Historian of art and literature; wrote a number of influential art history books. Some of his works were translated from Polish to German by the art historians Rosa Schapire.
Selected Bibliography
Rzym: ludzie odrodzenia. Lwów: Naklad Ksiegarni H. Altenberga, 1909, German, Rom. 3 vols. [v. 1. Die Menschen der Renaissance, v. 2. Die Menschen des Barock, v. 3. Das Italien des rokoko.] Munich: G. Müller, 1912; Rokoko we Wloszech: ludzie, literatura, sztuka. Warsaw: Nakl. Gebethnera i Wolffa, 1915, German, Das Italien des Rokoko. Munich: G. Müller, 1919; Historye neapolitanskie: wiek XIV-XVIII. Cracow: Nakladem Gebethnera i Wolffa. 1914, German, Neapolitanische Kulturbilder, XIV-XVIII Jahrhundert. Berlin: Bruno Cassirer, 1918.
Citation
"Chledowski, Kazimierz." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/chledowskik/.
More Resources
Search for materials by & about this art historian:
Historian of art and literature; wrote a number of influential art history books. Some of his works were translated from Polish to German by the art historians Rosa Schapire.
Scholar of Cubism; University of California, Berkeley professor of Art, 1953-1979. Chipp was born to George C. Chipp, an executive and Susie Browning (Chipp). He worked as a poster artist in Los Angeles between 1938-1941. Chipp served during World War II in the U. S. Navy, 1941-1945 and was present at the bombing of Pearl Harbor. A distinguished soldier, he rose to the rank of lieutenant and was awarded sixteen battle stars as well as the Presidential Unit Citation. At the liberation of Paris, he met Pablo Picasso, whetting his interest in Cubism. He was married to his wife, Heide, in 1944.
He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a B.A., in 1947, receiving an M.A., in 1948. He secured a Fulbright fellowship for graduate study at the University of Paris, Institute of Art and Archaeology, between 1951-1952 before completing his Ph.D., at Columbia University in 1954 where he lectured as a graduate student, 1950-1953. His dissertation, written under Meyer Schapiro, was on French Cubism. A Fulbright scholar in Paris, he studied at the Sorbonne and the Ecole du Louvre and also in Munich at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte. He joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, as an assistant professor in 1953. He was director of the College Art Association from 1960-1964. He worked tirelessly to create a campus art museum. His eventual creation, the University Art Gallery, (in 1970 renamed the University Art Museum) appointed him acting director. He was made full professor of art history in 1962. In 1965, Peter H. Selz replaced Chipp as director of the Gallery. Chipp was awarded a faculty research fellowship in Berkeley in 1967. In 1968, Chipp, together with Selz and Joshua C. Taylor edited the first publication of primary source documents for art history, Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book by Artists and Critics. He retired from Berkeley, emeritus, in 1979. In retirement he published his study Picasso’s Guernica, published in 1988. In the 1990’s he joined Alan Wofsy to lead the “Picasso Project,” an initiative to issue a catalogue raisonné of that artist’s work. He suffered a stroke in 1992 and died in a San Francisco hospital. His students included Joel Isaacson.
Selected Bibliography
[dissertation:] Cubism: 1907-1914. Columbia University, 1955.
and Richardson, Brenda. Jugendstil & Expressionism in German Posters. Berkeley: University of California, 1965;
[edited, with Selz, Peter, and Taylor, Joshua. Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book by Artists and Critics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968;
and Phillips, Laughlin, and Cafritz, Robert C. Georges Braque: the Late Paintings, 1940-1963. Washington, DC: Phillips Collection, 1982;
and Tusell, Javier. Picasso’s Guernica: History, Transformations, Meanings. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988;
[directed project] and Wofsy, Alan. Picasso’s Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture, 1885-1973: the Picasso Project. San Francisco: Alan Wofsy Fine Arts, 1995ff.
