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Cruttwell, Maud

November 8, 2023April 5, 2024

**Image Credit:** Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century

Full Name: Cruttwell, Maud

Other Names:

Maud Alice Wilson Cruttwell

Gender: female

Date Born: 1860

Date Died: 1939

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

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

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

Overview

Historian of Italian Renaissance artists; close friend of the Berensons. Cruttwell met the Bernard Berenson and Mary Berenson in England. The Berensons rented two villa apartments in San Domenico, near Fiesole, Italy, in 1894 and Cruttwell agreed to be their housekeeper. She worked closely with Bernard and thanks him in her various art histories for his help. Cruttwell was a fairly open lesbian and among other things, endorsed and perhaps encouraged Mary Berenson‘s increasing physical size (Mrs. Berenson was quite fat in later years). Crutwell left the Berensons when she was asked in 1899 by the editor of George Bell Publishers, George Charles Williamson (1858-1942), to write a volume on Luca Signorelli for their Great Masters series. In 1900 she acted as witness to the Berenson’s marriage. In 1904, Cruttwell published her volume on Andrea Verrocchio. Although Wilhelm Bode had brought this teacher of Leonardo into scholarly vogue, Cruttwell rejected many of the over-attributions to which Bode was inclined. She was commissioned by the Bodley Head to write the series of books on Renaissance artists. Her attributions have generally stood the test of time. In her later years she wrote biographies of women, such as her Madame de Maintenon of 1930. She died in Paris at age 79. Cruttwell was a connoisseur-style historian with a particularly sharp eye.

Selected Bibliography

Luca & Andrea della Robbia and their Successors. London: Dent, 1902; Verrocchio. London: Duckworth, 1904; A Guide to the Paintings in the Florentine Galleries; the Uffizi, the Pitti, the Accademia: a Critical Catalogue with Quotations from Vasari. London: J. M. Dent, 1907; Venice and Her Treasures. London: Methuen, 1909; Madame de Maintenon. London: Dent, 1930.

Sources

Berenson, Bernard. The Selected Letters of Bernard Berenson. Edited by A. K McComb. London: Hutchinson, 1963. p. 31 [mentioned]; Samuels, Ernest. Bernard Berenson: the Making of a Connoisseur. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1979, pp. 189, 260, 352, 354; Dunn, Richard M. Geoffrey Scott and the Berenson Circle: Literary and Aesthetic Life in the Early 20th Century. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1998, p. 319, n. 26; [obituaries:] “Miss Maud Cruttwell.” Times (London) August 21, 1939, p 12; addendum, Williamson, G. C. “Miss Maud Cruttwell.” Times (London) August 23, 1939, p. 7.

Cruzada Villaamil, Gregorio

November 8, 2023April 5, 2024

Full Name: Cruzada Villaamil, Gregorio

Other Names:

Gregorio Cruzada Villaamil

Gender: male

Date Born: 1832

Date Died: 1884

Home Country/ies: Spain

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

Overview

Scholar of Spanish art and Rubens. Cruzada Villaamil researched Peter Paul Rubens’ lifelong ties with Spain, tracing the inventories of Philip IV through individual paintings. He compiled the Rubens Works he considered lost and extant. In 1880 Carl Nicolaus Heinrich Justi continued research on this and Cruzada Villaamil’s work ultimately set the foundation for Rubens catalog by Maximilian Rooses. Cruzada Villaamil’s invertory of Rubens’ paintings “remains a basic reference of Rubens’ Paintings in Spain” (Alpers)

Selected Bibliography

Catálogo provisional historial y razonado del Museo Nacional de Pinturas: formado de órden del Excmo. Sr. Ministro de Fomento, marqués de la Vega de Armijo. Madrid: Impr. de M. Galiano/Museo del Prad, 1865; edited, Carducho, Vicente. Diálogos de la pintura. Madrid: Impr. de M. Galiano, 1865; Los tapices de Goya. Madrid: M. Rivadeneyra, 1870; Anales de la vida y de las obras de Diego de Silva Velazquez, escritos con ayuda de nuevos documentos. Madrid: M. Guijarro, 1885.

Sources

Alpers, Svetlana. “Introduction.” The Decoration of the Torre de la Parada. Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, Part IX. New York: Phaidon, 1971, pp. 21-22.

