave earned his doctoral degree in archaeology and art history at the University of Liège under Marcel Laurent. In 1924 he joined in Brussels the Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, directed by Jean Capart. He began his long museum career at the Service éducatif, where he did guided tours and organized lectures. He soon was assigned to the management of the Musée royal d’Armes et d’Armures, housed in the Museum Buildings. In 1926 he published Sculptures conservées du pays mosan, followed in 1930 by the catalog of the exhibition of gothic sculptures in the church Saint-Vincent in Liège, La sculpture gothique à l’exposition d’art religieux. Both volumes appeared in the series Notes et documents pour servir à l’histoire de l’art et de l’iconographie en Belgique. By that time the acclaimed monographs by Émile Mâle on medieval art in France had aroused a broader interest in the iconography of the art of the middle ages. In 1927 De Borchgrave was elected a corresponding member of the Académie royale d’Archéologie de Belgique, and subsequently, in 1935, a titular member. Committed to the preservation of the artistic heritage of his country, he published a four-volume inventory of interiors of houses, monasteries, churches and castles in the Meuse River Valley, Décors anciens d’intérieurs mosans (1930-1932). Léo Van Puyvelde praised it in the Revue belge de philology et d’histoire (1933) as an important contribution to the field of applied arts in the region. De Borchgrave’s major work is his three-volume inventory of art works of the Belgian province of Brabant, Notes pour servir à l’inventaire des Åuvres d’art du Brabant. In 1939-1940 the first part, Arrondissement de Louvain, was published in the Annales de la Société Royale d’Archéologie de Bruxelles. De Borchgrave served this association for many years as general secretary. During the Second World War De Borchgrave served as captain-commander of the Infantry. His monographs, Les retables Brabançons conservés en Belgique and Madones anciennes conservées en Belgique, 1025-1425 appeared during the war in 1942 and 1943. His album of fine metalworks and ivories, Å’uvres de nos imagiers romans et gothiques. Sculpteurs, ivoiriers, orfèvres, fondeurs: 1025 à 1550, followed in 1944. In 1944-1946 the Société Royale d’Archéologie de Bruxelles published the second part of the Brabant inventory, Arrondissement de Bruxelles. In 1946 De Borchgrave obtained a teaching position of medieval art history at the Institut d’Histoire de l’Art et d’Archéologie at Liège University, succeeding Laurent. At the Brussels Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire he rose in 1951 from adjunct curator to chief curator, a position that he held until 1960. At the Brussels Institut supérieur d’Histoire de l’Art et d’Archéologie he taught art history classes. In 1951 he chaired the board of the preparatory committee for the international exhibition on Mosan Art, which was held at Liège, and subsequently in Paris and Rotterdam. He contributed to the catalogs, and in Paris he was among the participants of the 1952 conference on Mosan Art, which was organized during the Paris exhibition. Another 1951 publication, his album Art mosan, includes 72 photographs of medieval art works from the Meuse River region. Jean Lejeune (1914-1979) wrote the historical introduction. The third part of De Borchgrave’s inventory, Arrondissement de Nivelles, was published in the Bulletin de la Commission Royale des Monuments et des Sites, in 1956 and in 1960. De Borchgrave was a corresponding member of this committee. He retired from his position at Liège University in 1965. As a member of the Association Royale des Demeures Historiques de Belgique he was the director of the 1967 publication, Châteaux de Belgique. He wrote the introductory essay on the history of the Belgian castles and he contributed most of the individual descriptions. He also was a member of the Société d’Art et d’Histoire du Diocèse de Liège and of the Institut Archéologique Liégois. He died suddenly in 1975 while he was preparing the exhibition Trésors d’art (Art Treasures) in the Brussels Cathedral of Saint Michael.

