Art Historians

Whiting, Frederic A.

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Whiting, Frederic A.

Other Names:

Frederic Allan Whiting

Gender: male

Date Born: 1873

Date Died: 1959

Place Born: Oakdale, Robertson, TN, USA

Place Died: Framingham, Middlesex, MA, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Overview

First director of the Cleveland Museum of Art, 1913-1930. Whiting’s father, Frederic Augustus Whiting, was iron mining executive and later writer and editor, and his mother Catherine Tracy Allen (Whiting). The family moved from Tennessee and New Jersey eventually to Massachusetts where Whiting was primarily raised, first in the mill town of Lowell, MA, 1890-1895, and then Boston. His formal education lasted only through grammar school, but he was educated additionally at home. Initially, Whiting like his brothers and father, went into business in Lowell. In 1897 he returned to his family, who now lived in Framingham, MA, to prepare for the Unitarian ministry. Ironically for someone who would later become an art museum director, he considered his eyesight too poor for this avocation. On a ship bound for England in 1898, Whiting met C. Howard Walker (1857-1936) of the Society for Arts and Crafts, Boston. In 1900, Walker offered the paid position of secretary to Whiting. The Society was an outgrowth of European societies such as that founded by William Morris to encourage craftsmanship in the industrial age. Whiting worked diligently, focusing his energies into his life’s mission, education. He founded the journal Handicraft and lectured as far afield as Minnesota. His personal connections included Lockwood de Forest (1886?-1949), brother of Metropolitan Museum of Art President Robert de Forest (1845-1924). He married Olive Elizabeth Cook, a singer, in 1903. In 1912 Whiting became director of the John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis, IN. Through the de Forest connection, Whiting was recommended to be director of the fledgling Cleveland Museum of Art, which was in the process of incorporating. The following year, 1913, Whiting accepted the position. The Museum opened to the public in 1916. Whiting created a collection of handicrafts for craftsmen. He instituted the annual May Show, an exhibition of local artists. Between 1921 and 1923 he served as president of the American Association of Museums. At his retirement in 1930, Whiting became president of the American Federation of Arts, another organization devoted to the promotion of arts. He was succeeded at Cleveland by William M. Milliken. Whiting was not a researcher and wrote no art histories. Like many founding American art museum directors, he had a practical appreciation for the arts and an educator’s mission for the public. His considerable administrative skills helped the museum prosper and expand to one of the most important art museums in the United States in short number of years.

Selected Bibliography

Whiting contributed to Handicraft in the early twentieth century. He wrote no art histories.

Sources

“Whiting, Frederic Allen.” National Cyclopaedia of American Biography 43. New York: James T. White & Co., 1961, p. 47; Robertson, Bruce. “Frederic A. Whiting: Founding the Museum with Art and Craft.” Turner, Evan A. ed. Object Lessons: Cleveland Creates an Art Museum. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1991; Meister, Maureen. Architecture and the Arts and Crafts Movement in Boston Harvard’s H. Langford Warren. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2003, pp. 94-98ff.

Whitehill, Walter Muir

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Whitehill, Walter Muir

Gender: male

Date Born: 1905

Date Died: 1978

Place Born: Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England, UK

Place Died: Boston, Suffolk, MA, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre), Medieval (European), sculpture (visual works), and Spanish (culture or style)

