Subject Area(s): Medieval (European) and nineteenth century (dates CE)
Overview
Medievalist, wrote the important scholarship in the nineteenth century on Mont-Saint Michel. Henry Adams, in his Mont-Saint Michel and Chartres, mentions Corroyer in the opening pages of the book.
Selected Bibliography
Description de l’abbaye du Mont Saint-Michel et de ses abords précédée d’une notice historique. Paris, Dumoulin, 1877.
Medievalist, wrote the important scholarship in the nineteenth century on Mont-Saint Michel. Henry Adams, in his Mont-Saint Michel and Chartres, mentions Corroyer in the opening pages of the book.
Subject Area(s): art theory, Renaissance, Spanish (culture or style), and Spanish Renaissance-Baroque styles
Overview
Art historian, educational theorist, professor and El Greco scholar; co-founder of Summa artis, historia general del arte. The son of Patricio Bartolomé Flores, a judge, and of Natalia Cossío Salinas, Cossío studied at the Colegio El Escorial and at the Instituto de Ávila where he obtained his baccalaureate in 1871. He attended the Central University in Madrid enrolling in philosophy and literature courses and studying art history and archeology. Many Spanish intellectuals were under the influence of the German philosopher Karl Krauss (1781-1832). Kraussism taught that the education of professional elites would result in the nfluencing of society. In 1876, under the protection of the new Constitution which guaranteed freedom of education, Krausist teachers, led by Francisco Giner de los Ríos (1839-1915), many of whom had been dismissed from their professorships, founded in Madrid the Institución Libre de Enseñanza (The Free Institution for Education). Cossío was among the first assistants at the Institución Libre de Enseñanza; three years later, in 1879, he earned his doctoral degree in Philosophy and Letters. A scholarship at the Colegio de San Clemente de Bologna (Italy) gave him the opportunity to pursue his studies in history, art, pedagogy and philosophy, to obtain the certificate of the school of pedagogy and anthropology of the University of Bologna, as well as to travel extensively in Italy, Switzerland, France, Holland and Belgium. In 1881 he started his university career, dividing his time between teaching at the School of Arts in Barcelona (where he became a professor in 1883), and his appointment as director of the National Museum of Pedagogy (founded in 1882). He attended the Congress of Education in London in 1884 with Giner, and then visited Eton and Oxford; two years later he toured, commissioned by the Spanish government, the most important educational institutions in France, Belgium, Holland and Great Britain. Cossío finished his book Historia de la pintura española in 1886, (History of Spanish Painting) though it was only published later. At the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1889, he presided at the Spanish Education and Teaching department. He married Carmen López Viqueira in 1893. In 1901 he was entrusted with the department of General Pedagogy of the museum. An appointment as professor at the School of Criminology happened in 1903 and in 1904 another in the department of Pedagogy of Doctoral Studies of the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of the Central University. Cossío played an important role in the field of public education. He published his book on El Greco–the first catalogue raisonné of that artist–and a work that made him internationally famous, in 1908. On the occasion of the painter’s centenary in 1914, his Lo que se sabe de la vida del Greco came out. An English summary appeared the following year by the Hispanic Society of America. Ill health began to plague Cossío. He spent time recovering in El Escorial and then in Pozuelo de Alarcón (Madrid). His friend, Giner died the same year (1915). In 1921 Cossío was appointed Counselor of Public Instruction. On his retirement from the Institución Libre de Enseñanza at the age of 72, his disciples paid him homage by collecting some of his work in the book De su jornada (1929). After medical treatment in Switzerland, he returned to Spain as the republic was proclaimed. Continued ill health, however, prevented him from getting involved in the political life, although he was elected deputy in 1931, and was proposed by Lerroux to become the president of the republic. In 1931, too, he and José Pijoán y Soteras began the joint editorship of the important scholarly encyclopedia of art in the Spanish language, Summa artis, historia general del arte. The first seven volumes were published under both names, but Cossío died at Collado Mediano, Madrid, before making any