Cunningham, Allan

November 8, 2023April 5, 2024

Full Name: Cunningham, Allan

Other Names:

Allan Cunningham

Gender: male

Date Born: 1784

Date Died: 1842

Place Born: Keir, Fife, Scotland, UK

Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre), biography (general genre), British (modern), painting (visual works), and sculpture (visual works)

Overview

Author of the five-volume Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects and a biography of the painter David Wilkie. Cunningham was born to John Cunningham (1743-1800) and Elizabeth Harley (Cunningham). He was born in the parish of Keir, Dumfriesshire, Scotland, UK. He was educated at Quarrelwood and apprenticed to James, his brother, as a stonemason. As a young man he witnessed Robert Burns recite “Tam O’shanter,” cementing a lifelong interest in poetry and Scottish song. He began writing poetry under the pseudonym “Hidallan” (a hero of Ossian’s) which were subsequently published in the magazine Literary Recreations in 1807. In 1809 he began forging ancient ballads and sending them to the compiler Robert Hartley Cromek (1771-1812) in London. The following year he traveled to London and published more songs. Through Cromek, Cunningham met other artists, including the sculptor Francis Chantrey (1781-1841). Cunningham worked as a parliamentary reporter during which time he married Jean Walker (1791-1864), a domestic he had met in Scotland, in London in 1811. He wrote for the Literary Gazette and published a volume of songs Songs, Chiefly in the Rural Language of Scotland, in 1813. In 1814 he became Chantrey’s secretary and confidant. While in Chantry’s employ, he continued to write for Blackwood’s Magazine and then the London Magazine. In 1822 he published the drama Sir Marmaduke Maxwell with some other pieces as well as Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry. Four volumes of The Songs of Scotland, Ancient and Modern appeared in 1825. Romances, including Paul Jones (1826), Sir Michael Scott (1828) followed. In 1829 he started issuing his six-volume artistic biography, Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, as part of the Murray’s Family Library series. Written from his personal knowledge of many contemporary artists in a spare style (much different from his literary works), the set sold briskly. Between 1830 and 1834 he wrote literary history articles for The Athenaeum. In 1831 Cunningham met the philosopher and man of letters Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) in London. His eight-volume Works and Life of Burns appeared in 1834. Cunningham suffered a stroke in 1839. When Chantry died in 1841 Cunningham received a £3100 bequest. After completing his Life of Sir David Wilkie he suffered a second stroke in 1842 and died at his home. He is buried at Kensal Green. His son, Peter, edited the Wilkie work which appeared posthumously. Cunningham’s Lives appeared in a 3-volume edited by Mary Margaret Heaton appeared as Bohn’s Standard Library in 1879. New editions appeared in 1893 and 1908.

Selected Bibliography

The Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters and Sculptors. 5 vols. London: Murray, 1829-1833; The Life of Sir David Wilkie, with his Journals, Tours, and Critical Remarks on Works of Art. 3 vols. London: J. Murray, 1843.

Sources

Hogg, David. Life of Allan Cunningham with Selections from his Works and Correspondence. Dumfries: J. Anderson & Son, 1875; The Times (London) October 31 1842, p. 5 ; Hughes, G. E. H. The Life and Works of Allan Cunningham. Ph.D., Cambridge University, 1975.

Curjel, Hans

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Hans Richard Curjel

Other Names:

H.C.

Gender: male

Date Born: 1896

Date Died: 1974

Place Born: Karlsruhe, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany

Place Died: Zürich, Switzerland

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): Art Nouveau, European, Jugendstil (German, Austrian Art Nouveau), Modern (style or period), performing arts (discipline), theater (discipline), and theater arts

Overview

Jugenstil/Art Nouveau specialist; theater director. Curjel was born to famous architect, Robert Curjel (1873-1925) and Marie Herrmann (Curjel) (1872-1940). After graduating from the gymnasium in Karlsruhe, Curjel served as a soldier in World War I in uninterrupted war service, 1914-1919. Though his initial university interest was music, he switched to art history studying at the universities in Munich and Freiburg im Breisgau under Heinrich Wölfflin, Hans Jantzen, Paul Frankl, August Liebmann Mayer and Wilhelm Vöge. His doctoral degree was granted in 1925 in Freiburg with a dissertation written under Jantzen on the early years of Hans Baldung Grien. His classmates included the photographer Hans Finsler (1891-1972), and art historians Siegfrid Giedion, Carola Giedion-Welcker, Hertha Wescher and Franz Roh. In 1920, Curjel became curatorial assistant at the Karlsruher Kunsthalle (Art Gallery) under director Willy F. Storck. He married Elfriede G. M. (Yella) Fahrner (1897-1977), a musician, in 1921. Curjel returned to music, 1924-1925, as acting conductor of the Düsseldorf Schauspielhaus (Theater). When Storck was hospitalized extensively, he assumed a deputy director role of the Kunsthalle.

