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Elderkin, Kate

Full Name: Elderkin, Kate Denny McKnight

Other Names:

  • Kate Elderkin
  • Kate McKnight
  • Kate Denny McKnight
  • Kate McKnight Elderkin
  • Kate McK Elderkin

Gender: female

Date Born: 1897

Date Died: 16 February 1962

Place Born: San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA

Place Died: Princeton, Mercer, NJ, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): Classical

Career(s): art historians

Institution(s): Vassar College


Overview

Historian of classical antiquity at Vassar College. Elderkin, born Kate McKnight, was born in 1897 in California. Her father died a year after her birth and she was raised by her mother and stepfather, Arthur Robinson Ocheltree (1877- 1956). Kate McKnight graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar College in 1919 followed by a master’s degree in 1920. She returned as an officer of instruction in the department of art and archaeology, spending the first semester studying at Harvard. During this time she also excavated portions of northern Africa. She taught as a lecturer in the department of art and archaeology, receiving a doctorate from Radcliffe in 1922 with a dissertation entitled Chacrylion and His Vases. With the American School of Classical Studies in 1923 she visited the islands Aegina, Delos, Paros, Melos, Thera, and Crete in Greece. While she was a part of this trip, McKnight herself was not a member of the ASCSA. She went as a guest of her cousin Elizabeth Denny Pierce [later, Blegen] (1888–1966) and her fiancé, the distinguish archaeologist Carl Blegen (1887-1971), who was a member of the organization. In 1924 she left her position as an instructor at the art department of Vassar marrying George Elderkin in that same year. McKnight, now Elderkin, worked as Associate Editor on the book review section of the American Journal of Archaeology beginning in 1925. She is credited in part with the success of this section, a department that continues to exist today. Her last listing as associate editor is in the 1931 issue of the Journal, however, her book reviews continue to appear in the publication through 1946. In 1962 she died in her home at the age of 65.

Elderkin wrote several different publications on the small and large objects of classical antiquity. She focused on objects ranging from the use of buttons on Greek garments to vase paintings to classical collections. Her first notable work, Chacrylion and His Vases, was her dissertation. This work was included in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology. In this work she covers the work of Chacrylion and names both his teacher and possible student. She analyzes the stylistic changes of Chacrylion, as well as the two different signatures that are attributed to him. Unlike other authors, Elderkin categorizes Chacrylion as a potter rather than a painter.

Her work, Buttons and Their Use on Greek Garments, was published in the American Journal of Archaeology. The article covers a variety of fastenings on clothing; including buttons, pins, and string ties. She links the use of each of these different fastenings to the various garments found in ancient Greece. Elderkin does so by using both literary and sculptural sources.

Also included in the American Journal of Archaeology. is Jointed Dolls in Antiquity. This piece focuses on the toys found in both children’s collections and in temples dedicated to various goddesses. Elderkin also covers how gender roles affected children’s toys. She also covers the materials used in their creation, as well as the ties they show to Egyptian trade routes. Elderkin also spends a significant amount of time covering what the missing parts of the dolls also signify.

Elderkin put particular emphasis on the role of women in classical antiquity with her work The Contribution of Women to Ornament in Antiquity, included in Classical Studies Presented to Edward Capps. In this paper she emphasizes the impact women of ancient Greece had on the art world, specifically noting their skills in painting and embroidery. Elderkin also covers the work of female vase painters, a topic previously given little attention. Her theme of acknowledging marginalized communities didn’t end with women, in From Tripoli to Marrakesh she focuses on the works of Northern Africa. The scope of the work covers major and minor details of the architecture from Tripoli to Morroco. A unique aspect of this work is written in a diary format that also archives archaeological descriptions. As explained in the preface of the book the intended audience was laymen rather than experts. Despite this purpose, reviewers of the book claim that it is of equal value to those working in the field of archaeology. (Müller)


Selected Bibliography

  • Chacrylion and His Vases. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1924;
  • “The Ulysses Panels by Piero Di Cosimo at Vassar College.” The Art Bulletin 6, no. 4 (1924): 99–102
  • “Aphrodite Worship on a Minoan Gem.” American Journal of Archaeology 29, no. 1 (1925): 53–58.
  • “The Minor Classical Collections.” Art and Archaeology 20, (1925): 122.
  • “An Alexandrian Carved Casket of the Fourth Century.” American Journal of Archaeology 30, no. 2 (1926): 150–57
  • “Buttons and Their Use on Greek Garments.” American Journal of Archaeology 32, no. 3 (1928): 333–45
  • “Jointed Dolls in Antiquity.” American Journal of Archaeology 34, no. 4 (1930): 455-479.
  • The Contribution of Women to Ornament in Antiquity, Classical Studies Presented to Edward Capps, Princeton University Press 1936.
  • From Tripoli to Marrakesh Pond-Ekberg Company, 1944

