D

de Gruyter, Josiah Willem Jos

November 8, 2023April 5, 2024

Full Name: de Gruyter, Josiah Willem Jos

Gender: male

Date Born: 1899

Date Died: 1979

Place Born: Singapore, Singapore, Republic of Singapore

Place Died: Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands

Home Country/ies: Singapore

Career(s): art critics and curators

Institution(s): Groninger Museum

Overview

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. He felt attracted to drawing, stimulated by his contacts with artists, including the painter and art writer Just Havelaar (1880-1930). At the outbreak of World War I, the family settled in England. In London, de Gruyter received further formal education from his father, while also attending the Beckenham School of Arts and Crafts and the Royal College of Art in London. He stayed in England after his parents’ return to The Netherlands. In 1922 he received his diploma of etching. A year later he joined his parents in Amersfoort. He renewed his friendship with Havelaar, then art critic for Het Vaderland, who inspired him to become an art writer. In 1926 he published an essay on Thijs Maris and Vincent van Gogh in De Nieuwe Gids, as well as booklets on Van Gogh, Rodin, and Käthe Kollwitz. In the same year he married the painter Margaritha Feuerstein (1893-1986). After a stay in Italy and France, the couple settled in The Netherlands. De Gruyter became art critic for the Utrechtsch Dagblad, as the successor of Abraham Marie Wilhelmus Jacobus Hammacher, and in 1930 he was appointed editor visual arts for Het Vaderland in The Hague. In addition, between 1930 and 1932, he served as the editor of Elsevier’s Geïllustreerd Maandschrift. In 1935 his major work appeared, a monograph on the essence and development of European Painting after 1850: Wezen en ontwikkeling der Europese Schilderkunst na 1850. After his divorce, he remarried Catharina Meijer in 1951. He was appointed director of the Groninger Museum in 1955 as the successor of Alphonsus Petrus Antonius Vorenkamp. Dedicated to modern and contemporary art, de Gruyter played an innovative role in the museum, in a fruitful interaction with the art history institute of the University of Groningen, headed by Henk Schulte Nordholt. He began building up the collection with a focus on the Groningen artists’ association De Ploeg (the plow), founded in 1918. Among the initiators of this group were the artists Johan Dijkstra (1896-1978) and Jan Wiegers (1893-1959). The latter introduced expressionism in Groningen in the 1920s. A number of the prints of the Groningen artist Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman (1882-1945) also became part of the collection. De Gruyter’s 1956 show on 35 year modern art in Groningen attracted much attention in the museum world. His approach was a great stimulus for the artistic climate in Groningen. In the course of eight years de Gruyter organized more than 80 exhibitions on Dutch modern art as well on a number of foreign artists, including Paula Modersohn Becker (1958) and Edvard Munch (1959). The need for more space became urgent, but the plans for a new museum were not realized during his directorship. In 1963 de Gruyter chose to leave the Groninger Museum to become chief curator of the Gemeentemuseum at The Hague. In 1964 he received a doctorate honoris causa from Groningen University. In the same year, a collection of his catalog introductions appeared: Beeld en interpretatie (Image and interpretation). In 1965, he retired from his position in The Hague. In 1968 he published a two volume monograph on the Hague School, De Haagse School. Reflecting on his life, he began writing his autobiography, Bewust leven, which was not ready for publication when he died in 1979. In 2004, it posthumously appeared under the title, Zelfportret als zeepaardje: Memoires van W. Jos de Gruyter. In 2004/5 the Groninger Museum celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the 1955 appointment of its former director with an exhibition on his innovative acquisition policy, Keerpunt: keuze uit het aankoopbeleid van W. Jos de Gruyter 1955-1963.