In 1927, Curjel received an opportunity to direct at the State Opera at the Platz der Republik (Kroll Opera) in Berlin, a progressive opera house. Through his leadership, new music by Schönberg, Strawinsky, Hindemith, Janàcek, Krenek, and Milhaud were debuted. He empowered avant-garde artists such as Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Oskar Schlemmer, and Giorgio de Chirico to create stage design. A performance of Schlemmer’s Triadischem Ballett (Triadic Ballet) was directed at the theatre. In 1931, after closing of the Kroll Opera, he became theatre director to the German Opera House in Berlin; in addition to lecturing at Lessing University and pursuing journalistic activity.

In 1933, Curjel, who was raised Protestant Christ but of Jewish heritage, was dismissed from his post by the Nazi government on “racial” grounds and accused of being a protagonist of modernism is the Weimar Republic. He fled to Switzerland and with the help of Giedion and Ernst F. Burckhardt (1900-1958), Curjel became the chief director of the Corso Theatre (Variety theater) in Zürich, a position he held until 1942. He also promoted the music in Gstaad. After the war, he became the director of the Stadttheater Chur where Berthold Brecht premiered his play Antigone. In 1949, Curjel toured the United States, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation to study theaters. He freelanced as an art, theater, a music critic for publications (among others for Das Werk) and presenting Swiss and German radio broadcasts SWF and NDR.

His 1952 exhibtion, Um 1900 at the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Zürich was the first comprehensive overview of Jugendstil (or Art Nouveau) becoming an impetus for the rediscovery the style. He spent his remaining years lecturing and editing the works of the Jugenstil designer Henri Van de Velde, his collected writings in 1955 and his autobiography in 1962.

Curjel along with Will Grohmann and Sigfried Giedion were considered ”polyhistorians” scholars who viewed the arts together to see them as a cultural phenomenon (Staber).

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Die Jugendentwicklung des Hans Baldung Grien. Freiburg, 1925; Hans Baldung Grien. Munich: O.C. Recht, 1923; Um 1900. Art Nouveau und Jugendstil Kunst und Kunstgewerbe aus Europa und Amerika zur Zeit der Stilwende. Zürich Kunstgewerbemuseum, 1952; edited, van de Velde, Henry. Zum neuen Stil: aus seinen Schriften ausgewählt und eingeleitet von Hans Curjel. Munich: R. Piper 1955; edited, van de Velde, Henry. Geschichte meines Lebens. Munich: R. Piper, 1962.

Sources

[obituary:] Roth, Alfred and Staber, Margit, and Galli, Remo G. “Hans Curjel 1896-1974.” Werk 61 (1974): 359-361; Finsler, Hans. “Siebzig Jahre und Hans Curjel.” Werk 53, 1966: 93-94; Wendland, Ulrike. Biographisches Handbuch deutschsprachiger Kunsthistoriker im Exil: Leben und Werk der unter dem Nationalsozialismus verfolgten und vertriebenen Wissenschaftler. Munich: Saur, 1999, vol. 1, pp. 107-11.

Contributors: Cassandra Klos

Cursiter, Stanley

November 8, 2023April 5, 2024

Full Name: Cursiter, Stanley

Gender: male

Date Born: 1887

Date Died: 1976

Place Born: Kirkwall, Orkney, Scotland, UK

Place Died: Stromness, Orkney, Scotland, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): painting (visual works)