Career(s): librarians

Overview

American Medievalist of Spanish architecture and Americanist; Librarian and Director of the Boston Athenaeum. Whitehill’s parents were Walter Muir Whitehill, an Episcopal minister, and Florence Marion Williams (Whitehill). He entered Harvard University, receiving his A.B. in 1926, and continuing for his A.M., awarded in 1929. Whitehill married Jane Revere Coolidge, a descendant of Thomas Jefferson, in 1930, leaving for Europe the same year to continue his studies. He wrote his dissertation under the eminent American Romanesque scholar A. Kingsley Porter at the University of London, receiving his Ph.D. in 1934. He remained in Europe until 1936, immersed in Spanish architectural history research in Spain. He returned to the United States in 1936 to become assistant director of the Peabody Museum of Salem, Salem, MA. In 1941 Whitehill published a revised version of his dissertation, Spanish Romanesque Architecture of the Eleventh Century, founding the American Neptune: A Quarterly Journal of Maritime History. By this time Whitehill switched interests to American art. During World War II, Whitehill served in the Naval Reserve, assigned to active duty from 1942-1946 and discharged with the rank of commander. After the war, he joined the Boston Athenaeum, the private library, as director and librarian in 1946, which he held until his retirement in 1973. Whitehill was appointed a member of faculty of Harvard University associated with the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in 1951 and a lecturer in history for the 1956-1957 year. Whitehill became a champion of architectural preservation in Boston. In 1961 he succeeded in saving the Old Corner Bookstore. Whitehill maintained a country house in Starksboro, VT, where he and his wife entertained in a gentlemanly manner. He became a Trustee of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In 1965 he published a survey, The Arts in Early American History. A two-volume centenary history of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, appeared in 1970. Whitehill retired from the Athenaeum in 1973, publishing his Boston Prints and Printmakers the same year. In retirement, he issued an architectural work, Palladio in America. One of his final acts was helping to preserve the Quincy Market area in Boston in 1976. He suffered a stroke and died at age 72. He is buried on the grounds of Monticello, Jefferson’s home, in accordance to Jefferson’s will regarding Jefferson’s descendants. His papers are held at the Massachusetts Historical Society. Though Whitehill’s publishing career focused on Bostoniana, his work on Spanish medieval art represents the earliest American interest in the subject. He, Porter, Georgiana Goddard King, Walter W. S. Cook, Kenneth John Conant [the Cluny scholar’s dissertation on the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela) and Chandler R. Post formed something of a “New England School” in Spanish art (Cahn).

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Spanish Romanesque Architecture of the Eleventh Century, University of London, 1936, published, London: Oxford University Press, 1941; Boston Public Library: A Centenary History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956; The Arts in Early American History. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1965; The Many Faces of Monticello: Address at Monticello, 13 April, 1964. Charlottesville, VA: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, 1965; Dumbarton Oaks: the History of a Georgetown House and Garden, 1800-1966. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1967; Cabinet of Curiosities: Five Episodes in the Evolution of American Museums. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1967; Museum of Fine Arts Boston: A Centennial History. 2 vols. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1970; Boston Statues. Barre, MA: Barre, 1970; and Hutchings, Sinclair H., eds. Boston Prints and Printmakers. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1973; and Nichols, Frederick. Palladio in America. Milan: Electa, 1976. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: a Centennial History. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1970; Palladio in America. Milan: Electa, 1976.

Sources

“Preface.” Spanish Romanesque Architecture of the Eleventh Century. reprint ed. London: Oxford University Press, 1968; Garrett, Wendell D. “Walter Muir Whitehill.” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Third Series 90, (1978): 131-139; Cahn, Walter. “Romanesque Art, Then and Now: A Personal Reminiscence.” in Hourihane, Colum, ed. Romanesque Art and Thought in the Twelfth Century: Essays in Honor of Walter Cahn. University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 2008, p. 33; [obituary:] Thomas, Robert M. Jr. “Walter Muir Whitehill Dies at 72, A Leading Boston Preservationist.” New York Times March 6, 1978, p. D7.

White, William

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: White, William

Gender: male

Date Born: unknown

Date Died: unknown

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

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

Overview

Architectural historian.

Sources

Thompson, Paul. “The Writings of William White.” in, Concerning Architecture: Essays on Architectural Writers and Writing presented to Nikolaus Pevsner. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1968, pp. 226-237.

Architectural historian.

White, John

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: White, John

Other Names:

White, John E. C. T.