Selected Bibliography

[list of important writings:] Dubois, Pierre H. Josiah Willem (Jos) de Gruyter. Singapore 28 augustus 1899 – Amsterdam 30 juli 1979. Jaarboek van de Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde (1981), pp. 152-153; Wezen en ontwikkeling der Europese Schilderkunst na 1850. Amsterdam: H. J. Paris, 1935; A New Approach to Maya Hieroglyphs. Amsterdam: H. J. Paris, 1946; Het vrouwsportret in de Nederlandsche en Vlaamsche schilderkunst. Amsterdam: Van Holkema & Warendorf, 1947; Beeld en interpretatie. The Hague: Daamen, 1964; De Haagse School. 2 vols. Rotterdam: Lemniscaat, 1968-1969; Twentieth Century Dutch Graphic Art. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1969.

Sources

Swart, Arth. Eredoctor Willem Josiah de Gruyter. Een leven, boordevol van kunst Vrij Nederland (19 September 1964); Colenbrander, A. et al. Nalatenschap: kunst en cultuur in de ogen van W. Jos. De Gruyter (1899-1979). Groningen: Instituut voor Kunst en Architectuurgeschiedenis, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, 1995; Van Veen, H. Th. Naar een artistiek mecenaat. Ontwikkeling van de kunstzin aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. in Boom, Eva and Ten Bruggencate, Carolien, eds. Vruchten der Verbeelding: vier eeuwen kunst en kunstzin aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen/Fruits of Imagination Four Centuries of Art and Artistic Sense at the University of Groningen. Groningen: Dienst Interne Externe Betrekkingen der Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, 1999, pp. 7-21; Ebbink, Hans. Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederland 5. The Hague: Instituut voor Nederlandse geschiedenis, 2001, pp. 152-154; De Gruyter, Josiah, and Ebbink, Hans et al. Zelfportret als zeepaardje. Memoires van W. Jos de Gruyter. Bussum: Thoth, 2004; [obituary:] Dubois, Pierre H. Josiah Willem (Jos) de Gruyter. Singapore 28 augustus 1899 – Amsterdam 30 juli 1979. Jaarboek van de Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde (1981), pp. 144-153.

Contributors: Monique Daniels

de Holanda, Francisco

November 8, 2023April 5, 2024

Full Name: de Holanda, Francisco

Other Names:

Francesco de Hollanda

Gender: male

Date Born: 1517

Date Died: 1585

Home Country/ies: Portugal

Subject Area(s): biography (general genre) and Italian (culture or style)

Institution(s): Court of King João III of Portugal

Overview

wrote book of conversations with artists of Rome; d’Olland in Portugese?

Sources

KGK, 35; SKL

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

wrote book of conversations with artists of Rome; d’Olland in Portugese?

de Montabert, Paillot

November 8, 2023April 5, 2024

Full Name: de Montabert, Paillot

Gender: male

Date Born: 1771

Date Died: 1849

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): Romantic (modern European styles) and romanticism (form of expression)

Overview

influenced by d’Agincourt; Romantic art historian

Selected Bibliography

Dissertation sur les peintures du moyen âge et sur celles qu’on appelées gothiques extrait d’un ouvrage inédite sur la peinture (1812).

Sources

KGK 153

de Montebello, Philippe

November 8, 2023April 5, 2024

Full Name: de Montebello, Guy Philippe Henri Lannes

Other Names:

Philippe de Montebello
Guy Philippe Henri Lannes de Montebello

Gender: male

Date Born: 16 May 1936

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

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): museums (institutions)

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

Overview

Metropolitan Museum of Art director, 1977-2008. Montebello was born to Count André Roger Lannes de Montebello (1908-1986) and Germaine Wiener de Croisset (de Montebello) (1913-1975). His family traced its roots back to Jean Lannes, Duc de Montebello, (1769-1809), a Marshall of France under Napoleon. Other relatives are thought to have been models for characters in Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu, for example the Duchesse de Guermantes and the playwright Bloch. As a boy, his aunt, the Surrealism patron Marie-Laures Noailles (1902-1970) introduced him to Picasso. During World War II, the family lived in Grasse, France, where his father was part of the Resistance. The Montebellos immigrated to the United States in 1950 when Philippe was age 14. He attended the exclusive Lycée Français de New York (LFNY). At graduation, De Montebello became an American citizen in 1955, serving in the U.S. Army, serving 1956-1958 rising to second lieutenant. Montebello entered Harvard University, graduating magna cum laude (thesis on Delacroix) with a B.A. in 1961, marrying Edith Bradford Myles (b. 1939) the same year. He continued graduate study at New York University in 1961 on a Woodrow Wilson fellowship where he focused on French painting under the scholar Charles Sterling.

