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Art Historians

Rewald, John

Full Name: Rewald, John

Other Names:

  • John Rewald

Gender: male

Date Born: 1912

Date Died: 1994

Place Born: Berlin, Germany

Place Died: New York, NY, USA

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): French (culture or style), Impressionist (style), and painting (visual works)


Overview

Scholar of Impressionism and Cézanne; wrote first scholarly synthesis of Impressionism in the English language. Rewald’s father was Bruno Albert Rewald (b. 1885), a chemist, and mother Paula Feinstein (Rewald) (1880-1964) a dentist. He was educated at the Lichtwark School in Hamburg, receiving his Abitur in 1931. He spent the years 1931-1936 studying art history at various universities, including Hamburg under Erwin Panofsky and Fritz Saxl, and Frankfurt. Rewald entered the Sorbonne in 1932 ostensibly for a year’s study, but after Hitler’s rise the following year in Germany, he was compelled to remain in France as an exile. While rambling through France visiting the rural cathedrals, Rewald met fellow German Leo Marchutz, a painter who was searching out the landscapes of Paul Cézanne’s work. Rewald and Marchutz joined forces, Rewald photographing the landscapes used in Cézanne’s pictures. (These photographs later became the shots for Rewald’s book on Post Impressionism). At the Sorbonne, he convinced Henri Focillon to allow him to write his dissertation on Cézanne, an artist considered too recent to be a subject of study. Rewald’s dissertation, Cézanne et Zola, addressed the friendship between the two creative personalities. Between 1936-1941 he worked as a journalist for various newspapers writing art criticism. He married Estelle Haimovici in 1939. When France declared war on Germany, he was interned in 1939 as an enemy alien–despite being Jewish. He emigrated to the United States in 1941. Rewald was awarded the Prix Charles Blanc in 1940 in France for his dissertation, in absentia. In New York, where Museum of Modern Art Director Alfred H. Barr, Jr., had sponsored Rewald’s immigration, Rewald initially found work at Weyhe’s Book Shop and in 1942 for the War Department as a French interpreter. Beginning in 1943, he consulted for the Museum of Modern Art, New York, organizing exhibitions for it and other museums and researching his magnum opus, a history of Impressionism. Rewald had shown Barr a mass of unpublished Cézanne correspondence that Rewald had collected for his dissertation in France. Barr asked his former professor Paul J. Sachs at Harvard to convince their press to published them. But Harvard University Press turned him down. Rewald, again at Barr’s insistence, tried and failed to obtain a Guggenheim fellowship. Ultimately, Barr persuaded the New York branch of the Durand-Ruel Gallery to make a tax-free contribution to the Museum, which Barr gave to Rewald to complete the History of Impressionism. The History of Impressionism was published to universal acclaim in 1946. Rewald spent the rest of his life in part revising and republishing it in five editions. After a divorce from his first wife, he married Alice Bellony [formerly Alice Leglise] in 1956. Rewald was a visiting professor at Princeton University between 1961 and 1964. He joined the art faculty of the University of Chicago in 1964, remaining until 1971. During that time he wrote the Abrams (publisher) volume on Paul Gauguin for their Library of Great Painters series. In 1971 he became part of the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York as distinguished professor of art history. In 1977 he organized the highly important Cézanne: The Late Work exhibition at MoMA with William S. Rubin. He spent the year 1979 as the A. W. Mellon Lecturer, National Gallery of Art. Rewald retired from CUNY in 1984. In 1986 he was awarded the Mitchell Prize for his dissertation on Cézanne and Zola, which appeared in English as Cezanne: A Biography. Rewald was instrumental in creating a foundation to buy Cézanne’s studio and turn it into a museum. He died of congrestive heart failure at age 81. His catalogue raisonné of Cézanne was completed and appeared after his death in 1996. A street in Aix-en-Provence, where Cézanne lived and worked, is named after him. His son, Paul Rewald, who was a vice president of Sotheby Parke Bernet, died of cancer at age 32 in 1976. His daughter-in-law, Sabine Rewald, is a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Rewald’s scholarship, most exemplified in his histories of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, is the highly documentary, nearly day-by-day account of the movement. The thick text provides wonderful documentation of the movement but, compared to other treatments of the subjects, are shorter on analysis. They remain the authority for dates and chronology of late-nineteenth century French art. A connoisseur historian at odds with heavy psychological interpretations, he was a vocal critic, along with the critic John Canaday of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s selling of some of its important paintings in the early 1970s under Director Thomas Hoving. Throughout his career, he advised the wealthy art collectors John Hay Whitney and Paul Mellon on purchases both to their private collections and donations to art galleries.