Gender: male

Date Born: 1924

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

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

Overview

Italian Renaissance scholar. White attended Trinity College, Oxford University. During World War II he served as a pilot in the Royal Air Force. After the War he studied at the Courtauld Institute of Art. He held a junior fellowship at the Warburg Institute for two years before teaching at the Courtauld, first as a lecturer in 1952 and later as a Reader. In 1958 he published an important article in the Art Bulletin on the Raphael cartoons at Windsor Castle with fellow Courtauld colleague John Kinder Gowran Shearman. In 1959 he became Pilkington Professor of the History of Art at the University of Manchester and concomitantly Director of the Whitworth Art Gallery there. In 1966 he was appointed Professor and Chairman of the Department of the History of Art, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore,. That same year he published the volume on art and architecture of the early Italian renaissance for the prestigious Pelican History of Art series. He held that position until 1971 when he returned to England to be Durning-Lawrence Professor of the History of Art and Vice Provost of University College, London. He retired in 1990.

Selected Bibliography

The Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Space. London: Faber and Faber, 1957; Probleme und Methoden der Klassifizierung. Vienna: H. Böhlau, 1985; Art and Architecture in Italy, 1250 to 1400. Pelican History of Art 28. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1966; Studies in Renaissance Art. London: Pindar Press, 1983;

Pieter Bruegel and the Fall of the Art Historian 56th Charlton Lecture, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 1980;
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Sources

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. 48 mentioned; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, p. 221.

White, Christopher, Sir

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: White, Christopher, Sir

Other Names:

Sir Christopher White

Gender: male

Date Born: 1930

Place Born: London, Greater London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): Baroque, Dutch (culture or style), Dutch Golden Age, and Netherlandish Renaissance-Baroque styles

Overview

Scholar of the Dutch baroque and Director of the Paul Mellon Center, 1973-85. White was the son of Gabriel Edward Ernest Francis White (1902-1988) and Elizabeth Grace Ardizzone (White) (d. 1958). He was educated at the University of London, (BA), an MA at Oxford University, and Ph.D., at the Courtauld Institute, University of London. He joined the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum in 1954 as assistant Keeper. In 1957 he married Rosemary Katharine Desages. White became director of the old masters art sales gallery Colnaghi, London, in 1965, remaining there until 1971. Between 1971-73 he was curator of graphic arts for the National Gallery of Art in Washgington, D. C. He became director of the Paul Mellon Center for British Art in London and associate director of the Yale Center for British Art, both in 1973. White was appointed director of the Burlington Magazine in 1981. In 1985 he left these positions to direct the Ashmolean Museum as a fellow of Worcester College, Oxford. He added the appointment of Professor of Arts of the Netherlands, Oxford in 1992. He retired from the Oxford positions in 1997, accepting appointment as Trustee, Victoria and Albert Museum the same year. He is Vice-Chairman of the British Institute in Florence, a Member of the National Art Collections Fund Committee, and a Trustee of the Mauritshuis in The Hague. He is Director emeritus of the Ashmolean Museum.

Selected Bibliography

[Ashmolean Museum] Catalogue of the Collection of Paintings: Dutch, Flemish, and German Paintings before 1900 (Excluding the Daisy Linda Ward Collection). New York : Oxford University Press, 1999; and Buvelot, Quentin. Rembrandt by Himself. London: National Gallery Publications, 1999; Anthony van Dyck: Thomas Howard, The Earl of Arundel. Malibu, CA: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1995; and Crawley, Charlotte. The Dutch and Flemish Drawings of the Fifteenth to the Early Nineteenth Centuries in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994; Rembrandt as an Etcher: a Study of the Artist at Work. 2 vols. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press,1969; The Drawings of Rembrandt. London, Trustees of the British Museum, 1962; The Dutch Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982; Peter Paul Rubens: Man and Artist. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987; and Alexander, David, and D’Oench, Ellen. Rembrandt in Eighteenth Century England. New Haven, CT: Yale Center for British Art, 1983; and Coldwell, Paul. Edward Ardizzone’s World: the Etchings and Lithographs: an Introduction and Catalogue Raisonné. London: Unicorn Press/Wolseley Fine Arts, 2000.

Sources

People of Today. London: Debrett’s Peerage Limited, 2003, p 2137; CODART “Prof. Christopher White.”

