Art Historians

Champa, Kermit S.

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Champa, Kermit S.

Other Names:

Kermit Swiler Champa

Gender: male

Date Born: 1939

Date Died: 2004

Place Born: Lancaster, PA, USA

Place Died: Providence, RI, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): American (North American), architecture (object genre), Impressionist (style), painting (visual works), and sculpture (visual works)

Overview

French and American Impressionist painting scholar; Brown University Professor of Art and Architecture, 1970-2004. Champa was initially interested in music. He studied the trombone in grade school and toured Europe as part of Yale’s marching band. In his academic classes at Yale, Champa studied art history. He graduated from Yale with a BA in 1960, continuing at Harvard where he studied with the art critic Clement Greenberg, and wrote his doctoral degree in 1965 under Frederick B. Deknatel in Impressionism. He returned to Yale to teach art history as an assistant professor. He joined the art history faculty of Brown University in 1970. In 1974 became a full professor at Brown. Champa had the dubious honor of being named one of the “ten sexiest professors in America”, by Esquire magazine in 1975. Champa wove film into his art courses as well, and caused a furor when, in 1989, he planned to show (overtly racist) Birth of a Nation by D.W. Griffith for its ground-breaking film techniques. His The Rise of Landscape Painting in France: Corot to Monet appeared in 1991, a book using music as the framework for the intellectual importance of French landscape painting. He married Judith Tolnick Champa, a director director. Again, in Masterpiece’ Studies: Manet, Zola, Van Gogh and Monet (1994) Champa emphasized the interrelatedness of music, art and literature on French painting of the 1880’s. He was named the first Andrea V. Rosenthal Chair of History of Art and Architecture a Brown in 1995, an endowed professorship named after a pupil of his who had died in the Lockerbie plane bombing. He fought a prolonged battle with lung cancer from which he died. At the time of his death, he was revising The Slang of Aestheticism: The Anglo-American Color-Music Project 1898-1950, another project examining the correlation between art and music. Champa’s early training was under the formalist rubric, which he never left. The hallmark of his later work is the connections between disparate aspects of culture, principally music and art, but also literature, for example the relations between Zola and Manet, of the literature between artists, such as Monet and Van Gogh, or between Monet and Bazille. Champa could link the history of landscape painting in France with symphonic form development of the same period. He believed in the literary standards of art writing, as practiced by great 19th-century art writers such as Baudelaire and Julius Meier-Graefe. James Panero, a former related that Champa’s view of art was such that everything a scholar of 19th-century French art “needed to know could be found in Courbet, Meier-Graefe, Baudelaire and Wagner.”

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] The Genesis of Impressionism. Harvard University, 1965; and Champa, Kate H. German Painting of the 19th Century. New Haven, CT: Yale University Art Gallery, 1970; Masterpiece Studies: Manet, Zola, Van Gogh, & Monet. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994; Mondrian Studies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985; and Pitman, Dianne W. and Brenneman, David A. Monet & Bazille: a Collaboration. Atlanta: High Museum of Art/Harry N. Abrams, 1999; and Wissman, Fronia E., and Johnson, Deborah, and Brettell, Richard R. The Rise of Landscape Painting in France: Corot to Monet. Manchester, NH: Currier Gallery of Art, 1991; Studies in Early Impressionism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973.

Sources

[obituaries:] The Times (London), August 24, 2004; Shattuck, Kathryn. “Kermit S. Champa, 64, Author And Distinguished Art Historian.” The New York Times, August 17, 2004, p. B7.

Chambers, David Sanderson

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Chambers, David Sanderson

Gender: male

Date Born: unknown

Date Died: unknown

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

Overview

Patronage art historian

Selected Bibliography

Patrons and Artists of the Italian Renaissance. London: Macmillan, 1970; and Martineau, Jane, eds. Splendours of the Gonzaga. London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 1981.