Sources
[obituraries:] The New York Times, February 29, 1992, p. 30;
Art in America 80 (April 1992): 182;
Art News 91 (April 1992): 23;
Clifton, L.A. Artweek 23 (February 27 1992): 9.
Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971,pp. 4, 69;
Cubist scholar and University of California, Berkeley professor of Art, 1953-79. Chipp was born to George C. Chipp, an executive and Susie Browning (Chipp). He worked as a poster artist in Los Angeles between 1938-41. Chipp served in the U. S. Nav
Director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 1948-1968. Cheek was the son of Leslie Cheek, Sr., (d. 1935) and Mabel Wood Cheek. His father’s wealth had come investing in the family formula for Maxwell House Coffee, sold to General Foods. The younger Cheek studied art at Harvard University and architecture at Yale and Columbia. He headed the department of fine arts at the College of William and Mary 1937-39, where he was instrumental in getting an honorary award given to Georgia O’Keefe by the college in 1938 and Frank Lloyd Wright. In 1939 he married Mary Tyler Freeman (1917- 2005), the daughter of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of George Washington, Douglas Southall Freeman. That same year he joined the Baltimore Museum of Fine Art as its director, where he found Adelyn Dohme Breeskin of its prints department already assembling an outstanding collection. Cheek worked actively with various Works Progress Administration (WPA) artist’s projects. He resigned from the Museum in 1942 to join the army corps of engineers in World War II. After the war, he succeeded Thomas C. Colt, Jr as the second director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in 1948 (the museum itself was founded in 1936). During his tenure at Virginia, he persuaded the General Assembly to finance the Museum as the state’s official art museum. In 1953, Cheek developed a “mobile art program” to bring exhibitions to more remote parts of Virginia. The project, Artmobile I, was a success. In 1955, the Virginia Museum Theater opened to integrate the performing arts with the gallery. He retired from the Museum in 1968. The following year the Cheeks began a mountaintop compound they named Skylark on a former farm along the Blue Ridge Parkway. In 1977, they donated it to Washington & Lee University which is today that university’s conference center. Cheek suffered a series of strokes at his home in Richmond and died. His personal papers, 1981-1994, are held by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and 1940-1983 by the Archives of American Art, Washgington, D. C. The Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art, Nashville, TN, the ancestral home of Cheek, is now a public art museum, built upon the collection of the former Nashville Museum of Art..
Selected Bibliography
“Art at William and Mary: a New Kind of College Art Department.” Magazine of Art 31 (March 1938): 150-5; and Morely, Grace L. McCann. American Painting: 1958. Richmond, VA: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 1958.
Sources
Baltimore Museum of Art. Annual I: the Museum: its First Half Century. Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1966; Leslie Cheek Jr. 84; Led Virginia Museum, The New York Times, December 8, 1992, Tuesday, Late Edition – Final, Section D; Page 23; McClenahan, Mary Tyler Freeman Cheek. Southern Civility: Recollections of My Early Life. Richmond, VA: Donnan, 2003, pp. 95-118; [Leslie Cheek interview summary, 1964 March 9.] Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.
Director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 1948-1968. Cheek was the son of Leslie Cheek, Sr., (d. 1935) and Mabel Wood Cheek. His father’s wealth had come investing in the family formula for Maxwell House Coffee, sold to General Foods. The youn
Subject Area(s): Baroque, French (culture or style), and painting (visual works)
Career(s): art historians
Overview
Scholar of Baroque art He co-authored with Jacques Thuillier two monographs on French painting, one covering the period of art betwen [Jean] Fouquet to Poussin (1963) and the second from Le Nain to Fragonard (1964).
Selected Bibliography
and Thuillier, Jacques. La peinture française de Fouquet à Poussin. Geneva: Skira, 1963; La peinture française de Le Nain à Fragonard. Geneva: Skira, 1964.
Scholar of Baroque art He co-authored with Jacques Thuillier two monographs on French painting, one covering the period of art betwen [Jean] Fouquet to Poussin (1963) and the second from Le Nain to Fragonard (1964).
Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre) and sculpture (visual works)
Overview
architectural history of the castle and fortifications
Selected Bibliography
Châteaux et guerriers de la France du Moyen Age. évolution architecturale et essai d’une typologie. Strasbourg, 1981.; Châteaux forts et féodalité en Ile-de-France du XIe au XIIIe siècle. 1982.
Sources
Bazin 489
Citation
"Chatelain, André." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/chatelaina/.
More Resources
Search for materials by & about this art historian:
Subject Area(s): Modern (style or period) and Renaissance
Overview
Scholar of the Renaissance; professor of modern art history at the Sorbonne, 1955-1970, and the Collège de France, 1970-1984. Chastel was the son of Adrien Chastel and his wife, née Morin. He attended the école Normale Supérieure between 1933 and 1938. He trained as an art historian under Henri Focillon at the Sorbonne. Around 1934-1935, Chastel read the essay “Dürer’s ‘Melancholia I,'” a 1923 publication co-authored by Erwin Panofsky and Fritz Saxl. The methodology of these Warburg-Institute scholars made a strong impression on him. Convinced that the interpretation of art works needed to be rooted in this rigorous scholarly research, he traveled to Thames House in London, the new base of the Institute, meeting Panofsky and Saxl and others. Inspired by a Salvador Dali exhibition and the surrealist movement, he became fascinated by the power of images, particularly by the theme of melancholy. His early publications involved the theme of the temptation of St. Anthony. After graduation at the école Normale Supérieure (agrégé de lettres) in 1937, he was appointed a teacher at a lycée in Le Havre. At the outbreak of the World War II, he entered the French army, but was captured and spent two years in a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany. After his release in 1942, he studied humanism and Dante at the école Pratique des Hautes études with Augustin Renaudet (1880-1958), professor of the history of the Renaissance.
Chastel was assigned to inventory the atelier of the French painter Éduard Vuillard, who had died in 1940. This project brought him in immediate contact with the material aspects of art works, later leading to his first book, Vuillard, 1868-1940 in 1946. Between 1943 and 1944 he again taught high school (lycée) successively in Paris and Chartres. He married art critic and writer Paule-Marie Grand in 1943. At the conclusion of the war Chastel served as an assistant at the Institute of Art and Archaeology of the Sorbonne, where he stayed until 1948. He was appointed to the Lycée Marcelin-Berthelot and later at the Lycée Carnot in Paris and, in 1949, the Focillon Fellow Yale University. In 1950 he began writing as an art critic for the newspaper Le Monde. In that year he earned his doctor’s degree under supervision of Renaudet. His dissertation included a thesis on art and humanism in Florence during the time of Lorenzo de’ Medici, and a secondary thesis on the humanist Marsilio Ficino.
Following the retirement of Renaudet in 1951, Chastel became directeur d’études de la IVe section at the école Pratique, a position he held until 1978. His Ficino thesis was published in 1954 as Marsile Ficin et l’art, his principal thesis appeared five years later, Art et humanisme à Florence au temps de Laurent le magnifique (1959). The latter study was dedicated to his mentors, Focillon and Renaudet. Chastel took on his most-gifted student, the ex-patriot Romanian scholar Robert Klein. In 1955, in addition to his position at the école Pratique, Chastel was appointed professor of modern art history at the Sorbonne, succeeding Pierre Lavedan. The following year, Chastel published a two-volume handbook on the history of Italian art spanning the fifth to the twentieth century, L’art italien. In the course of his fifteen-year long service at the Sorbonne, he worked hard to raise the national and international status of art history in France. With the support of the Minister of Culture, André Malraux, he launched the Inventaire des monuments et des richesses artistiques de la France and, in 1968, he founded the art periodical Revue de l’art. He advocated the creation of more art history positions in the provincial universities. In Italy he promoted the discipline of art history at the French Academy in Rome, then housed in the Villa Medici. As a scholar, Chastel insisted on the use of original texts in art-historical research. In 1960 he published a critical edition and new French translation of Leonardo da Vinci’s Trattato della pittura in collaboration with Klein, Léonard de Vinci. Traité de la peinture. With his students, and in collaboration with Klein, he translated De Sculptura, a 1504 work by Pomponius Gauricus (published 1969). In 1963 Chastel and Klein coauthored L’Europe de la Renaissance, l’âge de l’humanisme. His two-volume survey, La Renaissance italienne appeared in 1965. In 1968 and 1969 two studies, La crise de la Renaissance, 1520-1600 and Le mythe de la Renaissance, 1420-1500 appeared. After Klein’s suicide (1967) Chastel edited a collection of articles and essays by Klein, published in 1970 as Robert Klein, La forme et l’intelligible. écrits sur la Renaissance et l’art moderne.
