Skip to content

Art Historians

Story, George Henry

Full Name: Story, George Henry

Gender: male

Date Born: 1835

Date Died: 1923

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): drawings (visual works), painting (visual works), and prints (visual works)

Career(s): curators

Institution(s): Metropolitan Museum of Art


Overview

First curator of Paintings, Drawings and Prints of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.


Selected Bibliography

Catalogue of the Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1900.


Sources

Tomkins, Calvin. Merchants and Masterpieces: The Story of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2nd. ed. New York: Henry Holt, 1989, p. 79, 112.



Contributors: Lee Sorensen


Citation

Lee Sorensen. "Story, George Henry." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/storyg/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

First curator of Paintings, Drawings and Prints of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Stone, Lawrence

Full Name: Stone, Lawrence

Other Names:

  • Michael Thompson Lawrence Stone

Gender: male

Date Born: 1919

Date Died: 1999

Place Born: Epsom, Surrey, England, UK

Place Died: Princeton, Mercer, NJ, USA

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): Medieval (European)

Career(s): educators


Overview

Princeton University social historian; wrote Pelican History of Art volume on the sculpture in medieval England (1955). Stone was educated at Charterhouse, where its headmaster Sir Robert Birley, (later professor of social science at the City University, London) greatly influenced him. In 1939 Stone Christ Church, Oxford University on a scholarship where he studied modern history. Oxford sent him to the Sorbonne, where he adopted a methodology of the of French Annales school historians. During World War II he served as a lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. He met and married the French citizen Jeanne Caecelia Fawtier in 1943. After discharge from the Navy, he returned to Oxford to complete his degree, changing focus to medieval history, the Third Crusade in particular. The “firsts” he took at Oxford in 1946 gained him an appointment as a lecturer at University College in 1947. Stone entered the intellectual circle of the social economist Richard H. Tawney (1880 – 1962), and the era of Tawney’s scholarship, 1540-1640 which Stone saw as a time when English institutions and its society emerged distinct from Europe. Stone published an article in 1948 in the Economic History Review, “The Anatomy of the Elizabethan Aristocracy,” an impetuous work of economic determinism on the English Civil War, suggesting the upper classes were on the verge of financial ruin. His Marxist approach brought him controversy and an attack by the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper (1914-2003) in a particularly virulent reply. However, he remained a topic of conversation within academic circles. He was appointed a Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford, in 1950. Perhaps to counter his profile, or to show his grasp of a related historic area, Stone accepted the commission by Nikolaus Bernard Leon Pevsner to write a volume on medieval British sculpture. Pevsner was sensitive to divergent methodologies and Stone’s book in the Pelican History of Art series was well-received. He never again wrote a strict art-historical volume. In 1960, Stone moved to Princeton, N. J., in part to escape the Oxford infighting, as a member of the private Institute of Advanced Study. In 1963 he was appointed Dodge Professor of History at Princeton University. Stone wrote his most famous book in 1965, The Crisis of the Aristocracy. The book was a “total history” employing anthropology, sociology and psychology into a broad analysis. He chaired the History Department at Princeton between 1967 and 1970, where his graduate students referred to him as “Il Magnifico.” In 1968 he co-founded and directed the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton. The Friday seminars at the Center were renowned for their uninhibited debate as well as Stone’s end-of-session summaries. Another book of social history, An Open Elite? England 1540-1880 appeared in 1984, whose argument denied the conventional view of English society new wealth assimilated into the upper classes via the purchase of landed estates. His book Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800 was issued in 1977. With these and other books, Stone courted controversy to the end. In 1985, New York University medievalist Norman F. Cantor (1929-2004) lambasted Stone in the conservative journal New Criterion as among the key Marxists taking over the teaching of history. Stone retired from Princeton in 1990, publishing his final books, the three-volume set encompassing Road to Divorce: England 1530-1987,1990, Uncertain Unions,1992, and Broken Lives,1993, explored marital, sexual and moral cases archived in ecclesiastical courts. He died suddenly of lingering Parkinson’s disease at his home in 1999. C. R. Dodwell in his review of Sculpture in Britain: the Middle Ages considered it a remarkable survey, largely because the reformation in England had destroyed much of the indigenous sculpture. Alongside the historians Eric Hobsbawm (b. 1917) and Edward Palmer (“E. P.”) Thompson (1924-1993), Stone was responsible for the reshaping of the concept of social history by broadening the areas considered factual and methodologies employed. These scholars used the techniques of social scientists for their historical endeavors. He was a serious historian with a popular following. He embraced computerization and its quantification of data which had been widely decried. A resourceful polemicist, he held celebrated disagreements with other important historians and thinkers, most notably the historian Geoffrey R. Elton (1921-1994) and philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-1984). Some of Stone’s most interesting shorter work was a a reviewer for the New York Review of Books, to which he regularly contributed.