Sources

KRG, 118 mentioned

Patronage art historian

Cevese, Renato

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Cevese, Renato

Gender: male

Date Born: unknown

Date Died: unknown

Home Country/ies: Italy

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

Overview

Scholar of renaissance art and architecture.

Selected Bibliography

[complete bibliography:] Ackerman, James, ed. Studi in onore di Renato Cevese. Vicenza, Italy: Centro internazionale di studi di architettura Andrea Palladio, 2000.

Scholar of renaissance art and architecture.

Cesnola, Luigi

November 8, 2023June 12, 2024

Full Name: Cesnola, Luigi Palma di

Other Names:

General Cesnola

Gender: male

Date Born: 1832

Date Died: 1904

Place Born: Rivarolo Canavese, Torino, Piedmont, Italy

Place Died: New York, NY, USA

Home Country/ies: Italy

Overview

First director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 1879-1904. Cesnola was born to family of distant Piedmontese nobility. He was born in Rivarolo, Italy, near Turin. He was trained as a military officer, fighting for the Sardininan Army of Revolution and British in the Crimean War. In 1861 he immigrated to the United States where he married Mary Isabel Reid, the daughter of war hero Commodore Samuel Chester Reid (1783-1861). Cesnola fought in the American Civil War, attaining the rank of colonel in the cavalry. He was captured in 1863 leading a charge of the 4th New York Cavalry at Aldie, Virginia. In 1865 he was appointed by President Lincoln to serve as the U.S. Consul to Cyprus, then under Ottoman occupation. He took up excavations, claiming to have dug more than fifty sites, but for certain making finds in Dali, Atheniu (Golgoi), Paphos, amathus and Kourion (Curium). He exhumed over 35,000 objects, around 22,000 of which he sold the the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. A master promoter, other objects were sold in high-profile auctions in London and Paris. After his duty as Consul concluded in 1877, he was made a trustee of the Metropolitan the same year. Cesnola wrote an account of his exploits, entitled Cyprus (1879) and the same year he was appointed the first professional director of the Metropolitan. He remained there until his death. He led the museum to its new location at Fifth Avenue in Central Park in 1880, his Cyrprian collections occupying the principal location on the first floor. Perhaps for these reasons, the art dealer Gaston Feuardent (1843-1893) accused Cesnola in the journal Art Amateur of having made “deceptive restorations” to the Cyprian objects. After a public exchange of comments, Feuardent sued for libel. Although Cesnola was acquitted, court documents indicate much of what Feuardent asserted was correct. Additional accusations of corrupt provenance were hurled by Max Hermann Ohnefalsch-Richter and eventually contained in a report to the Museum by the art journalist William James Stillman. In 1888, Cesnola demanded his curator, William Henry Goodyear to authenticate some Cypriot vases which Goodyear found “problematic.” Furious when his curator would not do as “his superior” demanded, Cesnola locked Goodyear out of his office until Goodyear resigned. Cesnola rankled other staff by strutting the halls and focusing on staff punctuality rather than art. Shortly before his death, Cesnola was instrumental in arranging the return of the Ascoli cope, which had been stolen from the church in Ascoli and unwittingly purchased by J. P. Morgan (1837-1913), to Italy. He died at his apartment in the Seymour Hotel at age 72. After his death in 1904, Cesnola was succeeded at the Metropolitan by Caspar Purdon Clarke of the South Kensington Museum. He is buried in Kenisco cemetery, Valhalla, NY.

Cesnola is much criticized for the adventurer/archaeologist he was. Even according to the casual standards of amateur nineteenth century archaeology, Cesnola was guilty of much. He was rarely present at the excavation carried out on his behalf, did not use photographic documentation, and willfully misinterpreted the objects to make them more important than they were. He forged the discovery locations of his finds, partly because he was not present and partly to heighten their luster. The later analysis of his collection by Sir John Myres (1869-1954), however, concluded that all objects were at least of Cyprian origin. A man of bombast and savvy, Cesnola assumed the title “General” during his Consulship, although his rank even after discharge was never higher than colonel. The Cesnola Collection of Cypriot items was quietly dissolved in the twentieth century by the Museum, except for the most authentic pieces.

