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Art Historians

Neumann, Erich

Full Name: Neumann, Erich

Gender: male

Date Born: 23 January 1905

Date Died: 5 November 1960

Place Born: Berlin, Germany

Place Died: Tel Aviv-Jaffa,Tel Aviv, Israel

Home Country/ies: Germany

Institution(s): Universität Berlin


Overview

“analytic psychologist and Jungian art critic” (KRG)


Selected Bibliography

The Archetypal World of Henry Moore. Translated by R. F. C. Hull. New York: Pantheon Books, 1959.Kunst und schöfperisches Unbewusstes. Zürich: Rascher Verlag, 1954. Art and the Creative Unconscious: Four Essays. Translated by Ralph Manheim. New York: Harper & Row, 1959.The Great Mother: An Analysis of teh Archetype. Translated by Ralph Manheim. Bollingen Series, 47. New York: Pantheon Books, 1955.


Sources

KRG, 103



Contributors: Lee Sorensen


Citation

Lee Sorensen. "Neumann, Erich." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/neumanne/.


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“analytic psychologist and Jungian art critic” (KRG)

Neumann, Carl

Full Name: Neumann, Carl

Other Names:

  • Carl Neumann

Gender: male

Date Born: 1 July 1860

Date Died: 9 October 1934

Place Born: Mannheim, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

Place Died: Heidelberg, Saxony, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

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

Career(s): educators


Overview

University of Heidelberg professor of art; wrote first full monograph on Rembrandt (1902). Neumann was the son of a wealthy Jewish mercantile family. In 1878 he entered the university in Heidelberg to study history. By 1880 he had switched to Berlin, attending the lectures of Nitsch and the historian Heinrich von Treitschke (1834-1896). He returned to Heidelberg in 1882 to receive his Ph.D. with a dissertation topic on Bernhard von Clairvaux and the beginnings of the second crusade. Neumann went to Basel to hear the lectures Jacob Burckhardt, which turned his interest to art history. At the end of the 1880 Neuman began displaying signs of mental illness, depression and long hospital stays. He spent 1882 studying classical art at the Glyptothek in Munich. It was around this time that Neumann also became devoted to modern art. His book Der Kampf um die neue Kunst (The Struggle for New Art) was published in 1892. Neumann’s preference, however, was for the classicizing tendencies of artists such as Anselm Feuerbach. Between 1884 and1887 Neumann made several journeys to Italy. He converted to Protestant Christianity in 1887. In 1894 he completed his Habilitationsschrift on the art of “Byzantium before the Crusades.” In 1894 he went to Heidelberg lecturing on historical topics from antiquity to the culture of the Middle Ages. Neuman also wove in contemporary art into his lectures. He described a turning point in his life at the Bildergalerie (Picture Gallery) in Cassel when he saw Rembrandt’s Jacob’s Struggle with the Angel. It was not the technical virtuosity of Rembrandt that impressed him as much as painter’s psychology. This aesthetic experience changed Neumann’s interest from Renaissance art to the art 17th century. In 1902 he published the first monographic biography on Rembrandt. During the academic year 1903-1904 Neumann taught with the Renaissance scholar/theorist Robert Vischer at Göttingen university. But Vischer and Neumann had strong methodological differences and Neumann had to move on. In 1904 he transferred to Kiel under professor Adelbert Matthaei (1859-1924), as the chair for art history at the new technical university at Danzig, and faculty at Kiel. Matthaei had founded in 1893 the Kunsthistorisches Institut at Kiel. Neumann became a full professor at Kiel, teaching a range of courses, including French 18th and 19th century art and culture, Italian renaissance and a Rembrandt course. His lectures attracted huge followings. In 1907 Neumann was first president of the Schleswig-Holstein art association, arranging numerous exhibitions in the art museum. In February 1908 Neumann established an “Arts Center” for the University. Neumann succeeded Henry Thode in Heidelberg in 1911, though Thode protested. Arthur Haseloff replaced Neumann at Kiel. Neumann remained at Heidelberg until his retirement in 1929. In 1934 he moved to Frankfurt, where he died the same year. The students he influenced included Wilhelm Rheinhold Otto Valentiner, Wilhelm Fraenger and Eberhard Freiherr von Bodenhausen. Neumann’s methodology was strongly biographical and nationalistic. His early monograph on Rembrandt (1902) was opposed by art historians who saw the Renaissance as the defining era of art history and by Wilhelm Bode, who had written his own Rembrandt book starting in 1897. Writing in the wake of the wildly successful (and wildly twisted) Rembrandt als Erzieher by Julius Langbehn, Neumann, too, focused on the irrational element in Rembrandt, eluding to the systematic philosopher Georg Simmel (1858-1918) in his book of 1916. Like many writing at the cusp of the twentieth century, Neumann assumed national characteristics determine the various styles of art. In Germany this national characteristic in art was frequently characterized as “medieval values.” Neumann saw Rembrandt as part of the nordic Kunstwollen(art impulse), which Neumann characterized as antithetic to Renaissance culture, and concomitantly the classicism, which it had drawn from. Neumann believed that individualism in culture resulted in barbarism, though he strongly defended artists’ rights to make art of their own time and not to rely on traditional models. Neumann was a proponent of modern art, what he called “the rights of the times,” in his Kampf um die Modern Kunst.


Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] De primariis optandi, jubendi, vetandi enuntiatis apud Homerum comparato usu Hesiedeo[sic]. Varel a.d.J.[?], 1883; Der Kampf um die neue Kunst. Berlin: H. Walther, 1896; Rembrandt. Berlin: Spemann, 1902; edited, and Burckhardt, Jacob. Briefwechsel mit Heinrich von Geymüller. Munich: G. Müller und E. Rentsch, 1914; Drei merkwürdige künstlerische Anregungen bei Runge, Manet, Goya. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1916; Aus der Werkstatt Rembrandts. Heiderlberg: C. Winter, 1918; Aus der Werkstatt Rembrandts. Heiderlberg: C. Winter, 1918; Rembrandt Handzeichnungen. Munich: R. Piper, 1918; Vom Glauben an eine kommende nationale Kunst. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1919; and Kruse, John. Die Zeichnungen Rembrandts und seiner Schule im National-Museum zu Stockholm. The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1920; Jacob Burckhardt. Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1927; Rembrandt van Rijn: das radierte Werk des Meisters in originalgetreuen Handkupferdrucken. 4 vols. Berlin: Amsler, 1928ff.; Der Maler Anselm Feürbach: Gedächtnisrede bei der Jahrhundertfeier für Feürbach an der Universität Heidelberg. Heidelberg: C. Winters, 1929.


Sources

Jahn, Johannes, ed. Die Kunstwissenschaft der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen. 2 vols. Leipzig: F. Meiner, 1924, pp. 33-76 (“1-44”), includes portrait, signature example, autobiography and bibliography; [Bodenhausen/Valentiner connection:] Barnes, James B. “Chronology.” Masterpieces of Art: In Memory of W. R. Valentiner, 1880-1958. Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1959, p. 1; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art: de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, p. 150; Kultermann, Udo. The History of Art History. New York: Abaris, 1993, p. 132; Fink-Madera, Andrea. Carl Neumann, 1860-1934. Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 1993. Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 280-282.




Citation

"Neumann, Carl." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/neumannc/.


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University of Heidelberg professor of art; wrote first full monograph on Rembrandt (1902). Neumann was the son of a wealthy Jewish mercantile family. In 1878 he entered the university in Heidelberg to study history. By 1880 he had switched to Berl

Neugebauer, Karl Anton

Full Name: Neugebauer, Karl Anton

Gender: male

Date Born: 04 November 1886

Date Died: 27 June 1945

Place Born: Berlin, Germany

Place Died: Berlin, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): Ancient Greek (culture or style), Antique, the, bronze (metal), bronzes (visual works), Classical, metalwork (visual works), sculpture (visual works), and statues


Overview

Specialist in ancient Greek and Roman art, particularly bronze statuary. Curator at the Antiquarium in Berlin, 1920-1945. Career suffered setbacks after 1933 because of the Jewish heritage of his wife. Died on June 27, 1945, following an operation.