In 1963, before completing any degree at NYU, he interviewed for a curatorial assistant position with Theodore Rousseau, Jr., at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the Department of European Paintings. Rousseau hired him immediately. At Rousseau’s advancement to Assistant Director in 1969, Montebello had had enough experience to be appointed to the directorship of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX, though he still lacked any graduate degree. In Houston, Montebello gained the reputation for disapproving of modern art, something that particularly rankled Houston’s major collectors, John and Domnique de Menil. At Rousseau’s death in 1973 he was recalled to the Met to succeed him as assistant to Director Thomas Hoving in 1974. He completed his M.A. from NYU in 1976. Hoving’s relationship with the Met board and staff grew stormier. At Hoving’s departure, Montebello became acting director in 1977 and Director the following year. The museum’s board reformed the bylaws after the Hoving experience, making Montebello’s new director position report to the President of the Trustees.

Montebello defined much of his tenure to contrast his predecessor. He refrained from splashy acquisitions or appearing in print on controversial issues. One exception was during the 1999 Brooklyn Museum’s art exhibition “Sensation” which included excrement art. City officials denounced the show and Montebello wrote a letter to the New York Times. Though he claimed it to be a plea for quality in art, the statement was largely taken as yet again an attack on modern art. The same year the Board made the director and president positions equal. In 2002, de Montebello signed on the Met’s behalf the Declaration on the Importance and Value of Universal Museums, a document affirming museum’s right to hold world art against claims of national patrimony. Duccio’s “Madonna and Child” was acquired by the Met under his aegis for $45 million. Montebello oversaw the dramatic growth of many collections, as well as the completion of the Master Plan that had begun under Hoving, ultimately doubling the Museum’s size. He retired from the Metropolitan in 2008. In retirement, he was named the first Fiske Kimball Professor in the History and Culture of Museums at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.

Montebello was not a scholar; he published little outside the introductions to exhibition catalogs. Hired in part to consolidate the building and acquisition strides the Hoving era had made, he helped redefine the nature of the Met’s blockbuster exhibitions program (now a staple of large museums) and heal lingering animosity toward the curatorial staff. His connoisseurship approach as a principal art criteria added to his anti-modernist reputation. He nevertheless presided over the large addition of the Met’s modern art (Lila Wallace) wing.

Selected Bibliography

The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide: Works of Art Selected by Philippe de Montebello. New York: The Museum, 1983;
“The Met and the New Millennium: A Chronicle of the Past and a Blueprint for the Future.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, New Series 52, No. 1, (Summer, 1994): 1, 4-90;
“The Richard A. F. Penrose Lecture: The Changing Landscape of Museums.” Journal of the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 147, No. 3 (September 2003): 259-272;

Sources

Mellow, James R. “The Fine Art of Directing the Museum.” New York Times (November 3, 1985): 30-35;
Danziger, Danny. Museum: Behind the Scenes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: Viking, 2007;
Houghton, James R. Philippe de Montebello and the Metropolitan Museum of Art: 1977-2008. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art/Yale University Press, 2009.