Selected Bibliography

  • [dissertation] Cézanne et Zola. Paris: Sorbonne, 1936, and Paris: A. Sedrowskik, 1936, a re-edited version appeared as Cézanne: Sa vie, son oeuvre, son amitie pour Zola. Paris: A. Michel, 1939;
  • Paul Cézanne: correspondance, recueillie, annotée et péfacée. Paris: B. Grasset, 1937;
  • Gauguin. New York: French and European Publications, Paris, Hyperion, 1938;
  • and Gloeckner, Andé. Maillol. London: The Hyperion Press, 1939;
  • Paul Gauguin: Letters to Ambroise Vollard & Andé Fontainas. San Francisco: The Grabhorn Press, 1943;
  • Georges Seurat. New York: Wittenborn and Company, 1943;
  • Modern Drawings. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1945;
  • and Richie, Andrew C. Aristide Maillol. Buffalo, NY: Albright Art Gallery, 1945;
  • Renoir Drawings. New York: H. Bittner, 1946;
  • The History of Impressionism. 1st ed. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1946;
  • Paul Cézanne: a Biography. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1948; Pierre Bonnard. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1948;
  • Post-Impressionism from Van Gogh to Gauguin. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1956; Paul Gauguin. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1969;
  • [letter to the editor decrying sale of paintings:] “. . . And, From the Mail, Two Other Notable Views.” New York Times March 12, 1972 p. D23;
  • Paul Cézanne, the Watercolors: a Catalogue Raisonné. Boston: Little, Brown, 1983;
  • Studies in Post-impressionism. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1986;
  • Studies in Impressionism. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1986;
  • Cézanne and America: Dealers, Collectors, Artists and Critics: 1891-1921. National Gallery of Art lecture series. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989;
  • Degas’s Complete Sculpture: catalogue raisonné. San Francisco: Alan Wofsy Fine Arts, 1990; and Feilchenfeldt, Walter, and Warman, Jayne. The Paintings of Paul Cézanne: a Catalogue Raisonné. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996.

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. 89 mentioned;
  • Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, p. 69;
  • 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. 544-49;
  • [personal early educational reminiscences] Rewald, John. “The William C. Seitz Collection.” Art Journal 37, no. 1 (Autumn, 1977): 49-50;
  • Bellony-Rewald, Alice. John Rewald: histoire de l’art et photographie. Paris: L’Échoppe, 2005;
  • [obituaries] Kimmelman, Michael. “John Rewald, 81, Expert on Art of Post-Impressionist Period, Dies.” New York Times February 3, 1994, p. B7;
  • Rishel, Joseph J. The Burlington Magazine 136 (May 1994): 317-8;
  • Wildenstein, Daniel. Gazette des Beaux-Arts 123 (March 1994) [Chronique des arts]: 99-100; Robinson, W. Art in America 82 (March 1994): 126.

Archives

John Rewald papers, National Gallery of Art. https://library.nga.gov/permalink/01NGA_INST/1p5jkvq/alma991744863804896



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"Rewald, John." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/rewaldj/.


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Scholar of Impressionism and Cézanne; wrote first scholarly synthesis of Impressionism in the English language. Rewald’s father was Bruno Albert Rewald (b. 1885), a chemist, and mother Paula Feinstein (Rewald) (1880-1964) a dentist. He was educate

Reuther, Oscar

Full Name: Reuther, Oscar

Gender: male

Date Born: 1880

Date Died: 1954

Place Born: Hemer, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): ancient, architecture (object genre), Early Western World, Near Eastern (Early Western World), Persian (culture), and sculpture (visual works)


Overview

Specialist in ancient architecture of the Near East. Student of Robert Koldewey. Professor of the History of Architecture at the Technical University of Dresden, 1920-1945. Professor at the Technical University of Karlsruhe, 1949-1950.


Selected Bibliography

Das Wohnhaus in Bagdad und anderen Städten des Irak, 1910.Die Innenstadt von Babylon (Merkes), WVDOG 64, 1926, 3 ff. Parthian architecture in: A Survey of Persian Art I, ed. A.U. Pope,1938, 411 ff. Säsänian Architecture in: A Survey of Persian Art I, ed. A.U. Pope,1938, 493 ff. Der Heratempel von Samos, 1957.


Sources

Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 1-2




Citation

"Reuther, Oscar." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/reuthero/.


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Specialist in ancient architecture of the Near East. Student of Robert Koldewey. Professor of the History of Architecture at the Technical University of Dresden, 1920-1945. Professor at the Technical University of Karlsruh

Requin, Pierre Henri, Canon

Full Name: Requin, Pierre Henri, Canon

Gender: male

Date Born: 1851

Date Died: 1917

Place Born: Jonquerettes, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France

Place Died: Avignon, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): French (culture or style)

Career(s): clergy


Overview

Priest and historian of French art. Requin traveled on foot throughout Provence, documenting the lives of artists who worked in the area. He used archival material and notorial registers to collect information, particularly on artists and techniques of the 15th century. In 1889, Requin completed a historiography of 15th century painters in Avignon. The historiography included artist Enguerrand Quarton, who painted Coronation of the Virgin by the Holy Trinity. This painting gained Quarton a prix-fait, which allowed him to paint commissions witnessed by a notary. Requin also studied the works of contemporary sculptors and painters with the help of Paul Arbaud, a collector from Aix. After suffering from a stroke in 1912, Requin’s manuscripts were collected by the Bibliothèque Municipale in Provence, and other public archives in the region for scholarly study.


Selected Bibliography

Histoire de la faience artistique de Moustiers. Paris: G. Rapilly, 1903; Documents inédits sur les peintres, peintres-verriers et enlumineurs d’Avignon au quinzième siècle. Paris, E. Leroux, 1889.


Sources

The Dictionary of Art




Citation

"Requin, Pierre Henri, Canon." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/requinh/.


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Priest and historian of French art. Requin traveled on foot throughout Provence, documenting the lives of artists who worked in the area. He used archival material and notorial registers to collect information, particularly on artists and techniqu

Renouvier, J.

Full Name: Renouvier, J.

Other Names:

  • Jules Renouvier

Gender: male

Date Born: 1804

Date Died: 1860

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): French (culture or style)


Overview

The twentieth-century art historian of French art Robert L. Herbert considered Renouvier an influence on his own work.


