Art Historians

Offerhaus, Johannes

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Offerhaus, Johannes

Other Names:

Johannes Offerhaus

Gender: male

Date Born: 1930

Date Died: 1991

Place Born: Groningen, Netherlands

Place Died: Utrecht, Netherlands

Home Country/ies: Netherlands

Institution(s): Nederlands Instituut in Rome

Overview

Director Nederlands Instituut in Rome (1980-1987); director Museum Meermanno-Westreenianum in The Hague (1987-1991). Offerhaus grew up in a prominent family in Groningen, in which city he attended the Gymnasium. While he served in the Netherlands Marine Corps, between 1950 and 1953, he met the Italian archeologist Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, who instilled in him a fascination for the Italian culture. After his military service, Offerhaus enrolled at Groningen University to study art history under Henk Schulte Nordholt. In 1954, Offerhaus’ father was appointed Commissary of the Queen of the province of Groningen. During his study, Offerhaus spent periods in Italy (Pisa and Venice) and in France (1957-1958), where he studied at the Sorbonne under the eminent Renaissance scholar André Chastel. After his graduation in 1959 Offerhaus became assistant curator at the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, but after a short period, in 1961, he left for Rome where he obtained a position as art historian and secretary at the Netherlands Institute. Among his responsibilities was the organization of exhibitions in the context of cultural contacts between the Netherlands and Italy. In 1965, when his former master, Schulte Nordholt, became the director of the Institute, Offerhaus returned to the Netherlands. He spent the next sixteen years at Utrecht University, initially as the administrator of the Institute of Art History. He soon obtained a teaching position in art history. In March 1974 he lectured at the Dutch Art Historical Institute in Florence on the decoration of the Sassetti Chapel in the church of Santa Trinità in Florence. Ghirlandaio’s frescos in this chapel were also discussed in his dissertation, a study on architecture as represented on Florentine fifteenth-century painting: Motief en achtergrond. Studies over het gebruik van de architektuur in de 15e eeuwse Florentijnse schilderkunst. In 1976 he received his doctoral degree from Amsterdam University. His adviser was Josua Bruyn. In 1977 he published an Italian article on the Sassetti Chapel, coauthored with Eve Borsook, an established researcher in this field. In 1981 the results of further investigations by both these scholars appeared, Francesco Sassetti and Ghirlandaio at Santa Trinita, Florence. History and Legend in a Renaissance Chapel. One year earlier, Offerhaus had left Utrecht University and settled again in Italy, to become the director of the Netherlands Institute in Rome, succeeding Schulte Nordholt. His second stay in Rome, however, was less happy than expected. The temporary exhibitions he frequently organized were not always successful, except the 1984 show on Dutch landscape painters in Italy around 1800, and the 1985 exhibition on the Dutch artist M. C. Escher (1898-1972). In addition to his position as director he served as an adviser for cultural affairs at the Dutch Embassy. Slinking budgets were among the difficulties that came on his way. In 1987 he quit his position and returned to the Netherlands, where he became the director of the Museum Meermanno-Westreenianum, the so called Museum of the book, in The Hague. In the next four years he was able to broaden the book collection and to improve the museum building. He organized a number of exhibitions, including one on early book printing in Venice, “Venetië, stad van de drukkunst”. In 1991, while he was preparing for a meeting of museum directors, Offerhaus suddenly died from a hart attack, at age 61. Francesco Sassetti and Ghirlandaio at Santa Trinita, Florence. History and Legend in a Renaissance Chapel is a thorough analysis of the decoration program of the Chapel, a synthesis of iconological, cultural-historical and archival research. Offerhaus’ co-authorship in this major work reveals his solid scholarly approach and his profound knowledge of Italian culture.

Selected Bibliography

[bibliography:] Grasman, Edward. “Johannes Offerhaus Groningen 21 mei 1930 – Utrecht 22 augustus 1991” Jaarboek van de Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde, 2005: 99; [dissertation:] Motief en achtergrond. Studies over het gebruik van de architektuur in de 15e-eeuwse Florentijnse schilderkunst. Amsterdam University, 1976, published, Utrecht: Elinkwijk, 1976; and Borsook, E. Francesco Sassetti and Ghirlandaio at Santa Trinita, Florence. History and Legend in a Renaissance Chapel. Doornspijk: Davaco Publishers, 1981.

