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Schefold, Karl

Full Name: Schefold, Karl

Gender: male

Date Born: 1905

Date Died: 1999

Place Born: Heilbronn am Neckar, Bavaria, Germany

Place Died: Basel, Basle-Town, Switzerland

Home Country/ies: Germany

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


Overview

Archaeologist and classical art historian; professor of classical archaeology at Basel, specialist in Pompeii and Greek art. Schefold graduated from the Eberhard-Ludwigs Gymnasium in Stuttgart. He began classical studies at the university of Tübingen in 1923. He studied philology in St. Petersburg in 1925 where he became acquainted with the work of the philologist Albrecht von Blumenthal (1889-1945). He moved to Jena to study under him between 1926-1928; both were part of the circle of intellectuals around the poet Stefan George. Later he moved to Heidelberg continuing study under Otto Regenbogen (1891-1966). There he met Marianne von den Steinen in 1927, daughter of the prominent Ethnologist, Karl von den Steinen (1855-1929), whom he married. At Heidelberg Schefold also studied under the classical archaeologist Ludwig Curtius, but when Curtius was called to Rome and the Deutsche Archäologische Institut (German Archaeological Institute or DAI), he pursued his degree in archaeology under Paul Jacobsthal at the university in Marburg. His dissertation was on the Greek vases of Kerch (Ukraine) region. After graduating in 1930, he was appointed an assistant at the DAI in Rome and Athens under Curtius. At the DAI in Athens he met the archaeologists Georg Karo and Emil Kunze and worked with the architectural historians Armin von Gerkan and Walther Wrede. He participated on excavations in Israel, Syria and Anatolia under Theodor Wiegand, sponsored by the Berliner Museum in 1932. Between 1932 and 1935 he took part in the excavations at Larisa at Hermos with Ernst Buschor. He was made an assistant at the Athens DAI. In 1935 Schefold was forced by the Nazis to give up his post at the DAI partially through his association with Curtius. He fled to Basel, Switzerland, where he secured a lectureship at the university assisted by Ernst Pfuhl and Peter von der Mühll (1885-1970). There he completed his habilitation on the Scythian animal style and became a university Privatdozent the following year, 1936. When Pfuhl died in 1940, Schefold succeeded him as chair of classical archaeology and Extraordinarius professor in 1942. Although Schefold had published much in his life already, in 1943 his first book, Die Bildnisse der antiken Dichter, Redner und Denker appeared. He declined an offer from Vienna in 1952 and was rewarded in 1953 with an appointment of Ordinarius für Klassische Archäologie at Basle. He and Herbert Cahn and Otto Rubensohn (1867-1964) founded the Vereinigung der Freunde antiker Kunst or Societé des Amis de l’Art Antique and its journal Antike Kunst in 1956. In 1964 Schefold began what became his major series on Greek iconography, Frühgriechische Sagenbilder translated into English as Myth and Legend in Early Greek Art. The set eventually grew into five volumes. He was a major impetus to the creation of the Antikenmuseum in Basel in 1960, which opened in 1966. The following year, he rewrote the volume on Greek art for the revised Propyläen Kunstgeschichte, the original of which had been written by Gerhart Rodenwaldt in 1927. He retired in 1975 and began adding to his series on the legends of the Greek gods and heroes with the second volume being Götter- und Heldensagen der Griechen in der spätarchaischen Kunst, appeared 1978. While attending one of his weekly lectures at the Antikenmuseum, at age 94 he fell, sustaining injuries from which he never recovered. Schefold was the quintessential twentieth-century European scholar: a life devoted to scholarship and teaching. His nearly 700 publications ranged from the scholarly survey to the the detailed archaeological report. He was instrumental in establishing the Swiss archaeological dig in Eritrea. His teaching made the University of Basel one of the best centers of classical archaeology. A number of his Basel students became directors of university institutes and classical-object collections. Schefold was a specialist in ancient Roman art, particularly Pompeii. His methodological approach focused more on interpreting the content of ancient artworks than the traditional analyzing of their form.


Selected Bibliography

[published bibliographies:] Willers, Dietrich. “Herbert A. Cahn achtzigjahrig, Karl Schefold neunzigjahrig. Antike Kunst 38 no. 2 (1995):. 63-7, [1966-1974:] Berger, Ernst, and Ackermann, Hans Christoph, eds. Schefold, Karl. Wort und Bild: Studien zur Gegenwart der Antike. Basel: Archäologischer Verlag/P. von Zabern, 1975, pp. xiv-xv, [1930-1990] Karl Schefold, Bibliographie 1930-1990. Basle: Antikenmuseum Basel und Sammlung Ludwig, 1990; [dissertation:] Kertscher Vasen. Berlin-Wilmersdorf: H. Keller, 1930; Die Bildnisse der antiken Dichter, Redner und Denker. Basel: B. Schwabe, 1943; and Giuliani, Luca. Götter- und Heldensagen der Griechen in der spätarchaischen Kunst. Munich: Hirmer, 1978, English, Gods and Heroes in Late Archaic Greek Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992; Die Religion des Archäologen J. J. Bachofen. Munich: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften/C. H. Beck, 1987; Frühgriechische Sagenbilder. Munich: Hirmer Verlag, 1964, English, Myth and Legend in Early Greek Art. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1966; Die Wände Pompejis: topographisches Verzeichnis der Bildmotive. Berlin: DeGruyter, 1957; Pompejanische Malerei, Sinn und Ideengeschichte. Basel: B. Schwabe, 1952.