Selected Bibliography

[collected essays:] The Past and the Present. Boston: Routledge & K. Paul, 1981; Sculpture in Britain: the Middle Ages. Pelican History of Art 9. Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books, 1955; The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558-1641. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965; Family and Fortune: Studies in Aristocratic Finance in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973; Schooling and Society: Studies in the History of Education. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976; “The Anatomy of the Elizabethan Aristocracy.” Economic History Review 18, no. 1/2 (1948): 1-53; [reply:] Trevor-Roper, Hugh. “The Elizabethan Aristocracy: An Anatomy Anatomized.” Economic History Review (New Series) 3, no. 3 (1951): 279-298, [Stone’s reply;] “The Elizabethan Aristocracy – A Restatement.” Economic History Review (New Series) 4, no. 3 (1952): 302-321.


Sources

[obituaries:] “Lawrence Stone, Dynamic Academic Who Made Social History Exciting.” The Guardian (London), July 5, 1999, p. 18; Cannadine, David. ” Professor Laurence [sic] Stone.” The Independent (London), June 26, 1999, p. 7; Honan, William. “Lawrence Stone, 79, Historian of the Changing Social Order.” New York Times, June 19, 1999, p. 16; [methodology:] Lloyd, Christopher. “The Methodologies of Social History: A Critical Survey and Defense of Structurism.” History and Theory 30, no. 2 (May, 1991): 180-219; Mousnier, Roland, and Elliott, J. H., and Stone, Lawrence, and Trevor-Roper, Hugh, and Kossmann, E. H., and Hobsbawm, Eric J., and Hexter, J. H. “Discussion of H. R. Trevor-Roper: “The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century.” Past and Present 18 (November 1960): 8-42.




Citation

"Stone, Lawrence." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/stonel/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Princeton University social historian; wrote Pelican History of Art volume on the sculpture in medieval England (1955). Stone was educated at Charterhouse, where its headmaster Sir Robert Birley, (later professor of social science at the

Stokstad, Marilyn

Full Name: Stokstad, Marilyn Jane

Gender: female

Date Born: 16 February 1929

Date Died: 04 March 2016

Place Born: Lansing, Ingham, MI, USA

Place Died: Lawrence, Douglas, KS, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): Medieval (European)

Institution(s): University of Kansas


Overview

Medievalist at University of Kansas; author of a major survey text of art history. Stokstad’s parents were Michigan government engineer associated with the state’s highway development, Olaf Stokstad (1898 – 1985), and his wife, Edythe Gardiner (Stokstad) (1899-1979). She received her bachelor’s degree from Carleton College in 1950. After studying briefly at the University of Oslo, 1951-1952 as a Fulbright scholar and member of the American Association of University Women fellowship, she entered Michigan State University where she completed an M.A. degree in 1953. Her thesis for this degree was entitled Norwegian Mural Painting from 1910 to 1950. Stokstad moved to the University of Michigan, receiving her Ph.D. in 1957. Her dissertation, written under Harold Wethey, was on a portico of the medieval cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.

 

She was hired the following fall of 1958 to teach art history at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS. She remained at Kansas her entire career. From 1961 to 1968, Stokstad served as the director of the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas. She created many exhibitions at the Museum that would guide future installations and plans.

In 1962 she advanced from assistant to associate professor and chair of the department. Early in her career, she worked to establish art history as a separate discipline with the College of Arts and Sciences (today College of Liberal Arts and Sciences). Previously, it had been taught in the KU School of Fine Arts. Appointed (full) professor in 1966 and curator of medieval art at the Nelson Art Gallery (today Nelson-Atkins), Kansas City, she relinquished her chair duties in 1972.

In 1968, Stokstad published Renaissance Art Outside of Italy, a text designed for introductory courses in art history.

Stokstad also was a member of the February Sisters, a feminist group who peacefully occupied University of Kansas’s East Asian Studies Building in 1972. Thanks to these efforts, the university established the Hilltop Daycare Center and the KU Women’s Studies Program. From 1972 to 1976, Stokstad served as the first female associate dean of the KU College of Arts and Sciences (today College of Liberal Arts and Sciences). Her financial support furthered the establishment of KU’s Emily Taylor and Marilyn Stokstad Women’s Leadership Lecture Series.

Elected to the board of the College Art Association as secretary in 1974, Stokstad moved through that professional society’s ranks to Vice-President, 1976-1978 and President, 1978-1980. She was named distinguished Professor of the History of Art in 1979.

Stokstad was active in the local and national levels of the American Association of University Women and the American Association of University Professors. She also held positions in numerous art history groups such as Medieval Academy of America, Midwest Art History Society, International Center for Medieval Art, and Women’s Caucus for Arts.

In 1978, Stokstad wrote Santiago de Compostela in the Age of the Great Pilgrimages (reprinted in 1993) as a continuation of her dissertation research. Together with historian Henry L. Synder (1929 – 2016) and literature professor Harold Orel (1926 – ), she published The Scottish World: The History and Culture of Scotland. She continued similar research with historian Jerry Stannard (1926-1988). Much of her research was funded by the National Endowment of the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts. She also held several fellowships at institutions such as the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American Art, Dumbarton Oaks, and the Institute for Research at the University of Wisconsin.

Her foray into survey-text writing began in 1985 with her Medieval Art. In 1995 Stokstad and curator of education, Marion Spears Grayson, authored what was to become one of the major general surveys of art history, Art History. Past textbooks had only inserted women artists into their newer editions.  Their book wove the achievements of women in the art world into the narrative itself. The book was widely adopted by college classes as a text and went through editions in 1999 and 2003, and 2011, growing into two volumes and over 1150 pages. She also published an additional survey text, Art: A Brief History, in 1999.