In 1970 Chastel moved from the Sorbonne for the prestigious Collège de France where he was appointed a professor of Renaissance art and civilization in Italy. In 1973 he delivered the Mellon Lectures in Washington DC under the title “The Sack of Rome in 1527.” Chastel was fascinated by this dramatic episode and its impact on art history. This topic also had been the subject of his 1971-1972 courses at the Collège de France. In 1975 he was elected a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles- Lettres. In 1978, he published a collection of his essays under the title: Fables, formes, figures and in 1980 an anthology of his articles written for Le Monde appeared: L’image dans le miroir. In collaboration with his seminar students at the école Pratique he translated the Vite of Giorgio Vasari. This major project, Giorgio Vasari, les vies des meilleurs sculpteurs et architectes, appeared in 12 volumes (1981-1989). Chastel was active in various organizations in the field of architecture and city planning in France and abroad. After the death of Wolfgang Lotz, in 1981, he was elected president of the Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio in Vicenza. In 1983 he lobbied for the creation of a French national institute of art history. As a result of this report, a 1989 national art library was founded bringing together material from across France and ultimately the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, INHA, founded in 2001. Chastel retired in 1984. In 1987 he was honored with a Festschrift, Il se rendit en Italie: études offertes à André Chastel. The articles by French and international scholars focus on the artistic relations between France and Italy. He continued publishing until the end of his life. His final project, L’art français, a multi-volume handbook, was left unfinished at his death to cancer in Paris in 1990 [sources stating Neuilly-sur-Seine as his death place are incorrect]. He is buried at Ivry Cemetery, Ivry-sur-Seine. Four volumes appeared posthumously, encompassing the early beginnings of French art until 1825. A number of other studies were completed and published posthumously. Both the journals, Histoire de l’art and Revue de l’art, dedicated a special volume to the memory of Chastel. His students included Antoine Schnapper.
Chastel “broke decisively with the tedious, frivolous, narrow and chauvinistic traditions that dominated most French art history between the two wars and introduced fresh air from Germany and Italy, England and the United States.” (Haskell). He adhered to no specific art theory, except for a heavily fact-minded approach in the French academic style (Times). He was convinced, however, of the need of a synthetic approach, advocating the concept of art in context. His early publications reflect his fascination with the approach of the Warburg Institute scholars, who, in addition to Saxl and Panofsky, included E. H. Gombrich and Jean Seznec. He was responsible for promoting their method to French scholarship (Martin and Haskell). Chastel was strongly aware of the relation of Renaissance art with humanism, philosophy and poetry. In agreement with ideas expressed by Jacob Burckhardt he defined artistic activity within frameworks of genres and themes, and based on facts and dates (Chastel, 1965). He highly valued the importance of sources and he insisted on the study of original texts. In an interview near the end of his life, Chastel asserted his conviction that though historical events can cause ruptures in the history of art, forms and techniques continue, mutating into new art forms. The eminent medievalist Willibald Sauerländer termed him the “prince of French art history.”