Whinney, Margaret

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Whinney, Margaret

Other Names:

Margaret Dickens Whinney

Gender: female

Date Born: 1894

Date Died: 1974

Place Born: Hammersmith, Hammersmith and Fulham, London, Greater London, England, UK

Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

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

Career(s): educators

Overview

Courtauld Institute scholar of medieval architecture and sculpture. Whinney was the daughter of the architect Thomas Bostock Whinney and Sydney Margaret Dickens, the -granddaughter of Charles Dickens. She attended private secondary schools before entering the University of London. Her first article, written under her primary mentor at the University, Tancred Borenius, appeared in 1930. She graduated from the University in art history in 1935. The same year she joined the staff of the nascent Courtauld Institute of Art, doing a variety of jobs including managing the slide library. Her intent was to work her way up into a position at the Courtauld, still a difficult task for a woman in pre-war England. At the Courtauld she continued her studies, now under Geoffrey Webb, who instilled a passion for architectural history. In 1937 Anthony Blunt joined the Institute, who, like Webb, was trained as a scholar rather than a connoisseur as many of the previous Courtauld lecturers had been. Whinney became devoted to Blunt professionally and emotionally (Blunt was a homosexual) “taking on the dullest jobs” for him and the Institute (Carter). When England declared war against Germany in 1939, the Courtauld closed for a year. It reopened in 1940 with Whinney, one of the few not working in the war effort, running the Institute. This included teaching and handling most of the administrative responsibilities. The same year, the research she had done on seventeenth-century drawings at Chatsworth, for Whitehall Palace, and Worcester College, Oxford, was accepted for a D. Litt., at the University of London, published the Walpole Society yearbook. After the war Blunt assumed the directorship of the Institute. Whinney was made a Reader at the Courtauld in 1950 and edited with Blunt the same year a guide to public art collections in the United Kingdom. In 1957 she and Oliver Millar wrote the Oxford History of English Art volume on the period 1625-1714, contributing the sections on architecture. Whinney was asked by Nikolaus Bernard Leon Pevsner to author the Pelican History of Art volume on British Sculpture from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century, which appeared in 1964. The volume, perhaps dwarfed in subject by the rest of the Pelican series, demonstrated Whinney’s abilities to evaluate disparate and ignored work art historically rather than the antiquarian treatment it had been previously been given. The same year, she retired from the Institute. She co-authored a catalog on the Flaxman models at University College, London, and a book on early Flemish painting, the latter the substance of her course on the same subject at the Courtauld. In 1971 Whinney wrote an introductory volume on Christopher Wren, which John Newenham Summerson praised for its sensitive selection of plates. Students who were directly affected by her teaching included Kerry Downes, whose book on Wren, appearing the same year as hers, paid tribute to her teaching. Whinney’s dissertation examined drawings which J. Alfred Gotch had reassigned from Inigo Jones to John Webb in 1912. While Whinney agreed that the drawing was not Jones’, she proved, using new evidence, that the Webb sketches had come from original designs by Jones. In her Pelican History of Art volume, Sculpture in Britain, 1530-1830, she showed she could handle marginally important art historical monuments sympathetically by treating her subject, not solely esthetically, as Rupert Gunnis had done, or as an antiquarian Katharine Esdaile, but as a full art history. Her model, according to Summerson, was Ellis K. Waterhouse and his early Pelican volume, Painting in Britain 1530-1790, 1953.

Selected Bibliography

Sculpture in Britain, 1530-1830. Baltimore: Penguin Books 1964, “Flaxman and the Eighteenth Century. A Commemorative Lecture.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 19, no. 3/4 (July 1956): 269-282; Early Flemish Painting. New York: Praeger, 1968; and Gunnis, Rupert. The Collection of Models by John Flaxman, R.A. at University College London. London: Athlone, 1967; and Millar, Oliver. English Art, 1625-1714. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957; English Sculpture 1720-1830. London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1971; and Blunt, Anthony. The Nation’s Pictures: a Guide to the Chief National and Municipal Picture Galleries of England, Scotland and Wales. London: Chatto and Windus, 1950.