Stokstad retired from the University of Kansas in 2002 as the Judith Harris Murphy Distinguished Professor of Art History (appointed in 1994). The same year, Stokstad received the Women’s Caucus for Art Annual Honor Award for Lifetime Achievement award. In 2005, Stokstad published her final work, Medieval Castles, cataloging historic medieval events and the development of architecture in the medieval world.  She continued to travel with her sister, Karen, and niece, Anna.

The following year, Stokstad established the Marilyn Stokstad Director at the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas.

Stokstad died in 2016 in her home at the age of 87. She maintained an office at the University of Kansas until her death. The University announced Stokstad had donated an additional $1.1 million to the campus, making her total donations equal $2.3 million.

 

Since 2016, the University of Kansas’s Spencer Museum of Art has awarded the “Marilyn J. Stokstad Spencer Museum of Art Student Award,” in honor of Stokstad to undergraduate and graduate students with notable contributions to the Museum.


Selected Bibliography

  • [master’s degree:]Norwegian Mural Painting from 1910 to 1950. University of Michigan, 1953;
  • [dissertation:] The Portico de la Gloria of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. University of Michigan, 1957;
  • Renaissance Art Outside of Italy. Dubuque: W.C. Brown Co., 1968;
  • Santiago de Compostela in the Age of the Great Pilgrimages (The Centers of Civilization series). Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978;
  • The Scottish World: The History and Culture of Scotland. New York City: Harry N Abrams Inc., 1981;
  • Gardens of the Middle Ages. Lawrence: University of Kansas, 1983;
  • Medieval Art. Boulder: Westview Press, 1986;
  • Art History. New York City: Harry N Abrams Inc, 1995;
  • Art: A Brief History. New York City: Pearson, 1999;
  • Medieval Castles. Westport: Greenwood, 2005

Sources



Contributors: Kerry Rork


Citation

Kerry Rork. "Stokstad, Marilyn." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/stokstadm/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Medievalist at University of Kansas; author of a major survey text of art history. Stokstad’s parents were Michigan government engineer associated with the state’s highway development, Olaf Stokstad (1898 – 1985), and his wife, Edythe Gardiner (St

Stokes, Margaret

Full Name: Stokes, Margaret

Other Names:

  • Margaret Stokes

Gender: female

Date Born: March 1832

Date Died: 20 September 1900

Place Born: Dublin, Ireland

Place Died: Howth, County Fingal, Ireland

Home Country/ies: Ireland

Subject Area(s): British Isles Medieval styles, Celtic (culture), Celtic (language), Medieval (European), Medieval styles and periods, and Northern European Medieval styles


Overview

Early scholar and illustrator of medieval Celtic art. Stokes was the daughter of William Stokes (1804-1878), a physician, and Mary Black (Stokes). Her paternal grandfather was Whitley Stokes (1763-1845) a physician and author of an English-Irish dictionary. Her father’s friends included the archaeologists and scholars James Henthorn Todd (1805-1869), George Petrie (1790-1866), William Reeves (1815-1892), Sir Samuel Ferguson (1810-1886), and Edwin R. W. Quin (1812-1871), third earl of Dunraven; these family friends inspired an interested in archaeology. Stokes’ earliest writing was an English revision of the book Christian Iconography by Adolphe Napoléon Didron in 1851. She, her father, Quin and Petrie visited the Aran Islands in 1867. Stokes, however, did not personally publish on Celtic art until over age fifty. Her lifelong friendship with Ferguson a poet and reviver and Celtic mythology resulted in illustration of a poem of Ferguson’s, “The Cromlech on Howth,” using illuminated initials from the Book of Kells. Public approval of the work led to a full-illustrated edition of the poem in 1861. Her accuracy of design brought her to the attention of the artist, Celticist and later National Gallery director Frederic William Burton. Stokes edited her first book of Irish iconography in 1871. When Quin died before the completion of his book Notes on Irish Architecture, Stokes, using his bequest for the purpose, edited and illustrated the book posthumously between 1875 and 1877. Her Early Christian Architecture in Ireland appeared in 1878 and Notes on the Cross of Cong in 1895 as well as her second book on Irish iconography. Two books of the travels of early Irish missionaries to Italy and France were also illustrated and published by her. In later years with the development of photography, Stokes photographed and transcribed inscriptions and rubbings of the stone monuments. Her last book, The High Crosses of Castledermot and Durrow. 1898, made pioneer use of this documentation but her intended book, The High Crosses of Ireland, remained incomplete at her death. In the course of her career, Stokes was elected an honorary fellow of the Royal Irish Academy, the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, and the Antiquarian Society of Scotland. She died at home in 1900. Her papers are housed at Trinity College Dublin Stokes formed part of the revival interest in Gaelic, Irish antiquities and early Irish history (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography). Her illustrations, but not her text, found favor with Oscar Wilde. Self educated, her books remained scholarly for their extensive inclusion of primary source material. Her work was eventually superseded by the Irish-French scholar Françoise Henry.