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

de Montor, Artaud

November 8, 2023April 9, 2024

Full Name: de Montor, Artaud

Gender: male

Date Born: 1772

Date Died: 1849

Home Country/ies: France

Overview

follower of d’Agincourt

Selected Bibliography

Considérations sur l’état de la peinture (1808). third ed. entitled, Peintures primitifs (1840)

Sources

KGK 153

De Borchgrave d’Altena, Joseph A. P. M. Ch., Comte

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: De Borchgrave d'Altena, Joseph A. P. M. Ch., Comte

Other Names:

Comte Joseph De Borchgrave d'Altena

Gender: male

Date Born: 31 March 1895

Date Died: 04 July 1975

Place Born: Horion-Hozémont, Liège, Wallonia, Belgium

Home Country/ies: Belgium

Career(s): curators

Overview

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. He began his long museum career at the Service éducatif, where he did guided tours and organized lectures. He soon was assigned to the management of the Musée royal d’Armes et d’Armures, housed in the Museum Buildings. In 1926 he published Sculptures conservées du pays mosan, followed in 1930 by the catalog of the exhibition of gothic sculptures in the church Saint-Vincent in Liège, La sculpture gothique à l’exposition d’art religieux. Both volumes appeared in the series Notes et documents pour servir à l’histoire de l’art et de l’iconographie en Belgique. By that time the acclaimed monographs by Émile Mâle on medieval art in France had aroused a broader interest in the iconography of the art of the middle ages. In 1927 De Borchgrave was elected a corresponding member of the Académie royale d’Archéologie de Belgique, and subsequently, in 1935, a titular member. Committed to the preservation of the artistic heritage of his country, he published a four-volume inventory of interiors of houses, monasteries, churches and castles in the Meuse River Valley, Décors anciens d’intérieurs mosans (1930-1932). Léo Van Puyvelde praised it in the Revue belge de philology et d’histoire (1933) as an important contribution to the field of applied arts in the region. De Borchgrave’s major work is his three-volume inventory of art works of the Belgian province of Brabant, Notes pour servir à l’inventaire des Åuvres d’art du Brabant. In 1939-1940 the first part, Arrondissement de Louvain, was published in the Annales de la Société Royale d’Archéologie de Bruxelles. De Borchgrave served this association for many years as general secretary. During the Second World War De Borchgrave served as captain-commander of the Infantry. His monographs, Les retables Brabançons conservés en Belgique and Madones anciennes conservées en Belgique, 1025-1425 appeared during the war in 1942 and 1943. His album of fine metalworks and ivories, Å’uvres de nos imagiers romans et gothiques. Sculpteurs, ivoiriers, orfèvres, fondeurs: 1025 à 1550, followed in 1944. In 1944-1946 the Société Royale d’Archéologie de Bruxelles published the second part of the Brabant inventory, Arrondissement de Bruxelles. In 1946 De Borchgrave obtained a teaching position of medieval art history at the Institut d’Histoire de l’Art et d’Archéologie at Liège University, succeeding Laurent. At the Brussels Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire he rose in 1951 from adjunct curator to chief curator, a position that he held until 1960. At the Brussels Institut supérieur d’Histoire de l’Art et d’Archéologie he taught art history classes. In 1951 he chaired the board of the preparatory committee for the international exhibition on Mosan Art, which was held at Liège, and subsequently in Paris and Rotterdam. He contributed to the catalogs, and in Paris he was among the participants of the 1952 conference on Mosan Art, which was organized during the Paris exhibition. Another 1951 publication, his album Art mosan, includes 72 photographs of medieval art works from the Meuse River region. Jean Lejeune (1914-1979) wrote the historical introduction. The third part of De Borchgrave’s inventory, Arrondissement de Nivelles, was published in the Bulletin de la Commission Royale des Monuments et des Sites, in 1956 and in 1960. De Borchgrave was a corresponding member of this committee. He retired from his position at Liège University in 1965. As a member of the Association Royale des Demeures Historiques de Belgique he was the director of the 1967 publication, Châteaux de Belgique. He wrote the introductory essay on the history of the Belgian castles and he contributed most of the individual descriptions. He also was a member of the Société d’Art et d’Histoire du Diocèse de Liège and of the Institut Archéologique Liégois. He died suddenly in 1975 while he was preparing the exhibition Trésors d’art (Art Treasures) in the Brussels Cathedral of Saint Michael.