contribution to the work. He is buried in the same grave as Sanz del Río, Giner, Fernando de Castro and Azcárate. He had been among the first Spanish intellectuals to be awarded the distinction Citizen of Honor of the Republic. Cossío’s historical importance was his appreciation of art as a key to asserting the importance of Spain in the world. His “discovery” through publications of art-historical importance of Toledo, Salamanca, and Avila, as well as the first catalogue raisonné of El Greco and a comprehensive history of Spanish painting cannot be underestimated, even if subsequent works supplanted his scholarship. As a pedagogue heading the Institución Libre de Enseñanza, he mandated cultural trips for students throughout Spain, so that they familiarize themselves with the artistic treasures of their country. CS
Selected Bibliography
[complete bibliography:] Santullano, Luis. El pensamiento vivo de Manuel B. Cossío. Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 1946, pp. 61-65, and http://busc.usc.es/A_Biblioteca/actividades/Pedagoxia/index.htm; El Greco. 3 vols. Madrid: V. Suárez, 1908, English, El Greco. Barcelona: Hispanic Society of America/Hijos de J. Thomas, 1915; La enseñanza primaria en España. Madrid: Fortanet, 1897; De su jornada, fragmentos. Madrid: Impr. de Blass, 1929, edited, and Pijoán, José. Summa artis, historia general del arte. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1931ff.
Sources
Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire d l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, p. 443; Fundación Francisco Giner de los Ríos, Institucion Libre de Enseñanza, chronology, http://www.fundacionginer.org/cronologia.htm#cossio1. Ledesma, Ramiro Ramos. « El pedagogo Cossío ». La Gaceta Literaria April 1, 1929, III, no. 55, p. 2; Santullano, Luis. El pensamiento vivo de Manuel B. Cossío. Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 1946; Alvarez Lopera, José. De Ceán a Cossío: la fortuna crítica del Greco en el siglo XIX. Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española, 1987ff.
Citation
"Cossío, Manuel B.." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/cossiom/.
More Resources
Search for materials by & about this art historian:
Art historian, educational theorist, professor and El Greco scholar; co-founder of Summa artis, historia general del arte. The son of Patricio Bartolomé Flores, a judge, and of Natalia Cossío Salinas, Cossío studied at the Colegio El Esco
Berenson, Bernard. The Selected Letters of Bernard Berenson. Edited by A. K McComb. London: Hutchinson, 1963. p. 10 [mentioned]; Berenson, Bernard. Sketch for a Self-Portrait. New York: Pantheom, 1949, p. 51.
Citation
"Costa, Enrico." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/costae/.
More Resources
Search for materials by & about this art historian:
Subject Area(s): Baroque, French (culture or style), French Renaissance-Baroque styles, and painting (visual works)
Overview
Poussin scholar and New York University professor of art history. Costello was raised in Brooklyn. She graduated from Erasmus Hall High School, Brooklyn, NY, and then Barnard College in 1940. She continued for graduate study at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, writing her dissertation under Walter F. Friedländer in 1951. In 1952 joined the faculty at New York University teaching undergraduates at the Washington Square campus. In 1953 she collaborated with the other baroque specialists on Poussin in the English language, Anthony Blunt and Ellis K. Waterhouse on volume three of Friedlaender’s catalogue raisonné of Poussin. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1954 for further study of Poussin. In 1960, Costello participated in one of the first televised lecture programs in art history, a joint venture with NYU and WCBS television, “Sunrise Semester.” Her taped program, which aired early in the morning was called “Outlines of the History of Art.” At her death, she willed works of African art were left to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, from the collection of her husband. A Jane Costello Prize for excellence in the study of fine arts was established in her honor at the College of Arts and Sciences.She married Arthur I. Goldberg.
Selected Bibliography
[dissertation:] Nicolas Poussin and the Genesis of French Classicism. New York University, 1951; Nicolas Poussin: The Martyrdom of Saint Erasmus. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1975; and Friedlaender, Walter, and Blunt, Anthony, and Waterhouse, Ellis. Mythological subjects, part 3 of, Nicolas Poussin: Drawings, catalogue raisonné. London: Warburg Institute, 1953.