Selected Bibliography

edited and revised, Didron, Adolphe Napoléon. Christian Iconography or, The History of Christian Art in the Middle Ages. 2 vols. London: H. G. Bohn, 1851-1886; edited, Petrie, George. Christian Inscriptions in the Irish Language. 2 vols. Dublin: Dublin University Press/Royal Historical and Archaeological Association of Ireland, 1872-1878; Early Christian Architecture in Ireland. London: G. Bell and Sons, 1878; Early Christian Art in Ireland. London: Committee of Council on Education/Chapman and Hall, 1887; The High Crosses of Castledermot and Durrow. Dublin: The Academy, 1898.


Sources

Wilde, Oscar. [review of Early Christian Art]. Pall Mall Gazette December 17, 1887, preprinted, Wilde About Wilde Newsletter no.17 (October 16 1994):15-16;Sheehy, Jeanne. The Rediscovery of Ireland’s Past: the Celtic Revival, 1830-1930. London: Thames and Hudson, 1980; Falkiner, C. Litton. and Legg, Marie-Louise (rev.). “Stokes, Margaret M’Nair.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; [obituaries:] Daily Express [Dublin] September 22, 1900; Times (London) September 24, 1900; The Athenaeum September 29, 1900, pp. 417-18.




Citation

"Stokes, Margaret." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/stokesm/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Early scholar and illustrator of medieval Celtic art. Stokes was the daughter of William Stokes (1804-1878), a physician, and Mary Black (Stokes). Her paternal grandfather was Whitley Stokes (1763-1845) a physician and author of an English-Irish d

Stokes, Adrian

Full Name: Stokes, Adrian

Other Names:

  • Adrian Durham Stokes

Gender: male

Date Born: 1902

Date Died: 1972

Place Born: Bayswater, City of Westminster, London, England, UK

Place Died: Hampstead, Camden, London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): art theory, psychoanalysis, and psychology

Career(s): art critics


Overview

Freudian art historian and art critic. Stokes’ father, Durham Stokes, was an eccentric stock broker who had once run for office in Parliament under the Liberal party. His affluence allowed the younger Stokes to live financially independent his entire life. Adrian Stokes attended the Rugby School. During World War I, his elder brother Philip was killed in France. Stokes entered Magdalen College, Oxford where he read philosophy, politics and classics. He achieved a second class in those fields in 1923 as well as excellence in tennis. After graduation, Stokes traveled to India and returned by way of China and the United States. It was these travels, as well as a college visit to Italy, that fostered an appreciation of art as the means to make sense of life. His first book, published in 1925, The Thread of Ariadne, was based on that thesis. The same year he moved to Venice to write and research on the Italian renaissance. Two events in the late 1920s would change his life and art-historical writings profoundly. In 1926, Stokes met Ezra Pound at Rapallo, Italy. In 1929 he began therapy with the Freudian psychoanalysist Melanie Klein (1882-1960) to investigate his bisexuality and depression. Pound’s literary conception of the Italian renaissance and Klein’s psychoanalytic theory would figure strongly in Stoke’s art history. His essays in the Criterion magazine began to be published in collected works. Pound’s prevailed upon T. S. Eliot (then editor at Faber & Faber) to publish the first two of Stokes’ books of art history essays, The Quattro Cento: A Different Conception of the Italian Renaissance, 1932, and The Stones of Rimini, 1934. That same year Stokes moved to England to live among the British artists at Parkhill Road, Hampstead, painting and writing reviews for the Spectator. In 1937 he studied painting at the Euston Road School with William Coldstream (1908-1987), Lawrence Gowing, F. Graham Bell (1910-1943) and Victor Pasmore (1908-1998). His book Form and Colour of the same year displays the sensibilities of an artist as much as an art historian. In 1938 he married the Scottish painter Margaret Mellis (b. 1914). The Stokes’ moved to Carbis Bay, Cornwall, shortly before World War II along with other artists from London, including Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson, Naum Gabo and Peter Lanyon (1918-1964). After stormy years of marriage and the birth of a son, Telfer (1940), Stokes divorced only to marry his ex-wife’s sister, Ann Mellis (b. 1922), in 1947 requiring a move to Ticino, Switzerland, with more liberal laws of consanguinity. A second son was born in 1948. Stokes returned to England in 1950 to Hurtwood House, Guildford. Many of the paintings for which he is known today were produced during this time. His post-war writing included two autobiographical works, Inside Out, 1947, and Smooth and Rough, 1951. Longer essays on individual artists such as Cezanne, 1947, Raphael, 1956 and Monet, 1958 also appeared. These works continued to use Freudian analysis as a basis to explain art. A major work of his later years using psychological interpretation, Michelangelo: A Study in the Nature of Art, appeared in 1955. His most programmatic use of psychology as a tool for the art historian appeared in 1963 as Painting and the Inner World, including an interview with the psychiatrist Donald Meltzer. From 1960-67 Stokes was a trustee of the Tate Gallery, London. In 1967, his final work Reflections on the Nude was both a synthesis of his ideas as well as the conclusion of his writing on art. Diagnosed with a brain tumor in 1971, he focused on his painting until his death the following year. His paintings are owned by a number of galleries including the Tate. A retrospective exhibition was held at the Serpentine Gallery, London, in 1982. A collection of poems, With All the Views, appeared in London in 1981. Stokes was completely self-educated in art history. His wealth allowed him to consort with the intelligentsia of Europe, traveling with the Sitwells, playing tennis with Ezra Pound, sharing a villa with Aldus Huxley in Sanary. It also freed him from constraints of writing to please mainstream art-historical audiences. Marginalized by the emerging Warburg art historians whom he disputed on esthetic and psycho-analytical grounds, Stokes was championed in the 1950s after a period of neglect by his friends Richard Wollheim (1923-2003) and the critics Andrew Forge and David Sylvester. Methodologically, Stokes continues the British esthetic-school art writing of John Ruskin Walter Pater, reacting against the formalism of the Bloomsbury group. Later art historians such as John Berger, Peter Fuller, Michael Baxandall, John Kinder Gowran Shearman and John Gage owe a debt to Stokes’ “phenomenological precision” (Read).