Sources

  • [obituary:]  l”Mrs. George Elderkin” New York Times, (February 17, 1962) .pg19
     
  • Vassar Miscellany News, Volume III, Number 37, Vassar Miscellany News (March 8, 1919) – Vassar Newspaper & Magazine Archive;
  • “The Fifth General Catalogue of the Officers and Alumnae of Vassar College Vol. IX No.3 “Vassar College Bulletin. Vassar College, Poughkeepsie N.Y (May 1920);
  • “Vassar Confers Degrees” The Vassar Miscellany News, (June 17, 1920);
  • “A College Romance” New York Times, (May 6, 1924): 2;1
  • “Resignations and Terminated Appointments,” The Vassar Miscellany News, (June 12, 1924);
  • Dugas, Charles. “Kate McKnight Elderkin, Chachrylion and His Vases.” Revue Des Études Grecques 39 no. 179 (1926)): 195-196;
  • “Contemporary Notes,” Vassar Quarterly, (July, 1928);
  • Walters, H. B. The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 71, no. 414 (1937): 148–148;
  • Müller, Valentine. American Journal of Archaeology 48, no. 3 (July-September, 1944): 314;
  • “‘All Aboard:’ Cruising the Aegean in 1923.” From the Archivist’s Notebook, (June 1, 2015);
  • “The History of the Aja.” The History of the AJA American Journal of Archaeology;
  • “All Aboard: Cruising the Aegean in 1923.” From the Archivist’s Notebook, June 1, 2015
  • “Carl W. Blegen Papers: American School of Classical Studies at Athens.” Carl W. Blegen Papers | American School of Classical Studies at Athens;
  • “Kate Denny McKnight.” geni_family_tree, November 25, 2020;

Archives

  • Vassar Miscellany News
  • Harvard Archives
  • “Archives and Personal Papers. “Archives and Personal Papers, American School of Classical Studies at Athens.
  • “Carl W. Blegen Papers: American School of Classical Studies at Athens.” Carl W. Blegen Papers American School of Classical Studies at Athens 

Contributors: Caitlin Childers


Citation

Caitlin Childers. "Elderkin, Kate." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/elderkink/.


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Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Historian of classical antiquity at Vassar College. Elderkin, born Kate McKnight, was born in 1897 in California. Her father died a year after her birth and she was raised by her mother and stepfather, Arthur Robinson Ocheltree (1877- 1956). Kate McK

Enwezor, Okwui

Image Credit: ArtNet

Full Name: Enwezor, Okwuchukwu Emmanuel

Gender: male

Date Born: 23 October 1963

Date Died: 15 March 2019

Place Born: Calabar, Cross River, Nigeria

Place Died: Munich, Bavaria, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany, Nigeria, and United States

Subject Area(s): African (general, continental cultures), African diaspora, Contemporary (style of art), photographs, and twentieth century (dates CE)

Career(s): authors, curators, and poets

Institution(s): Haus der Kunst and San Francisco Art Institute


Overview

Curator, art critic, art historian, and educator. Enwezor was born as the youngest son of an Igbo family in Calabar, Nigeria. During the Biafran war of 1967-1970, he and his family were forced to move to the city of Enugu, Nigeria. In 1982, after finishing a semester at the University of Nigeria, Enwezor moved to the Bronx, in New York. In 1987 he earned a B.A. in political sciences at Jersey City State College, now New Jersey City University. When Enwezor graduated, he moved to Manhattan and began writing poetry, which he performed at the Knitting Factory and the Nuyorican Poets Café in the East Village. Enwezor’s study of poetry led him from language arts to art criticism. In 1993, with fellow African critics Chika Okeke-Agulu (b. 1966) and Salah M. Hassan, Enwezor launched the triannual magazine of contemporary African art, Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art. He recruited scholars and artists such as Olu Oguibe (b. 1964) and Carl Hancock Rux (b. 1964) to edit and write for the inaugural issue. Enwezor primarily worked on smaller exhibitions, until 1996 when Enwezor had his breakthrough as a curator of Insight: African photographer, from 1940 to the present, an exhibition of 30 African photographers at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Insight was one of the first exhibitions to put contemporary African art in the context of colonial withdrawal and the emergence of independent African states. The exhibition also propelled artists like Sam Fosso (b. 1962), Seydou Keïta (1921-2001), and Malick Sidibé (1935-2016) to international recognition.

