Curator at the musée de Versailles; gave lessons on the great art collections of the 17th and 18th centuries (in the tradition of Edmond Bonnafé) and at the Ecole du Louvre. His students (though not particularly inspired by him) included
University of Toronto professor and early Courtauld Institute scholar. Brieger was born in Breslau, Silesia, Prussia, which is present-day Wroclaw, Poland. Brieger was born to Oskar Brieger, (d. 1914), an otolaryngologist and Hedwig Lion. He grew up in this affluent family under the tutelage of a governess, surrounded by books, and a summer home where his father had built a home theater for family drama productions. Their furniture was designed by Hans Poelzig (now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge University). As a child, he attended the St. Maria Magdalena Gymnasium. After receiving his abiture in 1916, he fought for Germany in World War I where he was wounded in Flanders. After the armistice in 1919, Brieger studied various humanistic disciplines at the universities in Breslau and Munich. He finally settled up on art history, studying under Wilhelm Pinder and, more significantly for him, Paul Frankl and Heinrich Wölfflin. Between 1922-1927 he was an assistant under August Grisebach at Breslau. He received his Ph.D. in art history in 1924, writing a dissertation under Grisebach on Baroque art. It was partially published in 1926. Between 1927-1928 he researched at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome. He became a privatdozent at Breslau under Grisebach, writing his habilitation on 19th-century history painting in Germany in 1927 (published in Berlin in 1930). Brieger continued as a privatdozent under Dagobert Frey between 1930 and1933. In 1931 he married Barbara Ritter, an historian. In 1933, anticipating the Jewish persecution in Nazi-Germany, Brieger left for Paris. He was officially classified a “non-Aryan” by the Nazi government (his family came from Jewish lineage) in 1934, when he finally fled to London. There, he secured work on the Atlas of Medieval Art and Architecture in England, being produced at the Courtauld Institute. The Institute conducted classes largely with temporary appointment faculty, of whom Brieger was one. His years in London turned his attention toward English medieval art, and he remained a medievalist for the rest of his career. In 1936 he moved to Canada seeking permanent employment. There he taught art history at the University of Toronto, rising through the ranks: lecturer and then associate professor, finally professor in 1947. In 1957 he wrote the volume English Art, 1216-1307 for the Oxford History of English Art, edited by T. S. R. Boase. He chaired the department between 1965 and 1969. Brieger was a visiting member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N. J. for the 1964-1965 year. After retirement in 1969 he edited a facsimile edition with Millard Meiss and Charles S. Singleton (1909-1985) on Dante manuscripts. He was a part-time professor at the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies in Toronto until 1973. He contributed to the National Gallery of Canada exhibition, “Art and the Courts: France and England from 1259 to 1328” in 1972.Brieger is considered “a pioneer in Art History as an academic discipline in Canada” (Eleen).
Selected Bibliography
[dissertation:] Zur Geschichte der Kunsturteils von 1550 bis auf Winckelmann. Breslau, 1924, partially published 1926; [habilitation:] Die deutsche Geschichtmalerei. Berlin: J. J. Augustus, 1930; and Verdier, Philippe. Art and the Courts: France and England from 1259 to 1328. 2 vols. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1972; English Art, 1216-1307. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957; and Meiss, Millard, and Singleton, Charles Southward, eds. Illuminated Manuscripts of the Divine Comedy. 2 vols. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969.0.Metzler
Sources
Wendland, Ulrike. Biographisches Handbuch deutschsprachiger Kunsthistoriker im Exil: Leben und Werk der unter dem Nationalsozialismus verfolgten und vertriebenen Wissenschaftler. Munich: Saur, 1999, vol. 1, pp. 70-2; Eleen, Luba. “Peter H. Brieger.” Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada 6, no. 1 (1990): 475-477.