Selected Bibliography

Cyprus: its Ancient Cities, Tombs, and Temples: a Narrative of Researches and Excavations During Ten Years’ Residence in that Island. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1878; A Descriptive Atlas of the Cesnola Collection of Cypriote Antiquities in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 3 vols. Boston: J. R. Osgood, 1885-1903; [Libel controversy material:] Gaston L. Feuardent vs. Louis P. di Cesnola: Testimony of the Defendant. New York: J. Polhemus, 1884; Answer of Gaston L. Feuardent to L.P. di Cesnola : the Accusations of Dishonesty Contained in a Communication Addressed to the Executive Committee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as Published in the New York “World” of January 9th, 1881: Mainly Answered by Di Cesnola’s Own Letters. New York : Thompson & Moreau, Printers, 1881; The Cesnola Collection and the De Morgan Collection: Papers Communicated to the American Numismatic and Archaeological Society. New York: Printed for the Society, 1878; Report of W. J. Stillman on the Cesnola Collection. New York: Thompson & Moreau, 1885; [Myres’s report concerning the collection:] Myres, John Linton. Handbook of the Cesnola Collection of Antiquities from Cyprus. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1914.

Sources

[obituary] “General Di Cesnola Dies After Short Illness.” New York Times November 22, 1904, p. 5;
Traill, David A. “Cesnola, Luigi Palma di.” Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, vol. 1, pp. 267-68;
Marangou, Anna G. The Consul Luigi Palma Di Cesnola 1832-1904: Life and Deeds. Paris: Cultural Center of the Popular Bank/Group, Nicosia, 2000;
Karageorghis, Vassos, and Mertens, J. R. and Rose, M. E. Ancient Art from Cyprus: The Cesnola Collection. New York: Metropolitan Museum, 2000;
Tomkins, Calvin. Merchants and Masterpieces: The Story of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2nd. ed. New York: Henry Holt, 1989, pp. 49-92.

Cellini, Benvenuto

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Cellini, Benvenuto

Gender: male

Date Born: 1500

Date Died: 1571

Place Born: Florence, Tuscany, Italy

Place Died: Florence, Tuscany, Italy

Home Country/ies: Italy

Subject Area(s): Mannerist (Renaissance-Baroque style), Renaissance, and sculpture (visual works)

