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Thuillier, Jacques

Full Name: Thuillier, Jacques

Other Names:

  • Jacques Thullier

Gender: male

Date Born: 18 March 1928

Date Died: 18 October 2011

Place Born: Vaucouleurs, Grand Est, France

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

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): French (culture or style) and seventeenth century (dates CE)


Overview

Scholar of Poussin and 17th-century French art; professor and art collector. Thuillier’s parents were André Thuillier, professor at the Lycée technique de Nevers, and Berthe Caritey (Thuillier). After having attended the Lycée de Nevers Thuillier studied from 1951 to 1955 at the École Normale Supérieure, in Paris. He obtained his degree of Agrégé des Lettres classiques in 1954, receiving fellowships at the Fondation Primoli, Rome, (1955-1956) and at the Fondation Thiers, Paris (1956-1959). Between 1956 and 1959 he also held a teaching position at the Institut d’Art et d’Archéologie, Université de Paris, Sorbonne. In 1958 he was among the participants in the international Poussin Colloquium, directed by André Chastel. In 1959 Thuillier was appointed assistant professor of art history at the Sorbonne. Thuillier’s research on Poussin, including a collection of seventeenth-century literary sources on Poussin, the so-called “Corpus Pussinianum”, appeared in the Actes du Colloque International Nicolas Poussin (1960). In that year the Poussin exhibition at the Louvre, organized by Germain Bazin, Anthony Blunt, and Charles Sterling, instituted the long-running debate about the chronology and authenticity of the artist’s early works, challenged principally by Denis Mahon, Thuillier would ultimately be drawn in on. Thuillier was a founding member of the journals Art de France (1960) and Revue de l’Art (1968). In 1962 he was appointed chair of medieval and modern art and of musicology at the Faculté des Lettres et Sciences humaines de Dijon. Together with the Baroque scholar Jennifer Montagu, he wrote the catalog of the 1963 Charles Le Brun exhibition at the Musée national de Versailles. He co-authored with Albert Châtelet two monographs on French painting, one covering the period of art betwen [Jean] Fouquet to Poussin (1963) and the second from Le Nain to Fragonard (1964). His book on the Marie de Medici cycle painted by Rubens appeared in 1967 both in Italian and in English, as Rubens’ Life of Marie de’ Medici. The French edition followed in 1969. Thuillier obtained the degree of Docteur ès lettres in 1970. In that year he succeeded Chastel as professor of the history of modern and contemporary art, and subsequently professor of the history of modern art, at the Institut d’Art et d’Archéologie at the Sorbonne. His successor in his position in Dijon was Antoine Schnapper. Thuillier organized the retrospective Georges de La Tour exhibition in the Orangerie des Tuileries in 1972 with Pierre Rosenberg and Michel Laclotte. In 1974 he published his critical catalog of the works of Poussin, Tout l’ouvre peint de Nicolas Poussin; documentation et catalogue raisonné. In 1977 Thuillier was elected to the “chaire d’histoire de la création artistique en France” at the Collège de France. Continuing his pioneering research on seventeenth-century French painting, he organized a show on the Le Nains brothers at the Grand Palais in 1978. In 1982 and 1992 he was involved in exhibitions on seventeenth-century Lorraine artists, held in Nancy, Musée des Beaux-Arts. In 1994 he issued a second monograph on Poussin, followed in 1995 by the catalog of the Feigen Gallery, New York, exhibition of early work of the artist, considered “essential to all concerned with Poussin studies” (Sewell). Thuillier retired in 1998. As honorary professor he continued to publish on different topics. He was selected to write the updated volume on European decorative arts, from the Renaissance to the Baroque, for the Spanish-language scholarly encyclopedia, Summa artis, historia general del arte, which appeared in 2000. His monograph, Jacques de Bellange, was published at the occasion of the exhibition of the artist in Rennes, in 2001. A 2002 Flammarion Histoire de l’art was not well received. Among his last publications was his Galerie des Glaces (2007), following the restoration of the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles Palace. Thuillier figured among the important Poussin scholars of the second half of the twentieth century, along with Mahon and Blunt. He played a major role in national and international committees, such as the Comité national de la recherche scientifique (CoNRS) and the Comité international d’histoire de l’art (CIHA). In 1991 he became a member of the Conseil artistique des Musées nationaux. He was a generous benefactor to French museums. His large donations of art to the Musée départemental George de la Tour in Vic-sur-Seille were instrumental in creating this museum, which opened in 2003. He donated an important collection of drawings and prints to the Musée des Beaux-Arts of Nancy.


Selected Bibliography

[bibliography:] http://www.college-de-france.fr/site/professeurs; “Tableaux attribués à Poussin dans les archives révolutionnaires” in Nicolas Poussin, Actes du Colloque International Nicolas Poussin, Paris, 1958. Paris: CNRS, 1960, vol. 2, pp. 27-44; “Pour un Corpus Pussinianum” in Nicolas Poussin, Actes du Colloque International Nicolas Poussin, Paris, 1958. Paris: CNRS, 1960, vol. 2, pp. 49-238; and Montagu, Jennifer. Catalogue de l’Exposition Charles Le Brun. Château de Versailles, 1963; and Châtelet, Albert. La peinture française de Fouquet à Poussin. Geneva: Skira, 1963; La peinture française de Le Nain à Fragonard. Geneva: Skira, 1964; Rubens’ Life of Marie de’ Medici, New York: Abrams, 1967; and Rosenberg, Pierre, and Landry, Pierre. Catalogue de l’Exposition Georges de La Tour, Orangerie des Tuileries, Paris: Éditions des Musées Nationaux, 1972; Tout l’ouvre peint de George de la Tour. Rizzoli-Flammarion, 1973; Catalogue de l’Exposition Les Frères Le Nain, Grand Palais, Paris, 1978; Tout l’ouvre peint de Nicolas Poussin; documentation et catalogue raisonné. Paris: Flammarion, 1974; Nicolas Poussin (Biographie) Paris: Fayard, 1988; Préface au ‘Cours de peinture par principes’ par Roger de Piles. Paris: Gallimard, 1989, pp. III-XXIX; Nicolas Poussin. Paris: Flammarion, 1994; Poussin Before Rome, 1594-1624. London: Richard L. Feigen & Co, 1995; and others. Summa artis, historia general del arte 46, 1. Las artes decorativas en Europa. Del renacimiento al barroco. Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 2000; Sébastien Bourdon, 1616-1671: catalogue critique et chronologique de l’oeuvre complet. Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2000; Jacques de Bellange. Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes, 2001; Histoire de l’art. Flammarion, 2002; Jacques Stella, 1596-1657. Metz: Serge Domini, 2006; La Galerie des Glaces, chef d’Åuvre retrouvé. Paris: Gallimard, 2007.