Sources

Schefold, Karl. Die Dichtung als Führerin zur klassischen Kunst: Erinnerungen eines Archäologen. Hamburg: Kovac, 2003; [obituaries:] Stucky, Rolf A. “Wissenschaft als Botschaft: zum Tod von Karl Schefold.” Antike Welt 30 no. 4 (1999): 417; Stucky, Rolf A. “Antike Kunst und Vereinigung der Freunde antiker Kunst verlieren einen ihrer Grundervater.” Antike Kunst 42 no. 2 (1999): 71-2; Metzger, Henri, and Moret, Jean-Marc Peer “Karl Schefold (26 janvier 1905-16 avril 1999).” Revue Archeologique 5 fasc 2 (1999): 387-90; Universität Basel 2006 Archäologisches Seminar: Karl Schefold. http://pages.unibas.ch/klassarch/geschichte/schefold; personal correspondance, Henry von Blumenthal, March 2009.




Citation

"Schefold, Karl." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/schefoldk/.


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Archaeologist and classical art historian; professor of classical archaeology at Basel, specialist in Pompeii and Greek art. Schefold graduated from the Eberhard-Ludwigs Gymnasium in Stuttgart. He began classical studies at the university of Tübin

Scheffler, Karl

Full Name: Scheffler, Karl

Gender: male

Date Born: 1869

Date Died: 1951

Place Born: Hamburg, Germany

Place Died: Überlingen am Bodensee, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): German (culture, style, period) and Modern (style or period)

Career(s): art critics


Overview

Art critic and early German historian of modern art. He was born in Eppendorf, Germany, which is present-day Hamburg, Germany. Scheffler graduated from the Realschule and took over his father’s interior painting business. In 1888 he attended the Kunstgewerbeschule of Berlin where he mastered tapestry design. After working for a Berlin fabric firm, he started to write articles for the magazines Atelier and the Dekorative Kunst in 1897, and after 1899 for the better known Die Zukunft. Turn-of-the-century German periodicals were increasingly attacking the conservative art policies of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Among the newly founded magazines supporting the avant-garde were Pan (1895-1900), edited by Julius Meier-Graefe, and Kunst und Künstler (1903-33), published by Bruno Cassirer (1872-1941) and edited by Scheffler from 1906 onward. Scheffler wrote over one hundred articles and exhibition reviews. Together with Curt Glaser he published a book series called Deutsche Meister during the years 1921-32 which met with limited success. After a series of essays on the Symbolist art of Henry van Velde (1913) Scheffler moved to the subject of Impressionism. The impressionist esthetic brought him into conflict with Expressionism, Cubism and Constructivism. His 1917 book, Der Geist der Gotik tracing German spirit through the impulse of the Gothic form, was remarkably similar to a similar volume by Wilhelm Worringer. Unlike Worringer, however, he opposed the works of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Paul Klee, preferring the art of Pablo Picasso. In 1921 Scheffler published his Berliner Museumskrieg (Berlin Museum War) attacking the Director of the National Gallery, Ludwig Justi, for using the Kronprinzenpalais as a museum for contemporary art. The ascension of the Nazis to power in Germany silenced most modernist art writing, including Scheffler’s. He published a few articles in journals including the Das Werk. During the war he remained at the Bodensee, producing volumes on the comparatively safer topics of French 19th-century painters, which appeared in 1942, and another in 1943 of anecdotes of artists. In 1944 he received the honorary doctorate form the University of Zürich. After World War II he once again elicited recognition from his native Germany. The Technical College of Stuttgart honored his art writing. He also finished the second part to his autobiography. Scheffler characterized himself in his biography as a person who looked at art questioning what makes one work better than another. He distanced himself from the academic discipline of art history, perhaps because he himself never attended college or worked in a museum. Although he wrote on all areas of art, Scheffler’s principle focus was on contemporary art; his writing set the standard for the later style of Kunstwissenschaft theory among German art historians in the century. He became editor of a small art journal, yet a very influential teacher for the understanding of art.


Selected Bibliography

Henry van de Velde: vier Essays. Leipzig: Insel-Verlag, 1913; Das lachende Atelier: Künstleranekdoten des 19. Jahrhunderts. Zürich: Scientia AG., 1943; Zeit und Stunde: neue Essays. Leipzig: Insel-Verlag, 1926; Was will das werden? Ein Tagebuch im Kriege. Leipzig: Insel-Verlag, 1917; Leben, Kunst und Staat: gesammelte Essays. Leipzig: Insel-Verlag, 1912; Der Deutsche und seine Kunst: eine notgedrungene Streitschrift. Munich: R. Piper, 1907; Grundlinien einer Weltgeschichte der Kunst. Berlin: K. H. Henssel, 1947.


Sources

Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 343-6; Heise, Carl Georg, and Langner, Johannes. Karl Scheffler: eine Auswahl seiner Essays aus Kunst und Leben 1905-1950. Hamburg: Dr. Ernst Hauswedell, 1969, pp. 5-8.



Contributors: HB and Lee Sorensen


Citation

HB and Lee Sorensen. "Scheffler, Karl." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/schefflerk/.