Sources
Shanley, John P. “Jane Costello Enjoys Her TV Assignment.” New York Times February 7, 1960; p. X13
Citation
"Costello, Jane." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/costelloj/.
More Resources
Search for materials by & about this art historian:
Poussin scholar and New York University professor of art history. Costello was raised in Brooklyn. She graduated from Erasmus Hall High School, Brooklyn, NY, and then Barnard College in 1940. She continued for graduate study at New York University
Museum curator, professor and art collector. Courajod attended the Lycée Charlemagne in Paris. After his graduation from Law school in 1864, he was trained as an archivist and paleographer at the école des Chartes from 1864 until 1867 where he met, among others, the future founder of art history at the Sorbonne, Henry Lemonnier. He continued his studies at the école des Hautes études. From 1867 until 1874 he served as an employee at the Cabinet des Estampes of the Bibliothèque Nationale, under chief curator Henri Delaborde. In that position, Courajod began to explore the field of art history. In 1867 he published his first article, “Les sépultures des Plantagenets à Fontevrault.” In 1874 he was appointed at the Louvre Museum as an attaché to the preservation of sculpture and art objects of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. In 1879 he was promoted to the position of adjunct curator. He reorganized and rearranged the collection, researching the art works and revising attributions. Between 1878 and 1887 he published a major study on the work of Alexandre Lenoir (1762-1839), the curator of the former Musée des monuments français (1795-1816). Part of this museum’s collection had been relocated to the Louvre. Courajod’s special fields of interest included the monumental sculpture of the fourteenth and fifteenth century, a period of transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. In addition, in 1887, he was appointed a professor of the history of sculpture of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Modern Age at the école du Louvre. Among his students were André Michel, Paul Vitry, and the Dutch art historian Aart Pit. Courajod was a regular contributor to the Gazette des Beaux-Arts. He was a member of a number of committees including the Commission des monuments historiques and the Société des Antiquaires de France. In 1893 he became the director of the Department of Sculpture of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Modern Age at the Louvre. He died prematurely at age 55. His successor as curator and professor was Michel, who completed and published Courajod’s catalog of the sculpture collection. Michel was the co-editor, with Lemonnier, of the three-volume publication of Courajod’s art classes at the école du Louvre. Courajod was the first art historian to look specifically for racial/national factors as determining styles. He argued that the Renaissance had been motivated by influences from Northern France and Flanders, opposing the Northern realism of these schools against the predominance of the classical and Italian character of the Renaissance. He also argued that medieval art had developed not exclusively from Roman art, but from a much wider complex of Christian, “barbarian”, and Oriental influences. Although he was trained as an archivist he always stressed above all the importance of the direct contact with the art work itself. He traveled regularly to study the objects in situ, considering them as the primary documents of art history. His posthumously published Leçons professées à l’école du Louvre (1887-1896),1899, has curious similarities to the universal history of art notion of Josef Rudolf Thomas Strzygowski (Vaisse). Wilhelm Vöge, whom he met while Vöge was in France in 1893, described Courajod as “the vehament Courajod” (Panofsky).
Selected Bibliography
[] Brière, M. G. “Bibliographie des travaux de Louis Courajod.” Lemonnier, Henry and Michel, André, eds. Louis Courajod. Leçons professées à l’école du Louvre (1887-1896). vol. 3, pp. xix – xxxv; études iconographiques sur la topographie ecclésiastique de la France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Le Monasticon gallicanum. Paris: Liepmannssohn et Dufour, 1869; Lemonnier, Henry and Michel, André, eds. Louis Courajod. Leçons professées à l’école du Louvre (1887-1896). 3 vols., 1. Origines de l’art roman et gothique, 2. Origines de la Renaissance, 3. Origines de l’art moderne. Paris: Alphonse Picard et Fils, éditeurs, 1899-1903. Livre-journal de Lazare Duvaux, marchand-bijoutier ordinaire du roy 1748-1758. 2 vols. Paris: F. de Nobele, 1965, Reprint of 1873 edition; Alexandre Lenoir, son journal et le Musée des monuments français. 3 vols. Paris: H. Champion, 1878-1887; [Musée national du Louvre] Catalogue sommaire des sculptures du Moyen Age, de la Renaissance et des Temps Modernes. Paris: Librairies-Imprimeries réunies, 1897.