Sources

Blunt, Anthony. [Review “The Literature of Art”] “Colloque Nicolas Poussin. Publié sous la Direction de André Chastel” in The Burlington Magazine 102, nr. 688 (1960): 330-332; Sewell, Brian. “The Blunt Truth about Poussin? ” Evening Standard (London) February 2, 1995, p. 30; [obituaries:] Rykner, Didier. “Disparition de Jacques Thuillier” La Tribune de l’art. October 20, 2011; Montagu, Jennifer. “Jacques Thuillier (1928-2011)” Burlington Magazine 154, nr. 1308 (March, 2012): 202; Jobert, Barthélémy, and Mérot, Alain. Revue de l’Art nr. 176 (2012): 85-87; Lemoine, Serge. “Jacques Thuillier (1927-2011), un grand maître de l’histoire de l’art” Le Monde.fr, Novembre 2, 2011; “Décès de Jacques Thuillier, Carnet Né dans la Meuse, cet historien de l’art français fut aussi un grand donateur” L’Est Républicain, Octobre 21, 2011, p. 19; http://www.college-de-france.fr/site/professeurs.



Contributors: Lee Sorensen and Monique Daniels


Citation

Lee Sorensen and Monique Daniels. "Thuillier, Jacques." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/thuillierj/.


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Scholar of Poussin and 17th-century French art; professor and art collector. Thuillier’s parents were André Thuillier, professor at the Lycée technique de Nevers, and Berthe Caritey (Thuillier). After having attended the Lycée de Nevers Thuillier

Thoré, Etienne-Joseph-Théophile

Full Name: Thoré, Etienne-Joseph-Théophile

Other Names:

  • Théophile Thoré

Gender: male

Date Born: 1807

Date Died: 1869

Place Born: La Flèche, Pays de la Loire, France

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

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): Dutch (culture or style) and Impressionist (style)

Career(s): art collectors


Overview

Vermeer scholar and “rediscoverer;” and collector and French Salon critic important for Impressionism; co-founder of L’Alliance des arts. Thoré wrote criticism beginning in the 1830s, during the regime of the July Monarchy (1830-48). By the 1840s his art criticism was wide ranging encompassing aesthetic and political views. He extolled the work of Eugène Delacroix, Théodore Rousseau and other Barbizon school painters, chiding the conservative painters such as Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres as well as the more popular artists such as Paul Delaroche and Horace Vernet. In 1842 he and Paul Lacroix (1806-1884) founded a private agency to sell and promote art, the Alliance des Arts. They also published a Bulletin. Between 1844-8 Thoré was the art critic for Le Constitutionnel. Because of his support of some of the radicals in the 1848 revolution, (he was a Saint-Simonist and exponent of Pierre Leroux, 1797-1871) was forced into exile in 1849. After living in London, Brussels and in Switzerland, he returned in 1859, continuing to write under the government of Second Empire (1851-70). In 1855, Thoré began using the Dutch-sounding pseudonym “Willem Bürger,” focusing his writing on northern European art. An active archival researcher and connoisseur, he is credited with the rediscovery of Johannes Vermeer and significant re-evaluations of of other seventeenth-century Dutch artists, including Frans Hals. He published museum catalogues and reviews of collections and exhibitions in Europe, as well as studies of the Spanish and English schools. Among these was the Velazquez catalog for French edition of Velazquez and his Works by William Stirling Maxwell in 1865. His criticism derided French baroque painting as too heavily influenced by Italy, terming it as inauthentic of a national identity. He lauded Dutch 17th-century naturalism and what has subsequently come to be seen as the acme of Netherlandish painting, the art of the Dutch Republic. It’s direct appeal to simple human virtues, he declared made it an art for the people (“l’art pour l’homme”). He continued to deplore the dark history painting of the Academie and the Second Empire, particularly that of Jean-Léon Gérôme and Alexandre Cabanel, in favor of Realism painter such as Gustave Courbet (his favorite), Jean-François Millet, and the Impressionists Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir. As early as 1860, Thoré began purchasing Vermeer paintings. A Lady Standing at the Virginal (1672-73, National Gallery, London) was acquired sometime before 1876, Woman with a Pearl Necklace (1664, Berlin, Gemäldegalerie) was bought from Henry Grevedon in June 1866. A Lady Seated at the Virginal (1675, National Gallery, London) was purchased for a mere 2,000 francs in 1867. Thoré was one of the first to recognize the importance of Manet in the 1868 Salon featuring his work. The sale of Thoré’s collection by Hotel Drouot in 1892 brought the Vermeers and other works into more public collections. Though Thoré’s criticism may appear overly political, his early recognition of the important masters of French nineteenth-century painting and the Dutch baroque place him at a seminal point in art history. His most important contribution was in the history of taste and collecting, particularly the reevaluation of Dutch artists as well as an early supporter of Impressionism.