Selected Bibliography

Antike Bronzestatuetten, 1921. Asklepios. Ein Beitrag zur Kritik römischer Statuenkopien, BWPr (1921) Die minoischen und archaischen griechischen Bronzen, 1931. Der Apllone vom Belvedere und sein Meister, AA 1946/47, 1–36. Die griechischen Bronzen der klassischen Zeit und des Hellenismus, ed. C. Blümel, 1951.


Sources

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




Citation

"Neugebauer, Karl Anton." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/neugebauerk/.


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Specialist in ancient Greek and Roman art, particularly bronze statuary. Curator at the Antiquarium in Berlin, 1920-1945. Career suffered setbacks after 1933 because of the Jewish heritage of his wife. Died on June 27, 1945, following an operation

Neudörfer, Johannes, der Àltere

Full Name: Neudörfer, Johannes, der Àltere

Other Names:

  • Johann Neudörfer

Gender: male

Date Born: October 1497

Date Died: 12 November 1563

Place Born: Nuremberg (also Nürnberg), Germany

Place Died: Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): biography (general genre), German (culture, style, period), and manuscripts (documents)


Overview

Author of an early manuscript biography of German artists. Neudörfer’s father was a successful furrier and business person, Stephan Neudörffer. As an adult, Johann earned his living as a teacher of mathematics and geometry; his interest and contemporary fame rested on his renoun as a calligrapher. A life-long resident of Nuremberg, he lived on the same street as and was well acquainted with the artist Albrecht Dürer until Dürer’s move in 1509. Dürer likely appreciated Neudörfer’s calligraphy skills; the lettering in Dürer’s woodcuts, “Map of the Eastern Hemisphere” (1515), the portrait of Ulrich Varnbüler (1522), the Four Apostles painting (1526) and the Triumphal Arch of Emperor Maximilian I (1515) employ Neudörfer’s distinctive script. In 1519 Neudörfer published a writing manual, Fundament…seinen Schulern zu einer Unterweysung gemacht, the first calligraphy handbook printed in Germany. He followed this with a treatise on script styles and penmanship, Eine gute Ordnung, in 1538. Two other writing treatises later appeared by him, 1544 and 1549. However, in 1547 Neudörfer wrote the work on which his posthumous fame would lie. He had always kept a close acquaintance with artists in Nuremberg. At the suggestion of a friend, he wrote (purportedly in only eight days’ worth of evenings) biographical sketches of the artists he knew. The manuscript, Nachrichten von Künstlern und Werkleuten was completed three years before the first edition of Le vite de più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori by Giorgio Vasari. Though Neudörfer did not intend it for publication as Vasari did, he remains the first German biographer of artists. His text is a trove of singular information about the Nuremberg’s important artists, particularly Dürer. The Nuremberg City Council hung his portrait (by Nicolas Neufchatel) in the Rathaus in 1561 to honor him. The so-called Master of the Neudörfer Portraits painted Johann and his wife in 1527 (Kassel, Schloss Wilhelmshöhe). Neudörfer’s manuscript consisted of 79 biographies of artists and workmen working the last hundred years in Nuremberg. His text circulated in copies until the nineteenth century. His Nachrichten was used (without acknowledgement) by many other biographers, including Joachim von Sandrart in his Teutsche Academie (1675). The autograph copy of Neudörfer’s work was extant until the 19th century and is today only known in copies. Though he claimed to have written the text in only eight days, the version of his work known today clearly was amended by later hands. Printed versions first appaered in 1822 in an edition of the Beiträge zur Kunst- und Literatur-Geschichte, edited by Joseph Heller and six years later in a copy by Andreas Gulden (1606-1683) in the collection of Frederick Campe. The first full version was published by Georg Lochner (1798-1882) in 1875.