Selected Bibliography

The Critical Writings of Adrian Stokes. Lawrence Gowing, ed. 3 vols. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1978; The Image in Form: Selected Writings of Adrian Stokes. Richard Wollheim, ed. New York: Harper & Row, 1972; Greek Culture and the Ego: A Psycho-Analytic Survey of an Aspect of Greek Civilization and of Art. London: Tavistock, 1958; Michelangelo: A Study in the Nature of Art. London: Tavistock Publications, 1955; Reflections on the Nude. London: Tavistock Publications, 1967; The Thread of Ariadne. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1925; Sunrise in the West: A Modern Interpretation of Past and Preset. London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1926; The Quattro Cento: A Different Conception of the Italian Renaissance. [Part One: Florence and Verona. An Essay in Italian Fifteenth-Century Architecture and Sculpture]. London: Faber & Faber, 1932; The Stones of Rimini. London: Faber & Faber, 1934; Colour and Form. London: Faber & Faber, 1937, extensively revised edition, 1950; Venice: An Aspect of Art. London: Faber & Faber, 1945; Inside Out: An Essay in the Psychology and Aesthetic Appeal of Space. London: Faber, 1947; The Invitation in Art. [Preface by Richard Wollheim]. London: Tavistock, 1965.


Sources

Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Research Guide to the History of Western Art. Sources of Information in the Humanities, no. 2. Chicago: American Library Association, 1982, p. 97; Wollheim, Richard. Introduction to The Image of Form: The Selected Writings of Adrian Stokes. Edited by Richard Wollheim. New York: Harper & Row, 1972; Read, Richard. “Preface.” Art and its Discontents: The Early Life of Adrian Stokes. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002, pp. xix-xlii; Bann, Stephen. Dictionary of Art; Kite, Steven, “Adrian Stokes” http://www.pstokes.demon.co.uk/; Carrier, David. “Introduction: England and its aesthetes.” England and Its Aesthetes: Biography and Taste: John Ruskin, Walter Pater, Adrian Stokes: Essays. Amsterdam: G+B Arts International, 1997; Bann, Stephen, ed. The Coral Mind: Adrian Stokes’s Engagement with Architecture, Art History, Criticism, and Psychoanalysis. Published University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007; [obituaries:] The Times [London], December 19, 1972, p.18.




Citation

"Stokes, Adrian." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/stokesa/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Freudian art historian and art critic. Stokes’ father, Durham Stokes, was an eccentric stock broker who had once run for office in Parliament under the Liberal party. His affluence allowed the younger Stokes to live financially independent his ent

Stohlman, W. Frederick

Full Name: Stohlman, W. Frederick

Gender: male

Date Born: 1886

Date Died: 1966

Place Born: Brooklyn, Cattaraugus, NY, USA

Place Died: Princeton, Mercer, NJ, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): Medieval (European)

Career(s): educators


Overview

Princeton University medievalist, part of the initial team assembled by Charles Rufus Morey. Stohlman was the son of C. Frederick Stohlman. He graduated from Princeton in 1909. After graduation he worked for a surgical instrument manufacturing firm. However, he returned to Princeton, initially studying the early Christian era especially sarcophagi under Charles Rufus Morey. He joined the Princeton faculty in the Department of Art and Archaeology in 1920. In 1924 he was awarded his M.A. and promoted to assistant professor the following year. Stohlman assisted in Morey’s project cataloging the collection of the Museo Cristiano, part of the Vatican library beginning in 1929. Morey wrote the first section on ivories, and Stohlman, volume two on enamels, which appeared in 1939. He joined Morey at the end of World War II in Rome, assisting him as Cultural Attaché. He retired associate professor emeritus in 1954. Stohlman suffered a stroke in 1966 and died several months later in a Princeton hospital. Stohlman’s area of expertise was enamel work. He was one of the medievalists comprising the group assembled by Morey who dominated Princeton’s Department of Art and Archaeology and helped establish the discipline in the United States. The others included, in addition to Morey himself, Ernest DeWald, E. Baldwin Smith, Albert M. Friend, Jr., and Kurt Weitzmann.