Sources

Boschloo, A. “In memoriam Johannes Offerhaus” Incontri 6 (1991): 100-102; Meijer, T. J. “In memoriam Johannes Offerhaus” Nederlands Instituut te Rome, Jaarverslag 1991. Rome, 1992, pp. 5-6; Ekkart, Rudi. “Johannes Offerhaus 1930-1991” De Boekenwereld 8 (1991-1992): 122-124; Cools, Hans and De Valk, Hans. “Johannes Offerhaus (1930-1991), kunsthistoricus, secretaris 1961-1965, directeur 1980/1981-1987” Institutum Neerlandicum MCMIV – MMIV. Honderd jaar Nederlands Instituut te Rome. Hilversum: verloren, 2004, pp. 111-112; Grasman, Edward. “Johannes Offerhaus Groningen 21 mei 1930 – Utrecht 22 augustus 1991” Jaarboek van de Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde, 2005: 92-99.

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

Oettinger, Karl Norbert Julius

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Oettinger, Karl Norbert Julius

Other Names:

Karl Oettinger

Gender: male

Date Born: 1906

Date Died: 1979

Place Born: Vienna, Vienna state, Austria

Place Died: Peschiera del Garda, Verona, Veneto, Italy

Home Country/ies: Austria

Subject Area(s): Medieval (European)

Overview

Medievalist and professor at the Universities of Vienna and Erlangen. Beginning in 1924, Oettinger studied archaeology Germanistik and art history at Berlin under Adolph Goldschmidt and at Vienna under Julius Alwin von Schlosser and Karl Maria Swoboda. His Ph.D. was awarded from Vienna in 1928. He joined the Österreichischen Museum für Angewandte Kunst (Austrian Museum for Applied Art) in 1930. He contributed entries to the Kunstlerlexikon of Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker, staring in 1934. He completed his habilitation in 1936. During World War II, he taught as an Außerordentlicher Professor at Vienna beginning in 1942. After the war, he was promoted to Ordinarius in 1945, replacing Hans Sedlmayr, who was dismissed for his ties to the Nazi. Oettinger led the excavation of the Romanesque portions of St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna which resulted in the 1949 book Das Taufwerk von St. Stephan in Wien and a 1951 one on the early history of the city. In 1954 he began teaching at Erlangen. He wrote several editions of guidebooks on Austria for tourists in the 1960s and guest lecturing at the University in Ankara, Turkey. Oettinger retired emeritus from the university in 1971. Oettinger was a leader in medieval archaeology (Czeike). His work helped determine the configuration of the Baldichine for the medieval altar of St. Stephens.

Selected Bibliography

Sedlmayr, Hans, and Messerer, Wilhelm, eds. Festschrift Karl Oettinger. Zum 60. Geburtstag am 4. März 1966 gewidmet.. Erlangen: Universitätsbund Erlangen-Nürnberg e. V. [and the] Universitätsbibliothek, 1967; [habilitation:] Lorenz Luchsperger: der Meister der wiener neustädter Domapostel. Berlin: Deutscher Verein für Kunstwissenschaft, 1935; Der Illuminator Veit: ein österreichischer Buchmaler des 15. Jahrhunderts. Vienna: s.n., 1932; “Der Illuminator Nikolaus Der Illuminator Nikolaus.” Jahrbuch der Preuszischen Kunstsammlungen 54 (1933): 221-238; “Four Holbein Drawings at Vienna Four Holbein Drawings at Vienna.” Burlington Magazine 65, no. 381 (December 1934): 258-264; “Der Meister des Friedrichs-Altars von 1447 Der Meister des Friedrichs-Altars von 1447.” Jahrbuch der Preuszischen Kunstsammlungen 58. (1937): 227-240; Hans von Tübingen und seine Schule. Berlin: Deutscher Verein für Kunstwissenschaft, 1938; Das Taufwerk von St. Stephan in Wien. Vienna: Berglandverlag, 1949; Das Werden Wiens. Vienna: Bauer, 1951; “Der Elfenbeinschnitzer des Echternacher Codex Aureus und die Skulptur Unter Heinrich III. (1039-56).” Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 2 (1960): 34-54; and Paschke, Uwe. Städtebauliche Denkmalpflege: Probleme des Schutzes grösserer städtebaulicher Einheiten von geschichtlicher und künstlerischer Bedeutung und ihrer Refunktionalisierung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Nuremberg: Städtebauinstitut Nürnberg, 1970.