University of Toronto professor and early Courtauld Institute scholar. Brieger was born in Breslau, Silesia, Prussia, which is present-day Wroclaw, Poland. Brieger was born to Oskar Brieger, (d. 1914), an otolaryngologist and Hedwig Lion. He grew
Subject Area(s): ancient, Ancient Greek (culture or style), archaeology, Classical, Etruscan (culture or style), and Roman (ancient Italian culture or period)
Overview
Archaeologist and art historian; specialist in ancient Greek, Roman and Etruscan art. Brendel’s father was a church minister in Nuremberg, Bavaria and the younger Brendel retained a lifelong interest in theology himself. He attended the Neues Gymnasium where he early on developed an interest in classical studies. As a youth he joined the Wandersvogel youth, hiking and singing in the German countryside during the years of economic hardship of the first World War. He painted and played both the cello and piano as part of evening’s entertainment with his family. An early course by Paul Hensel (1860-1930) on the philosophy of history remained with him his entire life. In 1919 he spent a year as an assistant to the painter Max Unold. In 1920 Bendel began working on his Abitur at the university at Heidelberg, where Ludwig Curtius had recently moved to become Ordiarius (full professor). Heidelberg offered Brendel the opportunity to study with the finest minds of that age. These included classicists Franz Boll (1867-1924), Alfred von Domaszewski (1856-1927), Friedrich Karl von Duhn (1851-1930), Richard Carl Meister (1848-1912), and Eugen Täubler (1879-1953); the literary theorist Ernst Robert Curtius (1886-1956), literary historian Friedrich Gundolf (1880-1931), philosopher Karl Jaspers (1883-1969), the classical art historians Karl Leo Heinrich Lehmann and Friedrich Zimmer. Brendel worked on the Michelangelo bibliography project for Ernst Steinmann during 1922 at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome. In 1923 he left the university for a position as the Assistant Keeper at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek, Copenhagen, under Frederik Poulsen (1876-1950). Poulsen became Brendel’s mentor and lifelong friend and Brendel soon became fluent in Danish. He returned to Heidelberg in 1926, securing a grant for travel to provincial museums in north Italy in 1927. The young Brendel was already a cigar-smoking bon vivant and at Heidelberg quickly became a favorite pupil (Ludwig) Curtius. The following year he received his Ph.D. under Curtius, writing on the topic of Roman iconography of the Augustan period. He married fellow Heidelberg student Maria Wiegert (1902-1994) in 1929, and, armed with a stipend from the Deutsches Archaeologisches Institut (German Archaeological Institute, or DAI), spent the 1929-1930 academic year on a scholarly Wanderjahre. Brendel became a Privatdozent at Erlangen in 1931, but took a leave the next year to be First Assistant to Curtius, who was now Director at the DAI in Rome. Brendel was fired from his job by the Nazis in 1936 for being married to a Jew (“non-Aryan”). He took a year as a research fellow at University of Durham (England) Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and then London 1936-1938 at the Warburg Institute. Late in 1938 he traveled to the United States as a guest lecturer, remaining there the rest of his career. After a year as visiting professor of art and archaeology at Vassar College, when his family finally joined him from Germany, and several at Washington University in St. Louis, MO, 1938-1941, he moved to Bloomington, IN, to be Professor for Archaeology and Art History at Indiana University (1941-1956). Brendel spent the years 1949-1951 at the American Academy in Rome first under a Prix de Rome and then with a Fulbright Fellowship. At Bloomington, he also wrote the manuscript for his book on erotic art in Greco-Roman antiquity, published only in 1970 by the Kinsey Institute. In 1956 he was named Professor of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University. Under the chair of Rudolf Wittkower, Columbia boasted one of the finest art history departments in the nation. Brendel and his wife attended the month meetings of the Archaeology Club, an informal group of classical art historians, whose ranks included Dorothy Kent Hill of the Walters Gallery, Homer Thompson (1906-2000) and his wife Dorothy Burr Thompson of the Institute for Advanced Study, Frances Follin Jones of the Princeton Art Gallery, and Evelyn B. Harrison. He became emeritus in 1963, continuing to teach until his retirement in June of 1973. He died that September. At the time of his death he had completed the manuscript for the Pelican History of Art volume on Etruscan art, which was published in 1978. Brendel’s scholarship, like that of his mentor Ludwig Curtius, demonstrates careful stylistic analysis of the object combined with a knowledge of the literary sources. His Prolegomena to the Study of Roman Art is a historiography of the discipline which has become indispensable for any student of the topic.
Selected Bibliography
[dissertation:] Ikonographie des Kaisers Augustus. Heidelberg, 1931; “Prolegomena to the Study of Roman Art.” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 21 (1953): 7-73, revised and reprinted separately as Prolegomena to the Study of Roman Art. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979; Etruscan Art. Pelican History of Art 43. New York: Penguin Books, 1978; The Visible Idea: Interpretations of Classical Art. Washington, DC: Decatur House, 1980; Ikonographie des Kaisers Augustus. 1931; “Symbolik der Kugel.” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archaeologischen Instituts, Römische Abteilung 51 (1936): 1-95, reprinted as, Symbolism of the Sphere: a Contribution to the History of Earlier Greek Philosophy. Leiden: Brill, 1977, “Classicism in Roman architecture.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 29 (October 1970): 264; “Borrowings from Ancient Art in Titian.” Art Bulletin 37 (June 1955): 113-25.
Sources
Calder, William M., III. “Biographical Note.” In Memoriam Otto J. Brendel: Essays in Archaeology and the Humanities. Edited by Larissa Bonfante and Helga von Heintze. Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1976, x-xi, [complete bibliography,] xii-xiv; 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. 81, mentioned; Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 283-284; Calder, William. “Brendel, Otto J.” Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, vol. 1, pp. 190-91; Bonfante, Larissa. “Maria Weigert Brendel.” http://www.brown.edu/Research/Breaking_Ground/bios/Brendel_Maria%20Weigert.pdf.
