Art Historians

Praschniker, Camillo

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Praschniker, Camillo

Gender: male

Date Born: 1884

Date Died: 1949

Place Born: Vienna, Vienna state, Austria

Place Died: Vienna, Vienna state, Austria

Home Country/ies: Austria

Subject Area(s): Ancient Greek (culture or style), Antique, the, Classical, Greek sculpture styles, and sculpture (visual works)

Overview

Specialist in ancient Greek art and sculpture. Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Vienna (1919-1923), then Professor at the German University of Prague (1923-1930) and Vienna (1930-1949). Director of the Austrian Archaeological Institute 1935-1938.

Selected Bibliography

Parthenonstudien, 1928;Bäderbezirk von Virunum, 1947.

Sources

Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 224-225.

Poynter, Edward John, Sir

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Poynter, Edward John, Sir

Gender: male

Date Born: 1836

Date Died: 1919

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

Place Died: Kensington, Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): museums (institutions)

Career(s): directors (administrators) and museum directors

Overview

Director, National Gallery, 1894-1905 and artist. Poynter was the son of the architect Ambrose Poynter (1796-1886) and Emma Forster (Poynter) (1800-1848), the latter the granddaughter of sculptor Thomas Banks (1735-1805). Poynter studied at Westminster School, Brighton College, and Ipswich grammar school, between 1847-52, inclusively. He further studied under Thomas Shotter Boys and Leigh’s academy. In the winter of 1853 he traveled to Rome where he met the painter Frederic Leighton (1830-1896) and was greatly impressed by the classicizing genre. He joined the studio of Charles Gleyre (1806-1874) in Paris in 1856 and later the éole des Beaux-Arts. There he met James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), the author and illustrator George Du Maurier (1834-1896) (in whose novel, Trilby, 1894, Poynter appears), Thomas R. Lamont (1826-1898), and Thomas Armstrong (1832-1911). He returned to London in1860, working for a glassworks firm. Poynter married Agnes Macdonald (1843-1906) in 1866, a beautiful and socially aspiring woman who became the aunt of Rudyard Kipling and the sister-in-law of the artist Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898). Poynter also worked illustrating magazines, including London Society, and books, such as the Dalziel brothers’ popular Bible Gallery (1880). Poynter began exhibiting Orientalist paintings at the Royal Academy in 1861. He traveled to Venice in 1868 to study mosaics for a decoration and, in 1869, was made a member of the Royal Academy. As such he worked on designs the frieze of the Royal Albert Hall and the St. George mosaic in the British houses of parliament, both of that same year. Poynter was appointed the first Slade professor at University College, London in 1871. His lectures were published in 1879 as Ten Lectures on Art. Intensely impressed with French methods of artistic pedagogy, including the importance of drawing, Poynter made many reforms and saw to it at his resignation in 1875 that his successor was the French artist Alphonse Legros (1837-1911). That year Poynter was appointed the director and principal of the National Art Training School at South Kensington. Poynter again took a reformist stance to the school, publishing of a series of art history textbooks. During these years he also executed many important public painting projects for which he is still principally remembered. His Visit to Aesculapius (1880, Tate Gallery), and The Visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon (1890, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney) were among these. In 1894 he was appointed director of the National Gallery, London, succeeding Frederic William Burton, beating out Charles Fairfax Murray and Charles L. Eastlake for the position. Poynter’s acquisitions during his years as director included The Vision of St. Eustace by Pisanello, Agony in the Garden by Mantegna, Portrait of a Man by Titian and the Rembrandt portraits of Jacob Trip and his wife, and works by Lorenzo Monaco, Zurbaran, and Goya. Unlike his predecessor, Poynter’s acquisitions were performed in concert with the Board of Trustees. In 1896 he was knighted and then elected president of the Royal Academy, succeeding John Everett Millais (1829-1896). Poynter was instrumental in the installation of objects in the National Gallery of British Art (later the Tate Gallery) in 1897. He retired from National Gallery in 1905 (succeeded by Charles Holroyd), retaining the Academy directorship until 1918. His health failing, Poynter sold his extensive collection of master drawings in 1918. He died at his house and studio in Kensington (London) and is buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral, London. His nephew was the director of the Ashmolean Museum, Charles F. Bell. Though primarily remembered as an academic artist, Poynter’s contribution to art history is significant. At the National Gallery, he issued the first complete illustrated catalog of the collection in 1899. As an artist he was frequently criticized by modernists as the embodiment of the stilted “Victorian Olympian,” however, his work in art education and art-historical survey texts became the model for the next generation. A cosmopolitan artist, he did not shrink from portrayal of the nude or works that glorified its sensual qualities, even during a time when this was not popular.