 

Enwezor is most known for his ambition as the director and chief curator of numerous Biennials, beginning with his role as artistic director of the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale from 1996-1997. The following year, until 2002, Enwezor was the artistic director of Documenta 11 in Kassel, Germany, and was the first non-European to have the job. He also directed the Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo de Sevilla, in Seville, Spain in 2006, the 7th Gwangju Biennale in South Korea in 2008, and the Triennale d’Art Contemporain of Paris at the Palais de Tokyo in 2012. He served as co-curator of the Echigo-Tsumari Sculpture Biennale in Japan, Cinco Continente: Biennale of Painting, in Mexico City, and Stan Douglas: Le Detroit, at the Art Institute of Chicago. Enwezor was the dean of the San Francisco Art Institute from 2005-2009 and the dean of Haus der Kunst in Munich, Germany from 2011-2018. Enwezor resigned from Haus der Kunst under complicated circumstances involving a scandal where some of his staff were found out to be scientologists, which required their immediate termination as the State of Bavaria, the museums largest benefactor, considers scientology as a threat to democracy. Amidst the furor, Enwezor was also accused of mismanagement of staff and budgets. Nevertheless, in 2014, Enwezor was ranked 24th in the ArtReview list of the 100 most powerful people of the art world. Enwezor married Muna el Fituri (b. 1965). After their divorce, his partner until his death was Louise Neri, a director at the Gagosian Gallery.

 

In his 1997 exhibition catalogue for the Second Johannesburg Biennale, Trade Routes: History and Geography, Enwezor defined his goal as chief curator as to examine the history of globalization through the ways an exhibition could, “explore how culture and space have been historically displaced through colonisation, migration, and technology. . . . emphasising how innovative practices have led to redefinitions and inventions of our notions of expression, with shifts in the language and discourses of art.” Here, Enwezor describes his persistent innovation and intellectual agenda when working with exhibitions. His ultimate goal in his career was to develop a transversal model of research for African art that veered the field away from the European model. Enwezor was one of a few curators in the 21st century who could claim a ‘global’ knowledge of contemporary art, though he always returned to his center, Africa. Enwezor died in 2019 after a three-year long battle with cancer.

 


Selected Bibliography

  • Archive fever : uses of the document in contemporary art. New York; Gottigen: International Center of Photography. Steidl, 2008;
  • with Siegel, Katy and Wilmes, Ulrich. Postwar: art between the Pacific and the Atlantic, 1945 – 1965 : [Haus der Kunst, Munich, from October 14, 2016, to March 26, 2017]. Munich: Prestel, 2016;
  • with Gyalui, Luz. All the world’s futures: la Biennale di Venezia, 56th International Art Exhibition. Venice: Marsilio, 2015;
  • Snap judgments: new positions in contemporary African photography. New York: International Center of Photography, 2006;
  • with eds Smith, Terry, and Condee, Nancy. Antinomies of art and culture: modernity, postmodernity, contemporaneity.Durham: Duke University Press, 2008;
  • “Repetition and differentiation, Lorna Simpson’s iconography of the racial sublime,” in Lorna Simpson. New York: Abrams, 2006;
  • with Sze, Sarah, Buchloh, B. H. D., and Hoptman, Laura J. Sarah Sze. London ; New York, NY: Phaidon Press Ltd, 2016;
  • with Bourouissa, Mohamed, Dezeuze, Anne, Donnadieu, Marc, Hunt, Amanda, and Nairn, Michael. Mohamed Bourouissa. Paris: Kamel Mennour, 2017;
  • with Zwelethu Mthethwa and Isolde Brielmaier. Zwelethu Mthethwa. New York: Aperture, 2010.

Sources

  • [obituary] Farago, Jason. 2019 “Okwui Enwezor, Curator Who Remapped Art World, Dies at 55”  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/obituaries/okwui-enwezor-dead.html;
  • [obituary] Bishop, Claire. “Okwui Enwezor,” Third Text Online, https://www.thirdtext.org/bishop-enwezor, 2019;
  • Davidson, Jane Chin and Patel, Alpesh Kantilal. “Okwui Enwezor and The Art of Curating,” Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art (48): 6–13. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/10757163-8971243, 01 May 2021;
  • Enwezor, Okwui and Richards, Colin, Trade Routes: History and Geography: 2nd Johannesburg Biennale. Johannesburg Greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Council, p. 9, 1997;
  • Shatz, Adam. “Okwui Enwezor’s Really Big Show”, The New York Times Magazine: 2002.