Sources
Michel, André. “L’enseignement de Louis Courajod” in Lemonnier, Henry and Michel, André, eds. Leçons professées à l’école du Louvre (1887-1896). vol 3. Origines de l’art moderne. Paris: Alphonse Picard et Fils, éditeurs, 1903, pp. v-xvii; Panofsky, Erwin. “The History of Art.” In The Cultural Migration: The European Scholar in America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1953, p. 85, mentioned; D’Amat, Roman. “Courajod (Louis-Charles-Léon)” Dictionnaire de Biographie Française (1961): p. 931-932; [Vöge reminiscence] Panofsky, Erwin. “Wilhelm Vöge: A Biographical Memoir.” Art Journal 28 no. 1 (Fall 1968): 30; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art: de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, pp. 139, 168, 475-477; Bresc-Bautier, Geneviève. “Courajod, Louis(-Charles-Léon)” Dictionary of Art 8 (1996): 50; Cahn, Walter. “Henri Focillon” Medieval Scholarship: Biographical Studies on the Formation of a Discipline. 3. Philosophy and the Arts, Helen Damico, ed. New York: Garland Publishing, 2000, p. 265, mentioned; Un combat pour la sculpture: Louis Courajod (1841-1896) historien d’art et conservateur. (Actes de la journée d’étude organisée par l’Ecole du Louvre et le Département des sculptures du Musée du Louvre, à l’occasion du centenaire de la mort de Louis Courajod (1841-1896), Musée du Louvre, 15 janvier 1996, publiés sous la direction de Geneviève Bresc-Bautier avec la collaboration de Michèle Lafabrie). Paris: école du Louvre, 2003. [obituary:] Michel, André. “Louis Courajod” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (1896 no. 2): 203-217; Vaisse, Paierre. “Josef Strzygowski et la France.” Revue de l’Art no. 146 (2004): 73-83.
Museum curator, professor and art collector. Courajod attended the Lycée Charlemagne in Paris. After his graduation from Law school in 1864, he was trained as an archivist and paleographer at the école des Chartes from 1864 until 1867 where he met
Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre), churches (buildings), religious buildings, and sculpture (visual works)
Overview
Made accurate surveys of Chartres Cathedral. In the late 1950’s he undertook a study of the exact measurements of the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Chartres, France. Cox’s work superseded the earlier work by Ernst Lévy, a fact modestly admitted to by Levy himself in this lifetime. Cox’s measurements enabled other scholars, such as Otto von Simson in his book The Gothic Cathedral to draw the wider conclusions about Gothic architecture. Cox is not the Australian Art collector and physician with whom is he sometimes confused.
Selected Bibliography
“Villard de Honnecourt, Archimedes, and Charters [sic].” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 20 (October 1961): 143-5
Citation
"Cox, Leonard." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/coxl/.