Selected Bibliography

[excerpts] in Heller, Josoph and Jäck, Joachim Heinrich. Beiträge zur Kunst- und Literatur-Geschichte. Nuremberg: Riegel und Wiesner, 1822; Campe, Friedrich. Johann Neudörffers Nachrichten von den vornehmsten Künstlern und Werkleuten so innerhalb hundert Jahren in Nürnberg gelebt haben 1546: nebst der Fortsetzung. Nuremberg: Friedrich Campe, 1828; Lochner, Georg Wolfgang Karl. Des Johann Neudörfer Schreib-und Rechenmeisters zu Nürnberg Nachrichten von Künstlern und Werkleuten daselbst aus dem Jahre 1547. Vienna: W. Braumüller, 1875.


Sources

Lochner, Georg Wolfgang Karl. Des Johann Neudörfer Schreib-und Rechenmeisters zu Nürnberg Nachrichten von Künstlern und Werkleuten daselbst aus dem Jahre 1547. Vienna: W. Braumüller, 1875; Habich, Georg. Die deutschen Schaumünzen des 16. Jahrhunderts. Munich: Bruckmann, 1929-1934, vol. I, i, nos. 320-321, ii, nos. 1068, 1617; Kapr, Albert. Johann Neudörffer d. À., der grosse Schreibmeister der deutschen Renaissance. Leipzig: O. Harrassowitz, 1956; Smith, Jeffery Chipps. Nuremberg: A Renaissance City, 1500-1618. Austin, TX: University of TX, 1983; Kultermann, Udo. The History of Art History. New York: Abaris, 1993, p. 8; Smith, Jeffery Chipps. German Sculpture of the Later Renaissance, c. 1520-1580: Art in an Age of Uncertainty. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994;



Contributors: Lee Sorensen


Citation

Lee Sorensen. "Neudörfer, Johannes, der Àltere." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/neudorferj/.


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Author of an early manuscript biography of German artists. Neudörfer’s father was a successful furrier and business person, Stephan Neudörffer. As an adult, Johann earned his living as a teacher of mathematics and geometry; his interest and contem

Neal, John

Full Name: Neal, John

Gender: male

Date Born: 1793

Date Died: 1876

Place Born: Portland, Multnomah, OR, USA

Place Died: Portland, Cumberland, ME, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): American (North American)

Career(s): art critics, authors, and novelists


Overview

Writer and first American art critic. He was born in Falmouth, ME, USA, which is present-day Portland, Oregon. Neal was born to a Quaker family, his father was also named John Neal (d. 1793) and his mother was Rachel Hall (Neal). His father died almost immediately after his son’s birth. The younger Neal went to school at the Portland Academy until 1805. In 1808 he left to become a schoolmaster. Together with John Pierpont (1785 – 1866) (the future grandfather of J. P. Morgan) and Joseph L. Lord, he managed a dry-goods store in Baltimore, which boomed during the War of 1812, but collapsed afterward. A chance study with a penmanship teacher taught him the rudiments of drawing and he became a skilled portrait sketcher. He also began looking at pictures wherever he could. When Rembrandt Peale opened his museum in 1814, Neal joined that circle. He decided to support himself through writing and drawing, and to study law. His 1823 novel Randolph contained his first art criticism in the United States in the form of letters written by the hero, Holton. He contributed to newspapers and magazines and anonymously to Allen’s History of the American Revolution (1819). By 1823 he had become a lawyer but the amorous nature of his tales (strongly autobiographical) and his personal attack on the Baltimore lawyer William Pinkney (1764-1822), resulted in his fleeing the city to practice law in England. Neal resumed writing, authoring articles on America for various British journals, including Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. His trip to Paris included a visit to the Louvre. An ardent suffragist, he published an article in Blackwood’s, “Men and Women” in 1824 defending women’s rights. He returned to the United States in 1827, still persona non grata in Maine, marrying a cousin, Eleanor Hall. He founded the literary magazine Yankee the following year, promoting the ideas of Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), whom he had met in England, and the literary work of John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892), Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), and Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849). He also continued to write art criticism. Neal became a fitness fanatic in England, espousing gymnastic classes for university education and creating the first gymnasium at Bowdoin College in 1828. Neal edited the Boston newspaper New England Galaxy in 1835 and the magazine Brother Jonathan in 1843; he also contributed to popular national periodicals such as Godey’s Ladies Magazine, Graham’s, Harper’s, and the Atlantic Monthly. An address to the Broadway Tabernacle of New York in 1843, “Rights of Women,” once again criticized the lack of equality for women in American culture. In 1846 C. Edwards Lester published his Artists of America, praising Neal for his acute eye. An autobiography, Wandering Recollections of a Somewhat Busy Life, was published in 1869. His papers were largely burned in the great Portland fire of 1866, but others are housed at Harvard University, Houghton Library. Neal’s aesthetic judgments in his art writing, though hurried and sometimes flippant, has stood the test of time (Dickson). He preferred unlabored, loosely painted landscapes, notably the work of John Codman (1800-1842) whose career he literally made by praising his work in print. As an art critic, Neal contributed to the growing market for both landscapes and portraits that filled the walls of nineteenth century American parlors. His remarks in Randolph were the earliest American art criticism (Sears), though his contribution to art history was overshadowed by Lester and William Dunlap. Both Whittier and Poe considered his writing important.