Sources

Carter, Miranda. Anthony Blunt: His Lives. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2001, p. 216; [obituary:] Summerson, John. “Margaret Whinney.” Burlington Magazine 117, no. 872 (November 1975): 731-732; Summerson, John. “Margaret Dickens Whinney, 1894-1975.” Proceedings of the British Academy 68 (1982): 637-642; Blunt, Anthony. “Dr Margaret Whinney Service to the Courtauld Institute of Art.” The Times (London) September 5, 1975, p. 16.

Whewell, William

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Whewell, William

Gender: male

Date Born: 1794

Date Died: unknown

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): art theory and Gothic (Medieval)

Overview

Master of Trinity College and early theorist of Gothic architecture.

Sources

Pevsner, Nikolaus. “Whewell.” Some Architectural Writers of the Nineteenth Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972, pp. 45-51.

Master of Trinity College and early theorist of Gothic architecture.

Wheeler, Robert Eric Mortimer, Sir

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Wheeler, Robert Eric Mortimer, Sir

Other Names:

Sir Mortimer Wheeler

Gender: male

Date Born: 1890

Date Died: 1976

Place Born: Glasgow, Scotland, UK

Place Died: Leatherhead, Surrey, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): archaeology

Overview

Archaeologist who wrote several art history books. Wheeler’s father was Robert Mortimer a newspaper editor, and his mother Emily Baynes (Wheeler). The younger Wheeler was educated at the University of London, receiving his B. A., in 1910, and an M.A., in 1912. In 1913 he joined the Monuments Division. He married Tessa Verney (d. 1936) in 1914 and joined the Royal Artillery in World War I. After the War, he completed his Ph.D. (Litt) and was appointed Keeper of the Archaeological Department of the National Museum in Wales and lecturer in archaeology at the University of Wales (University College), all in 1920. He and Tessa did many local archaeological digs. He was made a Fellow of University College, London, in 1922, which he held until his death. in 1924 he was appointed Director of the National Museum, Wales, the same year the first volume of a book on the Roman occupation of Britain appeared. He left the National Museum to head the London Museum at Lancaster House in 1926. In 1934 he was made lecturer (and honorary director) of the London University’s new Institute of Archaeology. During these years he and Tessa led an excavation of Maiden Castle, Dorset. His wife died in 1936. In 1939 he married Mavis Cole and, after World War II was declared, returned to the artillery (Eight Army), rising to Brigadier. In 1944 he was named Lecturer in Archaeology at the University College of Cardiff, and director General of Archaeology in India (it’s last, replacing John Marshall, until 1947). As director General, he invigorated the archaeological initiative which had grown stagnant and trained the first group of south-Asian archaeologists to take over after Indian independence. After a divorce to Cole in 1942, he married the archaeologist Margaret Norfolk in 1945. As Archaeological Advisor to the Pakistani National Museum, he was successful in arranging excavations in the Indus Valley, India and Gujarat. He lead the search for Indian pottery. He became Professor of Roman Archaeology at the University of London’s Institute of Archaeology in 1948, which he and his third wife founded and where he was appointed a professor. He was named secretary of the British Academy in 1949, which he held until 1968. Beginning in 1952, Wheeler used this position to make radio and television appearances (among the earliest to do so), popularizing archaeology to the public. His television shows included the hugely popular “Animal, Vegetable, Mineral?” (running 1952-1960), featured another art historian, Thomas Bodkin. This was followed by “Buried Treasure” (running 1954-1959), and “Chronicle” (1966). He was knighted in 1952. He retired from the University of London in 1955. In 1964 he authored a book on Roman art for Praeger publishers, Roman Art and Architecture. His Roman Art and Architecture was reprinted in 1985. Wheeler used the so-called “grid system archaeological method in his work, one of the first to employ the system developed by Kathleen Kenyon (1906-1978). Wheeler esteemed the work of the archaeologist Augustus Pitt Rivers (1827-1900), modeling his work after Rivers. His scholarship has largely been superseded by modern work. Wheeler loved engaging the female participants of his digs, for which he was nicknamed “Randy Sir Morty.”