Selected Bibliography

edited, The National Gallery. 3 vols. London/New York: Cassell, 1899-1900; Ten Lectures on Art. London: Chapman & Hall, 1879; The National Gallery of British Art (Millbank) Illustrated Catalogue. London/New York: Cassell and Co., 1902; Illustrated Text-books of Art Education [series:] and Head, Percy R. Classic and Italian Painting. London: S. Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1880; and Buxton, Henry Wilmot. German, Flemish and Dutch Painting. London: S. Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1881; and Smith, Thomas Roger. Architecture, Gothic and Renaissance. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1880;[drawings collection sale:] Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge. Catalogue of the Superb Collection of Drawings by Old Masters, the Property of Sir Edward J. Poynter. London: Dryden press, 1918.

Sources

Inglis, Alison. “Sir Edward John Poynter (1836-1919).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; Connor, P. “‘Wedding Archaeology to Art’: Poynter’s Israel in Egypt.” in, Macready, Sarah, and Thompson, F. H., eds. Influences in Victorian Art and Architecture. London: Society of Antiquaries, 1985, pp.112-20; Inglis, Alison. “Sir Edward Poynter and the Earl of Wharncliffe’s Billiard Room.” Apollo 126 (1987): 249-55; Kestner, Joseph. “Poynter and Leighton as Aestheticians: the Ten Lectures and Addresses.” Journal of Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic Studies 2 no. 1 (1989): 108-20; Smith, Alison. The Victorian Nude: Sexuality, Morality and Art. Manchester/New York: Manchester University Press/St. Martin’s Press, 1996; M. Liversidge and C. Edwards, eds., Imagining Rome: British artists and Rome in the nineteenth century. London: Merrell Holberton, 1996; Arscott, C. “Poynter and the Arty.” in, Prettejohn, Elizabeth, ed. After the Pre-Raphaelites: Art and Aestheticism in Victorian England. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1999, pp. 135-51; Smith, Alision. ed., Exposed: the Victorian Nude. London: Tate Publishing, 2001; Freeman, Julian. Life at Arm’s Length: Sir Edward Poynter 1836-1919: a Pupil at Brighton College from 1849-1850. Brighton, UK: Brighton College, 1995. [depicted] Trilby: a Novel. New York: Harper & Bros., 1894. [obituaries:] “Death of Sir E. Poynter. A Great Victorian.” The Times (London), July 28, 1919, p. 16.

Powell, Nicolas

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Powell, Nicolas

Other Names:

Caryll Nicolas Peter Powell

Gender: male

Date Born: 1920

Date Died: 1986

Place Born: Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa

Home Country/ies: South Africa

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

Career(s): art historians

Overview

Fuseli and baroque architecture scholar; writer. Powell’s parents were Owen Price Powell and Nora Webb (Powell). His father worked as a mining engineer in South Africa. The younger Powell graduated from the Felsted (boarding) School, Essex, attending the university in Strasburg, Germany for a year, 1937-1938, before Peterhouse, Cambridge University, where he graduated in 1941. During World War II, he served with the Marine Commandos, rising to lieutenant. He was wounded in Tobru, taken prisoner in Italy in 1942 and freed by the Allies in 1943. He participated (and was wounded again) during the Normandy invasion. For his service, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order. Powell was awarded an M.A. from Cambridge in 1945. He worked in various capacities for British [arts] Council, London, first at the home office, 1949-1951. During this time he wrote the catalog on Henry Fuseli exhibition in 1951. Powell published his catalog of Fuseli drawings the following year. He was appointed second secretary to the British embassy in Bonn, West Germany in 1954, transferring to Cologne in 1959 and London,1962-1968. At the suggestion of former Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum and drawings expert Karl Theodore Parker, Powell undertook a volume on Fuseli’s “The Nightmare” for the Art in Context series, the brainchild of Allen Lane (1902-1970) to document a single work of art. The book was completed during his appointment to the bureau in Vienna (1968-1975). His writing interests in later years turned toward that city and the Jugendstil. He produced broader but less penetrating works such as The Sacred Spring: the Arts in Vienna, 1898-1918. Powell’s final assignment was in Amsterdam, 1975-1980. He appears in the book by Hilary St. George Saunders (1898-1951), The Green Beret, 1949.

Selected Bibliography

Fuseli: Catalogue of an Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings. London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1950; The Drawings of Henry Fuseli. London: Faber and Faber, 1951; From Baroque to Rococo: an Introduction to Austrian and German Architecture from 1580 to 1790. New York: Praeger, 1959; Fuseli: The Nightmare. New York: Viking Press, 1973; The Sacred Spring: the Arts in Vienna, 1898-1918. Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1974.

Sources

[jacket flap] Fuseli: The Nightmare. New York: Viking Press, 1973; “Obituary of Mr C N P Powell (163) /SCT.” Times (London) June 26, 1986.

Powell, Earl Alexander, III

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Powell, Earl Alexander, III

Other Names:

Earl Powell III

Gender: male

Date Born: 1943

Place Born: Spartanburg, SC, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Overview

Director of the National Gallery of Art, Washgington, D. C., 1992-. Powell’s parents were Earl Alexander Powell II and Elizabeth Duckworth (Powell). Powell entered Williams College with the intent of pursuing a medical career, but after barely passing introductory chemistry, he switched to history and art history, graduating with honors in 1966, under legendary art professors S. Lane Faison, Jr., Whitney Stoddard an William H. Pierson, Jr. He served as an officer in the U.S. Navy from 1966 to 1969, remaining in the Naval Reserve until 1980. After discharge from the service, he Powell considered architecture school Faison urged him to continued in art history. He entered Harvard University, receiving an A. M. from Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum in 1970. He married Nancy Landry in 1971. Powell taught as a teaching fellow in fine arts at Harvard while pursuing his Ph.D., beginning in 1970. His dissertation was accepted in 1974 on the topic of Thomas Cole. The same year he joined the University of Texas at Austin as assistant professor of the history of art. In 1976 he joined the curatorial staff at the National Gallery, rising to executive curator in 1979 under the directory, J. Carter Brown. Ongoing troubles at the Los Angeles County Museum of art resulted in the forced retirement of Kenneth Donahue in 1979; the LACMA board hired Powell in 1980 to lead its museum as director. Powell transformed the Museum, both the administrative infighting and its quality of exhibitions and collections to a museum of international stature (Art in America). Budget was tripled and attendance doubled with two major building initiatives completed. Powell was responsible for luring talent to the museum, including Philip Conisbee as curator of French painting. Powell wrote a monograph on Thomas Cole in 1990. At the retirement of Brown, Powell was chosen to lead the National Gallery of Art in Washgington, D. C. in 1992, whose other finalists were John Walsh, Jr., of the Getty. He was succeeded at LACMA by Michael Shapiro. Powell brought curtators from LACMA, notably Conisbee, with him to Washington. He was awarded an honorary doctorate of fine arts from Williams in 1993. Powell’s concentration was in 19th- and 20th-century European and American Art. It is as an adept arts administrator that Powell has made his reputation. Powell was embroiled in controversy when he delayed in 1994 the public acknowledgement that the Museum’s Poussin “Madonna on the Steps” was no longer thought by scholars to be by the master. The following year Powell was forced to run the important Vermeer show with seldom-lent paintings by the artist during the government shutdown of buildings because of a congressional budget dispute.