Overview

Museum director and painter. Cursiter was the son of John Scott Cursiter (1850-1896), baker and liquor vendor, and Mary Johan Thomson. He attended Kirkwall grammar school between 1893 and 1904 gaining a certificate in construction in 1900. Cursiter moved to Edinburgh in 1904 in hopes of a career in architecture, but too poor to afford training, he joined the chromolithography print firm of McLagen and Cumming. Cursiter attended the Edinburgh School of Art, then study under the designer W. S. Black in 1904, then the Royal College of Art, London, and finally under W. R. Lethaby in 1908. Beginning in 1909 he supported himself as an artist and designer. In 1911 Cursiter saw the famous post-impressionist exhibition at the Grafton Galleries, London, organized by Roger Fry. He met Fry and Clive Bell and convinced them to loan some work for the SSA exhibition in Edinburgh. Cursiter did for Scotland what Fry had done for Britain, the exhibition brought Cézanne, Van Gogh, and Gauguin paintings to Scotland for the first time. When World War I was declared in England, Cursiter enlisted in the 1st battalion of the Scottish Rifles (Cameronians) in 1914. He married the Scottish violinist Phyllis Eda Hourston (1888-1975) in 1916. As a soldier, he fought in the battle of the Somme, later transferring to the survey battalion assigned to cartography. Cursiter invented processes for map production in the field, speeding information on enemy troop placement, which earned him a military Order of the British Empire (OBE) honor. After discharge in 1919, Cursiter returned to Scotland to paint, but moved to Cassis in southern France for six months in 1920. Here he established himself as a skilled and sensitive painter. In 1925 Cursiter was appointed keeper of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, under J. L. Caw. He immediately threw himself into conservation, then a study in its infancy. He was appointed director of the Gallery in1930. Together with the restorer Rijksmuseum restorer Martin de Wild he developed a method of relining paintings using wax. He also published papers on X-ray analysis of paintings. Cursiter created a conservation/restoration department for the Gallery, redesigning most of the exhibition and storage spaces to make them more useable as a museum. During this time he also actively worked to implement a proposal by the Royal Commission on Galleries and Museums to create a gallery of Scottish artists, a “Scottish Tate Gallery.” Though his efforts came to no avail, it laid the groundwork for the current Scottish National Gallery. In 1938 Cursiter designed an integrated art complex, including a modern art gallery another for industrial design, and a film and performance theater. The advent of World War II prevented this from happening. Cursiter first supervised the safe hiding of the Scottish collection before being recalled to the cartography division as a civilian trainer. He returned to Edinburgh when it became apparent the stored collection was being harmed. He mounted numerous exhibitions during the war on women’s art, children’s art and images of the conflict. In 1947, he wrote Peploe: An Intimate Memoir of an Artist and of his Work on the artist Samuel John Peploe (1871-1935). Cursiter retired as director in 1948 and was awarded a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) honor. In retirement, Cursiter became a successful portrait artist. He also published his art history, Scottish Art at the Close of the Nineteenth Century, in 1949. His autobiography, Looking Back: a Book of Reminiscences, appeared in 1974. Cursiter returned to Orkney in 1975 where devoted himself to the preservation of St. Magnus’s Cathedral. He died after contracting bronchopneumonia at his home in 1976.

Selected Bibliography

Scottish Art to the Close of the Nineteenth Century. London: G. G. Harrap, 1949; Peploe: an Intimate Memoir of the Artist and of his Work. London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1947; and de Wild, A. Martin. A Note on Picture Relining. Cambridge, MA: Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, 1938; Art in Industry, with Special Reference to Conditions in Scotland. Edinburgh: Saltire Society/Oliver and Boyd, 1943.

Sources

Cursiter, Stanley. Looking Back: a Book of Reminiscences. Edinburgh: privately printed, 1974; Mackenzie, Jill C. “Cursiter, Stanley.” Dictionary of National Biography; [obituary:] “Mr Stanley Cursiter.” Times (London), May 1, 1976, p. 16.

Curtius, Ernst

November 8, 2023April 5, 2024

Full Name: Curtius, Ernst

Gender: male

Date Born: 1814

Date Died: 1896

Place Born: Lübeck, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany

Place Died: Berlin, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): ancient, Ancient Greek (culture or style), archaeology, and nineteenth century (dates CE)