Sources

Kürschners Deutscher Gelehrten-Kalender 1950. 7th ed. Berlin: Gruyter, 1950, p. 379; Österreicher der Gegenwart: Lexikon schöpferischer und schaffender Zeitgenossen. Vienna: Österreichische Staatsdruckerei, 1951; Wer ist wer in Österreich: Das österreichische “Who’s Who”. Vienna: “Wer ist Wer in Österreich”, 1953; Ackerl, Isabella, and Weissensteiner, Friedrich. Österreichisches Personenlexikon der ersten und zweiten Republik. Vienna: Ueberreuter, 1992; Czeike, Felix. Historisches Lexikon Wien 4. Vienna: Kremayr & Scheriau, 1992-1997; Aslanapa, Oktay. Türkiye’de Avusturyali Sanat Tarihcileri ve Sanatkarlar/Österreichische Kunsthistoriker und Künstler in der Türkei. Istanbul: Eren, 1993; Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopädie 7. Munich: Saur, 1995-1999.

Medievalist and professor at the Universities of Vienna and Erlangen. Beginning in 1924, Oettinger studied archaeology Germanistik and art history at Berlin under Adolph Goldschmidt and at Vienna under

Oertel, Robert

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Oertel, Robert

Gender: male

Date Born: 1907

Date Died: 1981

Place Born: Leipzig, Saxony, Germany

Place Died: Freiburg im Breisgau, Hesse, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

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

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

Overview

Scholar of Italian renaissance art and Berlin Gemäldegalerie director, 1964-1973; participant in the proposed Führermuseum theft of art object. Oertel was the son of a lawyer. After receiving his Abitur at the Thomasschule in 1927, he studied art history, archaeology, classics and philology at various universities, included Leipzig, Vienna, Munich and Hamburg. He completed his dissertation in 1932 under Hans Jantzen writing on a topic of Masaccio. After a trip to Paris, he worked as a volunteer at the Augustinermuseum in Freiburg. During the 1932-1933 year he received a scholarship to the Biblioteca Herziana from its founder, Ernst Steinmann. He returned to Frankfurt as Jantzen’s assistant in 1933, but because of the new courses incorporating Nazi doctrine in the Univeristy, gave up academics for museum work. He volunteered at the Berlin museums between 1933 and 1935 as a research assistant in place of colleagues dismissed for political or racial reasons by the Nazis. Eventually, he attached himself to the reference library, where he came in contact with the Museum’s Islamicist, Ernst Kühnel. He studied early Christian art under Fritz Volbach and eventually graphics when the division was under Friedrich Winkler and Willy Kurth. After a 1934 article on Renaissance drawings, Oertel was named to the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, where he served eventually as director between 1935 and 1939. Oertel studied fresco painting, spurred in part of by the worry that these monuments might be damaged in the looming war. He returned to Germany shortly before the declaration of World War II to assist the director of the Dresden Gemäldegalerie, Hans Posse, who was ill with cancer. In addition to his Dresden duties, Posse led the assembling of art works, largely stolen or forced from fleeing Jewish families, for the Führermuseum proposed for Linz, Austria. It was Oertel’s job to maintain the registry of the objects. When Posse died in 1942, the Director was replaced by Hermann Voss, under whom Oertel also served. Oertel was called to the army and fought at the front lines in 1944 and spent time in a Russian prison after the war. He was instrumental in reopening the Dresden gallery, after which he moved to Freiburg. He published an habilitationschrift in 1948 on Giotto’s post-Paduan style, qualifying him to teach in the university. He became a dozent in 1949, married in 1950, and appointed professor in 1955. Oertel was placed in charge of conservation for the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, part of the Bavarian state museums structure in 1958. After the death of Ordenberg Bock von Wülfingen in 1960, Oertel completed and published that scholar’s manuscript on Giotto. He was named chief conservator in 1964. That year he was named Director of the Berlin Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery), where he served for the last eight years of his career. He retired to Kirchzarten in 1973 where he resided until his death. Oertel was a renowned authority on Giotto and the early Italian Renaissance. Notes about Oertel’s opinions appear in the personal catalog of the 1937 Mostra Giottesca of the NYU renaissance scholar Richard Offner. He disagreed with the drawings scholar Bernhard Degenhart on the range of use of medieval drawings, seeing them as essentially limited to pattern books and models for painting.

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Die Frühwerke des Masaccio. Frankfurt am Main, 1932; Fra Filippo Lippi. Vienna: A. Schroll, 1942; Frühzeit der italienischen Malerei. English, Early Italian Painting to 1400. London: Thames & Hudson, 1968;

Sources

Ladis, Andrew. “The Unmaking of a Connoisseur.” in, Offner, Richard. A Discerning Eye: Essays on Early Italian Painting. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998, p,19, note 1; Löhr, Hanns C. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung November 2, 2000; [obituary:] Isermeyer, Christian Adolf. “Robert Oertel, 1907-1981.” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 45 no.. 4 (1982): 437-440; 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); Woods, Kim, ed. Making Renaissance Art. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press/The Open University, 2007, p. 26.

