Harvard Professor of Fine Arts and Director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1935-1954. Edgell was the son of George Stephen Edgell (d. 1915), a banker, whose New England lineage traced back to 1636. His mother was Isabella Wallace Corbin (Edgell). Edgell entered Harvard University, receiving his B.A. in 1909 magna cum laude in the new area of history and literature (interdisciplinary studies), focusing on the Renaissance. Appointed an assistant at his alma mater’s Department of Fine Arts the same year, he continued for his Ph.D., which he earned in 1913, the first Harvard Ph.D. awarded in the fine arts. Edgell remained on the Harvard faculty. His inaugural year course included the first course in the United States on central Italian painters. In this he followed the writings of another Harvard alumnus, Bernard Berenson. His “Fine Arts 1d” course became a staple at the University. Together with Fiske Kimball, Edgell authored A History of Architecture, with Edgell writing the chapters on medieval architecture. He became Dean of the Architecture faculty in 1922 and full professor in 1925. He joined the board of Trustees in 1927 of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Edgell, an architectural historian of the Renaissance with no practicing architecture experience, became increasing uncomfortable as the architecture school felt the need to incorporate Bauhaus-style modernism. He resigned from Harvard to accept the position of curator of painting at the MFA in 1934. The following year he was named Director, retaining the curatorship until 1938. Edgell received an honorary doctorate from Harvard in 1948. The following year he published his History of Sienese Painting. He died unexpectedly at his summer home in New Hampshire after a brief illness and was succeeded by Perry T. Rathbone. His papers are held at Harvard. Students whose dissertation he supervised may have included Robert C. Smith. In his memoirs, Otto Wittmann, Jr., described Edgell as a brilliant lecturer.
Selected Bibliography
[dissertation:] The Development of the Architectural Background in the Painting of the Umbrian Renaissance. Harvard University, 1913;
Sources
Whitehill, Walter. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: a Centennial History. vol. 2. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1970, pp. 443ff.; [transcript] Smith, Richard Cándida, interviewer. Otto Wittmann: The Museum in the Creation of Community. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Trust, 1995, p. 12; mentioned, Wohl, Helmut. “Robert Chester Smith and the History of Art in the United States.” in, Sala, Dalton, and Tamen, Pedro, et al. Robert C. Smith, 1912-1975: A investigação na História de Arte/ Research in History of Art. Lisbon: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 2000, p. 24; [obituary:] “G. H. Edgell Dead: Head of Boston Fine Arts Had Taught at Harvard.” New York Times June 30, 1954, p. 27; Dooley, William Germain. “George Harold Edgell, 1887-1954.” College Art Journal 14, no. 2 (Winter, 1955): 165-166.
Harvard Professor of Fine Arts and Director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1935-1954. Edgell was the son of George Stephen Edgell (d. 1915), a banker, whose New England lineage traced back to 1636. His mother was Isabella Wallace Corbin (Edge
First American to present nonobjective and modernist art in a book positively, modernist art collector and lawyer. Eddy’s parents were Jerome Eddy (1829-1905) a Flint, MI businessman and politician, and Ellen M. Case (Eddy). Arthur Eddy entered Harvard Law School in 1877 but in 1879 returned to be publisher of the Genesee Democrat newspaper. He continued studying law with a local expert. In 1888 he moved to Chicago to begin his legal career, passing the Illinois Bar in 1890 and marrying Lucy C. Orrell, the granddaughter of Michigan governor Henry Howland Crapo (1804-1869). He joined the firm of Wetten, Matthews & Pegler where he practiced anti-trust law and setting up corporations. Eddy’s liberal convictions about monopolies and competition (he insisted cooperation in business was better for the consumer than competition) led him to write books. After authoring a number of titles on law and economics, Eddy’s attention turned to art. He edited a Chicago literary magazine, Contributor’s Magazine. While attending the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago, he encountered the work of James McNeill Whistler (awarded the Fair’s Gold Medal) and Auguste Rodin which he positively reviewed in the magazine. He traveled to Paris to commission his full-length portrait by Whistler, titled Arrangement in Flesh Color and Brown: Portrait of Arthur Jerome Eddy (1894). In Paris he purchased a Manet and Monet, exceeding his personal budget at the time. Rodin sculpted a portrait bust of Eddy which were issued in bronze. An automobile enthusiast, he made a 2900-mile tour in 1901 to briefly hold the record in an auto trip. Eddy established a winter home in California where he spent part of the year, the conception of which he wrote about in the Craftsman magazine. He lectured on art and aesthetics in Chicago. His first art book, one of art appreciation, Delight, the Soul of Art, was published in 1902. This was quickly followed by Recollections and Impressions of James A. McNeill Whistler in 1903. He