Overview

Mannerist sculptor; his autobiography (Vita) contains evaluations of many renaissance artists. Trained as a goldsmith, Cellini worked primarily as a sculptor. His early work in Pisa on the cathedral (accidentally, he had originally set out for Rome) resulted in a keen knowledge of Roman sculpture via sarcophagi. Finally in Rome by 1519, he dealt in antique medals, gems, and other objects which, according to his autobiography, he routinely discovered. In 1532 he traveled to Naples before a commission for the Cardinal Ippolito d’Este (1479-1520) led him to the court of Francois I in Fontainebleau in 1540. At Fontainebleau, Cellini worked on royal commissions, including a famous Nymph of Fontainebleau, now in the Louvre [the work was only reattributed to Cellini by Leopoldo Conte Cicognara in 1824]. In 1543 he produced his most famous work of art, the Salt Cellar of Francois I, a gold and enamel salt holder for royal use. Thereafter, Cellini returned to Florence to work for for Cosimo I de’ Medici. These included his notable bronze Perseus statue. In 1556 he was imprisoned in the Stinche for more than two months for assault. He was charged with sodomy in 1557. It was during this time, when, sentenced to four years’ imprisonment and under house arrest, (or possibly the following year) that Cellini began his Vita, an important proto-art-historical work. He likely intended his autobiography both as an apologia as well as a document of his accomplishments. The manuscript, which was dictated in 1562 to an assistant while Cellini sculpted, was unpublishable at the time because of his strained relations with Cosimo I. Cellini appears to have added sections to it around 1566-7. The Vite remained unpublished during Cellini’s lifetime, though contemporaries such as Giorgio Vasari, himself an important art-historical chronicler, knew of its existence. Benedotto Varchi, another in the Medici circle, may also have read it. The manuscript was believed lost, though imperfect 17th-century copies existed. These copies circulated to Filippo Baldinucci and Antonio Cocchi, who issued an edition in 1728. The first English translation appeared in 1771 by Thomas Nugent, who had used the Cocchi version. Goethe translated it into German. The rediscovery of the original manuscript in 1805 allowed Francesco Tassi to issue a reliable edition in 1829. Though many events appear to be “reconstructions,” perhaps in the hopes of reingratiating himself with the Medici, the account overall is a more or less truthful document. Cellini’s life forms a privileged snapshot of artistic life in the art capital of the time. He faced interrogations in the Castel Sant’Angelo in 1538, encountered bizarre scenes of witchcraft in the Colosseum, and had dealings with many famous artists and patrons. The Vita is part of a tradition of Italian humanistic biography. Cellini’s style is immediate, his facility for dialogue sensitive. His romancing of episodes and impossible chronologies has led to accusations of fiction. Cellini freely discusses the oneiric aspects of life (hallucinations, visions, premonitions) as well as his experience with other renaissance artists and his frank evaluation of them. Modern organization into chapters and sub-parts, which makes for easier reading, is not part of the original structure. Cellini also wrote a treatise on art, not connected with an art history.

Selected Bibliography

[Original manuscript:] Florence, Bib. Medicea-Laurenziana, Cod. Mediceo-Palatino 234.2, (c. 1558-67); [first printed edition:] Atonio Cocchi, editor. Vita di Benvenuto Cellini orefice e scultore fiorentino da lui medesimo scritta. Colonia [i.e., Naples]: P. Martello 1728; [first English edition:] The Life of Benvenuto Cellini. Thomas Nugent, trans. 2 vols. London: Printed for T. Davies, 1771; [first edition using original manuscript:] Tassi, Francesco, editor. Vita di Benvenuto Cellini orefice e scultore fiorentino scritta di lui medesimo, restituita alla lezione originale sul manoscritto Poirot ora Laurenziano ed arrichita d’illustrazioni e documenti inediti. 3 vols. Florence: G. Piatti, 1829 ; [most recent reliable English translation:] Symonds, John Addington, trans. The Life of Benvenuto Cellini. 2 vols. London: John C. Nimmo, 1888; [abridged edition] Hope, Charles, and Nova, Alessandro, editors. The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini. Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1983.

Sources

Kultermann, Udo. Geschichte der Kunstgeschichte: Der Weg einer Wissenschaft. 2nd ed. Frankfurt am Main and Vienna: Ullstein, 1981, p. 35; Naumer, C. “Cellini, Benvenuto.” Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, vol. 1, pp. 262-3; Novo, Alessandro. “Cellini, Benvenuto.” Dictionary of Art; Wittkower, Rudolf and Wittkower, Margot. Born under Saturn: The Character and Conduct of Artists: A Documented Study from Antiquity to the French Revolution. New York: Norton, 1963; Pope-Hennessy, John. Cellini. New York: Abbeville Press,1985; Cervigni, Dino. The ‘Vita’ of Benvenuto Cellini: Literary Tradition and Genre. Ravenna: Longo,1979; Rossi, Paolo L. “Sprezzatura, Patronage, and Fate: Benvenuto Cellini and the World of Words.” in, Vasari’s Florence: Artists and Literati at the Medicean Court. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Mannerist sculptor; his autobiography (Vita) contains evaluations of many renaissance artists. Trained as a goldsmith, Cellini worked primarily as a sculptor. His early work in Pisa on the cathedral (accidentally, he had originally set ou

Cecchi, Emilio

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Cecchi, Emilio

Gender: male

Date Born: 1884

Date Died: 1966

Home Country/ies: Italy

Subject Area(s): catalogues raisonnés

Career(s): art critics

Overview

Giotto scholar and film critic; notes about Cecchi’s opinions appear in Richard Offner‘s annotated catalog of the 1937 Mostra Giottesca. He acted as the translator of Italian Painters of the Renaissance by Bernard Berenson. His son (?) is the art historian Alessandro Cecchi.