Selected Bibliography

Histoire de l’origine et des progrès de la gravure dans les Pays-Bas et en Allemagne jusqu’à la fin du quinzième siècle. Brussels: M. Hayez, 1860; and Montaiglon, Anatole de. Histoire de l’art pendant la évolution: 1789-1804, suivie d’une étude sur J.-B. Greuze. Paris, 1863.





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The twentieth-century art historian of French art Robert L. Herbert considered Renouvier an influence on his own work.

Renders, Émile

Full Name: Renders, Émile

Other Names:

  • Émile Renders

Gender: male

Date Born: 18 January 1872

Date Died: 07 April 1956

Place Born: Dixmuide, West Flanders, Flanders, Belgium

Place Died: Bruges, West Flanders, Belgium

Home Country/ies: Belgium

Career(s): art collectors and bankers (people)


Overview

Banker; art collector. Renders was born as Émile-Léon Houvenaeghel. He was adopted by the Bruges antiquarian August-Adolf Renders, receiving the family name Houvenaeghel-Renders, abridged to Renders in 1907. He married Julienne Sylvie D’Hoore (1875-1956). From 1920 onwards, Renders unscrupulously purchased a considerable collection of early Flemish paintings. Throughout his career, he collaborated with the painter and restorer Joseph van der Veken (1872-1964). In 1927, his collection was presented in the exhibition, Flemish and Belgian Art, 1300-1900, in the London Burlington House, a private art club. Georges Nicolas Marie Hulin de Loo, the distinguished professor and connoisseur of early Flemish painting, wrote the introduction to the 1927 catalog of the Renders collection, notices on each painting were provided by Édouard Michel (1873-1953). The director of the Berlin Zentralbibliothek Friedrich Winkler expressed serious doubts about the authenticity of a dozen of art works in his review, “Die flämisch-belgische Ausstellung in London.” By the end of the 1920s Renders published a number of articles in several periodicals, including The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, on the identity of Rogier van der Weyden, who in his view was the so-called Master of Flémalle. This identification, although not entirely new, went against the commonly held view according to which Rogier van der Weyden was the pupil of the Master of Flémalle. Renders stated that the works attributed to the Master of Flémalle were in fact the earlier works of Rogier van der Weyden himself. Renders harshly attacked several art historians for disagreeing with him. He further explained his theory in a two-volume study, La solution du problème Van der Weyden-Flémalle-Campin, which appeared in 1931. His theory was accepted by Max J. Friedländer and Jacques Lavalleye, but rejected by Jules Destrée, Hulin de Loo, Friedrich Winkler, Erwin Panofsky, and others. Another debate arose in the 1930s regarding the existence of Hubert van Eyck, the brother of Jan van Eyck. Renders argued in his 1933 publication, Hubert van Eyck, personnage de légende, that Hubert van Eyck was merely a legendary person. In his view, the quatrain inscribed on the exterior frames of the wings of the Ghent Altarpiece, with the names of Hubert and Jan as the makers of the artwork, was a later addition. In 1935 Renders published a follow-up monograph on the work of Jan van Eyck, again rejecting the existence of his brother Hubert, Jean van Eyck, son oeuvre, son style, son évolution et la légende d’un frère peintre. This extreme view was accepted by some art historians, including Friedländer, although with reservations, and Maurice Brockwell, and rejected by others, including Hermann Theodor Beenken and again, Winkler. In 1941, during the Second World War, Renders sold 20 paintings to Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring (1893-1946). Soon after the end of the war, part of the Renders collection was discovered in Germany. Renders attempted to reclaim his paintings, stating that the sale had taken place under duress. In 1946 ten panels from the collection returned to Brussels. The Belgian Office de Récupération économique denied Renders’ claims of ownership. In 1949-1951 Renders eventually lost a lawsuit against the Belgian State. In the meantime the debate on Hubert van Eyck continued. In 1945 Jozef Duverger defended the thesis that Hubert had been a real person, referring to the mention of his name both in the tombstone inscription and in the quatrain, Het grafschift van Hubrecht van Eyck en het quatrain van het Gentsche Lam Gods-retabel. The last publication of Renders on the question, Jean van Eyck et le polyptique; deux problèmes résolus, attracted little attention. The debate seemingly had lost its relevance. Renders died in 1956. In recent years, various aspects of the role of Renders as a collector, and his collaboration with Van der Veken, received much attention, following research on two paintings from his former collection, the so-called Madeleine Renders, and the so-called Madone Renders. Among the missing paintings of the Renders collection (in 1945) was a copy of the right wing of the Braque Triptychby Rogier van der Weyden representing Mary Magdalen (the original of which is in the Louvre); in the 1927 London exhibition catalog this copy had been attributed to Hans Memling. In 1946, this copy surfaced in Spain, in the possession of Alois Miedl (1903-?), an agent of Goering who had fled to Spain. Miedl sold the panel to a Scandinavian collector in 1966. In 2004 it returned to Belgium for technical examination at the laboratories of the Institut royal du patrimoine artistique/Koninklijk Instituut voor het Kunstpatrimonium. It appeared that Van der Veken had completely over-painted it before 1927. This so-called Madeleine Renders was shown in the 2005 exhibition, L’affaire van der Veken, in the Brussels Musée royal des Beaux-Arts, which asserted Van der Veken had “restored” a considerable number of other paintings as well. Another painting formerly in the possession of Renders (now Tournai Musée des Beaux-Arts), a Madonna and Child (school of Rogier van der Weyden), was examined at the Catholic University of Louvain (Laboratoire d’étude des oeuvres d’art de l’UCL, Labart). This painting, the so-called Madone Renders, was exhibited in the 2004-2005 exposition Fake or not Fake in the Bruges Groeninge Museum, and in the 2005 exhibition, L’affaire van der Veken, in the Brussels Musée royal des Beaux-Arts.