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Art critic and early German historian of modern art. He was born in Eppendorf, Germany, which is present-day Hamburg, Germany. Scheffler graduated from the Realschule and took over his father’s interior painting business. In 1888 he attended the K

Scheen, Pieter Arie

Full Name: Scheen, Pieter Arie

Gender: male

Date Born: 1916

Date Died: 2003

Place Born: The Hague, South Holland, Netherlands

Place Died: Apeldoorn, Gelderland, Netherlands

Home Country/ies: Netherlands

Subject Area(s): biography (general genre) and Dutch (culture or style)

Career(s): art dealers and art historians


Overview

Art dealer; writer of dictionary of Dutch artists. Scheen grew up in The Hague. He attended school until the age of fifteen. He then began working in his father’s art business. In 1931 he himself became an art dealer in The Hague. Eager to know who the artists were whose paintings he was involved with, he started collecting biographical data of thousands of Dutch painters and draughts men. In 1946 his first publication in this field appeared: Honderd Jaren Nederlandsche Schilder en Teekenkunst; de Romantiek met voor- en natijd (1750-1850). In 1950, he selected the illustrations for Gerben Colmjon’s publication on the painters of the Hague School. With the organization of exhibitions, including a major one on the romantic painter Wijnand Nuyen (1813-1839), he contributed to a better appreciation of Dutch nineteenth-century painting. Around 1962, Scheen began a new and exhaustive dictionary of artists born between 1750 and 1950, as a follow up to his 1946 publication, now including sculptors, ceramists, gold- and silversmiths, printmakers etc. Assisted by his daughter and his second wife, Elske van Santen, whom he married in 1965, he excerpted exhibition catalogs and searched through archives, including those kept at the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (Netherlands Institute of Art History) in The Hague. Other important sources were art historical studies and various dictionaries of artists, in particular those of Johannes Immerzeel, Jr., Christiaan Kramm, and Alfred Wolfgang von Wurzbach, and the Allgemeines Lexikon of Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker. Scheens two-volume illustrated work, Lexicon Nederlandse Beeldende Kunstenaars 1750-1950, appeared in 1970. In 1975 Scheen turned his art business over to his son-in-law, Joop Breeschoten. Scheen and his wife moved to Antibes, in France, where they lived for six years. Returning to the Netherlands, the couple retired in Apeldoorn. When Scheen’s successful publication was out of print, his son Pieter Scheen, Jr. started working on a revision of his father’s Lexicon. For practical reasons, however, he left out contemporary artists, focusing instead on the period between 1750 and 1880. Scheen, Jr. published his revised edition in 1981, as Pieter A. Scheen: Lexicon Nederlandse Beeldende Kunstenaars 1750-1880. Herzien door P. Scheen. Scheen, Sr., died 22 years later, in 2003. Scheen was one of the first art dealers whose interest extended to art from the Dutch Romantic and the Hague schools. He organized a retrospective exhibition of Nuyen’s work at the Panorama Mesdag Museum in The Hague.


Selected Bibliography

Honderd Jaren Nederlandsche Schilder en Teekenkunst; De Romantiek met voor- en natijd (1750-1850). The Hague: Boek en Periodiek, 1946; [in collaboration with] Gerben, Colmjon. De Haagse School: de vernieuwing van onze schilderkunst sinds het midden der negentiende eeuw. Rijswijk: Leidsche Uitgeversmij., 1950; Lexicon Nederlandse Beeldende Kunstenaars 1750-1950. 2 vols. The Hague: Kunsthandel Pieter A. Scheen N. V., 1969-1970; and Scheen, Pieter, jr. Lexicon Nederlandse Beeldende Kunstenaars 1750-1880. Herzien door P. Scheen. The Hague: Uitgeverij Pieter A. Scheen BV, 1981.


Sources

De Bruijn, Jr. H. C. ‘Pieter Scheen, kunstambassadeur met ere.’ Op de Uitkijk: Christelijk Cultureel Maandblad (October, 1960): 7-11; Heijbroek, J. F. ‘Kunsthandel Scheen.’ De Boekenwereld 18 (2002): 2-7; Visser, Jan. ‘Pieter Scheen schrijft zijn levensverhaal.’ Apeldoornse Courant August 27, 2003; [Obituaries] Haagsche Courant November 12, 2003; De Gelderlander November 13, 2003; Brabants Dagblad November 13, 2003; De Telegraaf November 14, 2003; Rappard, Willem Frederik. ‘Scheen, Pieter A(rie), Ridder.’ Dictionary of Art 28: 65; De Leeuw, Ronald, and Sillevis, John, and Dumas, Charles, eds. The Hague School: Dutch Masters of the 19th Century. London: Royal Academy of Arts/Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983, p. 134.



Contributors: Monique Daniels


Citation

Monique Daniels. "Scheen, Pieter Arie." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/scheenp/.


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Art dealer; writer of dictionary of Dutch artists. Scheen grew up in The Hague. He attended school until the age of fifteen. He then began working in his father’s art business. In 1931 he himself became an art dealer in The Hague. Eager to know wh

Schede, Martin

Full Name: Schede, Martin

Gender: male

Date Born: 1883

Date Died: 1947

Place Born: Magdeburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): ancient, Ancient Greek (culture or style), archaeology, Byzantine (culture or style), and Roman (ancient Italian culture or period)


Overview

Archaeologist and art historian who specialized in ancient Greek, Roman and Byzantine art. He was active in archaeological expeditions in Asia Minor 1910-1913. He served as Professor in the antiquities division of the Berlin Museum (1919-1924) before returning to Turkey for the German Archaeological Institute (Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, DAI) in 1924, becoming director of the newly created Istanbul branch in 1929. In 1938 he succeeded Theodor Wiegand as president of the whole DAI, a post he held until 1945. He died in 1947 in a Russian prisoner of war camp.


Selected Bibliography

Die Burg von Athen, 1922; Griechische und römische Skulpturen des Antikenmuseums, 1928. (a catalog of masterworks in the Turkish museum in Constantinople).