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] English Influences in the Art of Thomas Cole (1801-1848). Harvard University, 1974; “Maniere Dawson’s Woman in Brown.” Arts Magazine (May 1977): 122-123; “Thomas Cole and the American Landscape Tradition: The Naturalist Controversy.” Arts Magazine (February 1978): 114-124. “Thomas Cole and the American Landscape Tradition: Associationism.” Arts Magazine (April 1978): 113-117; Thomas Cole. New York: Abrams, 1990.

Sources

“Earl A. Powell III.” U.S. Commission on Fine Arts [website] http://www.cfa.gov/about/bios/powell; CV [Earl Powell III]. National Gallery of Art [website] http://www.nga.gov/press/2002/releases/powell/pr_club/cv.shtm; Dobrzynski, Judith H. “An Art Lover Who Awakened a Generation.” New York Times October 28, 1997, p. E1; “Truth in Labeling; The National Gallery should acknowledge that its Poussin is a phony.” Washing Post November 13, 1994, p. C8;

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

Pouncey, Philip

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Pouncey, Philip

Other Names:

Philip Michael Rivers Pouncey

Gender: male

Date Born: 1910

Date Died: 1990

Place Born: Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, England, UK

Place Died: Kensington, Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): drawings (visual works) and Italian (culture or style)

Career(s): curators

Overview

Curator and historian of Italian drawings. Pouncy was the son of Reverend George Ernest Pouncey, a banker who had taken clerical vows, Madeline Mary Roberts (Pouncy). He attended Marlborough College and Queens’ College, Cambridge. After viewing the 1930 “Italian Art, 1200-1900” exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, he decided to pursue art after college. He graduated in1931 and volunteered at the Fitzwilliam Museum from 1931-1933, making short trips to Italy in between. He was appointed as an assistant keeper in the National Gallery in London in 1934, where he remained until 1939. In 1937 he married Myril Gros, the daughter of a French army officer. He wrote the catalogs for the fourteenth-century Italian paintings, all published after he left the Gallery. In 1939 he move with the objects from the National Gallery to safekeeping in the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, Wales. At Aberystwyth his duties included editing the existing catalog of early Italian paintings, and supervising the management of the National Gallery collection, which was transferred from London during World War II. While working in Aberystwyth, Pouncey was closely associated with the assistant curator of the Print Room for the British Museum, Hugh Popham. The prints from this collection had also been moved to Aberystwyth. Popham, Johannes Wilde and Frederick Antal who were also assigned to Aberystwyth, would discuss the collection with Pouncey. He completed his war service working for the Intelligence Unit of the Foreign Office (Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park). After the war, his familiarity with the Print collection at the British Museum, led to an appointment there, collaborating with Popham (officially now) on cataloging the Italian drawings. These volumes appeared in 1950, 1962 (in collaboration with John Arthur Gere) and in 1983. Pouncy was named deputy keeper in 1954, however the keepership was never offered. In 1966 he joined Sothebys as a director while continuing to work on his catalogs. His only monograph, a 15-page Italian essay on Lorenzo Lotto’s drawings, Lotto disegnatore,1965, described the relationship between Lotto’s paintings and his drawings. From 1966 until his retirement in 1983, Pouncey served as a director at Sotheby’s, and as an advisor to the Uffizi, Louvre, Fitzwilliam, and Victoria and Albert Museums. In 1975 Pouncey was elected a fellow of the British Academy and an honorary keeper of Italian drawings of the British Museum. A loan exhibition of his (re)attributions was held on his 75th birthday at the Museum. A daughter, Francoise, married Marco Chiarini, director of the Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti). Pouncey was greatly influenced by the classic Crowe and Cavalcaselle History of Italian Renaissance Art, whose own approach was similarly untheoretical and connoisseurship based. His review of the 1964 Italian edition of Bernard Berenson‘s The Drawings of the Florentine Painters remains part of his significant writings.