Selected Bibliography

“Assembling Marks on Limoges Champleve Enamels as a Basis for Classification.” Art Bulletin 16 (March 1934): 14-18; “Quantity Production of Limoges Champlevé Enamels.” Art Bulletin 17, no. 3 (September 1935): 390-394; “A Group of Sub-Sidamara Sarcophagi.” American Journal of Archaeology 25, no. 3 (July 1921): 223-232; “The Marquand Art Library,” Princeton University Library Chronicle I, no. 1 (1930):9-14; Gli smalti del Museo sacro vaticano. Volume 2 of Morey, Charles Rufus, et al. Catalogo del Museo sacro della Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, pubblicato per ordine della Santità di Pio papa XI a cura della direzione. Vatican City: Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, 1939.


Sources

“Princeton Raises Faculty Salaries . . . Changes Made In the Faculty.” New York Times April 10, 1925, p. 40; [obituary:] “Prof. W. F. Stohlman, Archeologist, Dies.” New York Times January 20, 1966, p. 35.




Citation

"Stohlman, W. Frederick." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/stohlmanf/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Princeton University medievalist, part of the initial team assembled by Charles Rufus Morey. Stohlman was the son of C. Frederick Stohlman. He graduated from Princeton in 1909. After graduation he worked for a surgical instru

Stoddard, Whitney

Full Name: Stoddard, Whitney

Other Names:

  • Whitney Stoddard

Gender: male

Date Born: 25 March 1913

Date Died: 02 April 2003

Place Born: Greenfield, Franklin, MA, USA

Place Died: Williamstown, Berkshire, MA, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): Medieval (European)


Overview

Medievalist and professor at Williams College. Stoddard was the son of lawyer Charles Nowell Stoddard and Elizabeth Snow (Stoddard). He attended Eaglebrook School and Deerfield Academy before entering Williams College. At Williams he attended courses in art history by Karl E. Weston, graduating in 1935. He married Jean Wilson Read in 1936 (d. 1988) and entered Harvard University to pursue his doctorate in art history, returning to teach at Williams in 1938. At Harvard Stoddard studied under Chandler R. Post and Wilhelm Reinhold Walter Koehler. His dissertation, on the sculpture of Chartres cathedral, was completed in 1941 under Koehler. Stoddard entered the Navy during World War II serving between 1942 and 1945 as a radar controller for night fighter planes. He returned to Williams where he taught for the rest of his life, as Assistant Professor to 1948, Associate Professor 1948-1954 and Professor 1954-1976. In 1952 he revised his dissertation, publishing it as The West Portals of St.-Denis and Chartres. In 1966, Stoddard wrote a survey of medieval art, Monastery and Cathedral in France, which became one of the standard handbooks for the introduction to medieval art. Stoddard, however, focused his energies on teaching as opposed to research. His few publications were offset by the immense impact he had on his students. He played the part of “college professor” according to his many students, skiing to class during the Massachusetts winters, attending college athletic events. Stoddard led many students excavating the medieval monastery of Psalmodi in southern France, which he did for decades. He retired in 1982. In 1989 he received a distinguished teaching award from the College Art Association. After the death of his first wife, he married Elizabeth Jensvold (d. 2002) in 1991. Together with professors S. Lane Faison, Jr., and William H. Pierson, Jr., Stoddard is credited with developing the small department of art at Williams College Department into one of the major inspirations for a subsequent generation of art leaders. These included Alexander Powell III, director of the National Gallery of Art; Thomas Krens, director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York; Glenn Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; James N. Wood, director of the Art Institute of Chicago; Michael Govan, director of the Dia Center for the Arts; Roger Mandle, president of the Rhode Island School of Design; and Kirk Varnedoe, director of the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art. His son, Brooks W. Stoddard, also professor of art, teaches at the University of Maine. Stoddard was among the earliest art historians to study the Romanesque facades and cloister sculptures at the churches of St. Gilles and St. Trophime in Arles. He was given a key to the city and made an honorary citizen of Arles. Conservators researching these sites in the 1990s made extensive use of Stoddard’s photographs taken in the 1950s and 60s.


Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Chartres: The Making of a Cathedral Portal. Harvard University, 1941; [revised dissertation] The West Portals of Saint-Denis and Chartres: Sculpture in the île de France from 1140 to 1190, Theory of Origins. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952; Monastery and Cathedral in France: Medieval Architecture, Sculpture, Stained Glass, Manuscripts, the Art of the Church Treasuries. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press,1966, [subsequently retitled as] Art and Architecture in Medieval France; Medieval Architecture, Sculpture, Stained Glass, Manuscripts, the Art of the Church Treasuries. New York: Harper & Row, 1972; The Façade of Saint-Gilles-du-Gard: its Influence on French Sculpture. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1973; Adventure in Architecture: Building the New Saint John’s. New York: Longmans, Green, 1958; “Selection of Sculpture from Psalmodi.” Gesta 15 no. 1-2 (1976): 121-26.


Sources

[obituary:] Johnson, Ken. “Whitney Stoddard, 90, Art Historian and Teacher.” New York Times April 14, 2003, section F, p. 8; William College, Office of Public Affiars. “Noted Art Historian Whitney S. Stoddard Dies.” http://otis.cc.williams.edu/admin/news/stoddard; “Whitney S. Stoddard, noted Art Historian.” The Greenfield [Mass.] Recorder. www.recorder.com/obituaries/obit1287620.htm; Armi, C. Edson, et al. “Whitney Snow Stoddard.” Gesta 25 no. 1 (1986) pp. 5-8.