More Resources
Search for materials by & about this art historian:
Made accurate surveys of Chartres Cathedral. In the late 1950’s he undertook a study of the exact measurements of the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Chartres, France. Cox’s work superseded the earlier work by Ernst Lévy, a fact mo
Career(s): directors (administrators) and museum directors
Overview
Director, Victoria and Albert Museum, London 1955-1967. Cox was the son of William Pallett Cox, a lawyer, and Marion Beverley (Cox). He graduated from Eton and attended King’s College, Cambridge, where he took a first-class degree in the Modern Languages Tripos. Cecil Harcourt-Smith, the Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum and a family friend, encouraged Cox in museum studies. At Cambridge, Sydney Cockerell Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, likewise inspired. He initially worked as an unpaid attaché at the National Gallery, London, and in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum. Cox entered graduate school at the University in Berlin, because no British university offered a degree in the subject, studying, for one semester, under the outstanding medievalist Adolph Goldschmidt. A short period at the Sorbonne led to his 1931 publication, Jehan Foucquet. His collaboration with W. G. Constable on the catalog of the exhibition of French Art at the Royal Academy in 1931-32, led to an appointment as assistant to the Director of the Wallace Collection, the major collection of French 18th century painting, under James G. Mann. Cox married Maisie Anderson (d.1973), daughter of Sir Hugh Anderson, Master of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and a noted antiquarian, in 1935. At the outbreak of World War II, Mann was abroad. Cox had to supervise the evacuation of the collection from London. Cox became private secretary to Sir Alexander Maxwell, the Permanent Under-Secretary at the Home Office. His skills as an administrator landed him the post of Director of the City of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in 1944. Cox engineered a remarkable post-war renaissance at Birmingham. With his assistant, Mary Woodall, Keeper of the Department of Art, Cox established the war-damaged Museum and Art Gallery as a leading national institution. He maintained excellent relations with the Birmingham City Corporation, founding one of the most successful museum Friends groups of the period. His book on David Cox was published in 1947. His Peter Bruegel appeared in 1951. He was awarded a CBE in 1954. When Leigh Ashton became unfit because of alcoholism to carry out his duties at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Cox was offered the position in 1955. But the Minister of Education responsible for the appointment purportedly told Cox that Cox’s mission was only “to to keep the seat warm for John Pope-Hennessy,” the high-profile Keeper to the Department of Sculpture at the V&A and the one whom many expected the job to be given. Cox’s appointment as Director and Secretary of the V&A was openly opposed by Edward Arthur Lane, the brilliant, but depressive Keeper of Ceramics who later took his own life. Cox published his popular Pictures: a Handbook for Curators in 1956. As an administrator, he promoted both women and blacks in the Museum, advancing the first woman to Assistant Keeper in the early 1960s. Cox raised the exhibition standards of the Museum, conspicuously that of “Opus Anglicanum” in the 1960s. He was knighted in 1961. An eye affliction which two operations failed to correct forced a premature retirement in 1966. Pope-Hennessy succeeded Cox in 1967. Cox died of pneumonia exacerbated by cancer at his home in London. A man of self-effacing charm and interest in his staff, the socialite Charlotte Bonham Carter (1893-1989) remarked, “Trenchard would never miss a charwoman’s funeral.” Among his supporters was the caustic Ellis K. Waterhouse who recognized Cox’s administrative determination. Neither an outstanding scholar nor a great connoisseur, Cox’s acquisition’s for the V&A nevertheless included a jade wine- cup of Shah Jehan, considered to be the Museum’s most important post-war South Asian acquisitions. His tenure overall at the V&A, overall, however, failed to address the identity issues with which the Museum struggled.
Selected Bibliography
Jehan Foucquet, Native of Tours. London: Faber and Faber, 1931; A General Guide to the Wallace Collection. London: H. M. Stationery Office/Hertford House, 1933.; Pieter Bruegel (c. 1527-1569). London: Faber and Faber, 1951.
Sources
Bayley, Stephen. “Vitrol & Ambition: It’s One of the World’s Great Museums [etc.].” The Independent (London), July 28, 2000, p. 1; [obituaries:] Ireland, George. “Sir Trenchard Cox.” The Independent (London), December 23, 1995, p. 14; “Sir Trenchard Cox.” The Times (London). December 23, 1995; Saxon, Wolfgang. “Sir Trenchard Cox, 90, Author And Longtime Museum Director.” The New York Times, January 2, 1996, p. 36.
Citation
"Cox, Trenchard." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/coxt/.