Sources

Ladis, Andrew. “The Unmaking of a Connoisseur.” in, Offner, Richard. A Discerning Eye: Essays on Early Italian Painting. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998, p,19, note 1; Bolzoni, Francesco. Emilio Cecchi fra Buster Keaton e Visconti. Rome: Centro sperimentale per la cinematografia, Cineteca nazionale, 1995; Mucci, Velso. “Emilio Cechi uomo d’ordine.” Contemporaneo 5/6 (August-September 1958): 53-69.

Ceán Bermudez, Juan Agustin

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Ceán Bermudez, Juan Agustin

Other Names:

Juan Agustin Ceán Bermudez

Gender: male

Date Born: 1749

Date Died: 1829

Place Born: Gijón, Asturias, Principado de Asturias, Spain

Place Died: Madrid, Spain

Home Country/ies: Spain

Subject Area(s): painting (visual works) and Spanish (culture or style)

Overview

Academic and painter; wrote dictionary of Spanish art historians in the manner of Vasari. The son of don Francisco Ceán Bermudez and doña Manuela Maria de Cifuentes, Ceán Bermudez was primarily educated in his hometown of Gijón moving to Oviedo where he obtained his baccalaureat in philosophy from a Jesuit college. As his father could not afford sending his son to the university, Ceán Bermúdez put himself in the service of Gaspar de Jovellanos (1744-1811). Jovellanos (who was only five years older than himself), just as the latter was finishing his studies in Alcalá de Henares (1765). Jovellanos was rather impressed by the intelligence and ambition of his 17year old servant and helped him pursue university studies: this was the beginning of a lifelong friendship between the two men, based, among others, on a shared passion for the arts. This close acquaintance also allowed Ceán Bermudez to write the most important – and often plagiarized – biography of Jovellanos. In 1768, Ceán Bermudez followed his master and friend to Seville, where he cultivated his artistic talents and took painting lessons from Juan Espinal, and also founded, together with other artists of his age, an Academy for the practice of drawing and painting. In 1776, his talent earned him Jovellanos’s help with his transfer to Madrid, where he received lessons from Anton Rafael Mengs. Mengs would have taken his young disciple with himself to Rome, two years later, but Cean Bermudez preferred to remain in the service of his friend and protector Jovellanos. In 1778 he was appointed official in the Secretariat of the National Bank of San Carlos, later Banco de España, and advanced as chief official of the same Secretariat in 1785. These positions provided him with the opportunity to travel throughout Spain and to acquire an increasing familiarity with the artistic treasures of his country. This is how he came to lay the foundations of a discipline hardly cultivated before him, namely the historical investigation of the development of arts in Spain. In 1790, while in charge with the Archivo de Indias (Indian Archives) in Sevilla, he was working on what was to become the “jewelry of Spanish bibliography”, the Diccionario histórico de los más ilustres profesores de las Bellas Artes en España (Historical Dictionary of the Most Illustrious Professors of Arts in Spain). When Jovellanos became minister of Justice in 1797, Ceán Bermudez obtained an official position in the same Ministry, which allowed him to establish his residence in Madrid, and thus be closer to the Academy of Arts of San Fernando, to which he presented the manuscript of his dictionary. 1800 saw the publication, in six volumes, of this seminal work, which earned him fame and acknowledgement in the intellectual and artistic circles of the time. The political misfortunes of Jovellanos, exiled and imprisoned in the Baleares in 1801, obliged Ceán Bermudez to resign from his official position and to take refuge in Sevilla, where he dedicated himself to his historical and artistic investigations, publishing in 1804 both his Descripción artistica de la Catedral de Sevilla and Descripción artistica del Hospital de la Sangre. In 1808 he returned to Madrid to take his position in the Ministry of Justice. The last twenty years of Ceán Bermudez’s life were dedicated to his research and collaboration with various academic institutions: he was an active member of the Academy of Arts of San Fernando, where he held several important offices, and, from 1812, a member of the Academy of History. He was also a corresponding member of the Academies of San Luis, Zaragoza, San Carlos, and Valencia, as well as founder of the Academy of Arts in Sevilla. Ceán Bermudez died in Madrid at the age of eighty. A large part of his writing remains unpublished. His most important posthumous work is his Sumario de las antigüedades romanas que hay en España, en especial las partenecientes a las Bellas Artes (Summary of the Roman antiquities in Spain, especially the works of art) published in 1832. Ceán Bermudez’s life was dominated by his artistic explorations and writing of art treaties, his dictionary of Spanish art historians being considered a ground-breaking work. His numerous letters, essays and more extensive scholarly works are generally descriptive and historical in focus, but they also reveal his critical insights and an interest in the origins of classical art. CS