Selected Bibliography

Le Salon de 1844: pécédé d’une lettre à Théodore Rousseau. Paris: Masgana, Alliance des arts, 1844; Le salon de 1845, pécédé d’une lettre a Béranger. Paris: Masgana, Alliance des arts, 1845; [under pseudonym W. Bürger] Tre´sors d’art en Angleterre. Brussels: F. Claassen, 1860; Tre´sors d’art: expose´s a Manchester en 1857 et provenant des collections royales, des collections publiques et des collections particulières de la Grand-Bretagne. Paris: Jules Renouard, 1857; Muse´es de la Hollande. 2 vols. Paris: J. Renouard, 1858-1860. [Velazquez catalog, in] Stirling, William Maxwell. Velazquez et ses œuvres. Paris: J. Renouard, 1865.


Sources

Blum, Andé. Vermeer et Thoré-Bürger. Genève: Les Éditions du Mont-Blanc s. a., 1945. Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, p. 237; Jowell, Francis S. Dictionary of Art; Jowell, Frances-Suzman. “Vermeer and Thoré-Bürger: Recoveries of Reputation” Studies in the History of Art 55 (1998): 35-58; Jowell, F. S. “From Thoré to Bürger: the Image of Dutch Art before and after the Musees de la Hollande.” Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 49 no. 1 (2001): 44-60; Hecht, Peter. “Rembrandt and Raphael Back to Back: the Contribution of Thoré.” Simiolus 26 no. 3 (1998):162-78; Kultermann, Udo. The History of Art History. New York: Abaris, 1993, pp.117.




Citation

"Thoré, Etienne-Joseph-Théophile." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/thoret/.


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Vermeer scholar and “rediscoverer;” and collector and French Salon critic important for Impressionism; co-founder of L’Alliance des arts. Thoré wrote criticism beginning in the 1830s, during the regime of the July Monarchy (1830-48). By the 1840s

Thompson, Robert Farris

Full Name: Thompson, Robert Farris

Other Names:

  • Bob Thompson
  • Bob Farris Thompson
  • Robert F. Thompson
  • Bob F. Thompson

Gender: male

Date Born: 30 December 1932

Date Died: 29 November 2021

Place Born: El Paso, TX, USA

Place Died: New Haven, New Haven, CT, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): African (general, continental cultures), African American, African diaspora, African sculpture styles, American (North American), dance (performing arts genre), Nigerian, sculpture (visual works), West African (general), and Yoruba (culture or style)

Career(s): art historians and curators

Institution(s): Yale University


Overview

Curator and early historian of African and African-American art. Thompson was born and raised in El Paso, Texas, by his father, a surgeon, and his mother, a local arts patron. He grew to appreciate the cultures on either side of the border with Mexico. On a trip to Mexico City during his last year of high school, Thompson first heard mambo, a genre of Cuban dance music. This experience sparked what would become a lifelong passion for Afro-Atlantic music, dance, visual arts, and culture. After graduating from Phillips Academy Andover, in Massachusetts, Thompson enrolled at Yale University, where he lived in Branford College and completed his B.A. in 1955. He then served for two years in the U.S. Army in Germany and toured as a drummer with the All Army Talent Show. He released an Afro-Cuban percussion album, Safari of One, in 1959 before returning to Yale to pursue doctoral work. Thompson received an M.A. in 1961 from Yale, and subsequently a Ph.D. in 1965 under George Kubler, becoming the second person to receive a degree in the field of African art in the United States. His dissertation, Yoruba Dance Sculpture: Its Contexts and Critics, introduced the study of Yoruba religion and dance practices to art history, and served as the methodological foundation for the study of African art. He accepted a teaching position at Yale after receiving his Ph.D., and is currently the Colonel John Trumbull Professor in the Department of the History of African and African American Art. He also served as Master of Timothy Dwight College from 1978 until 2010, making him the longest serving master of a residential college at Yale.

Thompson’s research encompasses art from the entire African diaspora, ranging from Afro-Brazilian art to African-American art. In 1974, he curated an exhibit at the National Gallery of Art, entitled, African Art in Motion: Icon and Act, which emphasized the importance of movement and dance in the African artistic tradition. Thompson’s 1983 book, Flash of the Spirit: African and African-American Art and Philosophy was the first comprehensive study of the African religious traditions, such as altar building and divination ceremonies, that influenced Caribbean and African-American cultures. His field research in Africa, the Caribbean, and South America emphasizes the strength of African religious, philosophical, and artistic traditions despite the social obstacles presented by the international slave trade. The more recent field of African diaspora studies developed from Thompson’s publications and his research on Africa art from a global perspective. Methodologically, Thompson introduced the contextual foundation for the study of African art.  Instead of simply seeing African sculpture in exclusively aesthetic terms, he underscored how the art functioned in dance and spiritual beliefs of those who created it.

The College Art Association presented its inaugural Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award for Art Writing to Thompson in 2003. In 2007, Thompson was given the “Outstanding Contribution to Dance Research” award, by the Congress on Research in Dance.Thompson was named CAA’s Distinguished Scholar in 2015. Thompson currently resides in New Haven, CT where he continues to teach his popular Yale courses, including “African art and New York mambo.”