Sources

Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 220-221. Suzanne L. Marchand. Down from Olympus: Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750-1970. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996: 333-334, 336-337, 369.




Citation

"Schede, Martin." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/schedem/.


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Archaeologist and art historian who specialized in ancient Greek, Roman and Byzantine art. He was active in archaeological expeditions in Asia Minor 1910-1913. He served as Professor in the antiquities division of the Berlin Museum (1919-1924) bef

Scharf, George, Sir

Full Name: Scharf, George, Sir

Gender: male

Date Born: 1820

Date Died: 1895

Place Born: London, Greater London, England, UK

Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom


Overview

Art historian, first director of the National Portrait Gallery, London. Scharf was the son of Georg Scharf (d. 1860), a miniature painter originally from Bavaria. He attended the schools associated with Royal Academy in (studio) art training. In 1840 he traveled as a draughtsman with Sir Charles Fellows to Asia Minor, returning 1843 on behalf of the British government. Scharf returned to England and became a book illustrator, largely of art and antiquity topics. Among his illustrations include Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome (1847), the English edition of the Handbook of Italian Painting,1851, by Franz Kugler, and Smith’s classical dictionaries. In 1850 he hired a young Italian expatriot artist, G. B. Cavalcaselle who would later co-author the first important history of art in English. Scharf was among the art experts involved in the classical “courts” for the Crystal Palace exhibiton. Under Charles Lock Eastlake, he was appointed art secretary to the important Manchester Art Treasures exhibition of 1857. After the exhibition, Scharf was appointed secretary and director of the new National Portrait Gallery in London. Scharf worked tirelessly to build the historic portrait collection, increasing the gallery’s collection to nearly 1000 portraits, and publishing essays on portraiture in England and elsewhere. He was made C. B. in 1885. In 1895, Scharf resigned from the Gallery, retaining a trustee appointment. He died later that the same year.



Sources

The Dictionary of Art; Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed.




Citation

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Art historian, first director of the National Portrait Gallery, London. Scharf was the son of Georg Scharf (d. 1860), a miniature painter originally from Bavaria. He attended the schools associated with Royal Academy in (studio) art training. In 1

Scharf, Alfred

Full Name: Scharf, Alfred

Gender: male

Date Born: 25 November 1900

Date Died: 20 December 1965

Place Born: Königsberg an der Eger

Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: Germany and United Kingdom

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

Career(s): educators

Institution(s): Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg


Overview

Expert and private scholar in 15th-century Italian painting, 17th century Dutch and Flemish painting and 15th-18th century drawing.. Scharf was born in Königsberg an der Eger, Germany (present-day Kynsperk nad Ohri Czech Republic). in 1900 to Heinrich Scharf (1872-1933) and Cӓcilie Presser (Scharf) (1876-1946). From 1920-1925, Scharf studied art history, archaeology, East Asian art, and theater history under Hans Jantzen. In 1925, he granted Scharf his doctoral degree from Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg. His dissertation was titled Beiträge zur Geschichte des Bühnenbildes (Contributions to the History of Stage Design). He married a fellow art historian Felicie Radziejewski (1901-1991). Scharf began work in several different administrative roles in 1925. Until 1928, he was a research assistant at the Kupferstichkabinett der Staatlichen Museen in Berlin (Prints and Drawings Department of the State Museums). There he worked with Max J. Friedländer and Jakob Rosenberg. At the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, he reported to the museum director Wilhelm von Bode. During this time period, he was also employed at the Kunstbibliothek (art library) in Berlin with Curt Glaser. Having similar interests to his colleague, he found himself working with Rosenberg again. On this occasion the two scholars worked on expanding a historical catalog of Dutch master artists in the Kupferstichkabinett. In 1927, he collaborated with Franz Rapp on a theater exhibition in Magdeburg. After 1928, Scharf worked on several different freelance projects. He became the lead editor of the magazines Der Cicerone and Weltkunst, wrote his own magazine articles, and published a number of books. His book Unknown Masterpieces in Public and Private Collections was completed alongside Wilhelm Valentiner and Ludwig Burchard. Scharf began his habilitation on the subject of the impact of Filippino Lippi on 15th century Italian painting, but because of mounting anti-Semitic policies in the Nazi government, was advised by Jantzen to abandon further work on a thesis. Scharf continued until his thesis work was officially rejected. Scharf then realized the extent of the rising Nazi movement across Germany. Consequently, he emigrated to London, United Kingdom in May 1933. From 1933-1934, he lectured at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London for employment. Scharf had published in English as early as 1931 in Art in America. After his tenure Courtauld, he did freelance work as a writer and art history consultant. His freelance work included his creation of a collection of photographs of Renaissance art and a catalog of antique works of art from the Renaissance and Baroque periods. His catalog of antique works was completed in conjunction with the Warburg Institute and Burchard.

Despite anti-semitism profoundly limiting his career opportunities, Scharf still managed to produce an extensive number of books, magazine articles, and scholarly works that contributed to many different niches of art history, most notably the Italian Renaissance. His failure to develop a successful habilitation was unfortunate; however his role as a consultant later in his life allowed him to advise younger scholars (Wendland).