Scholar of Italian renaissance art and Berlin Gemäldegalerie director, 1964-1973; participant in the proposed Führermuseum theft of art object. Oertel was the son of a lawyer. After receiving his Abitur at the Thomasschule in 1927, he stu

Obreen, Frederik D. O.

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Obreen, Frederik D. O.

Other Names:

Frederik Daniël Otto Obreen

Gender: male

Date Born: 1840

Date Died: 1896

Place Born: Rotterdam, South Holland, Netherlands

Place Died: Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands

Home Country/ies: Netherlands

Career(s): archivists, librarians, and researchers

Overview

Archivist and librarian; director of Museum Boijmans at Rotterdam; first chief director of the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum. Obreen was trained to become a businessman, but due to his interest in art and history he was appointed as an assistant librarian and archivist of the city of Rotterdam. The archive was housed in the Gemeenlandshuis van Schieland, along with the galleries of Museum Boijmans. In co-operation with the archivist Johannes H. Scheffer (1832-1886) he published sources on the history of Rotterdam: Rotterdamsche historiebladen. Obreen and Scheffer also published, between 1868 and 1880, a critical description of the Historical atlas of the Hoogheemraadschap Schieland and the city of Rotterdam: Roterodamum illustratum. Obreen’s most famous, and still valuable, work is his seven-volume Archief voor Nederlandsche kunstgeschiedenis. This collection of archival sources related to Dutch art history was published between 1877 and 1890, in collaboration with others, including Abraham Bredius The first volume includes a complete Guild Book, with information on master artists working in Delft in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Several articles by Obreen, on various subjects, were also published in these volumes. The main aim of the contributors was to make archival data easily accessible. These subsequently served as an important tool in the process of identification of the growing number of paintings in the museums. In 1879, Obreen became director of Museum Boijmans, in addition to his position as archivist and librarian. Although he was able to spend only half part of the day as museum director, he significantly improved the condition of the building and the galleries, and took care of the conservation and cleaning of the paintings. He also wrote a new catalog of the paintings, from the viewpoint of an archivist rather than that of a connoisseur. In 1883, he quit both positions in Rotterdam, and went to Amsterdam, where he was appointed as the first chief director of the Rijksmuseum and, in addition, as the director of the Rijksmuseum van Schilderijen (National Museum of Paintings). His first task was the relocation, in 1885, of three different national museums to the new Rijksmuseum building, designed by Petrus J. H. Cuypers (1827-1921). Both the Rijksmuseum van Schilderijen and the Rijksprentenkabinet (National Print Room) previously were housed in the Trippenhuis in Amsterdam, while the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst (Netherlands Museum for History and Art), exhibiting decorative arts, sculpture and architecture, was located in The Hague. Obreen, in his capacity as director of the Rijksmuseum van Schilderijen, was responsible for the display of the paintings. Victor Eugène Louis de Stuers, the head of the Department of Arts and Sciences in the Ministry of Home Affairs, played an important role in the relocation and rearrangement of the collections. Both Obreen and De Stuers had rather conservative views on the display of the works of art: they preferred to show as many paintings as possible, rather than making a selection. No attention was paid to new trends which manifested themselves in museums abroad, for example innovative policies of Wilhelm Bode in Berlin. While Obreen was busy with the arrangements in the new building, it was Bredius, assistant director of the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, who wrote a new catalog of the paintings of the Rijksmuseum, with 50 illustrations made by the artist C. L. Dake (1857-1918). Obreen was the author of the itinerary through the galleries: Wegwijzer door ‘s Rijks Museum te Amsterdam met teekeningen door Wilm. Steelink en plattegronden. Between 1887 and 1897, a selection of 257 paintings of the Rijksmuseum was photographed and published in a series of seven installments, with texts by Obreen: Le musée de l’état à Amsterdam. Under his directorship, between 1883 and 1896, 244 paintings were acquired. He often was advised by his colleague Johan Philip van der Kellen, the director of the Rijksprentenkabinet. In 1892, Obreen succeeded in purchasing Johannes Vermeer’s Liefdesbrief (Love-letter) from the collection Messchert van Vollenhoven. The Vereniging Rembrandt financed this important purchase with a loan of 15,000 guilders. As a dedicated and successful museum director Obreen has earned respect, even until the present day, although he was neither a real connoisseur nor an innovative person. His pioneering work as an archivist remains his most important legacy for the documentation of the history of art.