Selected Bibliography

“The Riddle of the Maître de Flémalle” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 54, no 315 (June 1929): 285-305; La solution du problème Van der Weyden-Flémalle-Campin. 2 vols. Bruges: Beyaert, 1931; Hubert van Eyck, personnage de légende. Paris-Brussels: G. van Oest, 1933; Jean van Eyck, son Åuvre, son style, son évolution et la légende d’un frère peintre. Bruges: C. Beyaert, 1935; The Renders Collection: 20 Primitives Acquired under Duress by Goering. Brussels, 1945; Jean van Eyck et le polyptique; deux problèmes résolus. Brussels: Librairie générale, 1950.


Sources

Early Flemish Paintings in the Renders Collection at Bruges, Exhibited at the Belgian Exhibition, Burlington House, January, 1927. With an introduction by G. Hulin de Loo and notices by Edouard Michel. London: B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1927; Winkler, Friedrich. “Die flämisch-belgische Ausstelling in London” Der Kunstwanderer 7 (1927): 221-224; Reinach, Salomon “The Riddle of the Maître de Flémalle” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 55, no 316 (July 1929): 55; Destrée, Jules. Roger de la Pasture – van der Weyden. Paris-Brussels: G. van Oest, 1930; Lavalleye, Jaques. “Le problème Maître de Flémalle – Rogier van der Weyden” Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 12,3 (1933): pp. 791-805; Winkler, Friedrich. “Der Streit um Hubert van Eyck” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 3 (1934): 283-290; Duverger, Jozef. Het grafschrift van Hubrecht van Eyck en het quatrain van het Gentsche Lam Gods-retabel. Brussels: AWLSK, 1945; Friedländer, Max J. Early Netherlandish Painting (Published under the direction of Ernest Goldschmidt) 1. The van Eycks – Petrus Christus. Leyden: A. W. Sijthoff, 1967, pp. 100-103, 105-106, 2. Rogier van der Weyden and the Master of Flémalle. Leyden: A. W. Sijthoff, 1967, pp. 53-56, 95-98; Verougstraete, H. and Van Schoute, R. “La Madone Renders et sa restauration par Joseph Van der Veken (1872-1964)” in Verougstraete, H. and Van Schoute, R. (eds.) La peinture et le laboratoire. Actes du Colloque XIII pour l’étude du dessin sous-jacent et de la technologie dans la peinture. Louvain-Paris-Sterling VA, 2001, pp. 7-28; L’affaire Van der Veken. Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels. Du 27 janvier au 20 février 2005. Brussels: Institut royal du Patrimoine artistique, 2005; Vanwijnsberghe, Dominique (ed.) avec la collaboration de Bourguignon, Catherine and Debergh, Jacques. Autour de la Madeleine Renders: Un aspect de l’histoire des collections, de la restauration et de la contrefaçon en Belgique dans la première moitié du XXe siècle. Brussels: Institut royal du Patrimoine artistique, 2008; Yeide, Nancy H. and Edsel, Robert M. (introduction), Beyond the Dreams of Avarice. The Hermann Goering Collection. Dallas: Laurel Publishing, LLC, 2009, nrs A 934-A 938; A 1204; A 1224.



Contributors: Monique Daniels


Citation

Monique Daniels. "Renders, Émile." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/renderse/.


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Banker; art collector. Renders was born as Émile-Léon Houvenaeghel. He was adopted by the Bruges antiquarian August-Adolf Renders, receiving the family name Houvenaeghel-Renders, abridged to Renders in 1907. He married Julienne Sylvie D’Hoore (187

Remington, Preston

Full Name: Remington, Preston

Gender: male

Date Born: 1897

Date Died: 1958

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): Post-Renaissance and Renaissance

Career(s): curators


Overview

Curator of Renaissance and Post-Renaissance Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Remington graduated from Harvard University, joining the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Department of Decorative Art in 1923 under Joseph Breck. He remained there the rest of his career. After Breck’s death in 1933, the department was divided into the three divisions, medieval art, under James Rorimer, Renaissance and Post-Renaissance art, under Remington, and American Art, under Joseph Downs. Remington advanced to the Vice-Directorship of the Department of Renaissance and Post-Renaissance Art. In later years, he held a notorious feud with Greek and Roman curator Dietrich von Bothmer, who began in the Museum in 1946. In the 1950s, Remington worked on the installation of the period rooms of the Museum, opened in 1954. Ill health in later years prevented his continued work as Vice Director. Remington published extensively in his Museum’s journals on objects in its collection.


Selected Bibliography

“Galleries of European Decorative Art and Period Rooms.” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 13 (November 1954): 65-136; “Signed French Chairs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.” Metropolitan Museum Studies 2 (November 1929): 65-75


Sources

Gross, Michael. Rogues’ Gallery: the Secret History of the Moguls and the Money that Made the Metropolitan Museum. New York: Broadway Books, 2009, pp.250; [obituary:] Rorimer, James. Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 16 (May 1958): 241.




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"Remington, Preston." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/remingtonp/.