Archaeologist and art historian; specialist in ancient Greek, Roman and Etruscan art. Brendel’s father was a church minister in Nuremberg, Bavaria and the younger Brendel retained a lifelong interest in theology himself. He attended the Neues Gymn
The van Gogh scholar J.-B. de la Faille studied under Bremmer. Independent art educator and adviser; van Gogh and Dutch artists scholar. Bremmer received his primary education at a boarding school in Roermond and attended high school in Leiden, where his parents owned a hotel (Hotel Rijnland). He also took classes with the painter D. L. Kooreman. In 1889 he left school and enrolled at the Teeken- en Schilderacademie (Academy for Drawing and Painting) in The Hague. He quit after one year and together with some friends he rented a studio in Leiden. Two years later he moved to the attic of his parents’ hotel and started working on his own. At that time he met the Dutch avant-garde painter Jan Toorop and other artists belonging to his circle, including Theo van Rijsselberghe and Henri van de Velde. These two painters, who together with Toorop were members of the Brussels group Les Vingt, stayed in Hotel Rijnland when visiting Leiden. Inspired by them, Bremmer painted a number of neo-impressionist and pointillist works. His studio became a meeting place where he discussed art and literature with visitors and friends. Bremmer had great admiration for the philosophy of Spinoza. In 1893 he met the jurist and sociologist Sebald R. Steinmetz (1862-1940) who encouraged him to organize drawing classes for typesetters. A year later, Steinmetz brought him in contact with the three Beekhuis sisters, who attended his classes with great enthusiasm. One of them, Leida, became Bremmer’s wife in 1895. The couple moved to The Hague, where Bremmer from 1897 onwards began a career as an independent art educator and adviser. He attracted a select audience teaching at his home in The Hague and elsewhere in the Netherlands. Bremmer brought art works to be discussed to the class which he often sold afterwards to his students. In 1906 he wrote an introduction to how to view art, Een inleiding tot het zien van beeldende kunst. Between 1903 and 1910 he was the editor of monthly portfolios, each containing 9 art reproductions with additional commentaries, Moderne Kunstwerken. From 1914 to 1938, he edited Beeldende Kunst, a comparable monthly publication. Bremmer promoted a number of Dutch avant-garde artists. They included, in addition to Toorop, Charley Toorop, A.C. Willink, J. Sluyters, John Rädecker, and Bart van der Leck. One of Bremmer’s favorite painters was Vincent van Gogh. In 1907 he became a purchasing adviser to Helene Kröller-Müller (1868-1939), one of his pupils and wife of an industrial magnate. Bremmer helped build her collection, which included a considerable number of Van Gogh paintings. The collection later became the national Kröller-Müller Museum at Otterlo, which opened in 1938. Bremmer also helped other pupils purchasing art works. When the first professorship of art history was established at Utrecht University in 1907, some of Bremmer’s influential admirers proposed him for that position, but it was Willem Vogelsang who became the first ordinarius art history professor at Utrecht University. In 1929 Bremmer came in contact with G. J. Nieuwenhuizen Segaar who opened an art firm in The Hague in 1933. In close collaboration with Bremmer, Nieuwenhuizen handled works from artists belonging to Bremmer’s circle. Bremmer’s popularity and his influence on the contemporary art scene lingered until 1940. At age 80 he received a honorary doctorate from Groningen University. Bremmer was not a scholar and had little esteem for art historical research. His 1911 introductory essay on Van Gogh in his Vincent van Gogh. Inleidende beschouwingen, uses an analysis based on a mystical contact between himself and the work of art. Bremmer played a major role in introducing contemporary art to a broader audience in the first part of the twentieth century. His lack of a scholarly background and direct involvement in the art market has been criticized.
Selected Bibliography
Een inleiding tot het zien van beeldende kunst. Amsterdam: W. Versluys, 1906; Delftsch Aardewerk: een practisch aesthetische studie. Amsterdam: W. Versluys, 1908; Practisch aesthetische studies.Amsterdam: W. Versluys, 1909; Vincent van Gogh. Inleidende beschouwingen. Amsterdam: W. Versluys, 1911; Pr. Saenredam: achttien lichtdrukken. The Hague: G. J. Nieuwenhuizen Segaar, 1938.
