Merchant; art critic, poet; professor at the Amsterdam Rijksacademie, 1876-1889; central figure in the emancipation process of the Roman Catholics of the Netherlands. Alberdingk Thijm received no higher education. He initially went into business. In 1842 he began writing art criticism for De Spectator. He married Wilhelmina Anna Sophia Kerst in 1846. In 1852 he founded the Volks-almanak voor Nederlandse katholieken (The People's Almanac for Dutch Catholics), and in 1855 the Catholic periodical Dietsche Warande.

Bruegel specialist; Curator Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique. René van Bastelaer was the son of Désiré Alexandre Henri van Bastelaer (1823-1907), a distinguished pharmacist, chemist, and archaeologist. His mother was Elisa van der Spiecke. Van Bastelaer obtained his BA degree from the Faculty of Arts of the Catholic University of Louvain. Rather than continuing his studies he trained in the studio of the history painter Antoine Van Hammée (1836-1903). Van Bastelaer was particularly attracted to engraving.

Curator Musée royal des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, in Brussels; maecenas. Bautier was the son of Edmond Bautier and Marie Querton. After having attended the Athénée royal at Ixelles, near Brussels, he studied law and history at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. From this university he earned the degree of doctor in law and the degree of doctor in philosophy and letters. He enrolled at the Brussels Bar, but he soon left the practice of law. He instead chose a career in art history. In 1907 he was among the founders of the Société des Amis des Musées royaux de l'État in Brussels.

Author of a pioneering study on medieval southern Italian art; professor of art history. Bertaux attended the Institut Sainte-Croix at Neuilly and the Lycée Condorcet in Paris. At the École normale supérieure, where he was a student from 1888 to 1891, he earned the degree of agrégé de lettres. After his military service he studied the art of the Italian renaissance under Eugène Müntz in Paris. In 1893 he enrolled at the École française de Rome, housed at the Palazzo Farnese.

Early collector of artists' biographies; rhetorician; notary. De Bie was born in the city of Lier near Antwerp in 1627. His father, Adrianus, was a painter. Since De Bie called himself a philosopher, it may be assumed that he studied philosophy, possibly at the University of Louvain. He had a broad knowledge of languages, including Latin, Italian, and Spanish. He married twice. His first wife, Elisabeth Smith, died in 1662 in an accident. She left him with four children. Four more children were born out of his second marriage to Isabella Caelheyt (died 1706).

Print collector, medical doctor; surgeon. Bierens de Haan was the son of David Bierens de Haan, professor of mathematics and physics at Leiden University, and Johanna Catharina Justina IJssel de Schepper. The young Bierens de Haan attended the Leiden gymnasium and, from 1887 to 1894, he studied medicine at Leiden University. He also received training in hospitals and universities abroad, in particular in Bonn, Vienna, Paris, and London. In those years he began building up his print collection, while visiting the European print rooms.

Director of the Amsterdam Rijksprentenkabinet; connoisseur of drawings and prints. Boon studied art history at Amsterdam University, with professor Ferrand Whaley Hudig (1883-1937), and at the Sorbonne in Paris. He finished his studies at the école du Louvre with a thesis on the relationship between the School of Cologne and Netherlandish painting in the second half of the fifteenth century, Les rapports entre l'école de Cologne et la peinture néerlandaise dans la deuxième moitié du quinzième siècle.

Curator at the Louvre; art collector. Both de Tauzia, commonly known as Tauzia, had a Dutch grandmother, Suzanne-Marie Both, whose name, Both, was added to his father's family name. An earlier scion of the Both family, Pieter Both, was the first governor of the Dutch East Indies (1610-1614). Tauzia's father, Pierre-Paul Both de Tauzia (1778-1843) was a royalist in the service of the city of Bordeaux. Between 1828 and 1830 he was administrator of the royal lottery. Tauzia's mother was Jeanne Fayt. The young Tauzia spent his early youth in Bordeaux.