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Curator of Renaissance and Post-Renaissance Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Remington graduated from Harvard University, joining the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Department of Decorative Art in 1923 under Joseph Breck. He re

Reitlinger, Gerald

Full Name: Reitlinger, Gerald

Other Names:

  • Gerald Roberts Reitlinger

Gender: male

Date Born: 02 March 1900

Date Died: 1978

Place Born: London, Greater London, England, UK

Place Died: St. Leonards, Dorset, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): economics


Overview

Scholar of the artistic taste and so-called economics of taste. Reitlinger was born to Albert Reitlinger (1845-1924), a London banker and Emma Brunner (Reitlinger). He attended the Westminster school with (Sir) Roy Forbes Harrod (1900-78), later the prominent economist. Reitlinger served briefly in the infantry of the Middlesex regiment in World War I. Afterward, he studied at Christ Church, Oxford, where the archaeologist Edward Thurlow Leeds (1877-1955) of the Ashmolean Museum suggested he study cultural topics. Afterward he studied art at the Slade School and Westminster Art School in the 1920s and early 1930s intent on being an artist. His paintings were exhibited during this time in London. Between 1927-1929 he also edited the art journal Drawing and Design, a journal “devoted to art as a national asset.” After his father’s death in 1924, Reitlinger and his brother were left the bulk of the large family estate, allowing both to be independently wealthy.  In the late 1920s he travelled to New York and Tahiti as inspiration for his painting career.  He participated in two excavations, the Field Museum (Chicago)-sponsored one at Kish (modern Iraq) in 1930-1931, and a second Oxford one he co-directed with David Talbot Rice at Hira in 1932. He appears in Robert Byron’s account of that excursion (The Station, 1928) as the character “Reinecker”. From these he built his collection of Syrian and Persian pottery of the Timurid, Isnik, and Safavid periods. Reitlinger wrote several non-fiction works during this time, A Tower of Skulls, in 1932, on his travels to Armenia and the middle east, and South of the Clouds on Yunan province, China, in 1939. The same year he married Dorothy Jardas (1900?-1951).  He served in again in World War II and in the gunnery battery and lectured to the troops. He was discharged from service because of ill-health. . After a divorce in 1939,  he remarried a second time to an independently wealthy widow, Eileen Anne Graham Bell, (born, Eileen Bilbrough), (1909-2001), working as a literary agent. After the war he began writing articles for art journals and articles on art for newspapers. The prestige and the art world luster allow Reitlinger tohold evening parties during these years, entertaining the fashionable of post-war Britain. He turned to writing about Nazi Germany and issues of the Holocaust, beginning with The Final Solution in 1953 and The SS: Alibi of a Nation in 1956. In 1960, Reitlinger published the first volume of his examination of the art market in eighteenth century France, The Economics of Taste, in part through his interest and experience of art collecting. Reitlinger was an avid and astute collector of Asian and Islamic pottery, notably Japanese Kakiemon ware, and seventeenth-century Chinese ceramics. His large porcelain collection was damaged by fire shortly before his death. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage at a House Nursing Home in St. Leonards, Sussex. The collection was willed to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford where it forms the Gerald Reitlinger Gallery.

Reitlinger was neither a trained art historian nor economist.  His economic treatment of the history of modern art is really a book on taste. Although the interest in art economics can rightly be traced from his groundbreaking books, they are not filled with market data like contemporary art market analysis. Instead, Reitlinger disparages the degradation of taste in the modern era, which he attributed to a redistribution of wealth in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He forecasted that in the future, only governments would be able to patronize artists due to inflated prominence of artistic personalities.


Selected Bibliography

The Economics of Taste. 3 vols. London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1961-70, vol. 1 The Rise and Fall of Picture Prices, 1760-1960, volume. 2. The Rise and Fall of Objets d’art Prices Since 1750, volume. 3. The Art Market in the 1960’s; The Final Solution: the Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945. New York: Beechhurst Press, 1953; The House Built on Sand; the Conflicts of German Policy in Russia, 1939-1945. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson [1960; South of the Clouds: a Winter Ride through Yün-nan. London: Faber & Faber, 1939; The SS, Alibi of a Nation, 1922-1945. London, Heinemann, 1956; A Tower of Skulls: a Journey through Persia and Turkish Armenia. London: Duckworth, 1932.


Sources

Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, p. 89 cited; Lord Bullock. “Gerald Reitlinger: a Portrait.” in Eastern Ceramics and Other Works of Art from the Collection of Gerald Reitlinger: Catalogue of the Memorial Exhibition. Oxford: Ashmolean Museum ; London: Sotheby Parke Bernet, 1981, pp. 9-11; Byron, Robert. The Station, Athos: Treasures and Men. New York: Knopf, 1928; Powell, Anthony. Messengers of Day. London: Heineman, 1978, pp.171-181; [obituaries and addenda:] “Mr Gerald Reitlinger.” The Times [London], March 11, 1978, p. 14; Powell, Anthony. “Mr Gerald Reitlinger .” The Times (London) March 17, 1978,; p. 20; D. P. [Dilys Powell?] “Mr Gerald Reitlinger.” The Times (London) March 21, 1978, p. 16; David A. Berry, “Reitlinger, Gerald Roberts (1900-1978).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004.



Contributors: Lee Sorensen


Citation

Lee Sorensen. "Reitlinger, Gerald." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/reitlingerg/.