Selected Bibliography

Notes et documents pour servir à l’histoire de l’art et de l’iconographie en Belgique. 1. Sculptures conservées du pays mosan. Verviers: G. Leens, 1926, 2. La sculpture gothique à l’exposition d’art religieux. Liège: C. Peeters, 1930; Décors anciens d’intérieurs mosans. 4 vols. Liège: Imprimerie des mutilés, 1930-1932; Notes pour servir à l’Inventaire des Åuvres d’art du Brabant. 1. Arrondissement de Louvain, 2. Arrondissement de Bruxelles, 3. Arrondissement de Nivelles. Brussels: A. Ballieu, 1940-1961; Les retables Brabançons conservés en Belgique. Brussels: Éditions du Cercle d’art, 1942; Madones anciennes conservées en Belgique, 1025-1425. Brussels: Éditions du Cercle d’art, 1943; Å’uvres de nos imagiers romans et gothiques. Sculpteurs, ivoiriers, orfèvres, fondeurs: 1025 à 1550. Brussels: Raymond Dupriez, 1944, Dutch, Het werk van onze romaansche & gotische beeldenaars. Beeldhouwers, ivoorsnijders, goudsmeden, beeldgieters. Antwerpen: Standaard boekhandel, 1944; La passion du Christ dans la sculpture en Belgique du XI au XVI siècle. Paris-Brussels, Éditions du Cercle d’art, 1946; Le retable de Saint Georges de Jan Borman. Brussels: R. Dupriez, 1947; Notes pour servir à l’histoire de l’art en Hainaut. Orfèvreries du moyen âge. La Louvière, 1949; et al. Art mosan et arts anciens du pays de Liège. Liège: éditions de l’A. S. B. L., 1951; and Lejeune, Jean Art mosan. Brussels: C. Dessart, 1951; and Lejeune, Jean, and Guérin, Jacques. Trésors d’Art de la vallée de la Meuse. Paris: Les Presses artistiques, 1952; “Quelques résultats des expositions de ‘L’art mosan’ à Liège, à Paris et à Rotterdam, 1951-1952″in Francastel, Pierre et al. L’art mosan. Journées d’Études. Paris, Février 1952. Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1953, pp. 113-117 ; et al. Châteaux de Belgique. Brussels-Liège: Desoer S.A., 1967, English: Castles of Belgium. Brussels-Liège: Desoer S.A., 1967.

Sources

De Seyn, Eug. Dictionnaire biographique des Sciences, des Lettres et des Arts en Belgique. 1. Brussels: Éditions L’Avenir, 1935, p. 208; Le Livre bleu. Recueil biographique … Brussels: Larciers, 1950, pp. 116-117 ; Koller, F., de Maeyer, T. W. and Taylor, Stephen S. (eds) Who’s who in Belgium including the Belgian Congo. Brussels: G. H. B. Universal Editors, 1959, p. 48; Houyoux, Jean and Delzenne, Yves-William, Le nouveau dictionnaire des Belges de 1830 à nos jours. 1. Brussels: Cri, 1998, p. 128; [Obituaries:] Risselin-Steenebrugen, Marie. Revue Belge d’Archéologie et d’Histoire de l’Art 46 (1977): 164; [Liège University] orbi.ulg.ac.be/bitstream/

Contributors: Monique Daniels

Dacos, Nicole

November 8, 2023April 5, 2024

**Image Credit:** Historians of Netherlandish Art

Full Name: Dacos, Nicole

Gender: female

Date Born: 1938

Date Died: 2014

Home Country/ies: Belgium

Institution(s): Université Libre de Bruxelles

Overview

student of Germain Bazin at l’Université libre de Bruxelles; Renaissance; Roman art; influence of the paintings of the Domus Aurea on Renaissance images and ornament

Selected Bibliography

La découverte de la Domus Aurea et la formation des grotesques à la Renaissance. London: Warburg Institute, 1969.