concentrated as a collector on late 19th-century art until 1912. Already interested in non-objective art (he had bought a chalk drawing by Arthur Dove at the first Chicago exhibition of the artist’s work in 1912), Eddy’s visit to the famous Armory Show of 1913 confirmed him as a devotee of modern art. Eddy purchased works at the show, his conversion to Avant-garde art was almost immediate. Traveling to London he bought a Brâncuși sculpture and in Munich he met Wassily Kandinsky and began adding this artist’s work to his collection, among the first Americans to do. In 1914 Eddy published his ground-breaking Cubists and Post-Impressionism, a book drawing from his experiences and personal statements of the artists directly and presenting modernist art in a positive light. Perhaps most important Eddy was the first author to discuss Kandinsky in an American book. Eddy practiced what he preached building a collection which amounted to more than one hundred works including those by Winslow Homer, Gabriele Münter, Franz Marc, André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck and eventually four Kandinskys (including Improvisation no. 30, 1913). Eddy focused on collecting American modern art in later years. Among his acquisitions were paintings by Arthur Dove. He contracted an acute appendicitis while in New York and died two days after an appendectomy. After his death some of his art collection was dispersed. In 1931 the Art Institute of Chicago director Robert B. Harshe (1879-1938) accepted 23 paintings of Eddy’s–including all four Kandinskys–for the Institute from Eddy’s widow, known today as the Arthur Jerome Eddy Memorial Collection. Eddy is significant as an early modernist-art exponent (the first in Chicago) and collector. His book Cubists and Post-Impressionism is an important book for the history American art history. It was the first book published in the United States on modern art to endorse the art form enthusiastically. It was particularly important for the dissemination of Kandinsky’s art and thought. The artist had previously only been known by a single painting in the Armory Show; Eddy was the first to publish the artsti’s theoryies in the English language (Robson). Harriet Monroe (1860-1936), a friend and founder of Poetry Magazine, characterized Eddy as not profound, but quick to seize on ideas and use them.
Selected Bibliography
Delight, the Soul of Art. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1902; Recollections and Impressions of James A. McNeill Whistler. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1903; Ganton & Co.: a Story of Chicago Commercial and Social Life. Chicago: McClurg, 1908; Cubists and Post-impressionism. Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1914.
Sources
Rich, Daniel Catton. “Introduction.” The Arthur Jerome Eddy Collection of Modern Paintings and Sculpture. Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1931; Monroe, Harriet. A Poet’s Life: Seventy Years in a Changing World. New York: Macmillan, 1938, p. 216; Sweet, Frederick A. “Great Chicago Collectors.” Apollo 84 (September 1966): 197; Kruty, Paul. “Arthur Jerome Eddy and his Collection: Prelude and Postscript to the Armory Show.” Arts Magazine 61 no. 6 (February 1987): 40-47; Robson, A. Deirdre. “Eddy, Arthur Jerome.” Dictionary of Art 9: 715-716; [obituaries] “Arthur Jerome Eddy Dies After Operation: Leading Chicago Lawyer, Financier and Author a Victim of Acute Appendicitis.” New York Times July 22 1920: 10; Washington Post July 22 1920: 5; “Arthur J. Eddy, Lawyer and Art Critic is Dead.” Chicago Daily Tribune July 22 1920: 7.
Contributors: Lee Sorensen
Citation
Lee Sorensen. "Eddy, Arthur Jerome." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/eddyj/.
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First American to present nonobjective and modernist art in a book positively, modernist art collector and lawyer. Eddy’s parents were Jerome Eddy (1829-1905) a Flint, MI businessman and politician, and Ellen M. Case (Eddy). Arthur Eddy entered Ha
Berlin-trained art historian who became part of the Nazi-propanda machine. Eberlein wrote his dissertation on the literary history of art writing in the eighteenth century. In 1934 he issued one of the major manifesti for art theory for the Nazi s, Was ist Deutsch in der deutschen Kunst? (What’s German in German Art?). He helped organize an art sales exhibition at the Berlin Nationalgalerie during the war in 1942, “Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung 1942”.
Selected Bibliography
[dissertation:] Die deutsche Litterärgeschichte der Kunst im 18. Jahrhundert: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Kunstwissenschaft. Berlin, 1916, published Karlsruhe: Müller, 1919; Was ist Deutsch in der deutschen Kunst? Leipzig: E.A. Seemann, 1934, English, partially issued as, “What is German in German art?” in Mosse, George L., Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural, and Social Life in the Third Reich. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1966; [introduction] Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung 1942: vom 31. Mai bis 31. August. Berlin: Nationalgalerie, 1942.
Sources
Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 68-70.
Citation
"Eberlein, Kurt Karl." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/eberleink/.