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Scholar of the artistic taste and so-called economics of taste. Reitlinger was born to Albert Reitlinger (1845-1924), a London banker and Emma Brunner (Reitlinger). He attended the Westminster school with (Sir) Roy Forbes Harrod (1900-78), later t

Reisner, George Andrew

Full Name: Reisner, George Andrew

Gender: male

Date Born: 1867

Date Died: 1942

Place Born: Indianapolis, Marion, IN, USA

Place Died: Giza, Egypt

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): Egyptian (ancient) and Egyptology

Career(s): curators


Overview

Egyptologist; director of the joint Museum of Fine Arts of Boston and Harvard University Egyptian excavations; curator of Egyptian art at Boston (1910-1942). Reisner was born to George Andrew Reisner and Mary Elizabeth Mason (Reisner). His father’s forebears had been German immigrants. Reisner was raised in Indiana and attended Harvard University graduating with an A. B., in 1889 and an A. M. in 1891. At Harvard he received a study grant to research cuneiform at the University in Göttingené; he studied additionally under the Egyptologist Adolf Erman (1854-1937) in Berlin. In 1892 he married Mary Putnam Bronson. Reisner received his Ph. D., in 1893 writing a dissertation on Semitic languages. In 1895 he was appointed an assistant in Egyptology the Berlin Museum for a year. While in Berlin, he published a selection of cuneiform hymns from the Greek era (1896). He returned to the United States as an instructor at Harvard in 1897. His association with the museum in Cairo began with a study of canopic jars from that museum, which appeared as an important article for the Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache in 1899. The same year Reisner convinced Phoebe Hearst (1842-1919), the widow of the late California senator George Hearst (1820-1891) to fund the Hearst Expedition to Egypt, Reisner being appointed director as well as Hearst Lecturer in Egyptology at the University of California, Berkeley. With little formal archaeological experience, Reisner developed his own method of documentation. His research on the temple documents of Telloh appeared in 1901. In 1902 the excavation moved to the pyramids at Giza, which became his life work. Hearst ceased funding the excavations in 1904. Reisner published a facsimile of the medical papyrus in 1905 which had been discovered during the digs, the so-called Hearst Medical Papyri, today at UC Berkeley. The same year Reisner joined the faculty at Harvard as an assistant professor. At Harvard, he lead the joint Harvard/Museum of Fine Arts, Boston digs in the Sudan and the royal cemeteries in Giza, a continuation of the Hearst expeditions. Reisner wrote two sections for the important catalogue génèral of the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. The first, Amulets, appeared in 1907. He also directed Havard’s excavations of Samaria in Palestine, 1908-1910. In 1910, Reisner was appointed curator of Egyptian Art at the Museum in Boston, a position vacated by Albert M. Lythgoe, the department’s founder and Reisner’s assistant at Harvard/Boston digs. His second part of the Egyptian catalog, Models of Ships and Boats, was published in 1913. That year he also wrote an article explaining the identity of the great sphinx, hypothesizing that the statue was of king Chephren (Khephren), 2520-2494 B.C., builder of the second pyramid. At the outbreak of World War I in Europe, Reizner, who had been associated with German scholars all his life, deliberated long about which side to support, before siding with him native country. In 1914 he became professor of Egyptology at Harvard. In 1925, he announced among his greatest discovery, the alabaster sarcophagus of Queen Hetepheres, mother of Cheops. A 1931 paper he read described the Egyptian dynasties so vividly that it was covered in the London Times. Reisner’s eyesight failed in his later years; his daughter, Mary B. Reisner, who had learned Egyptian under him at the digs, assisted him in his final articles. His students, either at Harvard or under him at his excavations, included Clarence Stanley Fisher (1876-1941), credited with spreading Reisner’s documentary technique to younger archaeologists, Cecil Mallaby Firth (1878-1931), and Herbert Eustis Winlock. Reisner continued to direct the excavations in Egypt despite declining health. He died, almost idyllically, in his sleep at the Giza site, in the shadow of the great Pyramid. The Harvard/Boston expeditions concluded immediately after World War II, his directorship assumed by W. Stevenson Smith. A scholar slow to publish, many of his archaeological findings appeared only after his death, including The Tomb of Hetep-heres in 1955, published by Smith, and Semna Kumna, 1960. Reisner’s career as an Egyptian archaeologist was part of the great era of American museum-sponsored expeditions. During this same period Winlock led digs for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Henry Breasted, Jr. for the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. As an archaeologist during the period when excavation was becoming more scientific, Reisner devised his own method of documentation, more elaborate than than of Sir Flinders Petrie (1853-1942). His method became the most methodical used in Egyptian excavations. He figures as among the most important archaeologists of the twentieth century. His students at his digs knew him as “Papa George.” Reisner’s humor and knowledge were renowned. When the archaeologist opened the tomb of Queen Hetepheres and found it empty (destroyed by robbers centuries earlier), he reportedly replied to those accompanying him, “I regret Queen Hetepheres is not receiving…”.


Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] A Review of the Grammatical Development of the Noun-Endings in Assyro-Babylonian. Harvard University, 1893; A History of the Giza Necropolis. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1942-55 [volume 2 by W. Stevenson Smith]; Amulets. Cairo: Institut français d’archéologie orientale, 1907; The Development of the Egyptian Tomb Down to the Accession of Cheops. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936; The Egyptian Conception of Immortality. Boston: New York, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1912; Excavations at Kerma [etc.]. Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum of Harvard University, 1923; Harvard Excavations at Samaria, 1908-1910. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1924; Mycerinus, the Temples of the Third Pyramid at Giza. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931; [Hearst Egyptian Expedition, University of California, Berkeley]. and Mace, A. C., and Lythgoe, Albert M., and Dunham, Dows. The Early Dynastic Cemeteries of Naga-ed-Dêr. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1908 ff.