Contributors: Alana J. Hyman


Citation

Alana J. Hyman. "Enwezor, Okwui." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/enwezoro/.


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Curator, art critic, art historian, and educator. Enwezor was born as the youngest son of an Igbo family in Calabar, Nigeria. During the Biafran war of 1967-1970, he and his family were forced to move to the city of Enugu, Nigeria. In 1982, after

Eydoux, Henry Paul

Full Name: Eydoux, Henry Paul

Gender: male

Date Born: 1907

Date Died: 1986

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre) and sculpture (visual works)


Overview

architectural history



Sources

Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986 p. 489


Archives


Contributors: Emily Crockett and Lee Sorensen


Citation

Emily Crockett and Lee Sorensen. "Eydoux, Henry Paul." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/eydouxh/.


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architectural history

Evelyn, John

Full Name: Evelyn, John

Gender: male

Date Born: unknown

Date Died: unknown

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre) and sculpture (visual works)


Overview

Architectural historian.



Sources

Downs, Kerry. “John Evelyn and Architecture: A First Inquiry.” in, Concerning Architecture: Essays on Architectural Writers and Writing presented to Nikolaus Pevsner. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1968, pp. 28-39.


Archives


Contributors: Emily Crockett and Lee Sorensen


Citation

Emily Crockett and Lee Sorensen. "Evelyn, John." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/evelynj/.


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Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Architectural historian.

Evers, Hans Gerhard

Image Credit: ArchInForm

Full Name: Evers, Hans Gerhard

Other Names:

  • Hans Gerhard Evers

Gender: male

Date Born: 1900

Date Died: 1993

Place Born: Lübeck, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany

Place Died: Hofgeismar, Hesse, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany


Overview

Evers studied literature at the university in Göttingen, writing his thesis on Johann Joachim Winckelmann and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. He moved to Heidelberg where the lectures of Ludwig Curtius, the Egyptologist Hermann Ranke and the literary historian and member of the Stefan George circle, Friedrich Gundolf (1880-1931), converted his interest to art history. After his Die Breitrichtung der Basilika appeared in 1932, written under Wilhelm Pinder Evers was appointed a lecturer at the university in Munich. He became Professor at Munich in 1942. That year he published the first of his two books on Rubens–this written in the form of a historical novel–yet nevertheless accounting for Rubens as both artist and statesman. After World War II he accepted a teaching position in 1950 at the Technischen Hochschule in Darmstadt where he remained until his retirement in 1968. He was one of the motivating figures behind the 1950 Darmstädter Gespräch. In Vom Historismus zum Funktionalismus (1967) he offered a revisionist account of nineteenth-century historicist architecture. His interest in art historiography was instrumental in his co-editing the bibliography volume in the Bibliographie zur Kunstgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts,1968. He was selected to write the volume in the Art of the World series by Crown [Die Kulturen des Abendlandes in Germany] on modern art, Art of the Modern Age (1970). In his final years, Evers attempted to counter the legend that Ludwig II of Bavaria was a mad king. He cast the famous Ludwig der Verrückt as the last enlightened monarch who was able to imprint his stylistic vision on his architectural commissions. His students included Otto von Simson, who, though he officially wrote his dissertation under Pinder, saw Evers as his most influential teacher, and Josef Adolf Schmoll genannt Eisenwerth, who wrote his habilitation under Evers.


Selected Bibliography

Schriften. Darmstadt : Techn. Hochschule, 1975; and Lietzmann, Hilda, and Lankheit, Klaus and Novotny, Fritz. Bibliographie zur Kunstgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Publikationen der Jahre, 1940-1966. Munich: Prestel-Verlag, 1968; and Rathke Ewald, and Herzog, Erich, and Gertz, Ulrich. Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts in Hessen. 3 vols. Hanau, Hessen: Peters, 1965-1969; Die Engelsbrücke in Rom. Berlin: Mann, 1948; Zeugnisse der Angst in der modernen Kunst. Darmstadt: Darmstädter Gespräch, Mathildenhöhe1963; Vom Historismus zum Funktionalismus. Zürich: Schweizer Verlagshaus, Neue Schweizer Bibliothek, 1967; Vom Historismus zum Funktionalismus. Baden-Baden: Holle, 1967, English, The Art of the Modern Age. New York: Crown Publishers, 1970; Dürer bei Memling. Munich: Fink, 1972; Ludwig II. von Bayern: Theaterfürst, König, Bauherr: Gedanken zum Selbstverständnis. Munich: Hirmer, 1986; Peter Paul Rubens. Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1942; Rubens und sein Werk: neue Forschungen. Brüssels: De Lage Landen, 1943; Tod, Macht und Raum als Bereiche der Architektur. Munich: Neuer Filser-verlag; inhaber: dr. Benno Filser, 1939.