Selected Bibliography

Italian Drawings in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum. 3 vols. in 7. London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1950-1983, specifically, vols 1 & 2 Italian Drawings in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum;
and Popham, A. E. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries; vols 3 & 4, Italian Drawings in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum;
and Gere, J. A. Raphael and his Circle; 5 & 6, Italian Drawings in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum;
[only Popham] Artists Working in Parma in the Sixteenth Century, Italian Drawings in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum;
vol 7 [Wilde, Johannes] Michelangelo and his Studio; vols 8 & 9, Italian Drawings in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum;
and Gere, J. A., and Wood, Rosalind. Artists Working in Rome, c. 1550 to c. 1640; “Review of I disegni dei pittori fiorentini, by Bernard Berenson.” Master Drawings 2, no. 3 (1964): 278-93.

Sources

The Dictionary of Art; Gere, J. A. “Pouncey, Philip Michael Rivers (1910-1990).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

Poulsen, Frederik

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Poulsen, Frederik

Other Names:

Poul Frederik Sigfred Poulsen

Gender: male

Date Born: 1876

Date Died: 1950

Place Born: Dalsgaard, Denmark

Home Country/ies: Denmark

Subject Area(s): archaeology

Overview

Archaeologist. museum director and specialist in classical iconography. Poulsen studied at the university in Göttingen under Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1848-1931). He moved to Munich were he equally impressed Adolf Furtwängler. Between 1905-7 he studied under the auspices of the l’Ecole Française d’Athèness, concentrating on pottery from the Dipylon. Poulsen accepted the position of assistant at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen in 1910. Using colored drawings of Etruscan tomb paintings originally commissioned by the industrialist Carl C. H. Jacobsen (1842-1914) the 1890s, Poulsen authored Etruscan Tomb Paintings in 1922. He began publishing on classical portraiture with his Greek and Roman Portraits in English Country Homes of 1923. He was appointed director of the Glyptotek in 1926. In 1931 his major work on classical iconography, Iconographic Studies in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek was published. His participation in excavations included those at Delphi and Kalydon, the latter resulting in the publication Das Heroon von Kalydon, 1934, with Konstantinos Rhomaios (b. 1874) and the architect Ejnar Dyggve (1887-1961). His general catalog of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek of 1940 remains a source of scholarship for the works in that museum.

Selected Bibliography

and Dyggve, Ejnar and Rhomaios, Konstaninos. Das Heroon von Kalydon. Copenhagen: Levin & Munksgaard, 1934; and Rhomaios, Konstantinos. Aus einer alten Etruskerstadt. Copenhagen: A.F. Høst & Søn, 1927; Iconographic studies in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek. Copenhagen: s.n., 1931; Glimpses of Roman Culture. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1950; Etruscan Tomb Paintings: their Subjects and Significance. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1922; Delphi. London: Gyldendal, 1920; Greek and Roman Portraits in English Country Houses. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923.

Sources

Poulsen, Frederik. Travels & Sketches. New York: A. A. Knopf, 1923; “Poulsen, Poul Frederik Sigfred.” Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, vol. 2, pp. 926-7.

Pottier, Edmond

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Pottier, Edmond

Other Names:

Edmond Pottier

Gender: male

Date Born: 1855

Date Died: 1934

Place Born: Sarrebruck, France

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

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): Ancient Greek (culture or style), ceramic ware (visual works), pottery (visual works), and vase

Overview

Scholar of Greek vases.

Sources

Medwid, Linda M. The Makers of Classical Archaeology: A Reference Work. New York: Humanity Books, 2000 pp. 247-248; Rouet, Philippe. Approaches to the Study of Attic Vases: Beazley and Pottier. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Scholar of Greek vases.

Post, Chandler R.

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Post, Chandler R.