Sources
Herdenking Dr. H. P. Bremmer. Uitgegeven na zijn overlijden op 10 januari 1956, door oud-cursisten, vrienden en leerlingen. Rotterdam: Comité Herdenking Dr. H. P. Bremmer, 1956; Vink, H. J. “Bremmer, Hendricus Petrus (1871-1956)” in Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederland 3: 73-75; Vink, H. J. “Bremmer, Spinoza en de abstracte kunst” Jong Holland 3, 2 (1987): 40-47; Hammacher, A. M. “Van Gogh and the Words” in The Works of Vincent van Gogh. His Paintings and Drawings. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff International, 1970, p. 24; Joosten, J. M. “De Leidse tijd van H. P. Bremmer, 1871-1895” in Jaarboekje voor geschiedenis en oudheidkunde van Leiden en omstreken 63 (1971): 79-119; Willink, Joost. “Bremmer, H(endricus) P(etrus).” Dictionary of Art 4: 743; Balk, Hildelies. H. P. “De freule, de professor, de koopman en zijn vrouw. Het publiek van H. P. Bremmer” Jong Holland 9, 2 (1993): 4-24; idem “Bremmer en Leiden” in Wintgens Hötte, Doris and De Jongh-Vermeulen, Ankie (eds) Dageraad van de Moderne Kunst. Leiden en omgeving 1890-1940. Zwolle: Waanders, 1999, pp. 41-70; idem “De expertises van H. P. Bremmer” RKD Bulletin 1 (2000): 7-17; .Het netwerk van H. P. Bremmer. Kunstenaars, verzamelaars en de markt voor moderne kunst. Publicatie bij de gelijknamige tentoonstelling van 1 sept. t/m 11 november 2001, Hannema-de Stuers Fundatie. Heino/Wijhe, 2001; De kunstpaus H. P. Bremmer: 1871-1956. Bussum: Thoth, 2006.
Contributors: Monique Daniels
Citation
Monique Daniels. "Bremmer, H. P.." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/bremmerh/.
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The van Gogh scholar J.-B. de la Faille studied under Bremmer. Independent art educator and adviser; van Gogh and Dutch artists scholar. Bremmer received his primary education at a boarding school in Roermond and attended hi
Professor and librarian. Breitenbach studied art history as well as German and Scandinavian literature at the university in Munich and then Hamburg where his professors were Erwin Panofsky and Fritz Saxl. His dissertation, completed in Strassburg in 1929 under Panofsky, was Speculum humanae salvationis: eine typengeschichtliche Untersuchungen. He worked as a Library assistant at the Warburg Library in Hamburg 1926-27. Between 1927-29 he studied library sciecne in Göttingen and Berlin, working until 1933 in the Frankfurt Stadtbibliothek. That year he was dismissed by the Nazis through their Gesetzes zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums law, removing jews (Breitenbach though Christian, was of Jewish extraction) from the civil service. Between 1933-37 he lived in Basel and London. In 1937 he emigrated to the United States in 1937. In 1943 he became an American citizen, working the Federal Communications Commission monitoring German radio broadcasts. Between 1944-45 he was Chief of Documentary Operations in the Office of War Information in Washgington, D. C. After the war, he returned to Germany with Office of Military Government-Unitded States (OMGUS) in 1945 in Berlin. Between the years 1946-49 he worked in the Central Art Collection Point in Munich (in the former NSDAP party headquarters) as the Museum and Fine Arts officer researching the provenance of misappropriated Nazi art. He was, under Craig Hugh Smyth, one of the founders of the Zentralinstitut(s) für Kunstgeschichte. He worked in the American High Commission in Bad Neuheim and Frankfurt between 1949-53, in the Cultural Relations Division, Section for Fine Arts, Museums, Libraries and Archives reconstructing German libraries. In 1956 he returned to Washgington, D. C., where he was head of the Prints and Photographs division of the Library of Congress in Washington. He retired in 1973. He died on a visit to Germany in 1977.
Selected Bibliography
[dissertation:] Speculum humanae salvationis: eine typengeschichtliche Untersuchungen. Strassbourg, 1929, published under the same title, Strassburg: J. H. E. Heitz, 1930; “Arnold Schönberg and the Blaue Reiter.” Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress 34, no. 1 ( January 1977): 32-38; and Wilder, Mitchell A., and Gerken, Rudolph A. Santos: the religious folk art of New Mexico. Colorado Springs, CO: The Taylor Museum of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, 1943; “Three Italian drawings [in the Library of Congress collection].” Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress 33, no. 1 (January, 1976): 47-54.0.Metzler
Sources
Wendland, Ulrike. Biographisches Handbuch deutschsprachiger Kunsthistoriker im Exil: Leben und Werk der unter dem Nationalsozialismus verfolgten und vertriebenen Wissenschaftler. Munich: Saur, 1999, vol. 1, pp. 68-70; Stonard, John-Paul. Art and National Reconstruction in Germany 1945-55. Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 2004, p. 233; Edgar Breitenbach interview, Feb. 18, 1975 . Archives of American Art; Fern, Alan Maxwell, and Eckardt, Wolf Von. In memoriam Edgar Breitenbach, June 26, 1903-October 12, 1977 : tributes. Hamburg: E. L. Hauswedell, 1978.
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"Breitenbach, Edgar." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/breitenbache/.
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Professor and librarian. Breitenbach studied art history as well as German and Scandinavian literature at the university in Munich and then Hamburg where his professors were Erwin Panofsky and Fritz Saxl
Subject Area(s): Byzantine (culture or style), Medieval (European), and sculpture (visual works)
Overview
Medievalist focusing n Byzantine and Romanesque sculpture. Method similar to Jurgis Baltrušaitis II; strong iconography; professor at l’Université de Clermont
Selected Bibliography
L’Art chrétien, son développement iconographique. 1918; L’art en France des invasions barbares à l’époque romane. Paris: La Renaissance du livre, 1930.