Curator of the Print Room, Bibliothèque nationale. After the death of his father, in 1859, Bouchot's mother and sister moved with him to Tilleroyes, near Besançon, where he later attended the Collège Saint-François-Xavier. He served in the army during the Franco-Prussian war. In 1874 he was admitted at the École des Chartes, where he obtained the diploma of archivist-paleographer. He began, in 1879, a lifelong career at the Print room of the Bibliothèque nationale, as an intern under Henri Delaborde.

Director of the Mauritshuis museum, 1889-1909, connoisseur and art collector. Bredius was raised in a wealthy family. His father was Johannes Jacobus Bredius a director of a powder factory in Amsterdam. His family collected Chinese porcelain and 17th-century Dutch paintings, which Bredius would build upon. His mother died when he was only ten. Early in his career, he intended to become a concert pianist, but realized after three years of study that he would never become an outstanding musician.

The van Gogh scholar J.-B. de la Faille studied under Bremmer. Independent art educator and adviser; van Gogh and Dutch artists scholar. Bremmer received his primary education at a boarding school in Roermond and attended high school in Leiden, where his parents owned a hotel (Hotel Rijnland). He also took classes with the painter D. L. Kooreman. In 1889 he left school and enrolled at the Teeken- en Schilderacademie (Academy for Drawing and Painting) in The Hague. He quit after one year and together with some friends he rented a studio in Leiden.

Professor of aesthetics and art history (1923-1946) at Nijmegen University. Brom was named after his father, Gerard Bartholomeus Brom, a blacksmith of liturgical objects, who had died before Brom jr. was born. His elder brother, Jan Hendrik, took over his father's firm. Brom, who was raised in a Catholic family, attended the Gymnasium of the Bisschoppelijk College in Roermond. After graduation he began medical studies in 1899 at Utrecht University, but a year later switched to Dutch language and literature.

Professor of Art History at the University of Amsterdam (1961-1985); lead art historian for the Rembrandt Research Project (RRP) catalogue raisonné, part of the Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project. Bruyn studied art history at Utrecht University. In 1948, before he finished his study, he was involved in cataloging old paintings in the Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller. In 1950 he was appointed assistant at the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, where he helped prepare the 1952 exhibition Drie eeuwen portret in Nederland (Three centuries of portraiture in the Netherlands).

Medievalist; professor of philosophy. De Bruyne attended high school at the St.-Vincentiuscollege in Ypres. In 1915, when the Germans attacked Ypres in World War I, the family fled to Sées in France (Orne). Here De Bruyne continued his high school education. In September 1916 he joined the Belgian army. After the war De Bruyne enrolled at Louvain University to study philosophy while still serving in the army. After having earned his Bachelor's degree, in 1919, he entered the Benedictine abbey, Regina Coeli, in Louvain. He soon obtained an extended leave from the army.

Egyptologist; Chief Curator of the Brussels Royal Museums of Art and History. In 1898, Capart finished his study of Law at the Free University of Brussels. He won an award for his thesis on Egyptian penal law, Droit pénal égyptien, and an abridged version of it was published in Revue de l'Université de Bruxelles (1899-1900). For further training in Egyptology, Capart attended the lessons of Alfred Wiedemann (1856-1936) at Bonn University and also visited other universities.

Director of the Royal Institute for the Study and Conservation of Belgium's Artistic Heritage, in Brussels. Coremans studied at the Free University of Brussels (Faculty of Sciences). In 1932, he obtained his doctorate in analytical chemistry with a dissertation: Sur le déplacement des électrolytes adsorbés.

Curator of ancient decorative arts at the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels. Crick studied art history and archaeology with Marcel Laurent at the university of Liège. In 1919, she obtained her doctoral degree with a dissertation on Romanesque art in the valley of the Meuse river. After her studies, she created the catalogs of the drawings (1919) and the engravings (1920) in the collections of the city of Liège. In 1920, she published a monograph on the drawings of Lambert Lombard, who lived in Liège between 1505 and 1566.