Sources

Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986 p. 228

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

student of Germain Bazin at l’Université libre de Bruxelles; Renaissance; Roman art; influence of the paintings of the Domus Aurea on Renaissance images and ornament

Daix, Pierre

November 8, 2023April 5, 2024

Full Name: Daix, Pierre

Other Names:

Pierre Georges Daix

Gender: male

Date Born: 1922

Place Born: Ivry-sur-Seine, Île-de-France, France

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): Abstract Expressionist, Cubist, Expressionist (style), and Post-Impressionist

Overview

Picasso scholar, compiler of catalogue raisonné, and writer. Daix was the son of Martial Daix, a city civil servant, and Germaine Derbré (Daix). He attended the Lycée Henri IV in Paris, and then universities in Rennes and Paris, receiving a B. A. Daix joined the communist party in France and served in the French Resistance during World War II, and was decorated with the Commandeur de la Légion d´honneur, the Croix de guerre 1939-1945, and Médaille de la Résistance. Daix first met Picasso, a fellow member of the French Communist Party, in 1945. After the war he worked the Armaments Ministry of the second government of Charles de Gaulle, 1945-1947, under his communist colleague Charles Tillon (1897-1993). He was appointed editor of Lettres Françaises, the journal founded during the occupation, in 1948 which he held until 1972. Daix’s stalwart belief in Communism caused him to attack David Rousset (1912-1997), a survivor of Buchenwald who was now crusading against Stahlin’s Gulg camps, in the pages of the Lettres françaises in 1949. Rousset sued and won a judgment against Daix in 1951.Daix was Deputy Director of the journal Ce Soir between 1950 and 1953. During these year Daix published several novels. His friendship with Picasso blossomed. The artist gave him access to his personal collection of his art housed after 1961 at Picasso’s villa, Notre-Dame-de-Vie at Mougins. Daix’s first book on Picasso, 1964, fascinated the artist and Picasso began commenting on his works to Daix regularly.Now approaching the last period of his life, Picasso confided numerous biographical fact to Daix, identifying models, lovers and events in the painter’s life. Daix began compiling a catalogue raisonné of the early works of Picasso, published in 1966 together with Georges Boudaille. Daix contributed the years 1900, 1901, and 1906 to the catalogue. Daix was married a second time in 1967 to Françoise London. The same year, Daix published an article in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts which changed Picasso scholarship. Picasso had admitted to Daix that the major painting of the Blue Period, “La Vie,” (1904) contained the portrait of Picasso’s s friend, Casagemas. Daix’s article set off a spate of scholarship assessing the artist’s work as biography. Other non-art writing followed. After Picasso’s death in 1973, Daix issued an autobiography, J’ai cru au matin in 1976. Daix began a chronology of Picasso’s work when the artist’s notebooks were made available to him in 1977 for La vie de peintre de Pablo Picasso. His a catalogue raisonné of Picasso’s subsequent early years, Picasso, the Cubist Years, 1907-1916, appeared in 1979. He was adviser to the editor of the Quotidien de Paris from 1980 (to 1985). Daix concentrated on art publishing, issuing le Journal du cubisme, 1982, la Vie du peintre Edouard Manet, 1983, Picasso créateur. La vie intime et l’oeuvre, 1987. Diax became friends with the French historian Ferdinand Braudel, whom he subsequently wrote a monograph on. He participated in the 1988 “Demoiselles d’Avingon” exhibition at the Musee Picasso and the Picasso Retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. His Picasso, trente ans après, 2003, won the prix Georges-Pompidou the same year. Another Picasso book was published in 2007. Daix’s scholarship on Picasso was essentially biography-as-art-history. Because of his closeness to Picasso, he was able to add to the knowledge of the artist’s work through ways that documents alone could not. Not until John Richardson thirty years later published his biographies of Picasso, also from first-hand knowledge, had such rich store of information been published. Daix’s account of Picasso’s blue period remains revisionist and critics found his later biographies overly anecdotal. Methodologically, Daix employed structuralist analysis of Claude Levi-Strauss, whom he acknowleged in the preface to his catalogues raisonnés. He did not incorporate post-Structuralist sensibilities, such as Ferdinand Saussure (Krauss).