Selected Bibliography

Diccionario historico de los mas illustres professores de las bellas artes en España. 6 vols. Madrid: En la impr. de la viuda de Ibarra, 1800; Memorias para la vida del excmo Señor D. Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, y noticias analiticas de sus obras. Madrid: en la imprenta que fue de Fuentenebro, 1814; Descripción artística de la Catedral de Sevilla. Seville: Viuda de Hidalgo y sobrino, 1804; Descripción artística del Hospital de la Sangre de Sevilla. Valencia: En la Impr. de D. Benito Monfort, 1804.

Sources

Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art: de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, p. 56; Escritores y Artistas Asturianos 2: 406-413; Alvarez Lopera, José. De Ceán a Cossío: la fortuna crítica del Greco en el siglo XIX. Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española, 1987ff.

Caylus, Anne Claude Philippe, Comte de

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Caylus, Anne Claude Philippe, comte de

Other Names:

Anne Claude de Tubières-Grimoard de Pestels de Lévis

Gender: male

Date Born: 1692

Date Died: 1765

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

Place Died: Boulogne, Paris, France

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): ancient and Antique, the

Overview

French antiquarian; early classifier of ancient works by subject matter. Caylus was born to an old noble family and was exposed to the privileges that aristocratic life offered. He traveled as a boy with the French ambassador to Constantinople and later to Italy and Asia Minor. He spent time in the military as a successful officer, but at the death of Louis XIV in 1715, he resigned his commission to devote himself to art. In 1716, he visited the perilous ancient sites of Smyrna, Ephesos, Colophon and Troad, seldom visited by Europeans. Returning to Paris permanently in 1719, he dabbled in engraving, and through the wealthy collector Pierre Crozat (1661-1740), met the painter Antoine Watteau (1684-1721). Caylus was exceedingly close to the artist, collecting the infamous “morceaux,” (clandestine, perhaps erotic drawings of Watteau, now destroyed), and engaging in generally dissipate activities with the artist and others. Caylus’ own renderings included the Roman coins and gems in the royal collection. He was admitted to the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres and the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1731. His graphic work continued to document the major ancient monuments in France. Caylus assisted the careers of Hubert Robert (1733-1808) and Joseph-Marie Vien (1716-1809) by advising their ancient landscapes. Between 1744 and 1765, Caylus lectured at the Académie des inscriptions on ancient art techniques and processes. He also used this position to advocate a return to history painting. Using Pliny the Elder‘s account of encaustic painting, Caylus rediscovered the process, which Vien demonstrated by producing a picture. In 1752, Caylus’ Recueil d’antiquités égyptiennes, étruscanes, grecques et romaines, a seven-volume work began to appear. The Recueil addressed the tastes and styles of Greece, Rome, Egypt and the Etruscans in a meaningful way, and like Johann Joachim Winckelmann made use of minor