Selected Bibliography

[For his articles, published in Archief voor Nederlandsche kunstgeschiedenis, see] Bergvelt, E. Pantheon der Gouden Eeuw: p. 375; and Scheffer, J.H. Roterodamum illustratum: beredeneerde beschrijving van den geschiedkundige atlas in het archief der gemeente Rotterdam aanwezig betrekkelijk het hoogheemraadschap Schieland en de stad Rotterdam. Rotterdam: van Waesberge, 1868-1880; and Scheffer, J.H. Rotterdamsche historiebladen. 3 vols. Rotterdam: Nijgh & Van Ditmar, 1871-1880; Archief voor Nederlandsche kunstgeschiedenis. Verzameling van meerendeels onuitgegeven berichten en mededeelingen betreffende Nederlandsche schilders, plaatsnijders, beeldhouwers, bouwmeesters, juweliers, goud- en zilverdrijvers, smeden, stempelsnijders, tapijtwevers, borduurwerkers, plateelbakkers, ivoorsnijders, glasschilders, ingenieurs, landmeters, kaartmakers, verlichters, lettersijders, schoonschrijvers, boekbinders, enz. Met bereidwillige medewerking bijeengebracht door Fr. D. O. Obreen. 7 vols. Rotterdam: Van Hengel & Eeltjes, 1877-1890. [A fully searchable text of the 1877 publication of the complete Guild Book of Delft Master Painters, Engravers, Sculptors, Potters, etc. in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, scanned from vol. 1. (1877-1878), is available on Internet, created by Kees Kaldenbach:] http://www.xs4all.nl/ kalden/dart/d-a-ab-obreen-lucasgilde2.htm; Beschrijving der schilderijen en beeldhouwwerken in het Museum te Rotterdam gesticht door F. J. O. Boymans. Rotterdam: 1880; Wegwijzer door ‘s Rijks Museum te Amsterdam met teekeningen door Wilm. Steelink en plattegronden. Amsterdam, s.n.,1887; Guide to the National Museum at Amsterdam. Schiedam: H.A.M. Roelarts, 1887; Le musée de l’état à Amsterdam. 7 installments. Paris: s. n., 1887-1894.

Sources

Van Thiel, P. J. J. “Het Rijksmuseum in het Trippenhuis, 1814-1885 (1): bestuursvorm en personeel” Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 29 (1981): 79-100, 85-87; Ekkart, R. E. O. “Grondleggers van het kunsthistorisch apparaat” in Hecht, Peter; Stolwijk, Chris; Hoogenboom, Annemieke. Kunstgeschiedenis in Nederland. Amsterdam: Prometheus, 1998, pp. 11-12; Bergvelt, Ellinoor. Pantheon der Gouden Eeuw. Van Nationale Konst-Gallerij tot Rijksmuseum van Schilderijen (1798-1896). Zwolle: Waanders b. v., 1998, pp. 225-260; “Abraham Bredius, A Biography.” Museum Bredius (website) http://www.museumbredius.nl/biography.htm.

Contributors: Monique Daniels

Oberhuber, Konrad J.

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Oberhuber, Konrad J.

Other Names:

Konrad Oberhuber

Gender: male

Date Born: 31 March 1935

Date Died: 12 September 2007

Place Born: Linz, Oberösterreich, Austria

Place Died: La Mesa, San Diego, CA, USA

Home Country/ies: Austria

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

Overview

Raphael authority, Harvard scholar and director of the Albertina, 1987-2000. Oberhuber was raised in a family strongly adherent to Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy, a worldview Oberhuber embraced his whole life. Oberhuber studied at the University of Vienna, though spending periods in the United States, writing his dissertation under Karl Maria Swoboda, the last of the masters who formed the Vienna School. His dissertation, on Bartholomeus Spranger, was completed in 1959. He continued study at the Austrian Historical Institute in Rome, were almost as an avocation he studied Raphael. While a scholar at the Bibliotheca Hertziana, he was asked to complete the corpus of Raphael drawings begun by Oskar Fischel in 1913. He discovered many Raphael drawings and discounted others, only a handful of which he ever privately published. In 1961, the as-yet-to-be-appointed director of the Albertina museum, Walter Koschatzky, hired him to assist his new directorship. Oberhuber returned to Vienna and teh Albertina, marrying Marianne Liebknecht, a dancer and granddaughter of the German socialist Karl Liebknecht (1871-1919). Oberhuber was appointed to his alma mater in 1971 and as well a curator at the National Gallery of Art, Washgington, D. C. Intermitant lecturing at Harvard University led to an appointment in 1975 on the faculty and as curator of drawings at the Fogg art museum. Those whose dissertations he advised, in part, included Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann. Important works on paper by Titian, Federigo Barocci, Nicolas Poussin, and Thomas Eakins entered Harvard collection. He added significantly to the University’s collections in the areas of German 19th century drawings, French 17th century school, and modern artists. The five-hundredth anniversary of Raphael saw Oberhuber’s book on the artist, 1982, and a year at the Hertziana for the 1983-1984. In 1987 he succeeded Koschatzky as Albertina director. With these duties came Hofrat and honorary professor at the University of Vienna. At the Albertina he supervised exhibitions ranging from Raphael to Jim Dine. Oberhuber consulted on other shows, such as “Poussin the Early Years in Rome” at the Kimball Museum in Fort Worth, TX. While in Vienna, he married a former student from his Harvard art history lectures, Victoria Martino, a violinist living in the city. He retired from the museum in 2000, teaching for two years in Japan before moving to San Diego, California, his second wife’s home, with a new family. Oberhuber lectured there for the annual art and music history series at the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library, La Jolla, each spring. He died at his La Mesa home of brain a tumor at age 72. His Harvard students included Suzanne Folds McCullagh. Oberhuber was an authority on the drawings of Raphael, but expanded it to those of the mannerists, Venetians and the early Poussin. His book on Raphael is considered a definitive study.