Contributors: Lee Sorensen


Citation

Lee Sorensen. "Stoddard, Whitney." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/stoddardw/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Medievalist and professor at Williams College. Stoddard was the son of lawyer Charles Nowell Stoddard and Elizabeth Snow (Stoddard). He attended Eaglebrook School and Deerfield Academy before entering Williams College. At Williams he attended cour

Stillman, William James

Full Name: Stillman, William James

Gender: male

Date Born: 1828

Date Died: 1901

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): Cypriote, Early Western World, and Near Eastern (Early Western World)

Career(s): art critics


Overview

Journalist and art writer. Authored report to Metropolitan Museum of Art on the accusations of the Cesnola Collection of Cyprian art.


Selected Bibliography

and Cole, Timothy, engraver. Old Italian Masters. New York: The Century Co., 1892; and Ruskin, John, and Symonds, John Addington, et. al. Landscape Painting and Modern Dutch Artists. New York: The Baker & Taylor Co. 1906; Edited. Venus & Apollo in Painting and Sculpture. London: Bliss, Sands & Co., 1897; The Acropolis of Athens: illustrated Picturesquely and Architecturally in Photography. London: F. S. Ellis, 1870; Report of W.J. Stillman on the Cesnola Collection. New York: Thompson & Moreau, 1885; and Blackburn, Henry. Official Illustrated Catalogue of the English Water Colors and Works in Black and White at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Boston, MA: Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1885.


Sources

Stillman, William James. The autobiography of a journalist. Boston: Cambridge [Mass.] : Houghton, Mifflin and Co. ; Riverside Press, 1901




Citation

"Stillman, William James." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/stillmanw/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Journalist and art writer. Authored report to Metropolitan Museum of Art on the accusations of the Cesnola Collection of Cyprian art.

Stillman, Damie

Full Name: Stillman, Damie

Gender: male

Date Born: 1933

Place Born: Dallas, TX, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Career(s): art critics and publishers


Overview

Editor-in-Chief, Buildings US. BS from Northwestern University (1954), MA from University of Delaware (1956), PhD from Columbia University (1961). Professor, University of Delaware (Department Chairman, 1981-1986, 1993-)


Selected Bibliography

The Decorative Work of Robert Adam. New York: Transatlantic Arts, 1966. English Neo-Classical Architecture. London: A. Zwemmer, 1988.


Sources

Who’s Who in American Art 22 (1997-98):




Citation

"Stillman, Damie." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/stillmand/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Editor-in-Chief, Buildings US. BS from Northwestern University (1954), MA from University of Delaware (1956), PhD from Columbia University (1961). Professor, University of Delaware (Department Chairman, 1981-1986, 1993-)

Stern, Henri

Full Name: Stern, Henri

Other Names:

  • Heinrich Stern

Gender: male

Date Born: 13 November 1902

Date Died: 04 September 1988

Place Born: Munich, Bavaria, Germany

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

Home Country/ies: France and Germany

Subject Area(s): Byzantine (culture or style) and Medieval (European)

Institution(s): Centre national de la recherche scientifique and École Pratique des Hautes Études


Overview

Fellow of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (French National Center for Scientific Research), Founder of the Association Internationale pour l’Étude de Mosaïque Antique (International Association for the Study of Ancient Mosaics), and Byzantinist. Henri Stern specialized in the study of iconography of mosaics from Late Antiquity through the Middle Ages, Syrian art of the 5th and 6th centuries, and early Islamic art more broadly. Yet, he was intentional in his approach to studying mosaics in relation to several other art techniques, mainly wall paintings, ivories, and sarcophagi (Barral I Altet). He was born in 1902 to Max Stern (d. 1940), a doctor. Stern received his abitur in 1921 in Munich, Germany where he spent his formative years. From 1922-1929, he studied art history in Heidelberg, Leipzig, and Munich under Heinrich Wölfflin, Wilhelm Pinder, and Max Hauttmann. He completed his dissertation Münchner Barockplastik von 1660-1720 (Munich Baroque Sculpture from 1660-1720) in 1929 working under the direction of Wilhelm Pinder. He eventually published this work in 1932 in Münchner. From 1930-1931, Stern was a scientific assistant at the Residenzmuseum in Munich, which has numerous royal collections and formerly housed the Wittelsbach monarchs of Bavaria. He worked under Freidrich Hofmann (1813-1888), who was the director of the museum. In his role, he managed the museum treasury and oversaw the exhibition “Kirchliche Kunst” (1930), a showcase of the Christian art displayed throughout the residence. In 1931, Stern became a research assistant at the Nationalmuseum Munich (Bavarian National Museum) where he greatly expanded the catalogue of pewter objects. In January 1933, he assumed the role of a researcher at the Frankfurt Museum of Decorative Arts under Adolf Feulner where he began cataloguing the extensive glass collection. He was deposed on 27 March 1933, however, because of his Jewish heritage, well prior to the enactment of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service. He emigrated to Paris in April 1933 and began working at the Musée d’Ethnographie. The arrival in Paris sparked several newfound interests within him, the study of Byzantine mosaics and early Islamic art. He began researching this topic at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, widely considered one of the most elite research institutions in France. Alongside Gabriel Millet, he spearheaded a research project on the Byzantine mosaics in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. In 1938, he won a scholarship from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique which would have fully funded his excavation expedition to Syria to study early mosaic works. With the imminent outbreak of World War II, his expedition was canceled and he ultimately served for the first two years of the war in the French Resistance. After World War II, he continued his research on the history of the mosaic at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and assembled his own team of experienced scholars within the field. In 1953, he published his major thesis on the Calendar of 354, which remains fundamental to the study of Late Antiquity (Barral I Altet). He published one of his most seminal works in 1957, Recueil général des mosaïques de la Gaule (General Collection of Mosaics from Gaul) (Barral I Altet). In 1964, he solidified his lasting mark on the mosaic research community by founding the Association international pour l’étude de la mosaïque antique (International Association for the Study of Ancient Mosaics) (Barral I Altet). His contributions helped medieval mosaics gain the same recognition as oil paintings and sculptures for the first time in France (Barral I Altet).