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Berlin-trained art historian who became part of the Nazi-propanda machine. Eberlein wrote his dissertation on the literary history of art writing in the eighteenth century. In 1934 he issued one of the major manifesti for art theory for the Nazi s
Secretary and chronicler of the [British] Royal Academy; medievalist. Eaton’s father was Richard Eaton of Teignmouth, Devon and his mother Charlotte Short (Eaton). He attended King’s College School and St. Alban’s, Oxford, graduating in 1860. He edited Murray’s Handbooks on Egypt in 1870 and later one on South Italy. In 1871 he married Caroline Charlotte Greville (d. 1893). He was appointed secretary of the Royal Academy in 1873, whose duties required him to deal with the artists exhibiting and those who had been rejected from the annual exhibitions. In 1882 he translated the biography of Albrecht Dürer by Moriz Thausing. The preface to that book shows a comprehensive knowledge of the literature on Dürer, including a sympathetic account of the work by Mary Margaret Heaton.
Selected Bibliography
translated, Thausing, Moriz. Albert Dürer, his Life and Works. London: J. Murray, 1882; revised, Hand-book to Worcester Cathedral, with a Plan and Engravings. 2nd ed. Worcester: E.G. Humphreys, 1896; and Hodgson, John Evan. The Royal Academy and its Members 1768-1830. New York: Scribner’s, 1905.
Sources
[obituaries:] “Sir Frederick A. Eaton.” The Times (London) September 12, 1913 p. 9; “The Late Sir Frederick Eaton.” The Times (London) September 26, 1913, p. 7.
Citation
"Eaton, Frederick Alexis, Sir." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/eatonf/.
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Secretary and chronicler of the [British] Royal Academy; medievalist. Eaton’s father was Richard Eaton of Teignmouth, Devon and his mother Charlotte Short (Eaton). He attended King’s College School and St. Alban’s, Oxford, graduating in 1860. He e
Place Born: Plymouth, Plymouth, City of, England, UK
Place Died: Pisa, Tuscany, Italy
Home Country/ies: United Kingdom
Subject Area(s): painting (visual works)
Career(s): painters (artists)
Institution(s): The National Gallery
Overview
First Director of the National Gallery, London 1855-65; painter and scholar of artist’s materials. Son of a British Admiralty barrister at Plymouth, Eastlake attended local schools and, for a short time, Charterhouse, Surrey. He studied under the artist Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786-1846) beginning in 1809 and by 1815 was exhibiting. He traveled to France, visiting the Louvre (then known as the Musée Napoléon). His success as a painter allowed him to move to Rome in 1816. There he painted for the British elite staying in Italy, including Maria Graham (later Lady Callcott) and the artists Sir Thomas Lawrence and J. M. W. Turner. His journeys during this time took him to Naples and Athens where he met the German artistic communities there: the Nazarene painters and scholar proponents of the new discipline of art history. Eastlake continued to send paintings to England, showing at the British Institution and the Royal Academy, where his successes lead to his absentia admission in that body in 1827. Eastlake returned to England permanently in 1830, continuing to paint historic and biblical paintings set in Mediterranean landscapes. Eastlake became increasingly fascinated with art history as an intellectual pursuit. His conversancy in German allowed his to publish translations first of Goethe’s1840 Zur Farbenlehre (Color Theory) and the 1842 Handbuch der Geschichte der Malerei (Handbook of the History of Painting) by Franz Kugler. The second section included notes by Edmund Walker Head. These high-profile publications and his reputation as a painter led to Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel’s 1841 nomination of Eastlake as Secretary of the Fine Arts Commission, the body in charge of government art patronage. For some time, Eastlake had been unofficially advising the National Gallery on acquisitions. In 1843 the government made it official by naming him to the highest office in the Gallery, Keeper (curator). Though he reported to the Trustees, the administrative structure at the National Gallery thwarted leadership and lead to innumerable quarrels. Eastlake’s curatorial tenure at the National Gallery was stormy. Acquisition scandals and overcleaning of masterworks, most notably in the press by J. Morris Moore, writing under the pseudonym “Verax.” In 1846, he met Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake a translator of a German-language work on British art by Johann David Passavant. Eastlake resigned over his department’s controvercies, despite the support of the Trustees, in 1847. He returned to writing art history, producing his two most lasting books, Materials for a History of Oil Painting (1847) and the first volume of Contributions to the Literature of the Fine Arts (1848). In 1849 he married Rigby. Together, he and Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake formed Britain’s earliest serious art-history writing ventures. Eastlake was raised to the Presidency of