[dissertation] Art et humanisme à Florence au temps de Laurent le magnifique. études sur la Renaissance et l’humanisme platonicien. école Pratique des Hautes études, 1950, published, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1959;
“La tentation de Saint Antoine ou le songe du mélancolique.” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 15 (April 1936): 218-229 and 16 (November 1936): 202-203;
Léonard de Vinci. Traité de la peinture. Paris: Club des Libraires de France, 1960;
Pomponius Gauricus. De Sculptura (1504). Paris: Droz, 1969;
and Klein, Robert. L’Europe de la Renaissance, l’âge de l’humanisme. Paris: éditions des Deux-mondes, 1963;
La Renaissance italienne: La Renaissance méridionale, Italie, 1460-1500, and Le grand atelier d’Italie, 1460-1500. Paris: Gallimard, 2 vols, 1965;
La crise de la Renaissance, 1520-1600. Geneva: Skira, 1968; Le mythe de la Renaissance, 1420-1500. Geneva: Skira, 1969;
and Klein, Robert. La forme et l’intelligible. écrits sur la Renaissance et l’art moderne, articles et essais réunis et présentés par André Chastel. Paris: Gallimard, 1970;
Système de l’architecture urbaine. Le quartier des Halles à Paris. (en collaboration avec Françoise Boudon, Hélène Couzy, Françoise Hamon). Paris: éd. du CNRS, 2 vols, 1977;
Fables, formes, figures. Paris: Flammarion, 2 vols, 1978; L’image dans le miroir. Paris: Gallimard, 1980; Giorgio Vasari, les vies des meilleurs sculpteurs et architectes. 12 vols. Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1981-1989
; Chronique de la peinture italienne à la Renaissance, 1280-1580. Fribourg: Office du livre, 1983; The Sack of Rome, 1527. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983;
Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, p. 102;
Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Research Guide to the History of Western Art. Sources of Information in the Humanities, no. 2. Chicago: American Library Association, 1982, pp. 43, 158;
Bazin, Germain, Histoire de l’histoire de l’art de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, p. 231;
Briganti, Giuliano. “Chastel e noi” Il se rendit en Italie: études offertes à André Chastel. Rome: Edizioni dell’Elefante, 1987, pp. 1-4;
personal correspondence (correcting place of death), Laurent Chastel, son;
[obituaries:] Revue de l’art 89 (1990): 5-7; Adorni, Bruno. “Ricordo di André Chastel, 1912-1990” Casabella 54 (November 1990): 22-23;
Hommage à André Chastel. Histoire de l’art 12 (1990), including Levaillant, Françoise and Tison, Hubert. “Entretien avec André Chastel”: 7-19;
Hommage à André Chastel. Revue de l’art 93 (1991) including Corgeval, Guy and Morel, Philippe. “Entretien avec André Chastel”: 78-87;
“Andre Chastel.” Times (London) July 20, 1990;
Haskell, Francis, “Andre Chastel.” Independent (London), July 21, 1990, p. 14;
“Anniversaire” Revue de l’art 100 (1993): 5-9; André Chastel: un sentiment de bonheur, entretiens filmés avec Guy Cogeval et Philippe Morel, réalisation Edgardo Cozarinsky, Les films d’ici, 1990;
Zerner, Henri. “André Chastel, historien de l’art” écrire l’histoire de l’art. Figures d’une discipline. Paris: Gallimard, 1997, pp. 64-70;
Martin, François-René. “La ‘migration’ des idées Panofsky et Warburg en France” écrire l’histoire de l’art : France-Allemagne, 1750-1920. Revue Germanique Internationale 13 (2000): 243-245;
Brunon, Hervé and others. André Chastel. http://www.centrechastel.paris4.sorbonne.fr/andrechastel.htm, 2006; [Sauerländer estimation:] Little, Charles T. “WillibaldSauerländer: Gothic Art and Beyond.” in Hourihane, Colum, ed. Gothic Art and Thought in the Later Medieval Period: Essays in Honor of WillibaldSauerländer. Princeton, NJ: Index of Christian Art, Department of Art & Archeology, Princeton University/Penn State University Press, 2011, p. 3;
André Chastel: Portrait d’un Historien de l’art. Paris: Picard/ Institut National d’histoire de l’art, 2015.