objects, not simply the “great works of ancient art” to create his art history. He helped fund the production Les Ruines des plus beaux monuments de la Grèce, 1758, by Julien-David Le Roy, the first book using serious measurements on Greek architecture. Caylus’ power in the Academy attracted a bitter enmity with the encyclopedist Denis Diderot (1713-1784) and Diderot’s followers. Diderot, the Baron Friedrich Melchior von Grimm (1723-1807), Jean-François Marmontel (1723-1799) and Charles-Nicolas Cochin the Younger (1715-1790) engaged in a bitter attack (well before Diderot’s Salon Criticism) portraying Caylus as a privileged hack and a dictator of taste. They argued vigorously against Caylus’ theories on the encaustic process (history vindicated Caylus). A long illness gradually took him in 1765, with Mariette at his side.Comte de Caylus’ fame rests with his emphasis on the archaeological object itself as the basis for understanding the work. He developed a historical approach to the periods and styles of the objects he wrote about, laying a basis for modern art histories. His works were translated into English and German shortly after their appearances in French. Like many informed classicists of his age, (including Winckelmann, etc.), he never made a trip to mainland Greece.

Selected Bibliography

[complete works:] Oeuvres badines complettes, du comte de Caylus. 12 vols. Amsterdam and Paris: Visse, 1787; Recueil d’antiquités égyptiennes, étruscanes, grecques et romaines. 7 vols. Paris: Desaint & Saillant,1752-67; and Majault, Michel Joseph. Mémoire sur la peinture a l’encaustique et sur la peinture a la cire. Paris: Pissot, 1755, English, Encaustic: or, Count Caylus’s method of painting in the manner of the ancients. Müntz, Jean-Henri, trans. London: Printed for the author, 1760; Nouveaux sujets de peintre et de sculpture. Paris: Duchesne, 1755; Vie d’Antoine Watteau. Académie de peinture & de sculpture, le 3 février, 1748. Paris, l’Académie de peinture & de sculpture, 1748, pp. [7]-25.

Sources

Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Research Guide to the History of Western Art. Sources of Information in the Humanities, no. 2. Chicago: American Library Association, 1982, p. 60 mentioned; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, pp. 95-98; “Caylus, Anne Claude Philippe, Comte de.” Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, vol. 1, pp. 261-2; Goncourt, Edmond de, and Goncourt, Jules de. Portraits intimes du XVIIIe siècle: études nouvelles d’après les lettres autographes et les documents inédits. Paris: E. Dentu, 1857, pp. 10-42; Rice, Danielle. “Caylus, Comte de.” Dictionary of Art.

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

Cawelti, John G.

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Cawelti, John G.

Gender: male

Date Born: unknown

Date Died: unknown

Subject Area(s): American (North American)

Overview

art historian of American art

Selected Bibliography

and Taylor, Joshua C. America as Art. Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institute Press for the National Collection of Fine Arts, 1976. see also Taylor, J.

Sources

KRG, 149 mentioned

art historian of American art

Caw, J. L.

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Caw, J. L.