Selected Bibliography

Notes et documents pour servir à l’histoire de l’art et de l’iconographie en Belgique. 1. Sculptures conservées du pays mosan. Verviers: G. Leens, 1926, 2. La sculpture gothique à l’exposition d’art religieux. Liège: C. Peeters, 1930; Décors anciens d’intérieurs mosans. 4 vols. Liège: Imprimerie des mutilés, 1930-1932; Notes pour servir à l’Inventaire des Åuvres d’art du Brabant. 1. Arrondissement de Louvain, 2. Arrondissement de Bruxelles, 3. Arrondissement de Nivelles. Brussels: A. Ballieu, 1940-1961; Les retables Brabançons conservés en Belgique. Brussels: Éditions du Cercle d’art, 1942; Madones anciennes conservées en Belgique, 1025-1425. Brussels: Éditions du Cercle d’art, 1943; Å’uvres de nos imagiers romans et gothiques. Sculpteurs, ivoiriers, orfèvres, fondeurs: 1025 à 1550. Brussels: Raymond Dupriez, 1944, Dutch, Het werk van onze romaansche & gotische beeldenaars. Beeldhouwers, ivoorsnijders, goudsmeden, beeldgieters. Antwerpen: Standaard boekhandel, 1944; La passion du Christ dans la sculpture en Belgique du XI au XVI siècle. Paris-Brussels, Éditions du Cercle d’art, 1946; Le retable de Saint Georges de Jan Borman. Brussels: R. Dupriez, 1947; Notes pour servir à l’histoire de l’art en Hainaut. Orfèvreries du moyen âge. La Louvière, 1949; et al. Art mosan et arts anciens du pays de Liège. Liège: éditions de l’A. S. B. L., 1951; and Lejeune, Jean Art mosan. Brussels: C. Dessart, 1951; and Lejeune, Jean, and Guérin, Jacques. Trésors d’Art de la vallée de la Meuse. Paris: Les Presses artistiques, 1952; “Quelques résultats des expositions de ‘L’art mosan’ à Liège, à Paris et à Rotterdam, 1951-1952″in Francastel, Pierre et al. L’art mosan. Journées d’Études. Paris, Février 1952. Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1953, pp. 113-117 ; et al. Châteaux de Belgique. Brussels-Liège: Desoer S.A., 1967, English: Castles of Belgium. Brussels-Liège: Desoer S.A., 1967.

Sources

De Seyn, Eug. Dictionnaire biographique des Sciences, des Lettres et des Arts en Belgique. 1. Brussels: Éditions L’Avenir, 1935, p. 208; Le Livre bleu. Recueil biographique … Brussels: Larciers, 1950, pp. 116-117 ; Koller, F., de Maeyer, T. W. and Taylor, Stephen S. (eds) Who’s who in Belgium including the Belgian Congo. Brussels: G. H. B. Universal Editors, 1959, p. 48; Houyoux, Jean and Delzenne, Yves-William, Le nouveau dictionnaire des Belges de 1830 à nos jours. 1. Brussels: Cri, 1998, p. 128; [Obituaries:] Risselin-Steenebrugen, Marie. Revue Belge d’Archéologie et d’Histoire de l’Art 46 (1977): 164; [Liège University] orbi.ulg.ac.be/bitstream/

Contributors: Monique Daniels

Davy, M.-M.

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Davy, M.-M.

Other Names:

Marie-Madeleine Davy

Gender: unknown

Date Born: 1903

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): Medieval (European) and Romanesque

Overview

Medievalist, specialist in Romanesque.Davy’s essay Essai sur la symbolique romane dealt with the creative power of the eleventh century (Sypher).

Selected Bibliography

Essai sur la symbolique romane (XIIe siècle). Paris: Flammarion, 1955.

Sources

Sypher, Wylie, ed. Art History; an Anthology of Modern Criticism. Gloucester, MA: P. Smith, 1975, p. 117, mentioned; Davy, Marie-Madeleine. Traversée en solitaire. Paris: A. Michel, 1989

Medievalist, specialist in Romanesque.Davy’s essay Essai sur la symbolique romane dealt with the creative power of the eleventh century (Sypher).