Selected Bibliography

[collected essays:] Nouvelle critique et art moderne, essai. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1968; “La Periode Bleue de Picasso et le suicide de Carlos Casagemas.” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 69 (April 1967): 239-246; and Boudaille, Georges, and Rosselet, Joan. Picasso 1900-1906, catalogue raisonné de l’ouvre peinture. Neuchâtel/Paris: la Bibliothèque des arts, 1966, English, Picasso: the Blue and Rose Periods: a Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, 1900-1906. Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society 1967; La vie de peintre de Pablo Picasso. Paris: Seuil, 1977; and Rosselet, Joan. Le cubisme de Picasso: catalogue raisonné de l’ouvre peint 1907-1916. Neuchâtel: Ides et Calendes, 1979, English, Picasso, the Cubist years, 1907-1916: a catalogue raisonné of the paintings and related works. Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1979; Journal du cubisme. Geneva: A. Skira, 1982, English, Cubists and Cubism. New York: Rizzoli, 1982; Picasso créateur. La vie intime et l’oeuvre, 1987, English, revised, Picasso. Life and Art. London: Thames & Hudson, 1993; Dictionnaire Picasso. Paris: R. Laffont, 1995; Braudel. Paris: Flammarion, 1995.

Sources

Rousset, David. Le procès concentrationnaire pour la vérité sur les camps: extraits des débats. Déclarations de David Rousset, plaidoirie de Théo Bernard, plaidoirie de Gérard Rosenthal. Paris: Éditions du Pavois, 1951; “Acknowledgements” and “Introduction.” Daix, Pierre. Picasso: Life and Art. New York: Icon Editions, 1993, pp. vii-xiii; Krauss, Rosalind “In the Name of Picasso.” October 16, no. 102 (Spring, 1981): 11, 14; Who’s Who in France (online); Daix, Pierre. Tout mon temps (mémoires, 2001).

Dalton, Ormonde M.

November 8, 2023April 5, 2024

Full Name: Dalton, Ormonde M.

Other Names:

Ormonde Dalton

Gender: male

Date Born: 1866

Date Died: 1945

Place Born: Cardiff, Wales, UK

Place Died: Holford, Somerset, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): Antique, the, antiquities (object genre), and Medieval (European)