Sources

Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. 2nd ed. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2007, pp. 84-86; Stonard, John-Paul. Art and National Reconstruction in Germany 1945-55. Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 2004, pp. 233-234; [transcript] “Otto von Simson, interviewed by Richard Cándida Smith.” Art History Oral Documentation Project. Malibu, CA: Getty Research Institute,p. 9.


Archives


Contributors: Emily Crockett and Lee Sorensen


Citation

Emily Crockett and Lee Sorensen. "Evers, Hans Gerhard." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/eversh/.


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Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Evers studied literature at the university in Göttingen, writing his thesis on Johann Joachim Winckelmann and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. He moved to Heidelberg where the lectures of

Evans, Joan, Dame

Image Credit: Hubbard Plus

Full Name: Evans, Joan, Dame

Gender: female

Date Born: 1893

Date Died: 1977

Place Born: Abbots Langley, Hertfordshire, England, UK

Place Died: Wotton under Edge, Gloucestershire, England UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): Medieval (European)

Career(s): art collectors


Overview

Oxford-trained private medievalist art historian and collector. Evans was the daughter of Sir John Evans (1823-1908) an archaeologist, and his third wife, Maria Millington Lathbury (1856-1944). Her mother attended Oxford at age 30 and married at 36. Joan Evan’s half-brother by more than forty years was the archaeologist Arthur J. Evans. The girl had a lonely childhood, essentially raised by her nanny. She suffered a nervous breakdown at the death of her father in 1908 and was only restored by a family friend, Margaret Jourdain, who insisted she write a history of jewelry. She attended St. Hugh’s College, Oxford, from 1914 graduating in archaeology (with honors) in 1916 under J. D. Beazley. But a lack of sympathy with Beazley’s attributions methodology led her to pursue later periods. In 1917 she took a temporary position as St. Hugh’s librarian which lasted until 1922. A B.Litt was awarded in 1920. In 1921 she published her book, English Jewellery from the 5th Century BC to 1800. English art, however, was not her primary focus. Her scholarly interest was established in 1925 by the book Life in Mediaeval France. The University of London awarded her a D. Litt, in 1930. In 1931 she used her research in adornment to write Pattern: a Study of Ornament in Western Europe from 1180 to 1900, a monumental study which reframed the scholarly concept of decoration. That same year she was named honorary librarian of the Courtauld Institute, London. Oxford University bestowed a D. Litt, on her in 1932. Evans produced the second of her studies of French medieval life in 1936, Monastic Life at Cluny, 930-1157, followed in 1939 by Taste and Temperament. In rapid succession, Art in Mediaeval France (1948), English Art, 1307-1461 (1949), Cluniac Art of the Romanesque Period (1950), and Dress in Mediaeval France (1952) were published. A second history of ornament, A History of Jewellery, 1100-1870 was issued in 1953. These were interspersed by histories of more contemporary subjects, such as her biography of Chateaubriand in 1939, on Madame de Sérilly in 1946, and Joseph Joubert, published in 1947. In 1943 she published a family memoir, Time and Chance: the Story of Arthur J. Evans and his Forebears. Evans bought a medieval Cluniac chapel, Chappelle des Moines de Berzé and donated it to the town of Mâcon in 1947. In 1948 she was elected president of the Royal Archaeological Institute (through 1951). Evans greatly admired the Victorian age and indeed saw herself as an extension of it in many ways. After a biography of John Ruskin in 1954, she co-edited with John Howard Whitehead, Ruskin’s diaries in 1956, a work demonstrating almost a personal understanding of the work of the most influential art writer of the nineteenth century in Britain. That same year her A History of the Society of Antiquaries appeared in 1956, as well as an honorary doctor of letters from Cambridge. Evans was elected the first woman president of the Society of Antiquaries in 1959 (through 1964) a position which had previously been held by both her father and half brother, and awarded the gold medal the Society in 1973. She donated her gem and jewelry collection to the Victoria and Albert Museum beginning in 1960. She was a trustee of the British Museum (1963-1967). In 1966 she published a view of the middle ages in general, The Flowering of the Middle Ages and a biography of the family of Netherlandish scholar Martin Conway. In her personal life, she donated time and money to many charitable historic causes, nearly all of them anonymously. Most publicly, she helped purchase the ridge above Wotton under Edge for the National Trust. She resided there at Thousand Acres, the family home at Wotton, for the remainder of her life. Evans died at Wotton under Edge in 1977 and her body cremated. Her will left collections to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and the Birmingham City Art Gallery. Evans never had an academic appointment. Scholarly opinion of her work is generally that she too strongly felt the urge to match the publishing output of other family members to match their excellence. Her books lack evidentiary detail which a slower publication schedule might have allowed. Her work on Ruskin is one of great sensitivity and her study on ornament remains important.