Overview

Leading archaeologist of ancient Greece in Germany in the late 19th century; his writings were highly art-historical. Curtius was the son of the mayor of Lübeck, Germany. He studied under Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker in Bonn, Otfried Müller in Göttingen, and August Böckh (1785-1867) in Berlin. Between 1837-40 he lived in Greece as the tutor to the children of the classicist Christian August Brandis (1790-1867), where he became familiar with the monuments. In 1840 he accompanied Müller to Delphi where Müller contracted an illness from which he died. It was Curtius who made the funeral arrangements for burial on Colonus. He returned to Berlin in 1842 and in 1844 secured a position as tutor to Crown Prince Friedrich (later Kaiser) III (1831-1888). Kaiser Friedrich III’s enthusiasm for archaeology can be traced to Curtius’ teaching. Curtius delivered an oration at the Berlin Singakademie in 1852 on Olympia, in whose presence was the royal family. This gave great impetus to its excavation, though actual work was much delayed because of the Turko-Russian War (1877-78). In 1851 Curtius became editor of the Corpus inscriptionum Graecarum and a member of the Berlin Academy. He was appointed Professor of classical philology at Göttingen in 1853, a position he held until 1867. Curtius’ Griechische Geschichte of 1857-61 was the first Greek history written in German. When Eduard Gerhard died in 1867, Curtius succeeded him as professor of classical archaeology at Berlin and as director of the Altes Museum and Antiquarium. In that position, he convinced the government to nationalize the DAI (German Archaeological Institute) and found a branch in Athens. Curtius finally was able to organize and lead the massive expedition to excavate Olympia (1875-1881) when he was in his sixties. His discoveries there included the sculptures of the Zeus Temple and the so-called “Hermes of Praxiteles.” His history of Athens, Stadtgeschichte von Athen, appeared in 1892. Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1848-1931) succeeded him in Berlin. Curtius’ younger brother Georg Curtius (1820-1885) was an eminent philologist and his grandson the literary historian Ernst Robert Curtius (1886-1956). Curtius’ comprehensive approach to classics was modeled on the methods of his teacher, Otfried Müller. As an archaeologist, Curtius led in cultural patriation of objects. The excavations at Olympus were performed with the agreement that all artifacts found by Curtius and his German crew would remain in Greece. After Curtius, archaeology was no longer a hunt for treasure, but a scientific pursuit. His writing, for example his Griechische Geschichte, could be moralizing; Wilamowitz and others found his writing sentimental. His art-historical writings were collected shortly before his death in his Gesammelte Abhandlungen (1894).

Selected Bibliography

Peloponnesos: Eine historisch-geographische Beschreibung der Halbinsel. 2 vols. Gotha: J. Perthes, 1851-1852; and Ascherfield, Jürgen. Olympia, von Ernst Curtius, mit ausgewählten von Pindar, Pausanius, Lukian. Berlin: Atlantis-verlag, 1935l; Die Stadtgeschichte von Athen. Berlin: Weidmann, 1891; Griechische Geschichte. 3 vols. Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1878-80, English, The History of Greece. 5 vols. New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1886; Gesammelte abhandlungen von Ernst Curtius. Berlin: W. Hertz, 1894 [volume 2, part B contains “Kunstgeschichte.”]; editor, from 1851, Corpus inscriptionum graecarum. 4 vols. Berlin: Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1828-77.

Sources

Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 39-40. Suzanne L. Marchand. Down from Olympus: Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750-1970. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996: 77-91; Calder, William. “Curtius, Ernst.” Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, vol. 1, pp. 341-42; Curtius, Friedrich. Ernst Curtius: Ein Lebensbild in Briefen. Berlin: J. Springer, 1903; Stemplinger, Eduard, editor. Der Münchner Kreis: Platen, Curtius, Geibel, Strachwitz. Leipzig: Reclam, 1933.

Curtius, Ludwig

November 8, 2023April 5, 2024

Full Name: Curtius, Ludwig

Gender: male

Date Born: 1874

Date Died: 1954

Place Born: Augsburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany

Place Died: Rome, Lazio, Italy

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): archaeology, painting (visual works), portraits, and sculpture (visual works)