Sources

mentioned, Tomkins, Calvin. Merchants and Masterpieces: The Story of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2nd. ed. New York: Henry Holt, 1989, p. 136; Bull, Ludlow, and Albright, F. W. “George Andrew Reisner, 1867-1942.” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 87 (October 1942): 8-10; Dunham, Dows. “George Andrew Reisner.” American Journal of Archaeology 46, no. 3 (July 1942): 410-412; “Dr. G. A. Reisner, Egyptologist, 74, Savant, in Charge of Harvard Excavations Since 1905, Dies at Pyramids of Gizeh.” New York Times June 8, 1942, p. 15




Citation

"Reisner, George Andrew." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/reisnerg/.


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Egyptologist; director of the joint Museum of Fine Arts of Boston and Harvard University Egyptian excavations; curator of Egyptian art at Boston (1910-1942). Reisner was born to George Andrew Reisner and Mary Elizabeth Mason (Reisner). His father’

Reinach, Salomon

Full Name: Reinach, Salomon

Other Names:

  • Salomon Reinach

Gender: male

Date Born: 29 August 1858

Date Died: 04 November 1932

Place Born: Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Île-de-France, France

Place Died: Boulogne, Paris, France

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): archaeology and Classical


Overview

Classical art historian and archaeologist; co-founder of the École du Louvre; author of a early survey of art history translated into English. Reinach was the middle son of Hermann Reinach and his wife, Julie Budding. The elder Reinach, an extremely wealthy Jewish banker from Frankfurt am Main, had immigrated to France in the 1840s. The Reinachs lived in a large villa in Saint-Germain-en-Laye (Paris suburbs) where Salomon was privately tutored. He attended the École normale supérieure, graduating with first class distinctions, studying under Michel Béal, the eminent French semantics scholar. Reinach’s interest in languages resulted in a life-long devotion to archaeology. He entered the French school at Athens in 1879 and between 1880-82 participated in the archaeological digs with Edmond Pottier (1855-1934) and Alphonse Veyries (1858-1882) in Aeolia. In 1881 Reinach helped discover the Aeolian city state of Nimrud Kalassi. He joined the Musée des Antiquités nationales in Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1886 as an assistant. Part of his experiences in archaeological field work were published in 1887 as La nécropole de Myrina. His pedagogic ideas of museology date from his experiences at Musée des Antiquités at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, which he joined in 1887. In 1893 he became conservateur (curator, essentially vice-director) of the museum. During these same years he taught 1890-92 and 1895-1918 at the École du Louvre, which he helped found. Around 1900, he met the aspiring papyrologist, Seymour de Ricci, who’s career Reinach furthered, introducing him to the important world of French society scholarship. From 1894 onward he was a member of the French School in Athens (Ecole Francaise d’Athènes). In 1894, too, he met Bernard Berenson whose connoisseurship he so admired that he translated some of Berenson’s articles into French. Reinach led various projects to publish corpora of objects, the earliest being Greek and Roman statuary, Repertoire de la statuaire gécque et romaine (issued between 1897-1898). Another corpus, Répertoire des vases points grecs et etrusques, appeared in 1900. Reinach was named Professeur de numismatiqueam at the Collège de France and the Directeur propriétaire of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts. Among his popular courses at the École du Louvre were his “Antiquités Nationales,” which succeeded in getting him named to a full professorship in 1902. His inaugural lectures for the 1902-1903 focused on a broad history of art centered around the Greek tradition. Reinach was appointed director of Musée des Antiquités at Saint-Germain-en-Layethe same year (1902). He was appointed editor of the Revue archéologique in 1903, receiving the title officer of the Legion of Honor the same year. A third catalog of objects, Répertoire de peintures du moyen âge et de la Renaissance 1280-1580, began in 1905. In 1904, Reinach’s École du Louvre lectures were published as a survey of art history entitled, Apollo: histoire générale des arts. It appeared in English the same year as The Story of Art throughout the Ages. The textbook was one of the first heavily illustrated art surveys and went through numerous editions. Between 1905-10 he lectured in general art history at the École As an ancientist, he was a member of the Société des antiquaires de France. Reinach died in 1932 and is buried in the Cimetière de Montmartre, Paris. His younger brother, Théodore, (1860-1928), was also a classical scholar, authority on semitic coins and owner of the Gazette des beaux-arts, 1905-1928. His elder brother, Joseph (1856-1921), a political writer involved in the Dreyfus Affair. Reinach’s art history was deeply influenced by ethnology and the study of the sacred symbolic function of culture. As an art history survey, Apollo focused on what he called “Greek miracle,” tracing its antecedents and its influence through the Renaissance, and avoiding the medieval age. Berenson correctly observed that Reinach in fact had little real feeling for art (Samuels). Over his career, Reinach developed a specialty in gems and was ranked with Adolf Furtwängler in expertise on the subject. His leadership at the Musée des Antiquités nationales made it the principal museum for Celtic and Roman artifacts of France. A strong proponent of Jewish culture and rights, he was vice president of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, a cofounder of the organization helping to resettle Russian Jews, the Jewish Colonization Association, and an active member of the Societé des Études Juives, founded in 1880.