Selected Bibliography

  • [dissertation:] Beiträge zur Geschichte des Bühnenbildes. University of Freiburg, 1925;
  • “Kaiser Friedrich-Museum Kupferstichkabinett”.Belvedere (1926): 16-17, 94-95;
  • and Valentiner, Wilhelm R. und Burchard, Ludwig. Unknown masterpieces in public and private collections. London, 1930;
  • “Eine Pinselzeichnung Filippino Lippis im Berliner Kupferstichkabinett”.Berliner Museen 51 no. 6. (1930): 145-147;
  • “Filippino Lippi und Piero di Cosimo”.Art in America. (1931): 59-62;
  • “Zum Laocoon des Filippino Lippi”.Mut. Kunsthist. Inst. Florenz. (1932): 530;
  • “Literaturberichte über die italienische Malerei des 15. Jahrhunderts”.Z. Kunstgesch. (1932);
  • “Dutch and Flemish painting at the Brussels, Amsterdam and Rotterdam Exhibitions”.Connoisseur (1935): 247-255;
  • Filippino Lippi. Vienna 1935, 2. Aufl. 1954;
  • “Rubens’ portraits of Charles V. and Isabella”.Burlington Magazine (1935): 259-266;
  • “Two neglected works by Filippino Lippi”.Burlington Magazine (1937): 4-7;
  • A catalogue of pictures and drawings from the collection of Sir Thomas Merton. London: Chiswick Press, 1950

Sources

  • “Sharf, Alfred.” Oxford Art Online;
  • 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. 601-604.
  •  Lu, Christopher. Census. Burchard’s Box and the Birth of the Census.  https://www.census.de/en/exhibition/room-1/
  • Martin Price, personal correspondence, July 2024


Contributors: Paul Kamer


Citation

Paul Kamer. "Scharf, Alfred." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/scharfa/.


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Expert and private scholar in 15th-century Italian painting, 17th century Dutch and Flemish painting and 15th-18th century drawing.. Scharf was born in Königsberg, Germany (present day Kaliningrad, Russia) in 1900 to Heinrich Scharf (1872-1933) an

Schardt, Alois Jakob

Full Name: Schardt, Alois Jakob

Gender: male

Date Born: 1889

Date Died: 1955

Place Born: Frickhofen, Hesse, Germany

Place Died: Los Alamos, NM, USA

Home Country/ies: Germany


Overview



Sources

Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 341-43.




Citation

"Schardt, Alois Jakob." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/schardta/.


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Schapiro, Meyer

Full Name: Schapiro, Meyer

Other Names:

  • Meyer Schapiro

Gender: male

Date Born: 1904

Date Died: 1996

Place Born: Siauliai, Šiaulių Rajono Savivaldybė, Lithuania

Place Died: Greenwich Village, Manhatten, New York, NY, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): Medieval (European) and Modern (style or period)

Career(s): educators


Overview

Medieval- and Modernist art historian; Columbia University professor; one of the most important art historians of the twentieth century. Schapiro’s father was a Hebrew school teacher who had emigrated from Lithuania in 1906. The younger Schapiro emigrated at age 3 when his father was able to send for the family. Schapiro studied at Public School 84 and Boys High School in Brooklyn (the family lived in the Brownsville section) where his father was a twine jobber. Both parents were socialist free-thinkers who encouraged their son to pursue many interests, among them sports, photography, and electrical gadgetry. As a child he attended a night class in art taught by John Sloan. In 1920 at age 16 he graduated from high school. He entered Columbia College the recipient of both a Pulitzer and a Regents scholarship. He graduated from Columbia with honors in art history and philosophy at 19. Anthropology, exemplified by Franz Boas (1858-1942) as a graduate degree interested him more than art history. Turned down from graduate work in art history at Princeton because, as he asserted, he was Jewish, he chose Columbia. At Columbia, Schapiro attached himself to the medievalist Ernest DeWald, who had just moved from the faculty of Princeton to Columbia. Schapiro taught himself German, made easier because of its relation to Yiddish, and read the ground-breaking work of Wilhelm Vöge and Aloïs Riegl. Vöge’s work on the monumental style in 11th- and 12th-century Europe and Riegl’s concept of Kunstwollen (how art reflected the lives of its native creators) were powerful initial influences. Schapiro was equally influenced by the work of A. Kingsley Porter, the wealthy Harvard art historian who’s 1923 book on Romanesque sculpture challenged the notion that France was the dominant influence of the style. Schapiro married Lillian Milgrim (1902-2006), a pediatrician, in 1928 and began lecturing at Columbia. Though Porter invited him to study under him at Harvard, Schapiro remained a Columbia, completing his dissertation under DeWald in 1929 on the sculpture of Moissac, a treatice that proved to be prophetic. Heretofore, the Romanesque had largely been seen as a precursor to the more important medieval period, the Gothic. Émile Mâle had argued in 1922 that the 12th-century sculpture was the birth of the Gothic tradition. Schapiro scoured folklore, epigraphy, medieval liturgy to create an analysis of Moissac that set it as a mature work of art, replete with intentionality and an adumbration of modern art. In 1931 portions of his dissertation appeared in the Art Bulletin and his reputation as both a medievalist and an original-thinking art historian was made. Schapiro wrote a pointed critique in Kritische Berichte on art historians employing a schematic approach to Romanesque art, singling out Henri Focillon and Jurgis Baltrušaitis II. His Ph.D. degree was finally awarded by Columbia in 1935. Around that time, he hosted famous, informal gathering of art scholars which included Robert Goldwater, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Erwin Panofsky, James Johnson Sweeney, occasionally Lewis Mumford, and the art gallery dealer Jerome Klein. He lectured at both New York University and Columbia until 1936 when he was appointed assistant professor at Columbia. He also taught at the New School for Social Research beginning in 1936 (to 1952) where his lectures had a profound impact for artists and writers, many of whom would form the core of the abstract expressionist movement. Schapiro was an early exponent of European modernist art, pointing out the intellectual value of Cubism and other movements. Schapiro retained the socialist influence of his upbringing, contributing to The Marxist Quarterly, The New Masses, The Nation and The Partisan Review. During these years, his art-historical writing remained relatively small, especially considering his immense reputation. A 1936 book review on two Vienna-School art historians became a powerful critique of the methodology of the group. While on a European trip, Schapiro visited the famous German literary theorist (and fellow Jew) Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) in Paris 1939, begging him to flee Europe for New York. Schapiro failed and Benjamin committed suicide the following year rather than go to a prison camp. The same year 1939, two of his most seminal articles on Romanesque sculpture appeared, “The Sculpture of Souillac” and “From Mozarabic to Romanesque in Silos,” the latter article announcing his emerging socially engaged methodology. In 1950 Samuel M. Kootz commissioned Schapiro and the critic Clement Greenberg to select art what became a series of modernist exhibitions, titled “Talent” at the Kootz Gallery. These shows gave first-time exposure to Franz Kline, Helen Frankenthaler and Morris Louis. In 1950 and 1952 Schapiro wrote the volumes for van Gogh and Cézanne for the Abrams series on artists. Though short, they remain rich examples of his analysis. He was appointed full professor at Columbia in 1952. He was named full professor at Columbia in 1965 and Professor Emeritus 1973. In 1987 Schapiro was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellow prize. He also taught at Harvard University as Charles Eliot Norton Lecturer and in Europe at Oxford University and the Collège de France. Two endowed professorships were created in his honor at Columbia: the Meyer Schapiro Professorship of Art History, created in 1978 with gifts from former students, and the Meyer Schapiro Professorship of Modern Art and Theory created in 1994. The same year, the medievalist Michael Camille published an article, “How New York Stole the Idea of Romanesque Art’: Medieval, Modern and Postmodern in Meyer Schapiro,” in the Oxford Art Journal outlining Schapiro’s accomplishment.