Overview

Archaeologist, Director of the DAI 1928-1938; built reputation on researching the development of sculpture portraiture and painting of the classical era. Born to a wealthy physician’s family, Curtius studied in Munich under Enrico Brunn and Adolf Furtwängler, under whom he wrote his dissertation in 1902 (published 1903). His topic was the herm format in sculpture. He taught as a private lecturer beginning in 1905 at Erlangen University. With the appearance of his 1907 Habilitationschrift concerning an Apollo head, he assumed a Professorship at Erlangen, where he advanced to Ordinarius in 1913. Together with Johannes Sieveking, he edited the papers of Furtwängler after Furtwängler’s untimely death. After military service during the First World War, Curtius taught at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau, 1918-1920. At Freiburg, Curtius’s colleagues included Ernst Buschor and Hans Jantzen. He was called to Heidelberg in 1920. In 1928, Curtius became the Director of the Deutsche Archäologische Institut (German Archaeological Institute or DAI) in Rome and succeeded in Heidelberg by Arnold von Salis. The following year he published his influential Wandmalerei Pompeijs (Pompeiian Wall Painting) as well as the volume in the prestigious Handbuch der Kunstwissenschaft series on Egypt and west Asia. Curtius held the directorship of the DAI until his disapproval of the Nazi’s (and his bi-sexuality) forced his dismissal (as an early retirement) in 1938. He was succeeded by a provisional appointment of Armin von Gerkan. Curtius remained in Rome throughout World War II and until his death. He witnessed the reopening of the DAI in 1953, but died before he could deliver an address commemorating its 125th founding. His Heidelberg students included Otto J. Brendel and at the DAI, Karl Schefold. He is no relation to the classicist Ernst Curtius.

Selected Bibliography

[complete bibliography:] Lullies, Reinhard. Schriften von Ludwig Curtius, Eine Bibliographie, 1979;[collected writings:] Torso. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt,1958; [dissertation:] Die antike Herme: eine kunstgeschichtliche Studie. Leipzig: B. G. Teubner,1903; [Habilitationsschrift:] über einen Apollokopf in Florenz. Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1908; and Zschietzschmann, Willy. Die antike Kunst. 2 vols. Berlin: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion, 1913ff.; Deutsche und antike Welt: Lebenserinnerungen. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1950; Interpretationen von sechs griechischen Bildwerken. Bern: A. Francke,1947; and Rüdiger, Horst. Johann Joachim Winckelmann: 1768-1968. Bad Godesberg: Inter Nationes, 1968.

Sources

Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 186-187; Calder, William. “Curtius, Ludwig.” Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, vol. 1, p. 342; Bieber, Margaret. “Necrology.” American Journal of Archaeology 59 (1955): 64-65; Calder, William III. Review, “Bachelors of Art.” in, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 03.01.16.

Cust, Lionel, Sir

November 8, 2023April 5, 2024

**Image Credit:** National Portrait Gallery

Full Name: Cust, Lionel, Sir

Other Names:

Lionel Cust

Gender: male

Date Born: 1859

Date Died: 1929

Place Born: London, Greater London, England, UK

Place Died: Datchet, Windsor and Maidenhead, Berkshire, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): museums (institutions)