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Die stilistische Entwicklung im Werk Bartholomäus Sprangers. Vienna, 1958;Entwürfe zu Werken Raphaels und seiner Schule im Vatikan 1511/12 bis 1520. vol. 9 of Raphaels Zeichnungen, edited by Oskar Fischel. Berlin: Gebruder Mann, 1972; Sixteenth Century Italian Drawings from the Collection of Janos Scholz. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1973; Raffaello. Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1982; Raphaels Transfiguration: Stil und Bedeutung. Stuttgart: Urachhaus, 1982; Polarität und Synthese in Raphaels “Schule von Athen.” Stuttgart: Urachhaus, 1983; Poussin the Early Years in Rome: the Origins of French Classicism. Fort Worth: Kimbell Art Museum, 1988; Raphael: the Paintings. New York: Prestel, 1999.

Sources

[obituaries:] Harvard Gazette Online, October 11, 2007; Frommel, Christoph Luitpold. “Konrad Oberhuber (1935-2007).” Burlington Magazine 150 (March 2008): 193-194; Kinsman, Michael. “Prominent Art Scholar, Lecturer, Expert on Raphael.” San Diego Union-Tribune. September 30, 2007, p. 1H.

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

O’Connor, Francis V.

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: O'Connor, Francis V.

Other Names:

Francis Valentine O'Connor

Gender: male

Date Born: 1937

Place Born: Brooklyn, Cattaraugus, NY, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): American (North American), Modern (style or period), and murals (general, decorations on wall)

Overview

Americanist, Jackson Pollock scholar and of New-Deal era art, especially American murals. O’Connor’s father was Frank J. O’Connor (1904-1974), a bank employee, and his mother Blanche Valentine Whalen (O’Connor) (1900-1974). He attended Manhattan College where he was awarded a B.A. in English in 1959. O’Connor continued to Johns Hopkins University for his M.A. in Creative Writing in 1960, changing to art history for his Ph.D. Though his dissertation advisor, Christopher Gray urged him to write on Delacroix, O’Connor pursued the work of Jackson Pollock (only seven years deceased). He began teaching at the University of Maryland at College Park,, as an assistant professor of art history in 1964, earning his his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins with a dissertation on Pollock in 1965. After a year lecturing as an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins’ Evening College, he wrote the exhibition catalog–the essence of his dissertation (O’Connor)–for the Museum of Modern Art’s Pollock retrospective in 1967. He received a National Endowment for the Arts grant for the 1967-1968 year spending the year researching the New Deal visual art projects in New York state. This led to his editing three major publications on these WPA-era projects. O’Connor left the University of Maryland in 1970 to become a senior visiting research associate at the National Collection of Fine Arts (now the Smithsonian American Art Museum) Smithsonian Institution, in Washgington, D. C. He taught occasional courses at Johns Hopkins University, American University, and Corcoran School of Art through 1972. That year he became an adjunct professor, Union Graduate School, and a tutor at the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program, continuing through 1977. In 1973 he became director of Raphael Research, New York. The same year he edited a volume on contemporary WPA essays, marking his interest murals in America. In 1972 he moved to New York City to undertake a catalogue raisonné of Jackson Pollock. He served on the committee to determine the authenticity of over one thousand works claimed to be by Jackson Pollock, other members including the art dealer and collector Eugene V. Thaw (b.1927), MoMA curator Bill Lieberman, Pollock’s wife, Lee Krasner Pollock (1908-1984) and the art dealer Donald McKinney. This resulted in O’Connor and Thaw’s four-volume catalogue raisonné on Jackson Pollock in 1978, still the scholar leading resource for initial study of that artist. From 1974 to 1983 he published Federal Art Patronage Notes, a newsletter on government cultural policy. O’Connor began researching American mural painting history during the early 1980s subsequently receiving several research grants from the NEH and the U. S. Capitol Historical Society. In 1982 he founded the Association of Independent Historians of Art (AIHA). He was the 1990 Robert Sterling Clark Visiting Professor of Art History at Williams College and Visiting Professor of Art History at George Washington University in Washgington, D. C., in 1993. He spent the academic year 1994-1995 as a Fellow at the National Humanities Center, North Carolina, continuing his research on American murals. A supplement to the 1978 Pollock catalogue raisonné, written under his direction, was published by the Pollock-Krasner Foundation in 1995. His The Mural in America: Wall Painting in the United States from Prehistory to the Present was in 2008 and published electronically. O’Connor was the documentary scholar for Jackson Pollock at the time when his fame was being solidified. His catalogue raisonné was thorough enough to identify a set of telephone notepad scribblings which had images on them. In 1991 he lead the protest over the awarding of the Pulitzer Prize for biography to a controversial Pollock book by Stefen Naifeh and Gregory Smith. He was also the leader of a small group of art historians who in the late 1960s and early 1970s did the initial research on the New Deal’s visual arts programs.