Sources
Sypher, Wylie, ed. Art History; an Anthology of Modern Criticism. Gloucester, MA: P. Smith, 1975, pp. 117, mentioned; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art: de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, pp. 171, 212.
Citation
"Bréhier, Louis." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/brehierl/.
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Medievalist focusing n Byzantine and Romanesque sculpture. Method similar to Jurgis Baltrušaitis II; strong iconography; professor at l’Université de Clermont
Place Born: Baltimore, Baltimore Independent City, MD, USA
Place Died: Lake Garda, Italy
Home Country/ies: United States
Subject Area(s): American (North American) and painting (visual works)
Overview
First woman to direct a major American art museum (Baltimore Museum of Art); Cassatt scholar. Breeskin was the daughter of Alfred Robert Louis Dohme (1867-1952) and Emmie Blumner (Dohme). Her father was a chemist who founded the pharmaceutical company Sharpe & Dohme (later Merck, Sharpe & Dohme). The younger Dohme attended the Bryn Mawr preparatory school in Baltimore, initially planning on being an artist. After stints at Bryn Mawr and Radcliffe Colleges, she eventually graduated from Boston’s School of Fine Arts, Crafts, and Decorative Design in 1918. Her family had a strong interest in art; her father was among the initial donors to the Baltimore Museum of Art at its founding in 1914. After graduation, Dohme took a job as an assistant in the print department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, working with Kathryn B. Child under the curator of Prints, William M. Ivins, Jr. In 1920, she married the violinist Elias Breeskin (1895?-1969). Adelyn Breeskin was reluctant to give up her museum career and the couple divorced in 1930. She returned to Baltimore to accept the position of curator of prints at the Baltimore Museum of Art. In 1938 she was named general curator of the museum. At Baltimore, Breeskin built one of the finest works on paper collections in the country, largely from scratch. When the current museum director, Leslie Cheek, Jr., resigned in 1942 to join the army, Breeskin was named acting director until 1947, when she was belatedly named director. In 1948, Breeskin wrote the catalogue raisonné of prints of the Impressionist Mary Cassatt (revised in 1979). She supervised expansions to the John Russell Pope museum building as well as negotiating the donation of the Etta and Claribel Cone Collection of twentieth-century painting in 1949. Of this spectacular gift, Museum of Modern Art founder Alfred H. Barr, Jr., quipped that it was “far too good for Baltimore.” Among the exhibitions she mounted were “Abstract Expressionism” (1954). In 1960 she served as the commissioner for the American contingent of the 30th Venice Biennale. Breeskin retired in 1962 and accepted the position of director of the nascent Washington Gallery of Modern Art, whose aim was to create contemporary shows in the District. Breeskin curated shows including “Roots of Abstract Art in America” (1965). However, she resigned only two years later in a dispute with the trustees over exhibition policies. From 1968 to 1974 she was the curator of contemporary painting and sculpture at the National Collection of Fine Arts (NCFA), later known as the National Museum of American Art, part of the Smithsonian Museums. Among the exhibits she organized were ones on Cassatt, Brooks, Johnson, Milton Avery, H. Lyman Sayen and Bob Thompson. A catalogue raisonné of Cassatt’s other works on paper appeared in 1970 (revised in 1980). She died of kidney failure while on a trip to Italy near Lake Garda in northern Italy.
Selected Bibliography
Anne Goldthwaite: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Graphic Work. Montgomery, AL: Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, 1982; Mary Cassatt, Impressionist from Philadelphia [videorecording]. Chicago: Home Vision, 1975; Mary Cassatt, 1844-1926. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1970; Roots of Abstract Art in America 1910-1930. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1965; The Graphic Work of Mary Cassatt: a Catalogue Raisonné. New York: H. Bittner, 1948; Mary Cassatt: a Catalogue Raisonné of the Oils, Pastels, Watercolors, and Drawings. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1970; Romaine Brooks: Thief of Souls. Washington, DC: National Collection of Fine Arts/Smithsonian Institution Press, 1971.
Sources
Interview with Adelyn Breeskin Conducted by Paul Cummings. June 27, 1974. Archives of American Art; Berman, Avis. “Adelyn Breeskin: 50 Years of Excellence.” [interview] Feminist Art Journal (Summer 1977): 9-14, and Berman, Avis “Adelyn Breeskin: A Perseverance of Vision,” Baltimore Sun, October 30, 1977; Gilbert, Rose B. “Professional Profile: Adelyn Breeskin.” Museum News November 1964, pp. 27-30; Adelyn Breeskin’s Farewell Dinner [recording], 1962 Apr. 16. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution; [obituaries:] Glueck, Grace. “Adelyn Dohme Breeskin, 90, Curator at National Museum.” New York Times July 25, 1986, p B4; Barnes, Bart. “Adelyn Breeskin, Smithsonian Art Scholar, Dies.” Washington Post July 25, 1986, p. B4.