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

Overview

Director, National Portrait Gallery, London, 1895-1909, and co-editor of the Burlington Magazine, 1909-1919. Cust’s father was the barrister Sir Reginald John Cust (1828-1913) and mother Lady Elizabeth Caroline Bligh (Cust) (1830-1914). After graduating from Eton College he attended Trinity College, Cambridge (1877-1881) completing a degree in Classics. Initially assigned to the War Office between 1882 he made a civil-service transfer to the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum under Sidney Colvin in 1884. Though Cust had been a poor performer in the War Office, he shone in the Department under Colvin. Cust set about creating an Index to the Dutch, Flemish, and German artists represented in the print room (published in 1893) and started another for the French artists. In 1895 Cust succeeded George Scharf as director of the National Portrait Gallery and married Sybil Lyttelton (1873-1934), a noble and half-sister the politician Alfred Lyttelton (1857-1913). The following year his index of French artists for the British Museum was published. As Portrait Gallery director, Cust moved the collection from the temporary quarters at Bethnal Green to the modern space at St. Martin’s Place. He issued the first of two permanent holdings catalogs of the collection in 1896. A study of Dürer’s paintings and prints appeared in 1897, and a book on an German engraver, Master E. S. in 1898. Also in 1898, Cust produced a History of the Society of Dilettanti. Running a state portrait gallery required broad and specific knowledge of peerage and genealogy as well as a knowledge of the private holdings of country estates. Cust mastered all of this, a knowledge resulting in numerous contributions to the Dictionary of National Biography. In 1900 he published a large book on Anthony van Dyck. Cust added duties as the surveyor of the king’s pictures to his Director position in 1901, rehanging most of the pictures in the Royal palaces. A smaller treatment on van Dyck and a book on the The Bridgewater House Gallery were both issued in 1903. Under the auspices of the Oxford Historical Society, Cust wrote catalogs of the portrait collections for three consecutive years beginning in 1904. A book of his personal poems, Ludibrium ventia, was privately published in 1904. His catalog of the royal collection, The Royal Collection of Paintings: Buckingham Palace appeared in 1905 with a second volume on Windsor Castle in 1906. In 1909, he resigned from the Portrait Gallery (succeeded by C. J. Holmes), and joined Roger Fry as joint editor of the Burlington Magazine beginning in 1909, a relationship that lasted ten years. At the magazine, he supplied book reviews and articles on portraiture, raising public interest in this neglected genre. Almost immediately he was embroiled in the “Flora Bust” scandal, helping the magazine to denounce as modern a bust of the goddess Flora purported to be a Leonardo and purchased by another member of the Burlington Magazine‘s Consultative Committee, Wilhelm Bode for his Berlin museum. Bode resigned from the committee in protest. In 1913 Cust published a study of the painter Hans Eworth (fl. 1540-73) (“H. E.”) reassigning many works to him in the Walpole Society’s Annual for that year. Cust and the Burlington’s other joint editor, More Adey, developed strong disagreements with Fry and both resigned from the magazine in 1919. In 1927 he relinquished his role as surveyor of the king’s pictures, replaced by C. H. Collins Baker, and named as a KCVO, Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order, a member of the second highest rank of a British order of knighthood. He died at home, Datchet House, Datchet, Buckinghamshire. His cousin was the historian of Italian art, Robert H. Hobart Cust. Cust was responsible for raising the interest of British portraiture to an international level and helping to introduce northern artists to British attention. Before Cust’s writing in the Burlington Magazine, English art historians had focused largely on Italian artists. His early monographs on Van Dyck and Dürer were widely read. Though Cust lacked an elegant writing style, his work was redeemed by a scrupulous attention to facts. He demolished many myths around the art he wrote. His re-analysis of the sixteenth-century painter Hans Eworth, long erroneously identified with Lucas d’Heere, is of permanent significance.

Selected Bibliography

and Colvin, Sydney. History of the Society of Dilettanti. London: Macmillan, 1914; A Description of the Sketch-book by Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Used by him in Italy, 1621-1627, and Preserved in the Collection of the Duke of Devonshire, at Chatsworth. London: G. Bell, 1902; The National Portrait Gallery. 2 vols. London:] Cassell, 1901-02; Anthony Van Dyck, an Historical Study of his Life and Works. London: G. Bell and Sons, 1900; Index of Artists Represented in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum. 2 vols. London: British Museum/Longmans, 1893-1896.

Sources

Cust, Sybil. “Memoir.” Cust, Lionel. King Edward VII and his Court; Some Reminiscences. London: J. Murray, 1930, pp. v-xxiii; Millar, Oliver. The Queen’s Pictures London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1977, pp. 200-203; [obituaries:] “Sir Lionel Henry Cust, K. C. V. O.” Burlington Magazine 55, No. 320 (November 1929): 251; “Sir Lionel Cust The Historical Side of Art Scholarship.” Times (London) October 14, 1929, p. 19.

Cust, Robert H. Hobart

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Cust, Robert H. Hobart

Other Names:

Robert Henry Hobart Cust

Gender: male

Date Born: 1861

Date Died: 1940

Place Born: Hythe, Kent, England, UK

Place Died: Hampstead, Camden, London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Overview

Early scholar of Sodoma and the town of Siena. Cust’s father was Robert Cust and his mother Maria Hobart. After attending Eton, he studied at Trinity College, Cambridge and Magdalen College Oxford. He married Cornelia Octavia Peacock. In 1906 Cust published the major work on Il Sodoma, Giovanni Antonio Bazzi. In subsequent years, Cust had to fend off reviewers who found–as Cust did himself–Sodoma’s subject matter and lifestyle immoral. He and Bernard Berenson agreed that Sodoma’s paintings drifted “into work that would disgrace any artist.” Cust also submitted the article on Sodoma to Bryan’s Dictionary of Painters and Engravers. The following year he translated the 1888 Vittore Carpaccio: discorso letto by Gustav Ludwig (1852-1905) and Pompeo Molmenti (1852-1928) as The Life and Works of Vittorio Carpaccio. Cust took up residency in Siena, where, in 1903, he attacked R. Langton Douglas and his History of Siena, accusing him of ignorance of the basic archival sources of that city. Cust produced a number of short books for the publisher George Bell in the series Bell’s Miniature Series of Painters, including works on Leonardo and Botticelli (both 1908). In 1910 he issued his own translation of an abbreviated version of the life of Benvenuto Cellini, based on a newer edition of the Italian (by Bacci) to compete with the popular version translated by John Addington Symonds of 1888, and, though also popular, never achieved as much success. He served in the RAF during World War I. His cousin was Lionel Cust a director of the National Portrait Gallery.