Scholar of the Renaissance; professor of modern art history at the Sorbonne, 1955-1970, and the Collège de France, 1970-1984. Chastel was the son of Adrien Chastel and his wife, née Morin. He attended the école Normale Supérieure between 1933 and
Subject Area(s): ancient, archaeology, Classical, and sculpture (visual works)
Career(s): excavators
Overview
Harvard University Professor of classical art (primarily sculpture); principal excavator at the Argive Heraeum. Chase graduated from Harvard University class of 1896. He spent two years at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens where he excavated the Argive Heraeum, being awarded an 1897 A. M. from Harvard in the process. He continued working on his Ph.D. at Harvard, spending the 1900-01 year as a master of St. Mark’s School in Southborough, MA. In 1900 he was awarded his Ph.D. from Harvard with a dissertation on Greek Shield iconography. He joined the faculty at Harvard as a lecturer in 1901, moving to assistant professor in 1906.
In 1908 he married Freedrica Mark of Cambridge, MA; the same year he cataloged the James Loeb collection of classical (Arrentine) pottery with Loeb. He was associated with the excavations as Sardis in 1914. He was appointed the John E. Hudson Professor of Archaeology in 1916. As a teacher, Chase was known as a fair but extremely harsh grader. The lectures he delivered in 1919 as a course offered by the Lowell Institute in Boston were published as Greek and Roman Sculpture in American Collections (1924). The following year he and Chandler R. Post published their History of Sculpture, for many years a stable in art history classes. George M. A. Hanfmann assumed his publications of Lydian pottery from the Sardis excavations after Hanfmann became established at Harvard. In 1925 Chase became Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences until 1939 when he became Dean of the University, the first to hold that newly created office. In this capacity, he acted as president of the College when Harvard President James Bryant Conant (1893-1978) was serving in World War II and afterward when Conant served as U. S. high commissioner for western Germany. Chase issued fascicule 8 in the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum (series) for the Fogg Museum (Galletin Collection). In 1945 he was names professor emeritus. Chase assumed the position of Acting Curator of Classical Art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, replacing the late Lacey D. Caskey. He wrote the first guide book to the Boston MFA’s Classical Collection (1950). He died suddenly at home at age 77.
[dissertation:] The Shield Devices of the Greeks. Harvard, 1900, published in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 13: 61-127;
Catalogue of Arretine Pottery. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1916;
Greek and Roman Sculpture in American Collections. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1924;
and Post, Chandler Rathfon. A History of Sculpture. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1925;
and Loeb, James. The Loeb Collection of Arretine Pottery. New York: Fogg Museum of Art, 1908;
Fogg Museum and Gallatin Collections. Corpus vasorum antiquorum. United States of America. fasicule 8.
Sources
Index IV “Publications.” Beazley, John D. Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters. 2nd ed. vol. 3. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963 [Chase’s name appears out of alphabetical order in the ARV];
[obituaries:] S[tephen] B. L[uce]. American Journal of Archaeology 56 (July 1952): 180-181; “Dr. George Chase of Harvard Dies: University’s First Dean, Acting President in World War II, Retired From Staff in ’45.” New York Times February 4, 1952, p. 17.
Archives
Papers of George Henry Chase, 1926-1951 (inclusive)., Harvard University.
Contributors: Emily Crockett and Lee Sorensen
Citation
Emily Crockett and Lee Sorensen. "Chase, George Henry." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/chaseg/.