Davis, Howard McP.

November 8, 2023April 5, 2024

Full Name: Davis, Howard McParlin

Other Names:

Howard McParlin Davis

Gender: male

Date Born: 1914

Date Died: 1994

Place Born: Baltimore, Baltimore Independent City, MD, USA

Place Died: New York, NY, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Career(s): educators

Overview

Influential undergraduate professor of art history at Columbia University. Davis graduated from Princeton University in 1936 with a degree in French languages and literatures. He received a Carnegie Fellowship in 1937, studying summers at the Institut d’Art et d’Arch’ologie in Paris and in Brussels on a Belgian-American Educational Foundation Fellowship, 1938. His master’s degree in fine arts was granted in 1939. He joined the Metropolitan Museum of Art the same year as a curator in first the medieval art department (through 1942) and then prints and drawings (through 1944). He lectured in art history at Hunter college for two years before joining Columbia University in 1944. He became an assistant professor in 1947.

Davis was hired to teach Columbia’s “Art Humanities” course, an interdisciplinary offering, but when the Italian Renaissance course suddenly needed to be filled the same year, Davis obliged. He taught a northern Renaissance continually thereafter as well as the Art Humanities course, which also spanned forty years. He received a Fulbright Senior Research Grant to Italy in 1950-51, where he focused on Bernini. In 1954 he advanced to associate professor. He served the board of directors of the College Art Association as secretary between 1957 and 1960 and as vice-president for 1959-1960. He was named full professor in 1962. In 1968 he received the Mark van Doren Award at Columbia College for teaching. He served as chair of the Department of Art and Archaeology from 1969 to 1972. He was named Moore Collegiate Professor of Art History in 1980. In 1984 he was awarded a distinguished teaching award by the College Art Association and retired in 1985. He continued to teach the Art Humanities course until 1991. He died of heart failure at age 79. His daughter, Alison McParlin Davis-Murphy, is a photographer. Davis published almost nothing during his career; his reputation was as a teacher. His classes in Italian Renaissance painting and on Northern European painting were among the most popular undergraduate courses at Columbia. Although his lack of a Ph.D. prevented him from advising graduate students, many eminent art historians, however, first learned of the topic through Davis, among them David Rosand, now professor at Columbia.

Selected Bibliography

Florine Stettheimer: an Exhibition of Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings. New York: Columbia University, 1973;
“Fantasy and Irony in Peter Bruegel’s Prints.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 1 (June 1943): 291-5.

Sources

Rosand, David. “Introductory Note.” Source: Notes in the History of Art 5 no. 1 (Fall 1985): 1;
Rothstein, Mervyn. “A Classic Teacher Nears Career’s End at Columbia” The New York Times October 15, 1984, p. B3;
[obituaries:] Grimes, William. “Howard McParlin Davis, 79, Taught Art History at Columbia.” New York Times September 17, 1994, p. 12;
Art News 93 (November 1994): 48; “Howard Davis, Art Historian, Dies at 79.” Columbia University Record 20 no. 3 (September 23, 1994).

« Previous
1
…
203
204
205
206
207
…
252
Next »

Art Historians

Overview

Selected Bibliography

Sources

Archives

Citation

More Resources

Overview

Selected Bibliography

Sources

Citation

More Resources

Overview

Selected Bibliography

Sources

Archives

Citation

More Resources

Overview

Selected Bibliography

Sources

Citation

More Resources

Overview

Selected Bibliography

Sources

Archives

Citation

More Resources

Overview

Sources

Citation

More Resources

Overview

Selected Bibliography

Sources

Citation

More Resources

Overview

Selected Bibliography

Sources

Citation

More Resources

Overview

Selected Bibliography

Sources

Citation

More Resources

Overview

Selected Bibliography

Sources

Citation

More Resources

General Citation

License

Sponsored by

General Citation

License

Sponsored by