Selected Bibliography

  • [essay by] Divine Inspiration: From Benin to Bahia. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993;
  • [essay by] The Art of William Edmondson. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1999;
  • Faith Ringgold Paints Crown Heights. Chappaqua, NY: L & S Video, Inc., 1995;
  • and Meurant, Georges. Mbuti Design: Paintings by Pygmy Women of the Ituri Forest. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1996;
  • African Art in Motion: Icon and Act in the Collection of Katherine Coryton White. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1974;
  • Black Gods and Kings, Los Angeles: UCLA Museum of Ethnic Arts, 1971;
  • [reprint], Black Gods and Kings: Yoruba art at UCLA. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976;
  • The Four Moments of the Sun, New Haven: Eastern Press, Inc., 1981;
  • Face of the Gods: Art and Altars of Africa and the African Americas, New York: The Museum for African Art, 1993;
  • “An Aesthetic of the Cool,” African Arts, 1973;
  • “Yoruba Artistic Criticism,” The Traditional Artist in African Societies, ed. d’Azevedo, Warren L. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973;
  • Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy. New York: Random House, 1983;
  • and Cornet, Joseph. The Four Moments of the Sun: Kongo Art in Two Worlds. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1981;
  • Painting from a Single Heart: Preliminary Remarks on Bark-Cloth Designs of the Mbute Women of Haut-Zaïre (Malerei aus Aufrichtigem Herzen: Vorläufige Bemerkungen zu Rindenstoff-Zeichnungen der Mbute-Frauen in Haut-Zaïre). Munich: F. und J. Jahn, 1983.

Sources



Contributors: Alana J. Hyman and LaNitra Michele Walker


Citation

Alana J. Hyman and LaNitra Michele Walker. "Thompson, Robert Farris." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/thompsonr/.


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Curator and early historian of African and African-American art. Thompson was born and raised in El Paso, Texas, by his father, a surgeon, and his mother, a local arts patron. He grew to appreciate the cultures on either side of the border with Mexic

Thompson, John D.

Full Name: Thompson, John D.

Other Names:

  • John Devereaux Thompson

Gender: male

Date Born: 1917

Date Died: 1992

Home Country/ies: United States

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

Institution(s): Yale University


Overview

Architectural historian.


Selected Bibliography

and Goldin, Grace. The Hospital: A Social and Architectural History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975.


Sources

KRG, 73 mentioned



Contributors: Lee Sorensen


Citation

Lee Sorensen. "Thompson, John D.." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/thompsonj/.


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Architectural historian.

Thompson, Dorothy Burr

Full Name: Thompson, Dorothy Burr

Other Names:

  • Dorothy Burr Thompson

Gender: female

Date Born: 1900

Date Died: 2001

Place Born: Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, USA

Place Died: Hightstown, Mercer, NJ, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): ancient, Ancient Greek (culture or style), archaeology, Classical, Hellenic, and sculpture (visual works)

Career(s): educators


Overview

Archaeologist and classical-art historian at Bryn Mawr; authority on Hellenistic terracotta figurines. Burr’s father, Charles Henry Burr, Jr. (d. 1925) was a prominent constitutional lawyer in Philadelphia. Her mother was the biographer and novelist. Burr attended Miss Hill’s School in Center City, PA, and The Latin School in Philadelphia. She began her study of Latin at age 9 and Greek at 12. At age 13, she took a Grand Tour of Europe, visiting museums and monuments of Europe. In Switzerland, they were caught in the early fighting of the first World War. The family moved to London in 1917 where her father consulted for the British government. They returned in 1919 and Dorothy entered Bryn Mawr where she was exposed to the lectures of Rhys Carpenter and Mary Hamilton Swindler. Carpenter instilled in her a love of Hellenistic sculpture. She graduated summa cum laude in 1923, the first graduate with a major in Greek and archaeology, and was awared the college’s European Fellowship. She studied at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens (ASCSA) for two years, excavating under the direction of Carl Blegen (1887-1971) at Phlius and under Hetty Goldman (1881-1972) at Eutresis. Among her archaeological accomplishments, she discovered in 1925 a tholos (a beehive shaped vault of a late Greek Bronze Age tomb) which proved to be the burial place of the king and queen of Midea. She received her Ph.D. in 1931, the subject of which was a catalog of the 117 Hellenistic terracotta figures from Myrina (southwestern coast of Turkey) owned by Boston Museum of Fine Arts. When the MFA’s curator of Classical Antiquities, Lacey D. Caskey, declined publication by the Museum, Burr had the dissetation published privately in Austria. The following year she was appointed the first woman Fellow of the Athenian Agora excavations. The dig’s assistant director of field work was the Canadian archaeologist Homer Thompson (1906-2000). The two met and were married in 1934. The coupled returned to Canada where her husband accepted positions as curator of the classical collection at the Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology and assistant professor in fine arts at the University of Toronto. Every summer they returned to the Agora digs. In 1936, Burr Thompson was responsible for the discovery of the garden of the Temple of Hepaistos. She researched garden history and tradition in this context and became an expert on garden lore not only of early Greece but of Babylon, Egypt and Italy as well. When World War II halted Agora excavations and her husband volunteered for the navy in 1942, Thompson took over his teaching responsibilities at at the University of Toronto. In addition to her teaching responsibilities, she was a contributing editor to the Canadian Classical Associations’ journal, Phoenix. In 1946 her husband accepted the chair vacated by Goldman at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, and Burr Thompson fulfilled a position offer him as acting director of the Royal Ontario Museum until she moved to Princeton with him the following year. At Princeton she continued to publish articles and books, maintaining an office at the Institute, in addition to raising her three daughters. Her translation of 6th and 7th century B.C. Greek lyrics, Swans and Amber, was published in 1948. The couple spent every summer at the Agora excavation in Athens, hosting scholars at the American School. Beginning in 1952 a series of important articles by Burr Thompson on Agorean terracottas appeared in Hesperia. Beginning in 1953, she taught as a visiting professor at universities in the United States and Australia. A major work on her area of specialty, Greek terracotta, appeared in 1963 as Troy: the Terra-Cotta Figurines of the Hellenistic Period, the objects of which had been unearthed by the University of Cincinnati, 1932-38. In 1987 she was awarded the Gold Medal for distinguished achievement by the American Institute of Archaeology.


Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Terra-cottas from Myrina in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Bryn Mawr College, 1931; [issued as book of same title] Vienna: A. Holzhausens Nachfolger, 1934; and Davidson, Gladys R., and Talcott, Lucy. Small Objects from the Pnyx. 2 vols. Baltimore: American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 1943-56; An Ancient Shopping Center: the Athenian Agora. Princeton, NJ: American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 1971; and Frantz, Allison. Miniature Sculpture from the Athenian Agora. Princeton, NJ: American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 1959; Ptolemaic Oinochoai and Portraits in Faience: Aspects of the Ruler-Cult. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973; and Thompson, Homer A., and Rotroff, Susan I. Hellenistic Pottery and Terracottas. Princeton, NJ: American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 1987; “Three Centuries of Hellenistic Terracottas.” Hesperia 31 (1962): 244-262.


Sources

Havelock, Christine Mitchell. “Dorothy Burr Thompson (b. 1900): Classical Archaeologist.” in Women as Interpreters of the Visual Arts, 1820-1979. Claire R. Sherman, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981, pp. 357-375; “Keen Eye: Archaeologist Dorothy Burr Thompson.” Bryn Mawr Alumni Bulletin Online. (Winter 2001) http://www.brynmawr.edu/Alumnae/bulletin/wi01new3.htm;




Citation

"Thompson, Dorothy Burr." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/thompsond/.


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Archaeologist and classical-art historian at Bryn Mawr; authority on Hellenistic terracotta figurines. Burr’s father, Charles Henry Burr, Jr. (d. 1925) was a prominent constitutional lawyer in Philadelphia. Her mother was the biographer and noveli

Thode, Henry

Full Name: Thode, Henry

Other Names:

  • Henry Thode

Gender: male

Date Born: 13 January 1857

Date Died: 09 November 1920

Place Born: Dresden, Saxony, Germany

Place Died: Copenhagen, Hovedstaden, Denmark

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): Renaissance


Overview

Scholar of the Italian Renaissance, Michelangelo scholar; professor at Heidelberg. Thode was the son of Robert Thode (1825-1898), a banker in Dresden and Adolfine Dzondi (Thode) (1822-1900). He attended the Gymnasium in Goerlitz, entering the university in Leipzig initially to study law. Thode changed to art history, studying in Vienna, Berlin and Munich, writing his dissertation under Moriz Thausing in Vienna in 1880. He spent several years in study in Italy, France and England. In 1884 he and Hugo von Tschudi began editing the presigeous art-history journal Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft. He wrote his habilitation in 1886 at the University of Bonn. In the same year he married the oldest daughter Cosima [Liszt] Wagner and Hans von Bülow, Daniela von Buelow (1860-1940). In 1889, at the recommendation of Berliner Museum director Wilhelm Bode, Thode was offered the position of director at Städelschen Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt. However disagreements with the administration led to his resignation in 1891. It was in Frankfurt where Thode met the painter Hans Thoma; the two became lifelong friends. While researching in Venice in 1892, he bought a gold ring found by some peasants who had been digging a ditch. The ring bore the medieval inscription ‘Willingly thine own’. Thode recognized the style as around 1500. Within six days he was able to identify the original owner and the circumstances behind the ring and how it came to be lost where it was. The story was written as Frangipani’s Ring: an Event in the Life of Henry Thode (1900). In 1893 Thode became extraordinarius professor at the University of Heidelberg and in 1896 full professor. He declined a call to Berlin in 1901. Thode carried on a high-profile social life and his students frequently complained that he was not easily accessible. The Thodes moved to a Villa Cargnacco at the Gardasee in 1910 where they maintained a lavish lifestyle. That year, he met the Danish Violinist Hertha Tegner (1884-1946) and the two fell madly in love. In 1911, Thode retired as an emeritus professor and was succeeded, against his personal wishes, by Carl Neumann. Thode divorced Daniela in 1914 and married Tegner. When the first World War concluded in 1918, the Italian government forced them to abandon their villa in Tuscany and the house was adopted by poet/adventurer Gabriele d’Annunzio (1863-1938), who also appropriated their art book collection for his own. The loss of the house, the extensive library, its art collection as well as some of Thode’s unpublished manuscripts weakened his health. He drifted about in various German cities until 1919 when the couple emigrated to Copenhagen, where postwar hardships were not as bad. Thode died of complications of a gastric operation. His students included Wilhelm Rheinhold Otto Valentiner, Rosa Schapire, Hermann Voss and Eberhard Freiherr von Bodenhausen. The dancer Isadora Duncan, who attended lectures of Thode, called him her “spiritual husband.” Thode countered the dominant late-nineteenth-century view advanced by Jacob Burckhardt and others that the Renaissance was as a period of emancipation from medieval values and the emergence of the modern individual. A romantic and ultra Wagnerian (he had met Richard Wagner in his youth) who believed that art had reached its acme under the German masters of Friedrich Schiller and Wagner, Thode emphasized the important role Christian influences played. Thode’s Franz von Assisi sided with Paul Sabatier (1858-1928) in the assertation that the monk’s emphasis on God’s creation was the impetus for the Renaissance. The debates drew lines among the contemporary Renaissance scholarly community, with some, such as Aby M. Warburg, siding with Burckhardt. Thode’s principal following, according to Valentiner, was in large part because of his delivery style. Florid descriptions of Italian cities and mysterious early Christian monuments were typical. His attack on French Impressionism’s impact on Germany as the “commercial interest of a small clique in Berlin,” a swipe at the artist Max Liebermann and the art-historical work of Julius Meier-Graefe, was soundly refuted by the painter in print. Perhaps the bitterest attack came from Vienna school historian Franz Wickhoff, who in a review approving of Thode’s attribution of the crucifix at San Spirito, Florence, charged that Thode filled the world with false Mantegnas and Correggios and that Thode’s book on Dürer contained more by others than the Dürer himself. Thode’s research on Michelangelo found a legacy in the later work of James S. Ackerman (Lein).