Selected Bibliography

[not credited] A History of the American Revolution Comprehending all the Principal Events Both in the Field and in the Cabinet. Baltimore: John [sic] Hopkins, printer, 1819; Randolph: a Novel. 2 vols. Philadelphia: Published for Whom it May Concern, 1823.


Sources

[complete bibliography:] Sears, Donald A. John Neal. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1978; Neal, John. Wandering Recollections of a Somewhat Busy Life: an Autobiography. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1869; Lease, Benjamin, and Lang, Hans-Joachim, eds. The Genius of John Neal: Selections from His Writings. Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1978; Dickson, Harold Edward, ed. Observations on American Art: Selections from the Writings of John Neal (1793-1876). State College, PA: The Pennsylvania State College, 1943; Lease, Benjamin. That Wild Fellow John Neal and the American Literary Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972; Felker, Tracie “Charles Codman: Early Nineteenth-century Artisan and Artist.” American Art Journal 22 no. 2 (1990): 61-86.




Citation

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


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Writer and first American art critic. He was born in Falmouth, ME, USA, which is present-day Portland, Oregon. Neal was born to a Quaker family, his father was also named John Neal (d. 1793) and his mother was Rachel Hall (Neal). His father died a

Navas, Juan Gualberto López-Valdemoro y de Quesada, conde de las

Full Name: Navas, Juan Gualberto López-Valdemoro y de Quesada, conde de las

Gender: male

Date Born: 1855

Date Died: 1935

Home Country/ies: Spain

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

Career(s): art historians


Overview

Published the volume on The Royal Palace Madrid, in the “Art in Spain” series by the Hispanic Society of America.


Selected Bibliography

Guadalajara. Alcalá de Henares. Art in Spain, [published] under the Patronage of the Hispanic Society of America. Barcelona: Hijos de J. Thomas, 1913.





Citation

"Navas, Juan Gualberto López-Valdemoro y de Quesada, conde de las." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/navasj/.


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Published the volume on The Royal Palace Madrid, in the “Art in Spain” series by the Hispanic Society of America.

Nathan, Walter L.

Full Name: Nathan, Walter L.