More Resources
Search for materials by & about this art historian:
Harvard University Professor of classical art (primarily sculpture); principal excavator at the Argive Heraeum. Chase graduated from Harvard University class of 1896. He spent two years at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens where h
Place Born: Genlis, Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, France
Place Died: Paris, Île-de-France, France
Home Country/ies: France
Subject Area(s): ancient, Ancient Greek (culture or style), Antique, the, archaeology, and Roman (ancient Italian culture or period)
Overview
Archaeologist and head of Greek and Roman Antiquities, Louvre. Charbonneaux served in World War I at the Macedonian front winning a croix de guerre for his bravery. After the war he returned to Greece as a member of the école française d’Athens. His initial publications were in archaeology, the excavations by the French at Delphi. With Fernand Chapouthier (1899-1953) he published the first report on Malia in 1928, reflecting an interest in the pre-classical. Charbonneaux joined the Musée du Louvre in 1926 as a conservator, continuing to publish both scholarly and survey texts, including L’Art égéen in 1929. In 1945 he was appointed head of the department of Greek and Roman antiquities. His Louvre work brought his attention squarely into art history. After his appointment, his publishing focused primarily on objects in the museum and much of his time was devoted to acquisitions. He also taught a course annually at the école du Louvre. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s Charbonneaux published principally on sculpture, including modern sculpture (Maillol and Rodin) which was well represented at the Louvre. Beginning in 1968 he published the sections on sculpture for the prestigious Univers des formes series (Arts of Mankind, English) on Greek sculpture. At age seventy-four and newly elected president of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, he was killed in a car accident.
Selected Bibliography
Les terres cuites recques. Paris: L. Reynaud, 1936; La sculpture grecque classique. Lausanne: La Guilde du livre, 1942-45; La sculpture grecque archaïque. Paris: éditions de Cluny, 1939; Les sculptures de Rodin. Paris, F. Hazan, 1949; Les bronzes grecs. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1958; and Martin, Roland, and Villard, François. Grèce classique (480-330 avant J.-C.). Univers des formes 16. Paris: Gallimard, 1969, English: Classical Greek Art (480-330 B.C.). Arts of Mankind 16. New York: G. Braziller, 1972; Grèce archaïque (620-480 avant J.-C.). Univers des formes 14. Paris: Gallimard, 1968, English: Archaic Greek Art, 620-480 B.C.. Arts of Mankind 14. London: Thames and Hudson, 1971; and Martin, Roland, and Villard, François. Grèce hellénistique (330-50 avant J.-C.). Univers des formes 18. Paris: Gallimard, 1970, English: Hellenistic Art, 330-50 B.C.. Arts of Mankind 18. London: Thames & Hudson, 1973.
Sources
[complete bibliography:] Bibliographie de Jean Charbonneaux. Revue Archeologique ns (1968) p. 4-10; [obituaries:] Devambez, P. Jean Charbonneaux (1895-1969). Revue Archeologique ns (1969) p. 119-20; Cart, G. La Revue du Louvre et des Musees de France 19 no. 2 (1969): 76-8; “Charbonneaux. Jean.” Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, vol. 1, pp. 270-71.
Citation
"Charbonneaux, Jean." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/charbonneauxj/.