First woman to direct a major American art museum (Baltimore Museum of Art); Cassatt scholar. Breeskin was the daughter of Alfred Robert Louis Dohme (1867-1952) and Emmie Blumner (Dohme). Her father was a chemist who founded the pharmaceutical com
Director of the Mauritshuis museum, 1889-1909, connoisseur and art collector. Bredius was raised in a wealthy family. His father was Johannes Jacobus Bredius a director of a powder factory in Amsterdam. His family collected Chinese porcelain and 17th-century Dutch paintings, which Bredius would build upon. His mother died when he was only ten. Early in his career, he intended to become a concert pianist, but realized after three years of study that he would never become an outstanding musician. In 1873 Victor Eugène Louis de Stuers published an article in the journal De Gids, “Holland op zijn smalst” (Holland at its Narrowest), condemning the Dutch for their lack of knowledge of their own history of art which acted as a clarion call for a number of scholars to study Dutch art. In 1878, his father allowed him to travel for a long period to Italy, where he became deeply impressed by Italian art. In Florence, he met Wilhelm Bode, director of the Berlin Museum, who encouraged him to study the paintings of his own country rather than Italian art. In order to familiarize himself with Dutch seventeenth-century painting, he started visiting different collections of paintings all over Europe. He focused on archival research, which would be a hallmark of his scholarship. After a number of articles in the Nederlandse Spectator demonstrating his knowledge, he was appointed assistant director at the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst in The Hague in 1880, which became part of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in 1885. There he cataloged the collection. Bredius created a name for himself as a Vermeer scholar in 1883 by attacking an attribution of the late Etienne-Joseph-Théophile Thoré, the art historian who had re-discovered the artist, in an article “Ein pseudo-Vermeer.” Working in this new museum, Bredius completed in 1885 the first edition of the museum’s catalog. He began co-editing the scholarly art journal Oud-Holland in 1886. In 1888 he resigned from the Rijksmuseum after being granted a doctor’s degree honoris causa in Giessen, Germany. Another honorary doctorate was awarded from Krakow. In 1889, Bredius was named director of the Mauritshuis in The Hague, beating out Stuers, head of the Department of Arts and Sciences of the Ministry of the Interior. In 1891 Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, joined as assistant director. The two men frequently quarreled; Bredius continually leaked stories to the newspaper about their disputes until 1896. The two men managed to collaborate on a new Mauritshuis Catalog, published in 1895, replacing Stuers’ earlier one. A homosexual who’s proclivities were as open as they could be for the time, he took up residence with his “servant” Willem Goudkamp the same year at a house on the Prinsegracht. Hofstede de Groot resigned in 1896, replaced by the Ministry with François Gérard Waller, to whom Bredius objected. Under Bredius’ directorship, the Mauritshuis acquired international fame. Bredius, an enthusiastic art collector who traveled widely, purchased thirty works of art for the museum in his tenure placing several of his own paintings on loan as well. Bredius used his personal collection to present paintings and other art objects to various Dutch museums. His independence as a museum director caused conflicts with colleagues and officials, in particular with the autocratic de Stuers, who had been used to making acquisition decisions himself. It was Bredius, while on a trip to (then) Germany, who discovered a painting of a Polish rider which he claimed as Rembrandt (later sold to Henry Clay Frick). He found a new life partner, Joseph Otto Kronig (1887-1984), also trained in art, whom he cultivated as a connoisseur. In 1906 he received an honorary doctorate from Amsterdam. Bredius resigned from the Mauritshuis in 1909, claiming failing health, remaining honorary advisor, succeeded by assistant director Wilhelm Martin, professor of the History of Art at Leiden University. Bredius continually studied paintings on his long travels in Europe and America, and working in the archives. He published numerous articles in Oud-Holland, which he continued to co-edit. He visited the United States between 1913-1914. Beginning in 1915 his Künstler-Inventare (ultimately seven volumes and an index) appeared, consisting of numerous records of inventories of painters. In 1922, Bredius settled permanently in Monte Carlo, Monaco to avoid Dutch taxes. His one-time