Henri Stern’s bibliography of more than one hundred and fifty entries on Antiquity and the Middle Ages in the East and the West was compiled and dedicated to him in 1983 under the title Mosaïque (Barral I Altet). His formal training as a Byzantinist greatly influenced his passions for and study of other subfields of art history, including his interests in antiquity and the Middle Ages. He rigorously scrutinized the work of not only his students but also himself, and that is the reason why he was so highly regarded by his peers (Barral I Altet). He organized two major international colloquiums, once in Paris in 1963 and again in Vienna in 1976 (Barral I Altet). The international network of archaeologists and art historians held him in high esteem (Barral I Altet).

 


Selected Bibliography

  • [dissertation:] Münchner Barockplastik von 1660-1720 Berlin, 1929;
  • Le calendrier de 354. Etude sur son texte et ses illustration Paris, 1953;
  • Date et destinataire de l’«Histoire Auguste» Paris, 1953;
  • Recueil général des mosaïques de la Gaule, Province de Belgique Ouest Paris, 1957;
  • Recueil général des mosaïques de la Gaule, Province de Belgique Est Paris, 1960;
  • Recueil général des mosaïques de la Gaule, Province de Belgique Sud Paris, 1963;
  • L’art byzantin Paris, 1965;
  • Recueil général des mosaïques de la Gaule, Province de Lyonnaise Lyon Paris, 1967;
  • and Le Glay, Marcel. La mosaïque gréco-romaine II. Actes du IIe Colloque Intern, pour l’étude de la mosaïque antique. Vienne, 30 août-4 septembre 1971 Paris, 1975;
  • Recueil général des mosaïques de la Gaule, Province de Lyonnaise Partie Sud-Est Paris, 1975;
  • and Ocaña Jiménez, Manuel und Duda, Dorothea Les mosaïques de la Grande Mosquée de Cordoue Berlin, 1976;
  • and Darmon, Jean-Pierre Recueil général des mosaïques de la Gaule, Province de Lyonnaise Partie Centrale Paris, 1977;
  • Les mosaïques des maisons d’Achille et de Cassiopée à Palmyre Paris, 1977;
  • Recueil général des mosaïques de la Gaule, Province de Narbonnaise Partie centrale Paris, 1979;
  • and Balmelle, Catherine Recueil général des mosaïques de la Gaule, Province d’Aquitaine Partie méridionale (Piémont Pyrénéen) Paris, 1980;
  • and Lancha, Janine Recueil général des mosaïques de la Gaule, Province de Narbonnaise Vienne Paris, 1981;
  • and Balmelle, Catherine Recueil général des mosaïques de la Gaule, Province d’Aquitaine Partie méridionale, suite (les Pays Gascons) Paris, 1987;
  • and Michèle Blanchard-Lemée Recueil général des mosaïques de la Gaule, Province de Lyonnaise Partie occidentale, cités des Carnutes, Turons, Andecaves, Cénomans, Diabüntes, Namnètes Paris, 1991;
  • Recueil général des mosaïques de la Gaule, Province de Lyonnaise Partie nord-ouest, cités des Veneti, Osismi, Coriosolitae, Redones, Abrincatui, Unelli, Baiocasses, Viducasses, Lexovii, Esuvii, Eburovices, Veliocasses, Caleti Paris, 1994.

Sources

  • [obituary:] Barral I Altet, Xavier. “Henri Stern (1902-1988)”.Cahiers de civilisation médiévale. 33 no. 1 (1990): 97-99, https://www.persee.fr/doc/ccmed_0007-9731_1990_num_33_129_3043;
  • Wendland, Ulrike.Biographisches Handbuch deutschsprachiger Kunsthistoriker im Exil: Leben und Werk der unter dem Nationalsozialismus verfolgten und vertriebenen Wissenschaftler. Munich: Saur, 1999, vol. 2, pp. 664-667.


Contributors: Paul Kamer


Citation

Paul Kamer. "Stern, Henri." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/sternh/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Fellow of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (French National Center for Scientific Research), Founder of the Association Internationale pour l’Étude de Mosaïque Antique (International Association for the Study of Ancient Mosaics), a