the Royal Academy and knighted in 1850. The same year he commissioned the top connoisseur art historians, including Passavant, G. B. Cavalcaselle, and Gustav Friedrich Waagen to write opinions for the catalog of the Permanent collection of the Gallery in Liverpool. He was appointed the first President of the Photographic Society in 1853. Eastlake’s continual background lobbying for changes at the National Gallery were finally realized in 1855 Eastlake when he was named the its first Director. With this new position, Eastlake hired the artist and art historian Ralph Nicholson Wornum as Keeper (principal curator) and the German art historian and dealer Otto Mündler as “Travelling Agent” [for acquisitions]. In two short years Eastlake and Mündler acquired treasures for the museum mostly from Italy, but from the Netherlands and France as well until the petty criticisms of Lord Elcho, the future 10th earl of Wemyss (1818-1914) caused the dissolution of Mündler’s position in 1858. Eastlake continued to acquire works for the museum alone. He bought whole collections, including the Beaucousin collection (1860), from which Bronzino’s Allegory came, and the Lombardi-Baldi collection (1857), which held Uccello’s Rout of San Romano. Other Italian masterworks added by Eastlake include Perugino’s Virgin and Child (in 1856), Pollaiuolo’s Martyrdom of St. Sebastian (in 1857), Veronese’s the Family of Darius before Alexander (in 1857), Giovanni Bellini’s Madonna of the Meadow (in 1858), and Piero della Francesca’s Baptism (in 1861). Eastlake died while on one of his regular excursions in Italy in 1865. His will made provision for the Gallery to purchase paintings from his own collection at the same cost Eastlake had paid for them. Lady Eastlake also sold her husband’s rich art history book collection to the library. He was succeeded at the Gallery by William Boxall, a family friend who acted as one of his executors. His nephew, Charles L. Eastlake was also a keeper of the National Gallery, 1878-1898.
Eastlake’s combination of scholar, artist, and gentleman allowed him to make fundamental changes in the art community of England during his time. As a tastemaker, he and his wife were among the first to appreciate (“rediscover”) the so-called Italian primitives.
Selected Bibliography
A History of the Gothic Revival. London: Longmans, 1872; Hints on Household Taste in Furniture, Upholstery, and Other Details. London: Longmans, Green, 1868; Notes on the Principal Pictures in the Brera Gallery at Milan. London: Longmans and co., 1882; Notes on the Principal Pictures in the Louvre Gallery at Paris. London: Longmans and Co., 1883, [republished in the United States as] Notes on the Principal Pictures in the Louvre Gallery at Paris, and in the Brera Gallery at Milan. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1883; Notes on the Principal Pictures in the Old Pinakothek at Munich. London: Longmans and Co., 1884; Notes on the Principal Pictures in the Royal Gallery (R. Accademia di Belle Arti) at Venice. London: W. H. Allen & Co., 1888; Pictures in the National Gallery, London. 3 vols. Munich/London/New York: F. Hanfstaengel, 1896-1898; [reprinted papers from the Appendix to the Reports of the Fine arts commission] Contributions to the Literature of the Fine Arts. London: J. Murray, 1848; Materials for a History of Oil Painting. 2 vols. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1847-1869; The National Gallery: Observations on the Unfitness of the Present Building for its Purpose: in a Letter to the Right Hon. Sir Robert Peel, bart. London: W. Clowes and Sons, 1845; translated, Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. Theory of Colours. London: J. Murray,1840; Catalogue of Works of Art: sent in, Pursuant to the Notices Issued by Her Majesty’s Commissioners on the Fine Arts: for Exhibition in Westminster Hall. London: Printed for William Clowes and Sons, Stamford Street, 1844; translated and revised, Kugler, Franz. “General Literary Materials for the Study of Italian Painting.” The Italian Schools of Paintings. A Hand-book of the History of Painting: from the Age of Constantine the Great to the Present Time. [translation of Handbuch der Geschichte der Malerei von Constantin dem Grossen bis auf die neure Zeit.] 2 vols. London: J. Murray, 1842-1846, pp. xxiii-xxxii.
Sources
Robertson, David. Sir Charles Eastlake and the Victorian Art World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978; Ernstrom, Adele. M. “‘Equally Lenders and Borrowers in Turn:’ the Working and Married Lives of the Eastlakes.” Art History 15 (1992): 470-85; Klonk, Charlotte.” Mounting Vision: Charles Eastlake and the National Gallery of London.” Art Bulletin 82 no. 2 (June 2000): 331-47; Howard, Jeremy. “Renaissance Florence: Inventing the 1470s in the Britain of the 1870s.” British Art Journal 1 no. 1 (Autumn 1999): 75-7; Robertson, David. “Sir Charles Eastlake.” Dictionary of Art .
First Director of the National Gallery, London 1855-65; painter and scholar of artist’s materials. Son of a British Admiralty barrister at Plymouth, Eastlake attended local schools and, for a short time, Charterhouse, Surrey. He studied under the