More Resources
Search for materials by & about this art historian:
Director, Victoria and Albert Museum, London 1955-1967. Cox was the son of William Pallett Cox, a lawyer, and Marion Beverley (Cox). He graduated from Eton and attended King’s College, Cambridge, where he took a first-class degree in the Modern La
Subject Area(s): anti-modernism and Modern (style or period)
Career(s): art critics
Overview
Anti-modernist art critic and art historian. Craven was born to Richard Price and Virginia Bates (Craven). Craven graduated from Kansas Wesleyan University in 1908, moving to Paris for a time to study art. In France, Craven attempted to be as French as possible, according to himself, in order to be an artist. However, Craven returned to the United States settled in Greenwich Village and became acquainted with the American realist artists working there. He roomed with the American painter Thomas Hart Benton and was friends with objectivist painters John Stuart Curry, George Grosz, Reginald Marsh and Grant Wood. During World War I he served in the U.S. Navy in 1918 and afterward married the writer Aileen St. John-Brenon in 1923 (divorced 1947). During the late 1920’s, Craven fell under the influence of H. L. Mencken, publishing in Mencken’s magazine The Mercury a 1927 article, “Have Painters Minds?” Craven’s animadversion of all painting–from murals to portrait painting to still lives–caused a public fury. In 1931 Craven published his first and most influential book, Men of Art. An art-historical survey of painting in the Western world, it was a combination of social history, biography and description and criticism. It and his later works were selected as Book-of-the-Month-Club offerings, catapulting his anti-modernist taste to an even larger audience. Craven wrote numerous articles, essays, criticisms, and reviews for Scribner’s, Harpers, The Dial, The Nation, The New Republic and The Forum. He was art critic for the Hearst Paper in New York, New York American. Craven also authored two other books, Modern Art, A Treasury of Art Masterpieces, and Greek Art. His papers are housed in the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Craven was characterized the “the principal ideologue of the American Scene” movement by the art historian Matthew Eli Baigell. His often caustic reviews and criticisms of the modernistic movement made him a partisan of the conservative art movement. Somewhat visionary, however, he championed as authentic art the works of cartoon artists and Walt Disney.
Selected Bibliography
Men of Art. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1931; Modern Art: the Men, the Movements, the Meaning: New York: Simon and Schuster, 1934; A Treasury of American Prints: a Selection of One hundred Etchings and Lithographs by the Foremost Living American Artists. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1939; A Treasury of Art Masterpieces: from the Renaissance to the Present Day. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1939; Famous Artists and their Models. New York: Pocket Books, 1949.
Sources
[obituary:] “Thomas Craven, Author, Dead: Caustic Art Critic and Lecturer.” New York Times. March 1, 1969, p. 31.
Anti-modernist art critic and art historian. Craven was born to Richard Price and Virginia Bates (Craven). Craven graduated from Kansas Wesleyan University in 1908, moving to Paris for a time to study art. In France, Craven attempted to be as Fren
Subject Area(s): Medieval (European), Spanish (culture or style), and Spanish Medieval styles
Overview
Historian of medieval Spanish art, founding director of the Institute of Fine Art at New York University and leading figure in bringing German art historians and their style of art history to the United States. Cook was born to William Jeremiah Cook and Jan Macreal (Cook). He attended Phillips Academy before entering Harvard University. He served in the American Expeditionary Force, 1917-19 during World War I. Cook spent the years 1920-1924 working on his doctorate at Harvard and nine months conducting research in Spain and France a a fellow of the Archaeological Institute of America, 1920-1921. He spent the academic year 1922-1923 researching at Princeton University. His dissertation was on Catalonian panel painting in the Romanesque period written under Chandler R. Post. Cook kept particularly close ties with Charles Rufus Morey at Princeton and Harvard’s Paul J. Sachs. Cook was already acting in an unofficial for Harvard’s Fogg art museums during his summers in Europe. While a student in Europe, he familiarized himself with nearly all the centers of art historical scholarship, making contact that would later prove useful for both those scholars and Cook. He joined the faculty at New York University in 1926. Cook continued to spend six months each year in Europe as a research fellow for Spanish art of the College Art Association. He was professor of art, New York University from 1932 to 1953. In 1932, Cook