Other Names:

Chandler Rathfon Post

Gender: male

Date Born: 1881

Date Died: 1959

Place Born: Detroit, Wayne, MI, USA

Place Died: Foxboro, Norfolk, MA, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

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

Overview

Historian of Spanish and Italian renaissance art; early art history professor at Harvard. Post was born to William R. Post and Anne M. Rathfon (Post). He graduated from the University [grammar] School in Detroit and then attended Harvard University, graduating with a B.A. in Spanish literature in 1904. His classmates included Franklin Roosevelt and Hispanic scholar Hayward Keniston (1883-1970). He spent the academic year 1904-5 at the American School in Athens working on his master’s thesis on Greek literature. His Harvard master’s thesis was granted in 1906. Post then began teaching as an instructor of English, French, Italian and Greek and fine arts at his alma mater, and working on his doctorate. His dissertation in Romance literature, written under Jeremiah D. M. Ford (1873-1958), was completed in 1909 on the topic of Dante’s influence on Castilian allegory. That same year, Post suggested Harvard’s first specialized course on Italian art to Department Head, Arthur Upham Pope. During those years, Post made the friendship of Boston collector Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840-1924). Though his first published article (1909) was in art history, his article publications of these years focused on literature, the most notable of which, “The Dramatic Art of Sophocles” appeared in 1912. The same year he was named professor of Greek and Fine Arts. In World War I, Post served as assistant to the military attaché at the United States Embassy in Rome 1917-1919. The Italian government made him Chevalier of the Order of St. Maurice and St. Lazarus in 1918. Returning to academic life after the war, Post continued to alternate his Harvard courses between the Departments of Classics and Fine Arts. His Fine Arts course 9A “Art and Culture of Italy in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance” was a pioneering synthesis of art, religion and history. He was appointed associate professor in 1920. In 1921, Post published his History of European and American Sculpture, one of the early surveys of the medium in America. In 1923 he was promoted to full professor. Post co-wrote with George Henry Chase A History of Sculpture in 1924, but was already at that time working on his magnum opus, The History of Spanish Painting (12 vols.), which appeared beginning in 1930. Post spent much of the 1930’s hunting for obscure paintings in Spain to complete his corpus. He was made William Dorr Boardman professor of Fine Arts in 1934, holding the position as emeritus after 1950 when he retired. In 1953 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Michigan. He was at work on the final volumes of his History of Spanish Painting at the time of his death. The History was completed by a former student Harold E. Wethey. His students, in addition to Wethey, included Benjamin Rowland, Jr., Martin S. Soria, and Walter W. S. Cook. Together with A. Kingsley Porter, Walter Muir Whitehill and Georgiana Goddard King, Cook, Post constituted an early “New England School” of American interest in Spanish Romaneque studies. The Romanesque scholar Walter B. Cahn termed Post’s History of Spanish Painting “now scarcely readable.” As a lecturer, one student, Otto Wittmann, Jr., recalled him lecturing completely from memory, seldom writing information down. “His tests were all factual tests…that’s all he cared about.”

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Castillian Allegory of the Fifteenth Century, with Especial Reference to the Influence of Dante. Harvard University, 1909, published as Mediaeval Spanish Allegory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1915; and Wethey, Harold E. A History of Spanish Painting. 14 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1930-66; A History of European and American Sculpture from the Early Christian Period to the Present Day. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,1921; and Chase, George Henry, 1874-1952. A History of Sculpture. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1925.

Sources

Panofsky, Erwin. “The History of Art.” In The Cultural Migration: The European Scholar in America. Introduction by W. Rex Crawford, 82-111. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1953, p. 88, 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. 47 mentioned; The Dictionary of Art; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, p. 444; Wethey, Harold E. “Chandler Rathfon Post.” A History of Spanish Painting volume 14. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966, pp. xi-xiii; [transcript] Smith, Richard Cándida, interviewer. Otto Wittmann: The Museum in the Creation of Community. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Trust, 1995, p. 22-23; Cahn, Walter. “Romanesque Art, Then and Now: A Personal Reminiscence.” in Hourihane, Colum, ed. Romanesque Art and Thought in the Twelfth Century: Essays in Honor of Walter Cahn. University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 2008, p. 33; [obituaries:] New York Times. November 4, 1959, p. 35; Rowland, Benjamin, Hurley, John H., and Freedberg, Sydney J. “Chandler R. Post.” Art Journal 20 no. 1 (Fall 1960): 26.