Schapiro’s legacy as a cultivator of artists was a strong as that of art historians. The painter Robert Motherwell claimed to have come to New York in 1940 in order study with Schapiro. During World War II, Schapiro took Ferdinand Leger to the basement of the Pierpont Morgan Library where he showed Leger an 11th-century illumination from the Beatus Apocalypse; this became important for the symbolism of Leger’s later paintings. In 1952 he convinced a dejected Willem de Kooning that his Woman I was not the failure de Kooning supposed, but the basis of an form which ultimately became de Kooning’s mature style. On Schapiro’s 70th birthday in 1974, twelve artists artists issued a set of original graphics to help fund an endowed chair to honor him. They were: Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Alexander Liberman, Stanley William Hayter, Roy Lichtenstein, Andre Masson, Motherwell, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, Andy Warhol and Saul Steinberg. Not all approved of Schapiro’s modernist work, however. Eunice Lipton described his essays on van Gogh and Cézanne in the Library of Great Painters series as “wild psychoanalytic treks.” Schapiro’s influence to the modern approach to art history cannot be understated. Thomas E. Crow cites Schapiro as the quintessential outsider writing art history. Camille analyzed Schapiro’s weaving of folklore, social theory and daily function as core to Schapiro’s socialist roots. For most of Schapiro’s scholarly life, his reputation was built on his landmark 1929 formal analysis of the sculpture of Moissac, considered by most medievalists as still unsurpassed (Cahn, 2008). Schapiro was equally gifted in teaching. His many students included Dorothy E. Miner [dissertation never completed], David Rosand, Linda Seidel, John H. Plummer, Joel Isaacson and Albert E. Elsen. The art critic Barbara E. Rose made a film about his lectures, La Leçon de Meyer Schapiro, for the 2004 anniversary of his birth.