Other Names:

James Lewis Caw

Gender: male

Date Born: 1864

Date Died: 1950

Place Born: St. Quivox, Ayr, Scotland, UK

Place Died: Lasswade, Midlothian, Scotland, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Overview

Director of the Scottish National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery, 1907-1930. Caw was born to James Caw, a draper and Eliza Murray Greenfield (Caw). After attending Ayr Academy, Caw apprenticed in engineering at the West of Scotland Technical College, Ayr between 1883 until 1887 with the intention of becoming an engineer. In 1883 met Sir James Guthrie (1859-1920), and artist and later president of the Scottish Royal Academy. The following year Caw began his career as an art critic, striking up friendships with the Scottish art community, including Sir James Lawton Wingate (1846 – 1924), president of the Royal Scottish Academy, the artists Edward Arthur Walton (1860 – 1922), Alexander Roche (1863-1921), and William McTaggart (1835-1910), the latter the pioneer of Scottish impressionism. Caw worked as a draughtsman in Glasgow from 1887 to 1889 and then in Edinburgh beginning in 1889, continuing to study science courses intermittently at Heriot-Watt College and art at the Glasgow School of Art and the Royal Scottish Academy School of Art. In 1895, Caw’s painting and art criticism were well enough known to gain him an appointment as curator of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh. He organized the museum, combining the collections into a cohesive exhibition of Scottish portrait history. A monograph on Sir Henry Raeburn written together with Sir Walter Armstrong (1850-1918) appeared in 1901. In 1907 Caw became the first director of both the National Galleries of Scotland and the Portrait Gallery, appointing Stanley Cursiter as the Gallery’s curator. The two set out a program of acquisitions that deepened the scope of both institutions. Caw’s interest in the range of art periods led to astute purchases in works ranging from the so-called “Italian primitives” to post-Impressionism. Paul Gauguin’s spectacular Vision after the Sermon (“Jacob and the Angel”) and Claude Monet’s Poplars on the Epte were acquired by Caw for the museum in 1925 alone. In 1908, Caw published his Scottish Painting, 1620-1908 a serious study of his country’s art. He married McTaggert’s daughter, Anne “Annie” Mary McTaggert (1864-1949) in 1909. He joined The Scotsman newspaper as art critic in 1916 remaining until 1933. His book on McTaggert, William McTaggart was published in 1917. He retired from the national galleries in 1930 and was knighted in 1931. A book on Sir James Guthrie appeared in 1932 and another Allan Ramsay in 1937. Though retired, he organized the exhibition of Scottish art at the Royal Academy, London, with Cursiter in 1939. He sat on the editorial committee of the Burlington Magazine and the Walpole Society. He died at his home in Midlothian at the end of 1950. His paintings hang in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. Caw championed an appreciation of Scottish art as an important expression of national identity (Mackenzie). His balance view of the art of Scotland was written without the traditional apology for its development.

Selected Bibliography

Hours in the Scottish National Gallery (Edinburgh). London: Duckworth, 1927; Scottish Painting, Past and Present, 1620-1908. Edinburgh: T. C. and E. C. Jack, 1908; and Armstrong, Walter. Sir Henry Raeburn. London: W. Heinemann, 1901.

Sources

Mackenzie, Jill C. “Caw, James Lewis.” Dictionary of National Biography; Baile de Laperriere, Charles.ed., Royal Academy Exhibitors, 1971-1989: a Dictionary of Artists and their Work in the Summer Exhibitions of the Royal Academy of Arts. Wiltshire, England: Hilmarton Manor Press, 1989, vol. 1, pp. 291-292; Lloyd Williams, Julia. National Gallery of Scotland: Concise Catalogue of Paintings. Edinburgh: National Gallery of Scotland,1997; Smailes, The Concise Catalogue of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery (1990); “Mr. James L. Caw.” The Burlington Magazine 57, no. 331 (October 1930): 202; [obituary:] “Sir James Caw Champion Of Scottish Painting.” The Times (London), December 7, 1950, p. 6.

« Previous
1
…
215
216
217
218
219
…
252
Next »

Art Historians

Overview

Selected Bibliography

Sources

Archives

Citation

More Resources

Overview

Selected Bibliography

Sources

Citation

More Resources

Overview

Selected Bibliography

Citation

More Resources

Overview

Selected Bibliography

Sources

Archives

Citation

More Resources

Overview

Selected Bibliography

Sources

Citation

More Resources

Overview

Sources

Archives

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