Posse, Hans

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Posse, Hans

Other Names:

Hans Posse

Gender: male

Date Born: 1879

Date Died: 1942

Place Born: Dresden, Saxony, Germany

Place Died: Dresden, Saxony, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

Overview

Director of the Dresden Gemäldegalerie (1913-1942) and Nazi administrator in charge of the depository of looted art during the Reich years. Posse’s father was a respected archivist in Dresden. The younger Posse joined the Dresden gallery, the state gallery of Saxony in 1910 and became director in 1913. He issued an updated edition of the Dresden holdings catalog of Karl Woermann. From the first as director, he showed a special callousness toward returning loaned pictures. During World War I, Raphael’s “Portrait of a Youth” (Czartoryski Collection of the National Gallery, Warsaw, Poland) was moved to Dresden for safekeeping. After the war, Posse delayed returning the picture until 1920. When the Nazi’s gained power in Germany, Posse was briefly removed from office for anti-Nazi sentiments and having acquired art they considered “degenerate,” i.e., modern. He was reinstated by Hitler personally in 1939 and placed in charge of creating a museum in Linz, Austria, for the Führer. The project was referred to as the “Sonderauftrag” (special commission). The same year, Posse confiscated the collection of the Rothschild brothers, Alphonse Mayer Rothschild (1878-1942) and Louis Rothschild (1882-1955). Assisted by the Kunsthistorisches director, Ludwig von Baldass, plunderers took thousands of objects from the long-time Jewish Vienese residents. The treasures were taken to the Hofburg palace, the Nazis’ Zentraldepot for confiscated art. Lesser pieces went to Viennese museums, including the Kunsthistorisches, while much of the decorative arts, mainly porcelains, were auctioned at the state-owned Dorotheum. Posse was aided in his art thefts by the unscrupulous Berlin dealer Karl Haberstock (1878-1956). After the invasion of Holland, Posse moved to the The Hague as Referent für Sonderfragen (Adviser on “Special Questions”). With the aid of the Seyss-Inquart government, Posse’s office forced the purchase of major portions of the collection of Fritz Mannheimer (1890-1939) in 1944, including “The Jewish Doctor” by Rembrandt. The Fürherbefehl directive authorized Posse to “make decisions on the Führer’s behalf” for works of art discovered throughout the Reich. By 1941, Posse’s mission was aligned with the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) confiscations. Posse acquired Vermeer’s “The Artist in His Studio,” then in the hands of the Czernin family of Vienna, in1940, through the intervention of Reichsleiter Baldur von Schirach (1907-1974) after accusations of unpaid taxes to the family failed. Posse added three other Rembrandts to the Linz Collection, in addition to Watteau’s “La Danse” from Potsdam, the Corsini Memling portrait, and Rubens’ “Ganymede.” 21,000 objects were seized in France alone, of which the Linz collection took all but the 700–the others earmarked for the collection of Hermann Göring, another Nazi official collecting stolen art. Other specialists who advise Posse included Friedrich Wolffhardt (1899-?), a captain in the SS, who handled rare books and manuscripts; Fritz Dworschak, an Austrian Nazi party loyal, in charge of coins and medal collections; and Hans Reger, an architect from Munich to document the objects in photographs. Posse also hired a personal assistant, Robert Oertel, an Italian paintings scholar, to keep the records. Posse contracted cancer of the tongue and died in 1942. His funeral was attended by many ranking Nazis; Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945), the minister of propaganda, read the eulogy. He was succeeded, both at the Dresden Gemäldegalerie and the Führermuseum in 1943 by Hermann Voss. As the Allies moved into Europe in 1944, the art was moved to the Altaussee salt mines near Salzburg for safe keeping. After capture in 1945, the American 42nd Division army authorized the Austrian government to handle restitution. However, the Rothschilds were coerced to leave many works already in Austrian museums, including the eleven paintings to Kunsthistorisches, thirty works on paper to the Albertina, forty-three to the Museum of Applied Art, and eight works to the Belvedere Gallery. The Austrian government only returned works to the Rothschild heirs in 1999. Despite his complicity in assembling a Nazi art collection (Posse acquired over 2500 objects in three years), Posse disagreed so strongly with the Nazi view of modern art that it forced him into early retirement. As a scholar, he updated several excellent catalogs for the Dresden gallery.