Selected Bibliography

Still Digging. New York: Dutton, 1956 [British ed., 1955]; Roman Art and Architecture. New York: F. A. Praeger, 1964; edited. Splendors of the East: Temples, Tombs, Palaces and Fortresses of Asia. New York: Putnam, 1965; and Wheeler, Tessa Verney. The Roman Amphitheatre at Caerleon. Clowes. London: His Majesty’s Staionery Office,1931; The Roman Amphitheatre, Caerleon, Monmouthshire. London: His Majesty’s Staionery Office, 1943; Aspects of the Ascent of a Civilization. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955.

Sources

[obituaries:] “Sir Mortimer Wheeler Wider horizons and a new public for archaeology.” The Times (London) July 23, 1976, p. 16; “Sir Mortimer Wheeler.” The Times (London) July 28, 1976, p. 16; “Sir Mortimer Wheeler.” The Times (London) August 7, 1976, p. 14.

Wharton, Edith

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Wharton, Edith

Gender: female

Date Born: 1862

Date Died: 1937

Place Born: New York, NY, USA

Place Died: Pavillon Colombe, Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt, Paris

Home Country/ies: United States

Career(s): authors and novelists

Overview

Writer whose early work focused art topics. Edith Newbold Jones was born to a prominent New York family, George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Rhinelander. Her private education included travel to Europe. In 1885 she married Edward “Teddy” Robbins Wharton of Brookline, Massachusetts. The socialite Teddy and intellectual Edith were mismatched from the start. Edith continued her trips to Europe–escaping the social scene of New York–where she met authors and art historians, including Violet Paget (“Vernon Lee”) and Bernard Berenson. After commissioning the architect Ogden Codman, Jr. (1863-1951) remodel her Newport, RI, home, Wharton co-wrote her first book in 1898, The Decoration of Houses. The architectural and home-decoration guide was influential among decorators and designers. Wharton demonstrated her technique by commissioning a house designed upon these principals in Lenox, MA, called “the Mount,” in 1901, though she and Codman disagreed so much on the home that she dismissed him for Francis Laurens Vinton Hoppin (1866-1941). Wharton wrote Italian Villas and their Gardens in 1904, her second art history, a survey of Italian Renaissance gardens and their villas. The work was inspired by an 1897 work by Paget/Lee, to whom she dedicated it. The book contained original illustrations by Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966), which unfortunately in keeping with Parrish’s style, are too fairly-tale-like to complement the accuracy of her text. The following year, her book Italian Backgrounds appeared. This work, with drawings by E. C. Peixotto (1869-1940), takes the imaginative approach that Italy, much like its art, must be studied both through its formal foreground (known through its guidebooks) as well as its background, the province of what she termed “the dreamer” and student. In a style popular with fin-de-siécle travel literature, village and architectural description is interspersed with speculative rambling on dating, provenance and attribution of art. Though Wharton left art writing after this to concentrate on literature, she remained exceedingly close to the art-historical community in Europe and the United States. A portrait of the art historian John C. Van Dyke as “Ned Van Alstyne” appears in her House of Mirth. She settled permanently in France in 1907. It was Wharton who secured Berenson work during World War I in Italy as a negotiator and translator. Wharton divorced Teddy in 1928, after an affair with the journalist, Morton Fullerton (1865-1952), the events of which are contained in her most famous novel, Ethan Frome, 1911. She lived between two homes she renovated in France, the Pavillon Colombe in Saint-Brice-Sous-Fôret and the Chateau Sainte-Claire in Hyères, on the French Riviera. She died after several strokes in her Saint-Brice-Sous-Fôret home and is buried at the Cimetière des Gonards in Versailles. Wharton’s art-historical writing consists of documenting period styles and gleaning their principles to a wider audience. The Decoration of Houses was written to promote standards home decoration by emphasizing architectural principals of architectural proportion and the eschewing needless ornament. Italian Villas again emphasized the harmony of design of the Italian garden and its relationship to the villa and native landscape. She died in the vicinity of Pavillon Colombe, Saint-Brice-Sous-Fôret, Paris.

Selected Bibliography

and Codman, Ogden. The Decoration of Houses. New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1898; Italian Villas and their Gardens. New York: Century Co., 1904; Italian Backgrounds. New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1905.