Selected Bibliography

[complete bibliography:] “Career Narrative and Bibliography.” http://www.fvoconnorsbooks.com/go_to__77031.htm; [dissertation:] The Genesis of Jackson Pollock: 1912-1943. Johns Hopkins University, 1965; Jackson Pollock. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1967; edited, The New Deal Art Projects: an Anthology of Memoirs. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1972; edited, Art for the Millions: Essays from the 1930s by Artists and Administrators of the WPA Federal Art Project. Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society,1973; and Thaw, Eugene Victor. Jackson Pollock: a Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, Drawings, and Other Works. 4 vols. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978ff.; “An Undeserved Prize for a Pop Biography?” New York Times May 12, 1991,. p. H37, reply, “Scholarship Under Fire.” New York Times June 9, 1991, section 2, p. 7; and Seliger, Charles. Redefining Abstract Expressionism. New York: Hudson Hills Press, 2003.

Sources

[personal webpage:] http://www.fvoconnorsbooks.com/index.htm; personal correspondence, May 2009.

Nyholm, Esther

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Nyholm, Esther

Gender: female

Date Born: unknown

Date Died: unknown

Overview

Selected Bibliography

Arte e teoria del Manierismo. Odense, 1977.

Sources

Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986 p. 190

Novotny, Fritz

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Novotny, Fritz

Gender: male

Date Born: c. 1902-1903

Date Died: 1983

Place Born: Vienna, Vienna state, Austria

Place Died: Neunkirchen, Niederösterreich, Austria

Home Country/ies: Austria

Subject Area(s): French (culture or style), nineteenth century (dates CE), and painting (visual works)

Career(s): curators

Overview

Cézanne and 19th-century art scholar, curator and museum director. Novotny was born into a Roman Catholic family, his father Franz Novotny, worked as a mechanic and his mother was Josefine Bartosch (Novotny). He studied under Josef Rudolf Thomas Strzygowski at Strzygowski’s competing school of art history within the university in Vienna, the Wiener Institut. Novotny wrote his dissertation in 1927 on Romanesque sculpture and churches in Austria. He worked between 1928-39 as Assistant at the Kunsthistorischen Institut in Vienna. His Romanische Bauplastik in österreich established a strong interregional connection. Novotny, like a number of other Strzygowski students, was able to incorporate the rigorous research method of his mentor without the fanaticism, often racial in its conception, that marred his mentor’s work. Novotny shied away from the broad generalizations. In 1939 he was appointed curator at the österreichische Galerie in Vienna. From 1948 onward he was professor at the University. After the war, he became director of the Galerie from 1961-68. During his tenure, Novotny worked to repatriate works of art added to the Gallery during the post-war period to their rightful owners, including works owned by Alma Mahler-Werfel (he was turned down by the Austrian Education Minister, Erwin Thalhammer). Despite his training in Romanesque art, most of Novotny’s publications deal with modern artists because of his appointment at the österreichische Galerie. His book on Anton Romako redefined the artist as a precursor to Expressionism and Gustav Klimt. Novotny was a key figure for Modernism because of his analytical precision in the work of Cézanne. Cézanne und das Ende der wissenschaftlichen Perspektive (1938) placed the artist within an strong intellectual tradition. Novotny use painter’s works to establish a criteria for an art historical process useful for the who era of modernism. That book is his clearest use of Strukturanalyse of the Vienna School to which his thought belongs. Novotny argued that Cézanne the tension between “scientific” or natural perspective and the artist’s willful altering of it makes Cézanne a pivotal entity in Impressionism. His work influenced Meyer Schapiro and other Cézanne scholars. His Pelican History of Art volume, Painting and Sculpture in Europe 1780 to 1880, is notable for the way it treats artists as individual personalities, eschewing national characteristics less common to modern-era artists. The Pelican volume omitted Russian artists because Novotny did not consider Russia as part of Europe. Novotny emphasized the role that Idealism played in 19th-century Europe. Philosophy was key to Novotny; he used Kant (specifically the Critique of Pure Reason, [Kritik der reinen Vernunft]) to explain Cezanne’s work. His emphasis of the intellectual milieu of artistic production was not at the cost of the artwork’s formal aspects. Novotny was not a social historian, however. He avoided biographical and other documents when no direct connection could be made to the art.