Gender: male

Date Born: 03 September 1905

Place Born: Neustadt, Thuringia, Germany

Place Died: Unknown

Home Country/ies: Germany and United States

Institution(s): Boston University


Overview

University lecturer at Boston University and founder of the Department of Fine Art at Blue Ridge Community College. Walter Nathan was born in Neustadt, Germany in 1905. He received his abitur from Magdeburg Realgymnasium in 1923. Afterwards, he studied art history, German, and English in Würzburg, Berlin, and Bonn under Paul Clemen, Werner Weisbach, Fritz Knapp, Wilhelm Waetzoldt, Richard Sedlmaier, Wilhelm Worringer, and Eugen Lüthgen. He received his doctorate in 1928 and crafted his dissertation, Sir John Cheke und der englische Humanismus. In 1928, he satisfactorily completed his state examination to become a secondary school teacher. From 1928-1933, he was a high school teacher of English, German, and history at several different public high schools, but he was later dismissed from his teaching duties in 1933 under the “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” because of his Jewish descent. He subsequently found employment at a private German school. The rising state-sponsored discrimination and harassment resulted in his decision to leave for the United States in 1937. When he arrived in the United States in 1937, he joined the faculty at Blue Ridge Community College in New Windsor, Maryland. There, he founded the Department of Fine Art and fostered numerous educational arts exhibitions. Boston University hired him as an assistant professor in 1942. The stages of his life after this point are largely undocumented.

Walter Nathan was active in college life wherever he was working and actively engaged students in this classroom because of the deep knowledge he had of his German culture. His dissertation was still found “useful” in 1997 (McDiarmid).

 


Selected Bibliography

  • [dissertation:] Sir John Cheke und der englische Humanismus. Bonn, 1925;
  • Art and the message of the church Philadelphia, 1961.

Sources

  • McDiarmid, John. “John Cheke’s Preface to De Superstitione”. The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 48 no. 1 (1997): 120 doi:10.1017/S0022046900011994;
  • 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. 452.


Contributors: Lee Sorensen and Paul Kamer


Citation

Lee Sorensen and Paul Kamer. "Nathan, Walter L.." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/nathanw/.


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University lecturer at Boston University and founder of the Department of Fine Art at Blue Ridge Community College. Walter Nathan was born in Neustadt, Germany in 1905. He received his abitur from Magdeburg Realgymnasium in 1923. Afterwar

Nagler, G. K.

Full Name: Nagler, G. K.

Other Names:

  • Georg Kaspar Nagler

Gender: male

Date Born: 1801

Date Died: 1866

Place Born: Oberdiessbach, Oberbayern, Germany

Place Died: Munich, Bavaria, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

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

Career(s): book dealers and merchants


Overview

Book dealer and architectural historian. Nagler earned his doctorate from the Universität Erlangen in 1829. Through his research at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich, he completed his first major scholarly reference publication, Neues allgemeines Künstler-Lexicon (1835-52). It took Nagler seventeen years, scrupulously delivering a manuscript every month to his printer, E.A. Fleischmann, in Munich. Comprehensive art dictionaries and encyclopedias were only then being written. Scholars had mixed feelings about such works. The art historian Hans Wolfgang Singer wrote of the work that “value of the encyclopaedia as a reference work is not…quite as great as the amount of work that has gone into it.” Outside of his book dealing business, Nagler wrote articles about art for the Bayerische Nationalzeitung. Between 1857 and 1878, he wrote his second art historical reference work, Die Monogrammisten und diejengien bekannten und unbekannten Künstler aller Schulen. Nagler intended this dictionary as a complement to this dictionary of artists. Die Monogrammisten became one of the first efforts to approach art historical research in a systematic and scientific way. In 1836, Nagler began lecturing on architectural history at the Königliche Baugewerbschule in Munich. Nagler considered a second edition of Künstler-Lexicon, but died before it could be begun. In 1867, Wilhelm Engelmann (publishers) bought the rights to the Künstler-Lexicon from Tendler/J. Grosser publishers. Julius Meyer was entrusted with a new edition, but it took a reorganization under Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker to bring the modern Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler for fruition.


Selected Bibliography

Neues allgemeines künstler-lexikon; oder, Nachrichten von dem leben und den werken der maler, bilhauer, baumeister, kupferstecher, lithographen, formschneider, zeichner, medailleure, elfenbeinarbeiter, etc. Linz: E. Mareis, 1904-14; Die Monogrammisten. 6 vols. Munich, G. Franz, 1879.