More Resources
Search for materials by & about this art historian:
Archaeologist and head of Greek and Roman Antiquities, Louvre. Charbonneaux served in World War I at the Macedonian front winning a croix de guerre for his bravery. After the war he returned to Greece as a member of the école française d’
Subject Area(s): French (culture or style), painting (visual works), realism (artistic form of expression), and Realist (modern European fine arts styles)
Career(s): art critics
Overview
Critic and supporter of the French Realist painters. In 1843 Fleury-Husson moved to Paris where he met Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867). In 1844 he joined the journal L’Artiste, writing art criticism under his pseudonym “Champfleury”. In an 1848 issue of Le Pamphlet, he was among the first to praise the painting of Gustav Courbet. The following year, Courbet’s depiction of the poorer classes in Burial at Ornans (1849, Musée d’Orsay) pleased Champfleury because of the nobility the painter gave to the peasantry: it was not seditious because, Champfleury claimed, Courbet was no politico, he simply painted the scene before him. While critics accused Realists of mindless imitation of the least beautiful aspects of nature, Champfleury defended them, Courbet chief among them, pointing out their truthfulness. In 1850 his positive evaluation of El Greco helped elevate the artist’s reputation. During these years he also issued scholarly works on the Le Nain brothers and Maurice Quentin de la Tour. When Courbet painted L’Atelier du peintre, placing the writer on the “side of life” next to Charles Baudelaire and Bruyas, Champfleury was put in an awkward position. The painting, subtitled a “Real Allegory,” was neither truthful to an actual event (being an allegory) nor a good likeness of the writer. Nevetheless, Champfleury defended Courbet’s private exhibition of works on the Avenue Montaigne, though he felt that Realism as the term for the group was misleading. Champfleury ceased writing criticism by 1855, editing a short-lived periodical, Le réalisme from 1856-57. Courbet was increasingly influenced by Proudhon during this time, including becoming involved with politics. By 1857 the relationship between Champfleury and Courbet, the two exponents of Realism, had broken. Champfleury continued to defend Courbet, praising him in Champfleury’s Grandes figures d’hier et d’aujourd’hui (1861). Impressionists and Realists alike included Champfleury in their paintings to honor him. Edouard Manet painted him in his Music in the Tuileries Gardens (1862 National Gallery, London) and Henri Fantin-Latour included a likeness in his Homage to Delacroix (1864, Musée d’Orsay). However, by 1865 a permanent rift between the writer and Courbet had occurred. Champfleury focused on writing historical works instead of fiction or criticism. In 1872 he assumed the position of Chief of Collections at the Sèvres porcelain manufactory. He held that position at the time of his death. Champfleury’s art theory discards the art-for-art’s-sake idea, espousing sincerity in art: a true depiction of actual events and people. His espousal of Realism, both in his own novels and the art of Courbet, brought the movement to its popularity.
Selected Bibliography
Oeuvres posthumes de Champfleury Salons 1846-1851. Paris: A. Lemerre, 1894; Bibliographie céramique. Paris: Quantin, 1881; Histoire de la caricature moderne. Paris, [s.n.],1868; Histoire de la Caricature au Moyen âge. Paris: [s.n.], 1867-1871; Grandes figures d’hier et d’aujourd’hui: Balzac, Gérard de Nerval, Wagner, Courbet. Paris: Poulet-Malassis et de Broise, 1861; Réalisme. [serial] Paris: [s.n.], 1856-1857; Essai sur la vie et l’oeuvre des Le Nain, peintres Laonnois. Laon: E´d. Fleury et Ad. Chevergny, 1850; Les frères Le Nain. Paris: Vve J. Renouard, 1862; Les peintres de Laon et de Saint-Quentin: De La Tour. Paris: Dumoulin, 1855.
Sources
Kultermann, Udo. The History of Art History. New York: Abaris, 1993, pp.117; Dolan, Therese. “Champfleury, Jules -François-Felix.” Dictionary of Art; Flanary, David A. Champfleury: the Realist writer as Art Critic. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1980; Abélès, Luce, and Lacambre, Geneviève. Champfleury: l’art pour le peuple. Paris: Ministère de la culture/Réunion des musées nationaux, 1990; Asfour, Amal. Champfleury: Meaning in the Popular Arts in Nineteenth-Century France. New York: Peter Lang, 2001; Eudel, Paul. Champfleury: sa vie, son oeuvre & ses collections. Paris: L. Sapin, 1891; Byrne, John J. Courbet and Champfleury: a Study in Affinities. Ph.D., Fordham University, 1971.
Critic and supporter of the French Realist painters. In 1843 Fleury-Husson moved to Paris where he met Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867). In 1844 he joined the journal L’Artiste, writing art criticism under his pseudonym “Champfleury”. In an 18