Selected Bibliography

English Jewellery from the Fifth Century A.D. to 1800. London, Methuen & co., 1921; Pattern, a Study of Ornament in Western Europe from 1180 to 1900. 2 vols. Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1931; The Romanesque Architecture of the Order of Cluny. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1938; English Art, 1307-1461. The Oxford History of English Art: 5. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949; Art in Mediaeval France, 987-1498. London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1948; Cluniac Art of the Romanesque Period. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950; edited, with Whitehouse, John Howard. Ruskin, John. Diaries. 3 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956-59; Dress in Mediaeval France. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952; The Conways: a History of Three Generations. London: Museum Press, 1966.


Sources

Evans, Joan. Prelude & Fugue, an Autobiography. London: Museum Press, 1964; Garlick, Kenneth. “Evans, Joan, Dame.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004; Coldstream, Nicola. “Joan Evans (1893-1977): Art Historian and Antiquary.” in, Chance, Jane, ed. Women Medievalists in the Academy. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005, pp. 399-422; [obituary:] “Dame Joan Evans, Historian of French and English Medieval Art.” Times (London) July 15, 1977, p.18.


Archives

  • Oxford University: Ashmolean Museum, Department of Antiquities (maybe).

Contributors: Emily Crockett and Lee Sorensen


Citation

Emily Crockett and Lee Sorensen. "Evans, Joan, Dame." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/evansj/.


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Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Oxford-trained private medievalist art historian and collector. Evans was the daughter of Sir John Evans (1823-1908) an archaeologist, and his third wife, Maria Millington Lathbury (1856-1944). Her mother attended Oxford at age 30 and married at 3

Ephrussi, Charles

Image Credit: Wikipedia

Full Name: Ephrussi, Charles

Other Names:

  • Charles Ephrussi

Gender: male

Date Born: 24 December 1849

Date Died: 30 September 1905

Place Born: Odessa, Odessa, Ukraine

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

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): Northern European

Career(s): art critics


Overview

Author of a Dürer monograph; art critic; chief editor of Gazette des Beaux-Arts. Ephrussi was born to a Jewish family of grain exporters, as the youngest son of Léon Ephrussi (1826-1871) and Mina Lindau (1824-1888). The business based in Odessa (then part of the Russian Empire) later developed into a successful banking enterprise under the direction of Ephrussi’s grandfather. The young Ephrussi grew up in Odessa until age 10. He then moved to Vienna, where his father and his uncle Ignace further expanded the family business. The young Ephrussi was tutored in the prestigious family home, together with his siblings and cousins. He learned Latin, Greek, English, and German, while he spoke French and Russian. He had a special interest in art, especially in the drawings of Albrecht Dürer, which he saw at the Albertina. In 1871 his father set up a branch of Ephrusssi et Cie in Paris. He died the same year leaving Ephrussi’s elder brother, Jules, in charge. As the youngest, Charles was free to do whatever he liked. He soon traveled to Italy, where he spent a year collecting Renaissance art works, such as drawings, medallions, enamels, and tapestries. After his return to Paris, where he had his own suite of rooms in the Hôtel Ephrussi, he became involved in the contemporary art scene. He dedicated himself to art-historical research, and he became a regular contributor to the Gazette des Beaux-Arts and, to a lesser degree, the Chronique des arts et de la curiosité. In 1876 he published his first critical articles in the Gazette, “Jacopo de Barbarj. Notes et documents nouveaux”, and “Le Triptyque d’Albert Dürer exécuté pour Jacob Heller”. These studies provoked a controversy between Ephrussi and the director of the Albertina, Moriz Thausing, the author of a monograph of Dürer the same year. Ephrussi published further studies on the drawings of Dürer in nine installments in the Gazette, between 1877 and 1880. His later monograph was based on these articles. Both well-educated and among the highest social strata, Ephrussi regularly visited the private salons, hosted by ladies of distinctive families, such as Madame Straus (1849-1926), Princess Mathilde (1820-1904), Madame Lemaire (1845-1928), and Countess Greffulhe (1860-1952). Ephrussi shared with many others an interest in Japanese art objects, including woodcuts, folding screens, lacquer boxes, and netsuke. He owned several lacquer box- and an important netsuke collection. In 1878 he published a study on Japanese lacquer boxes on display in the Trocadéro, “Les lacques japonais au Trocadéro” in the Gazette. Ephrussi himself was involved in the organization of several exhibitions. In 1879 he curated, together with Gustave Dreyfus, an exhibition of 674 Old Master drawings, held in the École des Beaux-Arts. This exhibition led to Ephrussi’s friendship with the curator of the Department of paintings and drawings of the Louvre, L. Both de Tauzia (1823-1888). In the Gazette Ephrussi wrote articles on the curator’s acquisitions, including the Villa Lemmi fresco’s of Botticelli, which he had helped to bring over from Italy to Paris. He also authored a study on the collection of drawings bequeathed to the Louvre in 1878 by His de la Salle (1795-1878) and installed in 1882. To complete his research on the drawings of Dürer, he traveled to London, Vienna, Munich, visiting museums and private collections. With the assistance of his secretary, the poet Jules Laforgue (1860-1887), he revised and corrected his previously published articles, and incorporated them into a description of all the drawings in chronological order. This major work, Albert Dürer et ses dessins, appeared in 1882. The same year, Ephrussi helped organize a show of his friend, the academic painter Paul Baudry (1828-1886), in the Orangerie of the Tuileries, and was awarded the “Croix de la Légion d’honneur”. Ephrussi reviewed Impressionist exhibitions, eventually acquiring over forty works by Morisot, Cassatt, Degas, Manet, Monet, Sisley, Pisarro and Renoir. He appears in a top hat behind the guests in Renoir’s “Le déjeuner des canotiers” (the “Luncheon of the Boating Party”). In 1885 Ephrussi became co-owner of the Gazette. In 1887 his monograph on Baudry appeared. He also produced studies of the prints in early books such as the 1499 Dream of Poliphilus and the 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle. From 1894 onwards Ephrussi fully devoted himself to the Gazette as its editor in chief during the time the magazine was becoming more scholarly. The popular anti-Semitism of the Dreyfus Affair caused repercussions on Ephrussi as well (E. de Waal). In 1903 he was honored as “Officier de la Légion d’honneur”. He died two years later, in 1905. The figure of Swann in Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past is modeled in part on Ephrussi. In the introduction to his study, Albert Dürer et ses dessins, Ephrussi celebrated the 1879 exhibition of old masters in Paris as finally giving Dürer the appreciation they deserved in France. One of Ephrussi’s goals was to contribute to a better knowledge in France of the “greatest master of Germany”. In this work all Dürer’s drawings are documented, previously unpublished drawings from private collections were reproduced in facsimile. While Thausing’s 1876 monograph, Albrecht Dürer: Geschichte seines Leben und seiner Kunst, revised in 1884, and subsequently translated into English and French, is still a reference book, Ephrussi’s work was overshadowed by this work and later catalogs (Hélène de Givry).


Selected Bibliography

[complete bibliography:] “Bibliographie des ouvrages de Charles Ephrussi” Chronique des arts et de la curiosité 39 (1905): 275-277; De Givry, Hélène. http://whww.inha.fr/spip.php?article2310; Étude sur le triptyque d’Albert Dürer, dit le tableau d’autel de Heller. Paris: D. Jouaust, 1876; Le Tableau d’autel de Heller, Jacopo de Barbarj et le professeur Thausing. Paris: A. Quantin, [1877]; [in collaboration with Dreyfus, Gustave] Catalogue descriptif des dessins de maîtres anciens exposés à l’École des beaux-arts, mai-juin, 1879. Paris: G. Chamerot, 1879; Les Nouvelles Acquisitions du musée du Louvre: Fra Angelico, Domenico Ghirlandajo, Sandro Botticelli. Paris: A. Quantin, 1882; Albert Dürer et ses dessins. Paris: A. Quantin, 1882; Les Dessins de la collection His de la Salle. Paris: A. Quantin, 1883; Paul Baudry, sa vie et son Åuvre. Paris: L. Baschet, 1887 ; Étude sur le Songe de Poliphile, (Venise 1499 et 1545, Paris 1546). Paris: L. Techener, 1888; “Le Vicomte Both de Tauzia” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 38 (1888) : 158-160; Étude sur la Chronique de Nuremberg de Hartmann Schedel, avec des bois de Wolgemut et W. Pleydenwurff. Paris: L. Techener, 1894.