Sources

The Dictionary of Art (incorrectly cites as “Gustav” Kaspar); “From Thieme-Becker to the Artists’ Database.” K. G. Saur homepage. http://www.saur.de/akl/english/projekt.htm



Contributors: LaNitra Michele Walker and Lee Sorensen


Citation

LaNitra Michele Walker and Lee Sorensen. "Nagler, G. K.." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/naglerg/.


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Book dealer and architectural historian. Nagler earned his doctorate from the Universität Erlangen in 1829. Through his research at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich, he completed his first major scholarly reference publication, Neues

Mylōnas, Paulos M.

Full Name: Mylōnas, Paulos M.

Gender: male

Date Born: 1898

Date Died: unknown


Overview

Marilyn Aronberg Lavin described Mylōnas as one of “great art historians of the earlier generation.”


Selected Bibliography

Athos and its Monastic Institutions: through Old Engravings and Other Works of Art. Athens: Printed by I. Makris Papadiamantopoulou, 1963.


Sources

“Marilyn Aronberg Lavin,” Contemporary Authors.




Citation

"Mylōnas, Paulos M.." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/mylonasp/.


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Marilyn Aronberg Lavin described Mylōnas as one of “great art historians of the earlier generation.”

Muthesius, Hermann

Full Name: Muthesius, Hermann

Other Names:

  • Hermann Muthesius

Gender: male

Date Born: 1861

Date Died: 1927

Place Born: Grossneuhaus, Thuringia, Germany [vicinity of Erfurt]

Place Died: Berlin, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

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


Overview

Architect, architectural historian and theorist. His father was a mason and small building contractor who encouraged him to go into architecture. After graduating from the Realgymnasium in Weimar, he studied art history and philosophy at Friedrich Wilhelm University, Berlin, 1881-1883. He spent a year of military service before pursuing architecture at the Technische Hochschule in Charlottenburg (Berlin), and working in the office of Paul Wallot. Muthesis joined the firm Ende & Böckmann, a major Berlin architectural office. He was sent to Tokyo between 1887 and 1891, where, among his major designs was a Gothic Revival German church. He the Prussian Ministry of Public Works at his return to Germany, gaining a stipend to study in Italy in 1895. He married a concert singer, Anna Trippenbach and was appointed by the Kaiser to the German Embassy in London’s technical attaché in 1896, assigned to report on English art and technical achievements. He and Anna settled in Hammersmith, using his time in England to study the architects immediately before him, Philip Webb and R. Norman Shaw, as well as those more contemporary, C. F. A. Voysey, Edwin Lutyens and W. R. Lethaby. His first published work was the result of his Italian travels, Italienische Reise-Eindrücke, 1898. His early foray to publicize British contemporary building appeared as Die englische Baukunst der Gegenwart in 1900. Muthesius achieved a Ph.D. under Cornelius Gurlitt in Dresden under Gurlitt’s innovative program to award architectural history degrees to architects. He followed this with his treatise (again published in Germany), Stilarchitektur und Baukunst (1902), praising the arts & crafts ideas of William Morris as it fought against shoddy mechanically produced art. Unlike Morris, however he accepted the qualities of some machine-produced arts, anticipating industrial design. Muthesius returned to Germany in 1903, establishing a private architectural practice and working for the Prussian Ministry of Trade. He published his three-volume Das englische Haus beginning in 1904. The book examined the British house as a product of its society, proclaiming the style as the future of domicile building. Muthesius’ enthusiasm for England was met with alarm in Germany; copies were restricted in conservative Berlin academic libraries as late as the 1920s. Muthesius was not a form-follows-function theorist, the architect to him always maintained his status as an artist. His appreciation for the great stylists of the age, particularly Charles Rennie Mackintosh, with whom he became friends, exceeded the more rational-approach architects. Muthesius returned to architecture, designing the the Seefeld House (1904) in Berlin, heavily influenced by the English country style. Other urban and suburban house commissions followed. In 1907, he published Landhaus und Garten, outlining the English garden as used in domestic architecture. The same year he lectured at the Handelshochschule, Berlin, praising new construction methods and materials such as steel and reinforced concrete. The Fachverband für die wirtschaftlichen Interessen des Kunstgewerbes (Association for the Economic Interests of the Arts and Crafts) attacked him as being disloyal to German products. The ensuing controversy (the “Muthesius Affair”) led to the withdrawal of Muthesius supporters, influential designers, from the Fachverband, founding the Deutscher Werkbund, to bring quality design standards to mass-produced objects. Muthesius continued to move away from the Jugendstil concept of modernizing ornament. The Werkbund Conference of 1914, however, led by Henry Van de Velde and others, rejected his industrial design views. The conclusion of World War I dealt a death knell to the gentrified comfort of both the Werkbund and Muthesius’ elegant country-style homes. He continued to write, including his most popular book, Wie baue ich mein Haus? 1917, a handbook for home building, and Kann ich auch jetzt noch mein Haus bauen? 1920, encouraging home standards in the dismal economics that followed World War I. He was killed in a road accident after visiting a site in Berlin and is buried in the Friedhof Nikolassee in the city. His grand-nephew is the architectural historian Stefan Muthesius (b. 1939). Muthesius’ three principle publications were all on English formal arts. The first, Die Englische Baukunst der Gegenwart was a folio publication of all types of British buildings. The second, Die neuere kirchliche Baukunst in England, focused on modern church building. The third, Das englische Haus, was the most groundbreaking, approaching architecture through the example of 19th-century British house as an expression of the society. It emphasized the functional and practical aspects in architecture, most evident in domicile design. Though praised in England, such a sociological approach to design and interpretation threatened German architectural theorists. He drew from the architectural histories of British historians, such as Reginald T. Blomfield and his The Formal Garden in England, 1897, for his work on Garden history. As an architect, Muthesius did not always follow his theory that houses should adhere to standard types.