Selected Bibliography

Cézanne und das Ende der wissenschaftlichen Perspektive. Vienna: A. Schroll, 1938, excerpt, English, “Passages from Cézanne and the End of Scientific Perspective (1938).” The Vienna School Reader: Politics and Art Historical Method in the 1930s. Christopher White, ed. New York: Zone Books, 2000, pp. 379-433; Romanische Bauplastik in österreich. Vienna: Dr. B. Filser, 1930; Painting and Sculpture in Europe, 1780 to 1880. Pelican History of Art 20. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1960; Adalbert Stifter als Maler. Vienna: A. Schroll, 1941.

Sources

Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 285-7; The Vienna School Reader: Politics and Art Historical Method in the 1930s. Christopher White, ed. New York: Zone Books, 2000, pp. 378; Decker, Andrew. “A Legacy of Shame.” Artnews 83 no. 10 (December 1984): 65.

Novak, Barbara J.

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Novak, Barbara J.

Other Names:

Barbara Novak Deutsch

Gender: female

Date Born: 1928

Place Born: New York, NY, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): American (North American)

Career(s): educators

Overview

Americanist and Altschul Professor of Art History at Barnard College and Columbia University, 1958-98. Novak graduated from Barnard College in 1950 and attended Radcliffe for her graduate work. She received a Fulbright fellowship in 1953 to pursue her dissertation, which appeared in 1957 on the Hudson River School artists Thomas Cole and Asher Durand. She joined the faculty of Barnard College the following year. In 1960 she married the art critic Brian O’Doherty (an exhibiting artist under the name Patrick Ireland) in 1960. She began publishing art criticism in various newspapers and art journals, most notably Artforum. Her book on nineteenth century painting was published in 1969. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1974. In 1980 she published her Nature and Culture: American Landscape and Painting, 1825-1875 and the concomitant show, Next to Nature: Landscape Paintings from the National Academy of Design whose catalog appeared the same year. A novel, Alice’s Neck, was published in 1987. Novak was awarded the distinguished Teaching of Art History Award from the College Art Association and retired emerita as Helen Goodhart Altschul Professor from Barnard in 1998. A chaired professorship at Barnard College was named in her honor. Nature and Culture: American Landscape and Painting, 1825-1875, was described by John I. H. Baur of the Whitney Museum of American Art, as “the most important contribution to the understanding of nineteenth-century American art that has been written in our generation.”

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Cole and Durand: Criticism and Patronage: a Study of American Taste in Landscape, 1825-65. Radcliffe, 1957; Nature and Culture: American Landscape and Painting 1825-1875. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980; American Painting of the Nineteenth Century: Realism, Idealism, and the American Experience. New York: Praeger, 1969; Alice’s Neck. New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1987; Next to Nature: Landscape Paintings from the National Academy of Design. New York: National Academy of Design, 1980.

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, pp. 149-50; “Barbara Novak.” Challenging Art: Artforum 1962-1974. Newman, Amy, ed. New York: Soho Press, 2000, p. 478.

Notten, Marinus, van

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Notten, Marinus, van

Gender: male

Date Born: 1875

Date Died: unknown

Home Country/ies: Netherlands

Subject Area(s): conservation (discipline), conservation (process), Dutch (culture or style), monuments, and Netherlandish

Overview

First director of the department of Conservation of Monuments, Netherlands.

Selected Bibliography

Rombout Verhulst, beeldhouwer, 1624-1698: een overzicht zijner werken. ‘s-Gravemhage: M. Nijhoff, 1907.

First director of the department of Conservation of Monuments, Netherlands.

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