Sources

Burness, Edwina. “Wharton, Edith.” Dictionary of Art; Wharton, Edith. A Backward Glance. New York: D. Appleton-Century Co., 1934; Lewis, Richard Warrington Baldwin. Edith Wharton: A Biography. New York: Harper & Row, 1975; Auchincloss, Louis. Edith Wharton: a Woman in her Time. New York: Viking Press 1971; Benstock, Shari. No Gifts from Chance: a Biography of Edith Wharton. New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1994; Fryer, Judith. Felicitous Space: the Imaginative Structures of Edith Wharton and Willa Cather. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986, pp. 53-199; Griffith, Grace Kellogg. The Two Lives of Edith Wharton: the Woman and her Work. New York: Appleton-Century 1965.

Weyerman, Jacob Campo

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Weyerman, Jacob Campo

Other Names:

Jacob Campo Weyerman

Gender: male

Date Born: 09 August 1677

Date Died: 1747

Place Born: Charleroi, Southern Netherlands

Place Died: The Hague, South Holland, Netherlands

Home Country/ies: Netherlands

Subject Area(s): biography (general genre)

Career(s): art critics, art historians, biographers, journalists, painters (artists), playwrights, and translators

Overview

Writer of painters’ biographies; painter; playwright; translator; journalist. Weyerman’s parents, Hendrick Weyermans (d. 1695) and Elisabeth Sommerel (d. 1723), both served in the military, when their son Jacob was born. They moved to Den Bosch before settling in Breda in 1680. Weyerman spent his first 18 years in Breda, where he visited the so-called “Latin School” and trained as a painter. Among his masters was Ferdinand van Kessel (1648-1702). In 1695 he received his classical and literary education from the reformed minister Petrus Santvoort (1658-1703) in the little village at Woudt near Delft. In this city the painter Thomas van der Wilt (1659-1733) trained him in painting and drawing. Weyerman subsequently studied at Utrecht University, although according to his own information he did not attend classes. For a short time he served in the military as cadet in the regiment of Colonel George Lauder. In Antwerp he trained with the flower painter Simon Hardimé (1672?-1737). Around 1702-1703 Weyerman traveled to England, where he entered the studio of the leading portrait painter Godfrey Kneller. Weyerman specialized in painting flowers and fruit. Some of his flower paintings are preserved. He also lived from his pen, as a playwright and translator. He spent three weeks in Italy. In 1714 and 1715 he was formally enrolled at Leiden University in the faculty of Medicine, probably only for the benefit attached to the status of student. Around that time he lived in Breda. In 1718 he stayed in London in the house of John Woodward, professor of physics (1665-1728). In September 1920 Weyerman’s first weekly journal, De Rotterdamsche Hermes (The Rotterdam Hermes), appeared. It consisted of witty, satirical and often slanderous comments on the behavior of his contemporaries. Pursuing his literary activities he kept publishing journals with titles such as Den Ontleeder der Gebreeken (The Dissector of Deficiencies, 1723), and Den Echo des Weerelds (The Echo of the World, 1725). He also wrote essays, including De History des Pausdoms (The history of Papacy), which appeared between 1725 and 1728. Weyerman married in 1727 with Johanna Ernst. By that time the couple had two sons, Jacobus and Henricus. In 1729 Weyerman’s magnum opus, a three-volume biography of painters appeared in The Hague, De Levens-beschryvingen der Nederlandsche Konst-schilders en Konst-schilderessen, met een uytbreyding over de schilder-konst der Ouden (The lives of Netherlandish Painters and Paintresses, with an overview of the art of the ancient painters). The fourth volume was published posthumously in 1769 in Dordrecht. The overview of ancient painting is mainly drawn from Pliny the Elder‘s Naturalis Historiae (book 35). Weyerman’s original manuscript is preserved in Department of Manuscripts of the Brussels Royal Library (inv. nr. II-1608). The Levens-beschryvingen covers more than seven hundred lives of painters in the Low Countries and England. It is written in the tradition of artists’ biographers, such as Karel Van Mander, Cornelis de Bie, Joachim von Sandrart, and Arnold Houbraken. Although Weyerman did not hold Houbraken in high esteem, he modeled his compilation for a great part on the latter’s De Groote Schouwburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen (The great Theater of Netherlandish Painters and Paintresses). Weyerman’s unpublished treatise, Vertoogh over de apocrijfe schilders (Treatise on apocryphal painters), is preserved as part of the Brussels manuscript. It is dated 1730. It contains valuable information on the contemporary art market in the Low Countries, including character sketches of mostly unreliable art dealers. Weyerman, who occasionally acted himself as an art dealer, exposes in this manuscript the malpractices of the eighteenth-century art market. By that time Weyerman lived in Amsterdam, but due to his bad reputation he had to leave the city. In 1739 he was arrested in Vianen. The Hof van Holland accused him of extortion and slander. Insults at the address of members of the East India Company probably contributed to his life long sentence. He was imprisoned in The Hague, where he died after eight years of confinement. He kept writing and painting to earn money for his family. Part of the fourth volume of his Levens-beschryvingen is written in jail. Here he also translated Cervantes’ Don Quixote, De voornaamste Gevallen van den Wonderlyken Don Quichot (The main events of the amazing Don Quixote, 1746). Three years after Weyerman’s death, Johan Van Gool in his Nieuwe Schouwburg der Nederlantsche kunstschilders en schilderessen (New Theater of Netherlandish Painters and Paintresses) described Weyerman’s Levens-beschryvingen as unreliable and slanderous, and accused its author of plagiarism. Later biographers of artists mostly took over this negative evaluation. Art historians rarely disputed Weyerman’s bad reputation. More recent research, however, including contributions of the Stichting Jacob Campo Weyerman established in 1977, has led to a re-evaluation of Weyerman’s work. Broos (1990) came to the conclusion that Weyerman’s commentaries in the Levens-beschryvingen were more accurate and original than previously thought. Weyerman himself indicated that he did not want his remarks full of wit and merriment to be seen as diminishing the credibility of the information he provided on the lives of painters. (Broos 1990)