Sources

Thausing, Moritz. “Charles Ephrussi, Étude sur le triptyque d’Albert Dürer, dit le tableau d’autel de Heller.” Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst 12 (1877): 283-287; D’Amat, Fr. “Ephrussi Charles.” in D’Amat, Roman, ed. Dictionnaire de biographie française 12. Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1970, p. 1350; Kolb, P. and Adhemar, Jean. “Charles Ephrussi (1849-1905), ses secrétaires: Laforgue, A. Renan, Proust: ‘sa’ Gazette des Beaux-Arts.” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6th ser., 103 (1984): 29-41; De Givry, Hélène. “Charles Ephrussi” Le dictionnaire des historiens de l’art actifs en France http://www.inha.fr/spip.php?article2310; “Ephrussi, Charles.” Dictionary of Art 10: 432; De Waal, Edmund. The Hare with Amber Eyes. A Family’s Century of Art and Loss. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010; [obituary:] Marguillier, Auguste. “Charles Ephrussi.” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 34 (1905): 353-360; “Charles Ephrussi” Chronique des arts et de la curiosité (October 7, 1905): 257-258.



Contributors: Monique Daniels


Citation

Monique Daniels. "Ephrussi, Charles." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/ephrussic/.


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Author of a Dürer monograph; art critic; chief editor of Gazette des Beaux-Arts. Ephrussi was born to a Jewish family of grain exporters, as the youngest son of Léon Ephrussi (1826-1871) and Mina Lindau (1824-1888). The business based in

Erdmann, Kurt

Image Credit: Art Historiography

Full Name: Erdmann, Kurt

Gender: male

Date Born: 1901

Date Died: 1964

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): Islam, Islamic (culture or style), and religious art


Overview

Islamic scholar; instrumental in mounting the 1910 Munich exhibition of Islamic art with Ernst Kühnel.






Citation

"Erdmann, Kurt." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/erdmannk/.


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Islamic scholar; instrumental in mounting the 1910 Munich exhibition of Islamic art with Ernst Kühnel.

Erlande-Brandenburg, Alain

Image Credit: Wikipedia

Full Name: Erlande-Brandenburg, Alain

Gender: male

Date Born: 1937

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): Medieval (European)

Career(s): curators


Overview

Medievalist, chief curator of the Musee de Cluny and the Musee d’Ecouen; president of the French Society of Archaeology. Erlande-Brandenburg was chosen to write a number of French-language surveys on medieval art. In 1983 he produced the Gothic art volume for the Editions d’Art Mazenod and in 1987 volume 34 in the Univers des formes (survey) series on medieval art, 1260-1380.


Selected Bibliography

The Cluny Museum. Paris: Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, 1979. L’art gothique. Paris: Editions d’Art L. Mazenod, 1983, English, Gothic Art. New York: Abrams, 1989; La conquête de l’Europe: 1260-1380. Paris: Gallimard, 1987; Cathedrals and Castles: Building in the Middle Ages. [New York: H. N. Abrams, 1995;


Sources

The International Who’s Who. 72nd edition. London: Routledge, 2008.




Citation

"Erlande-Brandenburg, Alain." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/erlandebrandenburga/.


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Medievalist, chief curator of the Musee de Cluny and the Musee d’Ecouen; president of the French Society of Archaeology. Erlande-Brandenburg was chosen to write a number of French-language surveys on medieval art. In 1983 he produced the Gothic ar

Ertz, Klaus

Full Name: Ertz, Klaus

Gender: male

Date Born: unknown

Date Died: unknown

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): Netherlandish and Northern Renaissance


Overview

historian of Netherlandish art


Selected Bibliography

Jan Breughel der ältere. die Gemälde. Köln, 1979.; Jan Breughel der Jüngere. Flemish Painters in the Cycle of the Great Masters. Freren, 1984. [published in German and English]


Sources

Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986 p. 506




Citation

"Ertz, Klaus." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/ertzk/.


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historian of Netherlandish art