Selected Bibliography

Franz von Assisi und die Anfänge der Kunst der Renaissance in Italien. Berlin: G. Grote, 1885; and Meyer, Hans, and Kirchhoff, Alfred. Das deutsche Volkstum. Leipzig/Vienna: Bibliographisches Institut, 1898; Michelangelo und das Ende der Renaissance. Berlin: G. Grote, 1902; Böcklin und Thoma: acht Vorträge über neudeutsche Malerei gehalten für ein Gesamtpublikum an der Universität zu Heidelberg im Sommer 1905. Heidelberg: Carl Winter’s Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1905; Michelangelo: kritische Untersuchungen über seine Werke. 3 vols. Berlin: G. Grote, 1908-13; Thoma: des Meisters Gemälde. Stuttgart/Leipzig: Deutsche Verlags-anstalt, 1909; Luther und die deutsche Kultur. Munich: G. Müller, 1914; Paul Thiem und seine Kunst: ein Beitrag zur Deutung des Problems: deutsche Phantastik und deutscher Naturalismus. Berlin: G. Grote, 1921; Thoma, Hans. Briefwechsel mit Henry Thode. Leipzig: Koehler & Amelang, 1928.


Sources

and Thoma, Hans, illustrator. Frangipani’s Ring: an Event in the Life of Henry Thode. London: J. Macqueen, 1900; Szylin, Anna Maria. Henry Thode (1857-1920): Leben und Werk. Frankfurt am Main/New York: P. Lang, 1993; Kultermann, Udo. The History of Art History. New York: Abaris, 1993, pp. 133-135; Weigand, Wolf. “Thode, Henry.” Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon XI (1996): 1237-1240, http://www.bautz.de/bbkl/t/thode_h.shtml; Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 413-415; Lein, Edgar. “James S[loss] Ackerman: The Architecture of Michelangelo.” Naredi-Rainer, Paul von. Hauptwerke der Kunstgeschichtsschreibung. Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner, 2010, p.1.




Citation

"Thode, Henry." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/thodeh/.


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Scholar of the Italian Renaissance, Michelangelo scholar; professor at Heidelberg. Thode was the son of Robert Thode (1825-1898), a banker in Dresden and Adolfine Dzondi (Thode) (1822-1900). He attended the Gymnasium in Goerlitz, entering the univ

Thiersch, Hermann

Full Name: Thiersch, Hermann

Gender: male

Date Born: 1874

Date Died: 1939

Place Born: Munich, Bavaria, Germany

Place Died: Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany


Overview

Professor at the University of Freiburg i.B. 1905-1918, Göttingen University 1918-1939.


Selected Bibliography

Islam und Occident: Ein Beitrag zur Architekturgeschichte, 1909.


Sources

Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 183-184.




Citation

"Thiersch, Hermann." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/thierschh/.


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Professor at the University of Freiburg i.B. 1905-1918, Göttingen University 1918-1939.

Thienen, Frithjof W. S. van

Full Name: Thienen, Frithjof W. S. van

Other Names:

  • Frithjof Willem Sophi van Thienen

Gender: male

Date Born: 15 May 1901

Place Born: Delft, South Holland, Netherlands

Home Country/ies: Netherlands

Subject Area(s): Baroque, costumes (character dress), Dutch (culture or style), Dutch Golden Age, Netherlandish Renaissance-Baroque styles, and painting (visual works)


Overview

Scholar of the Dutch Baroque painting and costume; editor of the Algemeene kunst geschiedenis. Van Thienen attended high school (Gymnasium) in Delft. He studied art history at Utrecht University, where he obtained his doctor’s degree in 1929, under Willem Vogelsang. His dissertation dealt with the history of the costume in Holland between 1600 and 1670, Studien zur Kostümgeschichte der Blütezeit Hollands. After its publication, a broader edition followed in 1930, Das Kostüm der Blütezeit Hollands. Between 1933 and 1938 he held the position of teacher and keeper at the Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague. In 1935 he was appointed as research assistant of applied arts at the Hague Gemeentemuseum, where he subsequently became curator in 1938, (until 1943). In that period he published two monographs, one on Vermeer (1939) and one on Pieter de Hoogh (1941), both in the Palet series. In the late 1930s he was among the Dutch art historians who accepted the painting Christ at Emmaus, actually painted by forger Han van Meegeren, as a Vermeer, following the authentication by Abraham Bredius. Assisted by Karel G. Boon he became, in 1941, the editor of Algemeene kunstgeschiedenis, a Dutch-language art-history survey (1941-1951). In 1943 he was appointed professor of iconography at the Amsterdam Rijksacademie voor Beeldende Kunsten, succeeding Pieter Hendrik van Moerkerken (1877-1951), and subsequently, in 1944, professor of art history. In 1945 he in addition obtained a teaching position at the Amsterdam Theatre School. From 1945 to 1949 he was an editorial board member of the Dutch monthly Apollo, Maandschrift voor literatuur en beeldende kunst. In 1951 he published Het Noord-Nederlands costuum van de Gouden Eeuw. This study was translated in English as The Great Age of Holland, 1600-1660. In 1952 Thienen was elected vice president of the international conference of the history of costume in Venice. In the academic year 1952-1953 he was visiting professor of art history at Groningen University. In 1960 he published an overview of the development of costume in Europe, from the 1100s up to the present (the second edition up to 1967), Acht eeuwen kostuum (The costume during eight centuries). He retired from the Amsterdam Rijksacademie in 1967, succeeded by Jan Nicolas van Wessem. In 1969 he published a two volume study on the history of the European theatre from antiquity to the present day, Het doek gaat op: vijfentwintig eeuwen in en om het Europese theater (25 centuries European theatre).


Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Studien zur Kostümgeschichte der Blütezeit Hollands. Utrecht University, published, Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1929; Das Kostüm der Blütezeit Hollands. Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1930; Vermeer. Amsterdam: Becht, 1939, English, Jan Vermeer of Delft. New York: Harper, 1949; Pieter de Hoogh. Amsterdam: Becht, 1941; ed. Algemeene kunstgeschiedenis, de kunst der menschheid van de oudste tijden tot heden. Utrecht: W. De Haan, 1941-51; Het Noord-Nederlands costuum van de Gouden Eeuw, English: The Great Age of Holland, 1600-60 (Laver, James, ed., Costume of the Western World, v. 3, no 5) London: G. G. Harrap, 1951; and Duyvetter. Klederdrachten. Amsterdam: Contact: 1962; Acht eeuwen kostuum. Hilversum: De Haan, 1967; Het doek gaat op: vijfentwintig eeuwen in en om het Europese theater. Bussum: De Haan, 1969.


Sources

“Abraham Bredius, A Biography.” Museum Bredius (website) http://www.museumbredius.nl/biography.htm. Wie is dat? Biografische gegevens van Nederlanders die een vooraanstaande plaats in het maatschappelijk leven innemen, met vermelding van adressen. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1956; Meij, Ietse. “Frithjof van Thienen: grondlegger van de kostuumcollectie” Jaarboek Haags Gemeentemuseum Jubileumnummer 1995/1996 (1997): 148-173.



Contributors: Monique Daniels


Citation

Monique Daniels. "Thienen, Frithjof W. S. van." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/thienenf/.


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Scholar of the Dutch Baroque painting and costume; editor of the Algemeene kunst geschiedenis. Van Thienen attended high school (Gymnasium) in Delft. He studied art history at Utrecht University, where he obtained his doctor’s degree in 1

Thieme, Ulrich

Full Name: Thieme, Ulrich

Other Names:

  • Ulrich Thieme

Gender: male

Date Born: 31 January 1865

Date Died: 25 March 1922

Place Born: Leipzig, Saxony, Germany

Place Died: Leipzig, Saxony, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): biographies (literary works) and dictionaries

Career(s): art historians, biographers, and publishers


Overview

Editor of volumes 3-15 of the magisterial dictionary of artists, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler. Thieme studied art history in Leipzig, receiving his degree in 1892 under Anton Springer with a dissertation on the work of Hans Schäufelein. He entered the Berlin Gemäldegalerie under Wilhelm Bode. In 1898 he began work on a comprehensive dictionary of artists, architects and decorators enjoinging the assistance of Felix Becker. The two were inspired by the work of G. K. Nagler and his Neues Allgemeines Künstlerlexicon (1835-1852) which had appeared in 22 volumes. The publisher Wilhelm Engelmann bought the rights to Nagler’s work, assigning the new edition to the Gemäldegalerie director Julius Meyer. However, only three of the planned fifteen volumes of the new Allgemeines Künstler-Lexikon had appeared by 1885, largely because Meyer envisioned massive entries on more famous artists. Thieme and Becker reorganized the project, financing the project completely privately and frequently from their own resources. The first volume appeared in 1907. As editors, they assigned entries to over 300 writers, many of whom were young art historians who later became famous in their own right. Becker withdrew from the project in 1910 because of ill health. Beginning with volume three, Thieme edited the project alone–his sole name first appeared on volume five. Engelmann’s firm was bought by E. A. Seeman in 1911 who subsequently published the set. Beginning with volume thirteen, Frederick Charles Willis (b. 1883) became joint editor. The First World War interrupted contact with foreign sources and the ensuing inflation in Germany required new financial support. In 1921 the prestigeous Deutsche Verein für Kunstwissenschaft (German Association for the Study of Art) took over sponsorship. The Verein’s equally prestigeous board (Kuratorium), included at one time or another, in addition to Bode, Jakob Falke, Max J. Friedländer, Adolph Goldschmidt and Wilhelm Pinder. Thieme died before Becker, however, in 1922 and beginning with volume sixteen, the editorship was assumed by Hans Vollmer, a contributor since 1906, who saw the immense project to completion. A British bombing of Leipzig in 1943 destroyed the type-set for the last three volumes and had to be reset from galleys. Vollmer continued the initiative for a twentieth-century set, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler des XX. Jahrhunderts published between 1953 and 1962. A re-edition of the work began in 1983 in Leipzig, but the poor quality of this (published in the Communist DDR); resulted in the project’s revision and complete re-editing as the Saur Allgemeines Künstler-Lexikon, its successor. “Thieme-Becker” as the work was universally known, was a milestone for scholarly biographical art publishing. The dictionary made each entry rich in facts, shied away from value judgments and was open to artists of all specialities, religions, time periods (antique to 19th century) and nationalities (Fork). It’s roots, according to Vollmer, lay not only with Nagler and the Allgemeines Künsterlexikon, 1814 by Heinrich Fuseli, but also the Lexikon der Nürnberger Künstler of Andreas Andresen and the Lexikon der russischen Künstler by Eduard Dobbert.


Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:]Hans Schäufeleins malische Tätigkeit. Leipzig, 1892; and Bode, Wilhelm. Galerie Alfred Thieme in Leipzig. Leipzig: Privately Printed/Breitkopf & Härtel, 1900; and Becker, Felix, and Vollmer, Hans. Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart: unter Mitwirkung von 300 Fachgelehrten des In- und Auslandes. 37 vols. Leipzig: W. Engelmann [vols. 1-5] E. A. Seemann, 1907-1950.


Sources

“The Fate of Thieme-Becker.” Burlington Magazine 90, no. 543 (June 1948): 174; Fork, Christiane. “Thieme, Ulrich.” Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. 2nd. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2007, pp. 434-436.




Citation

"Thieme, Ulrich." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/thiemeu/.


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Editor of volumes 3-15 of the magisterial dictionary of artists, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler. Thieme studied art history in Leipzig, receiving his degree in 1892 under Anton Springer with a disserta

Thausing, Moriz

Full Name: Thausing, Moriz

Other Names:

  • Moriz Thausing

Gender: male

Date Born: c. 1835-1838

Date Died: 1884

Place Born: Schloss Tschischkowitz (Čížkovice) bei Leitmeritz, Czechoslovakia

Place Died: Ústí nad Labem, Ústecký Kraj, Czech Republic

Home Country/ies: Austria


Overview

Second chair in art history at the University of Vienna 1873; director of the Albertina museum. Thausing was born in Aussig am Elbe, Austria which is present-day Ústi nad Labem, Czech Republic. He initially studied at Prague before changing his studies to German literature and philology at the University in Vienna. The work of Gustav A. Heider and Rudolf Eitelberger von Edelberg changed his mind to study art history. Thausing studied at the Institut für österreichische Geschichtsforschung under Eitelberger and received his degree in Tübingen. He accepted the librarian position at Vienna’s Imperial museum of works on paper, the Graphiksammlung des Erzherzogs Albrecht (the Albertina), in 1864. In 1871 he was among the team of art historians (the others including Alfred Woltmann, Carl von Lützlow, Adolf Bayersdorfer, Friedrich Lippmann, Wilhelm Lübke, Bruno Meyer, Karl Woermann, G. Malsz and Wilhelm Bode) who convened in Dresden to determine which of two versions of Hans Holbein the younger’s “Meyer Madonna” was the autograph work. The so-called “Holbein convention,” one of the important events in nineteenth-century art history when many methodical approaches were employed to determined authenticity, concluded that the Darmstadt version was the original. He published a compilation of letters of the artist Albrecht Dürer in 1873. The following year he was appointed professor at the Institut für Geschichtsforschung at the University of Vienna. In 1875 Thausing published his pioneering monograph on Dürer which met with critical success, particularly in the French and English translations. Shortly thereafter, Thausing was appointed director of the Albertina. His collecting and administration turned the museum into the premiere works-on-paper museums in the world. One day, Thausing encountered Giovanni Morelli, the founder of modern connoisseurship. The meeting was one of the major events development of the Vienna school. Thausing’s students and later assistants, first Franz Wickhoff and then Aloïs Riegl, learned much from both men. They joined Thausing in the formation of the (first) Vienna School of art history at the University of Vienna. Thausing’s subsequent articles in the Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst reflected Morelli’s methodology in practice. In 1882 his book on Dürer was published in English, translated by the (British) Royal Academy secretary Frederick Alexis Eaton. Thausing battled with neurosis his whole life and was committed to a sanatorium in Rome, where Morelli visited him shortly before his death. On an excursion from the hospital the same year, Thausing committed suicide in town of Aussig am Elbe. His students included art historians as disparate as Wickhoff, Henry Thode and Riegl. Thausing’s monograph on Dürer is one of the great positivist art histories. Thausing’s view of the artist was as the (Carlyle-style) man-of-action hero. To Thausing, Dürer was representative of the Volksgeist of the age of the Reformation. His view of art history was largely free of esthetic evaluation; in his 1873 work on methodology, he wrote, “I can truly imagine a better art history in which the word ‘beautiful’ does not ever appear.” The animadversion he lodged against his art history colleagues, especially those in Berlin, tarnished his overall reputation (Feist/Metzler).


Selected Bibliography

Dürers Briefe: Tagebücher und Reime, nebst einem Anhange von Zuschriften an und für Dürer, ubers. und mit Einleitung, Anmerkungen, Personenverzeichniss und einer Reisekarte versehen. Vienna: W. Braumüller, 1873; Dürer: Geschichte seines Lebens und seiner Kunst. Leipzig: E. A. Seemann, 1876, English, Albert Dürer, his Life and Works. 2 vols. London: J. Murray, 1882; Wiener Kunstbriefe. Leipzig: E. A. Seemann, 1884 [particularly “Die Stellung der Kunstgeschichte als Wissenschaft” pp. 19ff.].


Sources

Schlosser, Julius von. “Die Wiener Schule der Kunstgeschichte.” Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Instituts für Geschforschungen 13 no. 2 (1934): 145ff.; Rosenauer, Artur. “Moritz Thausing und die Wiener Schule der Kunstgeschichte.” Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 36 (1983): 135-139; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, p. 155; German Essays on Art History. Gert Schiff, ed. New York: Continuum, 1988, p. xlii mentioned; Kultermann, Udo. The History of Art History. New York: Abaris, 1993, pp. 145, 159-60; Feist, Peter. “Thausing, Moriz.” Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 155, 410-11.



Contributors: Lee Sorensen


Citation

Lee Sorensen. "Thausing, Moriz." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/thausingm/.


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Second chair in art history at the University of Vienna 1873; director of the Albertina museum. Thausing was born in Aussig am Elbe, Austria which is present-day Ústi nad Labem, Czech Republic. He initially studied at Prague before changing his st