Selected Bibliography

[complete bibliography] Meyer Schapiro: the Bibliography. New York: G. Braziller, 1995; [master’s thesis:] The Sculptures of Moissac. Columbia, 1926; [dissertation:] The Romanesque Sculpture of Moissac. Columbia University, 1929, published in parts, Art Bulletin 13 no. 3 (September 1931): 249-351, Art Bulletin 13 no. 4 (December 1931): 464-531; “Über den Schematismus in der romanische Kunst.” Kritische Berichte zur kunstgeschichtlichen Literatur 1 (1932-1933): 1-21; “The New Viennese School.” Art Bulletin 18 (1936): 258-66; “Nature of Abstract Art.” Marxist Quarterly 1 (1937): 77-98 [includes a critique of Alfred Barr’s Cubism]; “From Mozarabic to Romanesque in Silos.” Art Bulletin 21 (1939): 312-74; “The Sculptures of Souillac.” In Medieval Studies in Memory of A. Kingsley Porter. Edited by Wilhelm R. W. Koehler. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1939: II: 359-87; “Courbet and Popular Imagery.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 4 (1940-41): 164-91; “Cain’s Jaw-Bone that Did the First Murder.” Art Bulletin 24 (1942): 205-12; “The Religious Meaning of the Ruthwell Cross.” Art Bulletin 26 (1944): 232-45; “‘ Muscipula Diaboli,’ the Symbolism of the Mérode Altarpiece by the Master of Flémalle.” Art Bulletin 27 (1945): 182-87; Paul Cézanne. The Library of Great Painters. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1952; Vincent van Gogh. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1951; “Rebellion in Art.” in America in Crisis: Fourteen Crucial Episodes in American History. Edited by Daniel Aaron. New York: 1952; “On a Painting of Van Gogh,” Perspectives U.S.A. 1 (Fall 1952): 141-53; “Style.” In, Kroeber Alfred Louis, ed. Anthropology Today. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953; “Leonardo and Freud: An Art-Historical Study.” Journal of the History of Ideas 17 (1956): 147-78, reprinted in Renaissance Essays. Edited by Paul Kristeller and Philip Paul Wiener. New York: 1968; “The Bowman and the Bird on the Ruthwell Cross and Other Works: The Interpretation of Secular Themes in Early Medieval Religious Art.” Art Bulletin 45 (1963): 351-7; The Parma Ildefonsus: A Romanesque Illuminated Manuscript from Cluny and Related Works. New York: College Art Association of America, 1964; “Apples of Cezanne: A Essay on the Meaning of Still-Life.” Art News Annual 34 (1968): 35-53; “The Still-Life as a Personal Object–A Note on Heidegger and van Gogh.” In Simmel, M. L. ed., The Reach of the Mind: Essays in Memory of Kurt Goldstein, 1878-1965. New York: 1968: 203-9; “On Some Problems in the Semiotics of Visual Art: Field and Vehicle Image Signs.” Semiotoca 1 (1969): 223-42, reprinted in Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 6 (1972/73): 9-19; Words and Pictures: On the Literal and Symbolic in the Illustration of a Text. The Hague: Mouton, 1973; [numerous above essays appear translated into English in the following:] Romanesque Art. Selected Papers [of Meyer Schapiro], vol 1. New York: George Braziller, 1977; Modern Art: 19th and 20th Centuries. Selected Papers [of Meyer Schapiro], vol. 2. New York: George Braziller, 1978; Late Antique, Early Christian and Medieval Art. Selected Papers [of Meyer Schapiro], vol. 3. New York: George Braziller, 1979.


Sources

Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, pp. 4, 11, 30, 53, 70-1 cited, 75, 93, 30 n. 66, 55 n. 117, 56 n. 121; Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Research Guide to the History of Western Art. Sources of Information in the Humanities, no. 2. Chicago: American Library Association, 1982, pp. 13, 29, 68, 80, 84, 92, 104-5, 109, 132 -33; Marquis, Alice Goldfarb. Alfred H. Barr, Jr.: Missionary for the Modern. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1989, p. 125; Lipton, Eunice. “Feminism and Impressionism.” Art Journal 51, no. 4 (Winter 1992): 99; Camille, Michael. “How New York Stole the Idea of Romanesque Art’: Medieval, Modern and Postmodern in Meyer Schapiro.” Oxford Art Journal 17 no. 1 (1994): 65-75; Solomon, Deborah. “A Critic Turns 90: Meyer Schapiro.” New York Times, August 14, 1994, p. 22; Craven, David. “A Series of Interviews (July 15, 1992-January 22, 1995) Meyer Schapiro, Lillian Milgram Schapiro and David Craven.” RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics no. 31 (Spring 1997): 159-168; Crow, Thomas E. “The Intelligence of Art.” The Intelligence of Art. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1999, pp. 6-23; Cahn, Walter. “Schapiro and Focillon.” Gesta 41/42 (2002): 129-136; Cahn, Walter. “Romanesque Art, Then and Now: A Personal Reminiscence.” in Hourihane, Colum, ed. Romanesque Art and Thought in the Twelfth Century: Essays in Honor of Walter Cahn. University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 2008, p. 36; [obituaries:] New York Times. March 4, 1996; Columbia University Record 21, no. 19 (March 8, 1996).




Citation

"Schapiro, Meyer." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/schapirer/.


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Medieval- and Modernist art historian; Columbia University professor; one of the most important art historians of the twentieth century. Schapiro’s father was a Hebrew school teacher who had emigrated from Lithuania in 1906. The younger Schapiro e

Schapire, Rosa

Full Name: Schapire, Rosa

Other Names:

  • Rosa Schapire

Gender: female

Date Born: 1874

Date Died: 1954

Place Born: Brody, L'vivs'ka Oblast', Ukraine

Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): catalogues raisonnés, Expressionist (style), German (culture, style, period), and German Expressionist (movement)