separated the graduate program from the undergraduate department from Washington Square, initially housing the program in a brownstone at the corner of 83rd and Madison Avenue and later at the Paul Warburg estate at 17 East 80th Street before its final home in the Duke mansion at 1 East 78th Street. Cook stated, “You may spend your money on a museum, but we are going to move right next door to a museum [the Metropolitan Museum of Art], and let them buy our works of art, while we spent it on the professors and get the best there are.” He used his position as the director of the new graduate center to “acquire” some of the most eminent art historians who were fleeing Hitler’s Germany. These included Erwin Panofsky, who settled at Princeton after NYU, Walter Friedlaender, Karl Leo Heinrich Lehmann, Martin Weinberger, Adolph Goldschmidt, Otto Homburger, Marcel Aubert, Henri Focillon, and Alfred Salmony. Some, like Aubert and Focillon went to other institutions and others, such as Panofsky, continued to teach at NYU even after his appointment at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1935. Cook once quipped, “Hitler is my best friend. He shakes the trees and I gather the apples.” Other scholars whom he sponsored or wrote enthusiastic endorsements of included Adolf Katzenellenbogen and Hans Huth. In 1950 he and José Gudiol issued Pintura e imagineria románicas for the important Ars Hispaniae series, one of only two English-speaking scholars author a volume in the set (the other being George Kubler). He continued as director of the Institute until 1951. At his retirement in 1953, a special exhibition was held in his honor at the Cloisters, Metropolitan Museum of Art. He died at sea on the ocean liner Leonardo da Vinci returning home from Genoa. Together with A. Kingsley Porter, Walter Muir Whitehill and Georgiana Goddard King, and his mentor, Post, Cook constituted an early “New England School” of American interest in Spanish Romaneque studies. His classroom technique was to use a large number of slides in a lecture, sometimes to the student’s bewilderment (Cahn). Cook’s posthumous reputation is largely for his hand in developing the Institute of Fine Arts into the graduate center it is today. Founded by Samuel F. B. Morse in 1835, Cook transformed it into a center for the training of scholars in the field of art history to enter the curatorial, teaching and academic fields. James S. Ackerman wrote that “Cook an indifferent and unproductive scholar and teacher, though his contribution to art history in America was eminent in a different way — he grasped the opportunity to bring to NYU the finest of German scholars expelled by the Nazis, and subseqently to invite for short gigs Wittkower, Panofsky, Baltrusaitis, Lotz and other outstanding historians. He was said to have gone down to ships arriving from Europe to meet prospective faculty as they descended the gangplank.” His efforts in providing safe haven for historians fleeing Germany were his lasting contribution. Died on board ship in the Atlantic.
Selected Bibliography
[dissertation] Romanesque Panel Painting in Catalonia. Harvard University, 1924; The Stucco Altar-frontals of Catalonia. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1924; and Gudiol, José. Pintura e imagineria románicas. Madrid: Editorial Plus-Ultra, 1950; La pintura mural románica en Cataluña. Madrid: Instituto Diego Velázquez del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1956; La pintura románica sobre tabla en Cataluña. Madrid: Instituto Diego Velázquez, del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1960.
Sources
Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, pp. 543-544; Boehm, Barbara Drake. “Harry Bober (1915-1988).” Gesta 28, No. 1. (1989): 103; Brush, Kathryn. “The Unshaken Tree: Walter W. S. Cook on German Kunstwissenschaft in 1924.” Zeitschrift des deutschen Vereins für Kunstwissenschaft 52/53 (1998/99): 24-51; Cahn, Walter. “Romanesque Art, Then and Now: A Personal Reminiscence.” in Hourihane, Colum, ed. Romanesque Art and Thought in the Twelfth Century: Essays in Honor of Walter Cahn. University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 2008, p. 33; James S. Ackermann, personal correspondence, February 2011; [obituaries:] Iniguez, D.A., et. al., “Walter W. S. Cook.” Art News 61 (November 1962) p. 27; Iniguez, D.A., et. al., Art Journal 22 no. 3 (Spring 1963): 167; “Dr. Walter Cook, Art Expert, Dies; Retired Professor at N.Y.U.” New York Times September 22, 1962, p. 25.
Contributors: Lee Sorensen
Citation
Lee Sorensen. "Cook, Walter W. S.." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/cookw/.
More Resources
Search for materials by & about this art historian:
Historian of medieval Spanish art, founding director of the Institute of Fine Art at New York University and leading figure in bringing German art historians and their style of art history to the United States. Cook was born to William Jeremiah Co