Selected Bibliography

[complete bibliography:] “Bibliography.” Style-Architecture and Building-Art: Transformations of Architecture in the Nineteenth Century and its Present Condition. Santa Monica, CA: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1994, pp. 107-126; Die englische Baukunst der Gegenwart: Beispiele neuer englischer Profanbauten. Leipzig: Cosmos, 1900; Stilarchitektur und Baukunst: Wandlungen der Architektur im XIX. Jahrhundert und ihr heutiger Standpunkt. Mülheim-Ruhr: K. Schimmelpfeng, 1902, English, Style-Architecture and Building-Art: Transformations of Architecture in the Nineteenth Century and its Present Condition. Santa Monica, CA: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1994; Das englische Haus. 3 vols. Berlin: E. Wasmuth, 1904-5, English, The English House. New York: Rizzoli, 1979; Das moderne Landhaus und seine innere Ausstattung. Munich: F. Bruckmann A.-G., 1905; Landhaus und Garten, Beispiele neuzeitlicher Landhäuser nebst Grundrissen, Innenräumen und Gärten. Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1907; Die Zukunft der deutschen Form. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1915.


Sources

Posener, Julius. “Hermann Muthesius.” Architect’s Year-Book 10 (1961): 45-51; Hubrich, Hans-Joachim. Hermann Muthesius: die Schriften zu Architektur, Kunstgewerbe, Industrie in der “Neuen Bewegung”. Berlin: Mann, 1981; Anderson, Stanford. “Introduction.” Style-Architecture and Building-Art: Transformations of Architecture in the Nineteenth Century and its Present Condition. Santa Monica, CA: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1994, pp. 2-6; Schneider, Uwe. “Hermann Muthesius and the Introduction of the English Arts & Crafts Garden to Germany.” Garden History 28, no. 1 (Summer, 2000): 57-72.




Citation

"Muthesius, Hermann." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/muthesiush/.


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Architect, architectural historian and theorist. His father was a mason and small building contractor who encouraged him to go into architecture. After graduating from the Realgymnasium in Weimar, he studied art history and philosophy at Friedrich