Overview

Early champion of Germany Expressionism and author of the first graphics catalog of Schmidt-Rottluff. Born to wealthy Jewish parents in Jewish community of Brody, Schapire was privately tutored along with her sisters. In 1893 she moved to Hamburg, writing feminist essays, including “Ein Wort zur Frauenemanzipation” (A word on women’s emancipation) in 1897. Inspired by the art lectures of the museum directors Justus Brinckmann at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe and Alfred Lichtwark at the Kunsthalle, she studied art history at the University in Bern, showing an early interest in modern art by writing an essay on the controversial Swiss painter Ferdinand Hodler.graduating in 1902. She graduated the same year, continuing graduate work in art history at Heidelberg, where her fellow students included Edwin Redslob, Walter Kaesbach, Emil Waldmann, and Ernst Kühnel. In 1904 she received her Ph.D. writing dissertation under Henry Thode on the Frankfurt painter Johann Ludwig Ernst Morgenstern. Schapire continued a post-doctorate semester with Heinrich Wölfflin in Berlin and the year 1905 at Leipzig University. After several years of more travel, she returned to Hamburg in 1908, translating and writing criticism. Among those whose works she translated into German were Balzac and the Polish art historian Kazimierz Chledowski. She met the judge and art historian Gustav Schiefler and around 1906. The two became supporters of the Dresden German Expressionist movement Die Brücke joining the Brücke as sustaining members (“passive members”). All the Brücke artists created and sent her “art postcards” for her support. Though initially close to the Brücke artist Emile Nolde and his wife, they fell out and Schapire became friends and a supporter of Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. In 1911, Schapire mounted the first solo exhibition of Schmidt-Rottluff in Hamburg. During World War I she and the feminist Ida Dehmel (1870-1942) founded the Frauenbund zur Förderung deutscher bildenden Kunst (Women’s Society for the Advancement of German Art) in 1916. The organization made gifts of women’s art to state museums. After the war Schapire co-edited and contributed to two Weimar-era Expressionist journals, Die Rote Erde (The Red Earth) and Kündung (Herald), entering the circle of the Hamburg Secessionists. Schmidt-Rottluff moved to Hamburg and created furniture, clothing and other objects into a Gesamtkunstwerk for Schapire in her apartment in 1921. She also collected heavily from the artist’s works, wrting the graphics catalogue raisonné of Schmidt-Rottluff in 1924. Her Jewish heritage and support of modernist art made her a target of the Nazi’s, who rose to power in 1933. After the 1937 degenerate art exhibition in Munich, Schapire was placed under house arrest in her Hamburg apartment. She published under a pseudonym. In 1939, fellow Hamburg art historian Fritz Saxl now Director of the Warburg Institute in its new home in London, sponsored Schapire’s immigration ot England. She left only two weeks before the start of World War II. The Gestapo confiscated and auctioned her library and abandoned works of art in 1940 and her furniture burned in an air raid on Hamburg in 1943. After the war, she worked for the architectural historian Nikolaus Bernard Leon Pevsner, collecting material for his project The Buildings of England. She contributed articles to various art periodicals, including Architectural Review, Eidos, Connoisseur and Die Weltkunst. Her offers to house her collection of Expressionist art in British public collections were thwarted. In 1946 she offered to donate a portion of her Expressionist collection to theTate Gallery was received cooly by the conservative director John Rothenstein; the gift was not realized and then only partially so until after her death. Likewise, an offer of her complete collection of graphics and works on paper was rejected by the British Museum Department of Prints and Drawings in 1950. Schapire died in the Tate Museum near the portrait Schmidt-Rottluff painted of her in 1954. The largest part of her collection, including 600 graphic works, was bequeathed German museums in Mannheim, Berlin, (Hamburg-) Altona, Hamburg and Cologne. Numerous portraits of her by Schmidt-Rottluff exist. Her younger sister, Anna Schapire (1877-1911) married the economist and social scientist Otto Neurath (1882-1945). Schapire was one of the early women to graduate with a degree in art history from a German university. Her tireless crusades for art and equality brought her causes to Hamburg, helping the emerging industrial city forge a modernist identity. Like Schiefler, she merged collecting and art writing to raise the movement of Expressionism to one of importance for Germany.


Selected Bibliography

[complete bibliography:] Wietek, Gerhard. “Dr phil. Rosa Schapire.” Jahrbuch der Hamburger Kunstsammlungen 9 (1964): 115-160; [dissertation:] Johann Ludwig Ernst Morgenstern: ein Beitrag zu Frankfurts Kunstgeschichte im XVIII. Jahrhundert. Heidelberg, 1904, enlarged edition appeared as Heft 57 of the Studien zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte. Strassburg: J.H.E. Heitz, 1904; [example of translation work:] Chledowski, Kazimierz. Rom. 3 vols. 1. Die Menschen der Renaissance. 2. Die Menschen des Barock. 3. Das Italien des Rokoko. Munich: G. Müller, 1912-1919; founded and edited periodical, with Niemeyer, Wilhelm. Kündung: eine Zeitschrift für Kunst. Hamburg: Einmann Werkstatt Johannes Schulz, 1921 [one year only]; edited, and Lorenz, Karl and Schwemer, Paul. Die rote Erde: Monatsschrift für Kunst und Kultur. Hamburg: Dorendorf & Dresel, 1919-1923; Karl Schmidt-Rottluffs graphisches Werk bis 1923. Berlin: Euphorion-Verlag, 1924.


Sources

Schapire, Rosa.”Vita,” in her disseration, Johann Ludwig Ernst Morgenstern; ein Beitrag zu Frankfurts Kunstgeschichte im XVIII. Jahrhundert. Strassburg: J.H.E. Heitz, 1904; Behr, Shulamith. “Anatomy of the Woman as Collector and Dealer in the Weimar Period: Rosa Schapire and Johanna Ey.” in, Meskimmon, Marsha, and West, Shearer, eds. Visions of the “Neue Frau”: Women and the Visual Arts in Weimar Germany Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1995, pp. 96-107; 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. 594-598.



Contributors: Lee Sorensen


Citation

Lee Sorensen. "Schapire, Rosa." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/schapierom/.


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Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Early champion of Germany Expressionism and author of the first graphics catalog of Schmidt-Rottluff. Born to wealthy Jewish parents in Jewish community of Brody, Schapire was privately tutored along with her sisters. In 1893 she moved to Hamburg,

Schäffer, Emil

Full Name: Schäffer, Emil

Gender: male

Date Born: 1874

Date Died: 1944

Home Country/ies: Austria

Institution(s): Universität Berlin


Overview

early contextual art historian


Selected Bibliography

Raffaels Sixtinische Madonna als Erlebnis der Nachwelt. Dresden: 1927.


Sources

Dilly, 41 mentioned



Contributors: Lee Sorensen


Citation

Lee Sorensen. "Schäffer, Emil." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/schaffere/.


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Search for materials by & about this art historian:

early contextual art historian