Selected Bibliography

[complete bibliography] Broos, Ton J. Tussen Zwart en Ultramarijn, pp. 258-263; De Levens-beschryvingen der Nederlandsche Konst-schilders en Konst-schilderessen, met een uytbreyding over de schilder-konst der Ouden, door Jacob Campo Weyerman, Konst-schilder. Verrykt met de Konterfeytsels der Voornaamste Konst-Schilders en Konst-Schilderessen, cierlyk in koper gesneden door J. Houbraken. 3 vols. The Hague: Wed E. Boucquet, H. Scheurleer, F. Boucquet, en J. de Jong, 1729, vol. 4. De Levens-beschryvingen der Nederlandsche Konst-schilders en Konst-schilderessen, met voorafgaande aanmerkingen over het betamelyke en het wanvoeglyke van de schilderkonst, benevens een korte levensschets der konstschilders van de schilder-akademie in as Hage. Door Jakob Campo Weyerman, Konst-schilder. Verrykt met nieuwe vignetten. Dordrecht: bij A. Blussé, 1769.

Sources

“Weyerman, Jacob Campo, called Campovivo” Benezit Dictionary of Artists; Broos, Ton J. “Weyerman, Jacob Campo” Dictionary of Art; Broos, Ton J. [dissertation Nijmegen, 1990:] Tussen Zwart en Ultramarijn. De levens van schilders beschreven door Jacob Campo Weyerman (1677-1747). Amsterdam – Atlanta GA: Editions Rodopy B.V., 1990, reviewed by De Vries, Lyckle in Oud Holland 105 (1991): 152-155; Altena, Peter, Hendrikx, Willem, and others. Het verlokkend ooft: Proeven over Jacob Campo Weyerman. Amsterdam: Huis aan de Drie Grachten, 1985; Jonckheere, Koenraad and Vermeylen, Filip. “A World of Deception and Deceit? Jacob Campo Weyerman and the Eighteenth-century Art Market” Simiolus 35 (2011): 100-113.

Contributors: Monique Daniels

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