Selected Bibliography

Leonardo da Vinci. London: G. Bell & Sons, 1908; Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, hitherto Usually Styled “Sodoma,” the Man and the Painter, 1477-1549: a Study. London: J. Murray, 1906; The Pavement Masters of Siena (1369-1562). London, G. Bell and Sons, 1901; translated, Cellini, Benvenuto. The Life of Benvenuto Cellini. London : G. Bell and sons,1910; translated, Molmenti, Pompeo Gherardo, and Ludwig, Gustav. The Life and Works of Vittorio Carpaccio. London: J. Murray, 1907; “Professor Langton Douglas and Documentary Evidence.” Burlington Magazine 1 no. 2 (April 1903): 269-270

Sources

Who Was Who among English and European Authors, 1931-1949. vol. 1. Detroit: Gale Research, 1978, p. 376; Who Was Who in Literature, 1906-1934. vol. 1. Detroit: Gale Research, 1979, p. 280.

Cuttler, Charles D.

November 8, 2023April 5, 2024

**Image Credit:** The University of Iowa Libraries

Full Name: Cuttler, Charles D.

Other Names:

Charles David Cuttler

Gender: male

Date Born: 1913

Date Died: 2008

Place Born: Cleveland, Cuyahoga, OH, USA

Place Died: New York, NY, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): Northern Renaissance

Overview

Scholar of the norther Renaissance in art. Professor of Art History, University of Iowa. Cuttler was born to Morris Joseph Cuttler and Nettie Wolff (Cuttler). After attending Ohio State University where he received a B.F.A. in 1935 and M.A., 1937. He was awarded a Carnegie fellowship to study at the University of Paris, 1937. He initially joined the University of Colorado, Boulder, as an instructor in art history in 1938, and a fellow at University of Brussels under the Belgian American Educational Foundation in 1939. Cuttler left his Colorado teaching post in 1940 on the eve of World War II to work as a designer for several defence engineering firms in Detroit, MI. He married Mary Cecilia Fuller in 1941 (later divorced). After World War II, Cuttler returned to art history, teaching as an assistant professor at Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI, beginning in 1947. He entered the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University for a doctorate in art history. Cuttler studied under the eminent German expatriate art historians who made the Institute famous in the years immediately after the war, including Martin Weinberger, Walter F. Friedländer and Erwin Panofsky. His Ph.D. was granted in 1952. He joined the faculty at Indiana University as Assistant professor teaching summers, 1952 and 1953. Cuttler was called to the University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA as an associate professor in 1957. Cuttler published an article in the Art Bulletin in 1957 on Hieronymous Bosch’s “Temptation of St. Anthony” (Lisbon); it remains the basic study on that work (Snyder). He rose to (full) professor of art history at Iowa in 1965, researching in Brussels the following year as a senior Fulbright fellow. He remarried to Betty Monroe. In 1968 Cuttler published one of the first surveys in the English language on northern Renaissance art (the earlier one by Otto Benesch, was a translation from German). He retired from Iowa in 1983. He died in New York city after a lengthy illness. His final book, Hieronymus Bosch: Late Work, appeared posthumously in 2011. His papers are held at the University of Iowa special collections library.

Selected Bibliography

[master’s thesis:] Flemish Painting Techniques. Ohio State University, 1937; [dissertation:] The Temptations of Saint Anthony in Art: from Earliest Times to the First Quarter of the XVI Century. New York University, 1952; Northern Painting from Pucelle to Bruegel Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Sixteenth Centuries. New York Holt: Rinehart and Winston 1968; Hieronymus Bosch: Late Work. London: Pindar Press, 2011.

Sources

Synder, James, ed. Bosch in Perspective. Engelwood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973, p. 166; [obituary:] “Charles Cuttler.” Iowa City Gazette April 23, 2008, p. 4B.

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