Career(s): curators

Overview

Keeper of the British and Medieval Antiquities Department at the British Museum, 1921-1928. Dalton was the son of a solicitor, Thomas Masters Dalton, and Emily Mansford. He attended Harrow School winning a scholarship to New College, Oxford, graduating in the “classical moderations” (Classical studies) in 1886 and in literae humaniores in 1888. Dalton made a grand tour after school, France, Germany, Austria, studying under Josef Rudolf Thomas Strzygowski and India, and teaching for a year at the Abbotsholme School in Derbyshire, in 1884. The following year Dalton joined British Museum in the department of British and medieval antiquities led by its keeper, Wollaston Franks. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute in 1895. He and Hercules Read published Antiquities from the City of Benin in 1899 and elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1899 subsequently serving on its council and boards. Dalton was promoted to first class assistant in 1901. Dalton’s initial focus in ethnology migrated to archaeology and he set about writting catalogs on the collections, beginning the same year with his Catalogue of Early Christian Antiquities. In 1903 he issed for the Museum the Guide to the Early Christian and Byzantine Antiquities and the Treasure of the Oxus, 1905, a collection which dated from the Franks years. In 1909 he rose to assistant (modern deputy) keeper, publishing the Catalogue of the Ivory Carvings of the Christian Era. In 1910 his second publication, Handbook to the Ethnographical Collections appeared, written with Thomas Athol Joyce. He oversaw the publication by the Byzantine Research and Publication Fund on several significant Byzantine churches, beginning with The Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem in 1910. In 1911 he issued his most important work, Byzantine Art and Archaeology a survey of Byzantine art in all areas except architecture. Dalton was pursuaded to write a series of articles in 1912 for the Burlington Magazine on the jewel collection of J. Pierpont Morgan, who still effectively controlled the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The series was introduced by Roger Fry, who had, by this time, had a falling out with Morgan. His Catalogue of the Engraved Gems of the Post-Classical Periods in the British Museum appeared mid-war, in 1915 along with a translated edition of the Letters of Sidonius the same year. During World War I, Dalton worked for the Admiralty, in the map making division, until he was struck by and car and seriously injured. During convalenscence, he wrote the third of three books published under the name W. Compton Leith, Domus doloris, in 1919 (the other two, Apologia diffidentis, 1908, and Sirenica, 1913). In 1921 the department was divided from its ceramics, ethnography, and oriental antiquities collections and Dalton was named keeper of the remaining department, named British and medieval antiquities.The future head of the British Museum, K. T. Kenrick was hired under his direction. He was elected FBA in 1922. In 1923 he and Hermann Justus Braunholtz translated the Josef Rudolf Thomas Strzygowski work Origin of Christian Church Art. Because Dalton’s earlier work omitted architecture, he wrote East Christian Art: a Survey, 1925, including all the arts. He retired to Bath in 1928. Dalton moved to a cottage in the Quantocks in 1940. He died at home, unmarried, in Holford, Somerset, in 1945. His Quantocks land was donated to the National Trust for its unspoiled beauty, the rest New College to found a research scholarship. His Catalogue of Early Christian Antiquities, like many of the early British Museum catalogs, functioned as standard works on the subject, owing to their scholarship and lack of other accessible publications in their areas (Myres). His 1911 survey Byzantine Art and Archaeology became one of the most important texts for the rising interest in Byzantine art history. It was eagerly discussed by the self-trained Byzantists Matthew Stewart Prichard and Thomas Whittemore.

Selected Bibliography

Catalogue of Early Christian Antiquities and Objects from the Christian East in the Department of British and Mediaeval Antiquities. London: Dept. of British and Mediaeval Antiquities and Ethnography, 1901; Catalogue of the Ivory Carvings of the Christian Era with Examples of Mohammedan Art and Carvings in Bone. London: Dept. of British and Mediaeval Antiquities and Ethnography, 1909; Byzantine Art and Archaeology. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911; and Fry, Roger. “Byzantine Enamels in Mr. Pierpont Morgan’s Collection.” Burlington Magazine, [series of articles, April-August] 1912; translated, Sidonius Apollinaris, Saint. The Letters of Sidonius. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1915; A Guide to the Early Christian and Byzantine Antiquities. London: British Museum. Dept. of British and Mediaeval Antiquities and Ethnography, 1921; translated, Strzygowski, Josef. Origin of Christian Church Art, New Facts and Principles of Research. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1923; East Christian Art: a Survey of the Monuments. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925; The History of the Franks. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927

Sources

Hill, G. “Ormonde Maddock Dalton, 1866-1945.” Proceedings of the British Academy 31 (1945): 357-73; Myres, J. L. and Pottle, Mark. “Dalton, Ormonde Maddock.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, P. 23 mentioned.

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

Damisch, Hubert

November 8, 2023April 5, 2024

**Image Credit:** The Architect's Newspaper

Full Name: Damisch, Hubert

Gender: male

Date Born: 1928

Date Died: 2017

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): art theory and semiotics

Institution(s): Université de Paris (Sorbonne)

Overview

semiotic methodology of art history

Selected Bibliography

Théorie du Nuage. Pour une histoire de la peinture. 1972.

Sources

Bazin 353

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

semiotic methodology of art history

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