Chief curator Musées royaux d'Art et d'Histoire/Koninklijke musea voor Kunst en Geschiedenis, Brussels. De Borchgrave was the son of Frédéric de Borchgrave d'Altena (1864-1932) and Marie-Clémentine Blanckart (1869-1960). The family lived in the castle of Lexhy in Horion-Hozémont, near Liège. De Borchgrave earned his doctoral degree in archaeology and art history at the University of Liège under Marcel Laurent. In 1924 he joined in Brussels the Musées royaux d'Art et d'Histoire, directed by Jean Capart.

art critic; director of the Groninger Museum (1955-1963); chief curator of the Gemeentemuseum The Hague (1963-1965). Between age five and ten, de Gruyter lived in the Dutch East Indies. His father then served in the Koninklijke Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij. In 1909 he quit this position to become an independent writer and he moved with his family to Haarlem, in the Netherlands. During the next four years, the young de Gruyter continued his primary and secondary school education.

Curator, painter, and early authority on prints. Delaborde was a son of Henri-François Delaborde, a general in the French army who was honored in 1809 with the title comte de l'Empire (Count of the Empire). The young Delaborde attended high school at the Lycée Charlemagne and the Lycée Bourbon in Paris. After graduation he wanted to become an artist, but his parents decided that he study law. Soon after his enrollment, however, with the permission of his father, Delaborde entered the studio of the history painter Paul Delaroche, where he practiced painting between 1829 and 1834.

Connoisseur of illuminated manuscripts; assistant curator at the Department of Manuscripts of the Royal Library in Brussels. He was born in Herseaux, Belgium. which is present day Herzele. Delaissé attended high school at Tournai, Belgium, and studied Romance Philology at the Catholic University of Louvain. During World War II, when Belgium was under German occupation, Delaissé joined the resistance and later fled to Spain, where he was arrested. He subsequently escaped to England, where he trained in the tank corps for the Belgian Army of Liberation.

Curator; professor of art history; novelist. Delen attended the Koninklijk Atheneum (high school) in Antwerp, where he befriended Alfons de Ridder (1882-1960), later known as the Flemish writer Willem Elsschot. Delen continued his education in economics at the Antwerp Hoger Handelsinstituut, and in art history at the Hoger Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis en Oudheidkunde in Brussels. He also attended the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. He was interested in the contemporary art scene and visited the studios of the painters Walter Vaes (1882-1958) and Richard Baseleer (1867-1951).

Curator Brussels Royal Museums of Art and History; archaeologist. Destrée attended high school at the Collège de Bellevue in Dinant. He received a BA in philosophy and letters at the Facultés Universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix in Namur, Belgium, and he studied law at the Catholic University of Louvain. After a break of several years he returned to Louvain where he enrolled in the Faculty of philosophy and letters. One of his professors, Canon Edmond Reusens (1831-1903) encouraged him to participate in a seminar of archaeology at the University of Bonn in Germany.

Art critic, author of monograph on Van der Weyden; lawyer; politician of the socialist party, minister. Destrée was the eldest son of Olivier Destrée (1834-1899), an engineer, and Clémentine-Jeanne Defontaine (1836-1876). He attended high school at the Collège de Charleroi, Charleroi, Belgium, and studied law at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, from which university he earned his doctoral degree in law in 1883. In 1886 he joined the Bar of Advocates of Charleroi. At the same time he was attracted to the literary movement and he became a collaborator to La Jeune Belgique.

Specialist in sculpture, particularly of the Meuse River Valley; curator of sculpture at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels. Devigne studied art history and archaeology at the University of Liège, in Belgium. When she obtained her doctoral degree in 1912, she was the first female doctor in art history in Belgium. Her dissertation, on medieval art in the Meuse River Valley, was granted from the University of Liège with Marcel Laurent as her dissertation supervisor. In Paris, she studied with André Michel at the école du Louvre.