Selected Bibliography

[complete bibliography:] Bibliographie de Salomon Reinach. Paris: Société d’édition Les Belles-lettres, 1936; Catalogue du Musée impérial d’antiquités. Constantinople: Le Musée, 1882; Traité d’épigraphie grecque. Paris: E. Leroux, 1885; épertoire de reliefs grecs et romains. 3 vols. Paris: E. Leroux, 1909-12; and Tolstoi, Ivan, and Kondakov, N. P. Antiquités de la Russie méridionale. Paris: E. Leroux, 1891; Manuel de philologie classique. 2 vols. Paris: Hachette, 1883-84; Cultes, mythes et religions. 3 vols. Paris: E. Leroux, 1905-08, English: Cults, Myths and Religions. London: D. Nutt, 1912; Apollo: histoire générale des arts plastiques professée à l’École du Louvre. Paris: Librairie Hachette et Cie, 1904, English: The Story of Art throughout the Ages, an Illustrated Record. Florence Simmonds, trans. New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1904, [subsequent editions retained the first word “Apollo” in the title]; Amalthée; mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire. 3 vols. Paris: E. Leroux, 1930-31; Catalogue sommaire du Musée des antiquités nationales au château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Paris: Librairies-imprimeries éunies, 1906; épertoire de la statuaire grecque et romaine. 4 vols. Paris: E. Leroux, 1897-1910; Recueil de têtes antiques idéales ou idéalisées. Paris: Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1903; épertoire de la statuarie grecque et romaine. 5 vols in 7. Paris: E. Leroux, 1897-1924; épertoire des vases peints grecs et étrusques. 2 vols. Paris: E. Leroux, 1899-1900; and Reinach, Adolphe. Recueil Milliet: textes grecs et latins relatifs á l’histoire de la peinture ancienne. Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1921; and Pottier, Eduard, and Veyries, Alphonse. La nécropole de Myrina: recherches archéologiques exécutées au nom et aux frais de l’École française d’Athènes. Paris: E. Thorin, 1887.


Sources

Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, pp. 224-225, 473-474; Brinke, Margit. “Reinach, Salomon.” Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon 7 (1994): 1530-1532; Rodrigue, Aron. “Totems, Taboos, and Jews: Salomon Reinach and the Politics of Scholarship in Fin-de-Siècle France.”. Jewish Social Studies 10 (Winter 2004): 1-19; Duchêne, Hervè. “Preface.” Reinach, Salomon. Cultes, Mythes et Religions. Paris: R. Laffont, 1996, pp. v-lxxxi; Samuels, Ernest. Bernard Berenson: the Making of a Connoisseur. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1979, p. 207.



Contributors: Lee Sorensen


Citation

Lee Sorensen. "Reinach, Salomon." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/reinachs/.


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Classical art historian and archaeologist; co-founder of the École du Louvre; author of a early survey of art history translated into English. Reinach was the middle son of Hermann Reinach and his wife, Julie Budding. The elder Reinach, an extreme

Reidemeister, Leopold

Full Name: Reidemeister, Leopold

Other Names:

  • Leopold Macke Wolfgang Reidemeister

Gender: male

Date Born: 1900

Date Died: 1987

Place Born: Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, Germany

Place Died: Berlin, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): Modern (style or period)


Overview

Modernist art historian and leading reconstructionist figure in post-war German art museums. Reidemeister fought as a soldier in World War I in Germany. After his return in 1918, he studied architecture at the Technischen Hochschule in Braunschweig, moving the following year to the University of Berlin. To fund his studies, Reidemeister worked as an assistant in the Galerie Van Diemen, Berlin, where he came into contact with many of the artists, particularly Die Brücke artists of Expressionism. He joined the East Asian department of the Nationalgalerie (National Gallery) in 1924, eventually rising to head curator. He studied Chinese and traveled to Asia, culminating in a major exhibition on Chinese Art in 1929 comprising loans from around the world. Follow World War II, Reidemeister became director of the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne in 1945. The museum building had been badly destroyed in the war. Reidemeister was charged with reconstructing the museum and its collection. After the re-establishment of the museum, Reidemeister returned to Berlin where, following the resignation of Paul O. Rave in 1950 Reidemeister became Director of the National Gallery in the West. He was named General Director of the Staatlichen Museens, 1957, which he held until 1965. His acquisitions for the National Gallery reflected his own taste for classic modernism; he also bought art compensating for many modernist losses from the Nazi campaign of confiscation modern art. During the 1960s and 70s he edited and curated exhibitions for the German Expressionist artists whom he knew during his early years, including numerous volumes for the Brücke Museum Archives journal.


Selected Bibliography

[complete bibliography:] Roters, Eberhard, ed. Leopold Reidemeister zum Gedenken. Berlin: Das Museum, 1988, pp. 97-104; Auf den Spuren der Maler der Ile de France: topographische Beiträge zur Geschichte der französischen Landschaftsmalerei von Corot bis zu den Fauves. Berlin: Propyläen Verlag, 1963; edited. Pechstein, Max. Erinnerungen. Wiesbaden: Limes Verlag, 1960; Karl Schmidt-Rottluff: das graphische Werk zum 90. Geburtstag des Künstlers. Berlin: Brücke-Museum, 1974; Karl Schmidt-Rottluff; 30 Aquarelle der sechziger Jahre aus dem Besitz des Künstlers. Berlin: Brücke-Museum, 1970; 1920-1970: 50 Jahre Galerie Nierendorf Ruckblick Documentation Jubilaumsaustellung. Berlin: Nieredorf Gallery, 1970.


Sources

Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 319-21.




Citation

"Reidemeister, Leopold." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/reidemeisterl/.


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Modernist art historian and leading reconstructionist figure in post-war German art museums. Reidemeister fought as a soldier in World War I in Germany. After his return in 1918, he studied architecture at the Technischen Hochschule in Braunschwei