partner, Kronig, moved to Florence where Bredius had bought him a villa. The same year he sold his house at the Prinsegracht to the municipality of The Hague, to which he also offered in loan the collection of paintings and other art objects that were left in his house. It was in collaboration with Gerson and Hans Schneider that Bredius published his famous catalog of the paintings of Rembrandt in 1935, which appeared in Dutch, German, and English editions. In this catalog, Bredius reduced the number of secure Rembrandt paintings from 690 (in the Rembrandt catalog of Wilhelm Rheinhold Otto Valentiner) to to 630. The dispute over which Rembrandt attributions were genuine, already alive with Valentiner’s 1921 catalog, would continue to engage this circle of scholars. [Gerson’s re-editing the catalog of Bredius in 1969, reduced the number of autograph works of Rembrandt still further.] In 1937 Bredius led the authentication of one of the most celebrated forgeries in art history, the painting, Christ at Emmaus as a Vermeer, actually painted by forger Han van Meegeren (1889-1947). Although other eminent art historians, including J. G. van Gelder, also validated the work, Bredius published an enthusiastic appraisal in the Burlington Magazine (“every inch [is] a Vermeer”). Bredius’ opinion was still so valued that other leading art-historians including Abraham Marie Wilhelmus Jacobus Hammacher, Th. M. H. Luns, I. Q. van Regteren Altena, Frithjof W. S. van Thienen, and A. B. de Vries accepted his judgment. Principally on Bredius’ recommendation, Dirk Hannema, director of the Boymans-Van Beuningen museum, acquired the work where it remained until its true identity was discovered after World War II. Bredius left his inheritance to Kronig after his death in 1946 and Kronig lived in Bredius’ Monico home until his own death. Bredius was buried at Cap d’Ail cemetery. The municipality of The Hague became the owner of Bredius’ collection, naming the institution the Museum Bredius, with Goudkamp as caretaker. In 1985 the museum relocated, opening in 1990 at the Lange Vijverberg. High strung with a violent temper and a tendency for retribution, Bredius thrived on conflict (Dolnick). He built a considerable portion of his reputation disputing those who disagreed with him. Well after his retirement, for example, he thwarted his successor, Martin, in the purchase of a Dutch primitive (Albert Bouts) because he favored a Rembrandt. His petty animosities, particularly to Hofstede de Groot and Waller, were tragic in their degree and lasted the life of both men. His disregard of bureaucratic rules included surreptitiously building of a personal art collection at the same time he was director, expressly forbidding by his museum’s bylaws. Perhaps in retaliation to his published character assassinations, several newspaper scandals erupted involving Bredius’ homosexual behavior. As an art historian, his methodology was the two-fold and nearly antithetical; one as an archival research and the other as connoisseur. His impressive work as an archivist is still admired today, accessible through his many publications and in his papers which he bequeathed to the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie in The Hague. He was convinced of the infallibility of his connoisseurship, pronouncing his opinions in a matter of minutes which he considered fact. Horst Gerson considered Bredius’ archival research, especially Bredius’ Künstler-Inventare as securing him a place among the most distinguished Dutch art-historians. Bredius lead the archival-research field in the Netherlands, preceded only by Frederic D. O. Obreen, whom he assisted on Obreen’s Archief voor Nederlandsche kunstgeschiedenis, and Adriaan van der Willigen (1810-1876). His personal art collection, including several Rembrandt paintings, was bequeathed to the Netherlands after his death.
Selected Bibliography
[bibliographies:] Margadant, S. W. F. in Dr. Abraham Bredius 1855-1925; Album hem aangeboden op 18 April 1925. Amsterdam:, 1925: 47-69; Leistra, J. “Publikaties van Bredius vanaf 1925” in De Boer, M and Leistra J. Met bijdragen van Ben Broos. Bredius, Rembrandt en het Mauritshuis!!! The Hague, 1991: 112-114; “Ein pseudo-Vermeer in der berliner Galerie.” Kunst-Chronik 18 (1883): 67-71; Künstler-Inventare; Urkunden zur Geschichte der Holländischen Kunst des XVIten, XVIIten und XVIIIten Jahrhunderts. 7 vols and index. The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1915-1922; Rembrandt. Schilderijen. 630 afbeeldingen. Utrecht/Vienna: Phaidon (?), 1935 (German and English editions, Vienna and New York: Phaidon, 1935; “New Vermeer: Christ and the Disciples at Emmaus.” The Burlington Magazine71 (November 1937): 210-11.