Selected Bibliography

Catalogue of the Pictures in the Royal Gallery at Dresden. 8th ed. Dresden: Wilhelm und Bertha v. Baensch Stiftung, 1912; and Jähnig, Karl Wilhelm. Die staatliche Gemäldegalerie zu Dresden: vollständiges beschreibendes Verzeichnis der älteren Gemälde, herausgegeben im Auftrage des Ministeriums für Volksbildung. Dresden: W. und B. v. BaenschStiftung, 1929ff.; Die Gemäldegalerie des Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum. Vollständiger beschreibender Katalog mit Abbildungen … Im Auftrag der Generalverwaltung der K. Museen. 2 vols. Berlin: J. Bard, 1909-1911; “Lucas Cranachs Katharinenaltar in der dresdner Galerie.” Pantheon 18 (August 1936): 243-249.

Sources

Kaufman, Jason. “The Rothschild Affair: A Test of Austria’s Conscience.” Wall Street Journal, July 6, 1999, p. A13; Wałek, Janusz. “The Czartoryski ‘Portrait of a Youth’ by Raphael.” Artibus et Historiae 12, no. 24. (1991): 204-206; http://schikelgruber.net/rapebis; Dictionary of German Biography 8: 47; Plaut, James Sachs. “Hitler’s Capital.” The Atlantic 178 (October 1946): 73-78; Plaut, James Sachs. “Loot for the Master Race.” The Atlantic 178 (September 1946): 57-63; Harclerode, Peter, and Pittaway, Brendan. The Lost Masters: World War II and the Looting of Europe’s Treasurehouses. New York: Welcome Rain Publishers, 2000, pp. 8-18; Office of Strategic Services. Art Looting Investigation Unit. Consolidated Interrogation Report no. 4: “Chief Personalities of the Linz Commission: The Directorate.” pp. 18-19. (PRO T 209 29); Petropoulous, Jonathan. The Faustian Bargan: The Art World in Nazi Germany. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 191.

Posner, Donald

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Posner, Donald

Other Names:

Donald Posner

Gender: male

Date Born: 1931

Date Died: 2005

Place Born: New York, NY, USA

Place Died: New York, NY, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): museums (institutions)

Career(s): directors (administrators) and museum directors

Overview

Carracci scholar; Ailsa Mellon Bruce Professor of Fine Arts and deputy director, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 1983-2002. Posner graduated from Queens College Phi Beta Kappa in 1956, writing his M.A. at Harvard University in 1957. He completed his dissertation at New York University in 1962 under Walter F. Friedländer on the topic of Annibale Carracci and immediately joined the faculty. He married fellow graduate student in art history Kathleen Weil-Garris the same year (later divorced). Posner was editor-in-Chief of the Art Bulletin between 1968-71 and art historian in residence, American Academy in Rome, 1968-1969. He revised and published his dissertation on Annibale Carracci in 1971. The following year he won the Charles Rufus Morey Award for Most Distinguished Work of Art Historical Scholarship from the College Art Association. In 1973 Posner wrote the volume on Watteau for the important Art in Context series of Viking Press. He was a fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton in 1976. For the academic year 1978-79 he was appointed acting Director for Academic Affairs at the Institute of Fine Arts. He was named Deputy Director, Institute of Fine Arts, N. Y. U., in 1983, remaining until 2002 Posner was Chairman of the Art Bulletin Editorial Board from 1991- 1994.

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] The Roman Style of Annibale Carracci and His School. New York University, 1962; Annibale Carracci: A Study in the Reform of Italian Painting around 1590. 2 vols. London: Phaidon Press, 1971; and Held, Julius. 17th and 18th Century Art: Baroque Painting, Sculpture, Architecture. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1972; Watteau: A Lady at her Toilet. New York: The Penguin Press/Viking, 1973; Antoine Watteau. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984.

Sources

IFA Faculty Directory Donald Posner. http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/fineart/ifa/faculty/posner.htm; [condolence announcement:] The New York Times August 17, 2005, p. 16.

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

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