Sources
Lugt, Frits. “History of Art.” in Barnouw, A. J. and Landheer, B., eds. The Contribution of Holland to the Sciences. New York: Querido, 1943, pp. 186-87; Jeppson, Lawrence. The Fabulous Frauds: Fascinating Tales of Great Art Forgeries. New York: Weybright and Talley, 1970, pp. 149-160; Gerson, H. “Foreword” in Bredius, Abraham. Rembrandt. The Complete Edition of the Paintings, revised by H. Gerson. Londen: Phaidon, 1971: vii-xiv; Ekkart, R.E.O. in J. Charité (ed.) Biografisch woordenboek van Nederland 1. The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1979, pp. 89-90; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire d l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, pp. 256 (mentioned); Barnouw-de Ranitz, Louise. “Abraham Bredius, een biografie” in Blankert, A. Museum Bredius. Catalogus van de schilderijen en tekeningen. Zwolle: Waanders Uitgevers, 1991: 13-27; De Boer, M. and Leistra, J. Met bijdragen van Ben Broos. Bredius, Rembrandt en het Mauritshuis!!! (cat. exhibition Mauritshuis, The Hague) The Hague: Waanders Uitgevers, 1991; Halbertsma, Marlite. “Die Kunstgeschichte in den deutschsprachigen Ländern und den Niederlanden 1764-1933: ein überblick” in Halbertsma, Marlite, and Zijlmans, Kitty, eds. Gesichtspunkte. Kunstgeschichte heute (translated from Dutch to German by Thomas Guirten). Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 1995, pp. 35-81, esp. pp. 55-57; Ekkart, R.E.O. “Grondleggers van het kunsthistorisch apparaat” in Hecht, Peter; Hoogenboom, Annemieke; Stolwijk, Chris (eds.) Kunstgeschiedenis in Nederland. Negen opstellen. Amsterdam: Prometheus, 1998, pp. 9-24, esp. pp. 13-15; Dolnick, Edward. “Bredius.” in The Forger’s Spell. New York: Harper, 2008, pp. 121-126; “Abraham Bredius, A Biography.” Museum Bredius (website) http://www.museumbredius.nl/biography.htm; [obituaries:] Van Gelder, H. E. “Dr. Abraham Bredius † 1855-1946”. Oud Holland 61 (1946) 1-4; Van Gelder, H.E. “Dr. A. Bredius”. Bulletin van den Nederlandschen Oudheidkundigen Bond, 5e serie, 1 (1947): 5; Byvanck, A.W. “Herdenking van A. Bredius (18 April 1855 – 13 Maart 1946)”. Jaarboek der Koninklijke Nederlandsche Akademie van Wetenschappen 1947-1948. Amsterdam: N.V. Noord-Hollandsche Uitgevers Maatschappij, 1948: 193-198; Martin, W. “Abraham Bredius. (Amsterdam, 18 April 1855-Monaco, 13 Maart 1946)” Jaarboek van de Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde te Leiden 1946-1947. Leiden, 1948: 29-41. Festschrift: Feest-bundel Dr. Abraham Bredius aangeboden den achttienden April, 1915. Amsterdam: Boek-, kunst-, en handelsdrukkerij, v/h Gebroeders Binger, 1915; Dr. Abraham Bredius 1855-1925; Album hem aangeboden op 18 April 1925. Amsterdam: Voor de Commissie uitgegeven door de vereenigde drukkerijen Roeloffzen-Hübner & van Santen en Gebr. Binger, 1925.
Director of the Mauritshuis museum, 1889-1909, connoisseur and art collector. Bredius was raised in a wealthy family. His father was Johannes Jacobus Bredius a director of a powder factory in Amsterdam. His family collected Chinese porcelain and 1
Subject Area(s): Late Antique and Medieval (European)
Career(s): art historians, curators, and educators
Overview
Art historian of late antique and medieval art, focusing on antique portraiture and numismatic motifs; museum curator; founder of the Midwest Art History Society. Breckenridge was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Clarence E. Breckenridge, a mechanic engineer, and Erna Gritschke (Breckenridge) in 1926.
In 1945, he earned a B.A. with distinction in fine arts from Cornell University. He went on to Princeton University and received an M.F.A with honors in 1949. In the same year, he married his first wife Charlotte Zoe Thomas. In 1950, he received a Fulbright grant to study in Paris for a year. While in Paris, Breckenridge attended the seminar of Andre Grabar at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes. Upon his return to the States, he worked successively as a curator at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (1952-1955) and the Baltimore Museum of Art (1955-1960). While working at these art museums, Breckenridge remained active in academia. He returned to Princeton to further doctoral studies.
Meanwhile, he taught art at Goucher College in Towson, Maryland, as a visiting lecturer in 1954. He earned a Ph.D. degree in 1957 with a dissertation The Numismatic Iconography of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian II. Initially, his dissertation was written under Albert M. Friend, Jr., and later Kurt Weitzmann when Friend’s health was failing. His dissertation was later published by the American Numismatic Society as a book in 1959.
He was a lecturer in art at Johns Hopkins University (1957-1959), a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies (1959-1960), and a visiting Associate Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Pittsburgh (1960-1961). In 1961, Breckenridge joined the art faculty of Northwestern University as an Associate Professor of Art. In 1964, a year after he divorced, Breckenridge married Dorte Ulrich. He was promoted to Professor in 1966, and in 1968, his book Likeness: A Conceptual History of Ancient Portraiture was published. in 1973, he was made Professor of Art History, which he held until his death. Meanwhile, he founded the Midwest Art History Society in 1973. He was a visiting member of the Institute for Advanced Research at Princeton(1974-1975) and served as its President from 1977 to 1980. In 1981, he received a second Fulbright grant to study in Bulgaria for a year. He died on Dec. 18, 1982, in Chicago.
“Although a specialist in religious art and the art and architecture of Rome, Byzantium, and the Middle Ages, Breckenridge taught, lectured, and wrote on a wide variety of topics in art history. His publications centered on antique portraiture and numismatic motifs.” (Northwestern University Archive)
Selected Bibliography
“Christ on the Lyre-Backed Throne.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 34/35 (1980): 247–60.
Art historian of late antique and medieval art, focusing on antique portraiture and numismatic motifs; museum curator; founder of the Midwest Art History Society.
