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Fierens Gevaert, Hippolyte

November 8, 2023April 14, 2024

Full Name: Fierens Gevaert, Hippolyte

Other Names:

né Hippolyte Fierens

Gender: male

Date Born: 1870

Date Died: 1926

Place Born: Brussels, Brussels-Capital Region, Belgium

Place Died: Liège, Wallonia, Belgium

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): aesthetics

Career(s): art historians, curators, and educators

Overview

First chief curator of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels; professor of aesthetics and art history; art critic; writer. At age seventeen, Fierens-Gevaert enrolled at the Brussels Royal Conservatory of Music. In 1890 he won the Premier Prix de Chant. In this year he married Jacqueline Marthe Gevaert, the daughter of the famous musician François Auguste Gevaert (1828-1908). Fierens then joined the Opera of the city of Lille, but he unfortunately damaged his voice, which meant the end of his career as a singer. After this misfortune the couple moved to Paris, where Fierens began a new career as a journalist, writer and art critic. He changed his last name to Fierens-Gevaert, adopting the name of his wife and father-in-law. From 1893 onwards he contributed articles to several periodicals including the Journal des Débats. He also wrote various essays. For his Essai sur l’art contemporain, published in 1897, he received an award from the Académie française, and in 1899 the Académie des Sciences morales et politiques awarded him for another essay, La tristesse contemporaine: essai sur les grands courants moraux et intellectuels du XIXe siècle. In 1901, Fierens-Gevaert published Psychologie d’une ville, essai sur Bruges, in which he studied the artistic development of the Flemish city of Bruges. In 1902, he returned to Belgium, accepting an offer to teach aesthetics at the University of Liège. In addition, he was charged with the courses of art philosophy, art history of the Renaissance and the New Era, and, in 1906, with the history of music. In 1903 he collaborated for the government reform regulating the university education of art history in the country. Among other things, this resulted in the creation in Brussels of the Société des cours d’art et d’archéologie, the later Institut supérieur d’Histoire de l’Art et d’Archéologie de Bruxelles. Fierens-Gevaert obtained here a teaching position, in addition to his position at Liège University. At the same time he was deeply involved in international exhibitions, in Belgium as well as in the cities of Turin, Milan, and Venice, in which latter city he became the official delegate for the Belgian sections of the Venice Biennales held between 1907 and 1926. In 1907 Fierens-Gevaert was appointed secretary to the Board of the Brussels Royal Museums of Painting and Sculpture of Belgium. In this year he published L’art au XXe siècle et son expression en Belgique. Between 1905 and 1909, he wrote two studies on early Flemish art: La Renaissance septentrionale et les premiers maîtres des Flandres (1905) and Les primitifs flamands (2 vols. 1908-1909); a revised edition of those studies was to appear in 1927-1929 (see below). In 1910, he was appointed professor at the newly founded Institut supérieur d’Histoire de l’Art et d’Archéologie at Liège University. In 1914 he published an article on art history education in Belgium. He was involved in the International Conference of Art History in Rome (1912) and later in Paris (1921). In 1914 he became a member of the Board of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium, and in 1919, after the first World War, he climbed to the rank of chief curator. As the first chief curator Fierens-Gevaert played an important role in reorganizing the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels. For the purpose of art historical education he created a documentation department, including the library, the periodicals, and the photographic collection. He also saw the museum as a place in which a larger public, including young people, was invited to enjoy beauty and to learn about art. The first guided school visits were held in 1920. In 1924, the “Diffusion artistique des Musées Royaux” was founded, aimed at organizing guided tours and lectures. Temporary exhibitions were frequently organized. The Van Eyck-Bouts exhibition (1920) proudly showed the famous Ghent Altarpiece of the Van Eyck brothers, after its shutters were returned to Belgium, following a decision made at the Treaty of Versailles, and subsequently reunited with the central panels. In 1924, Fierens-Gevaert published Les Très Belles Heures de Jean de France, duc de Berry. For this study he won the “Prix quinquennal de critique historique et littéraire” in 1925. Fierens-Gevaert suddenly died in 1926. His three-volume Histoire de la peinture flamande des origines à la fin du XVe siècle was published posthumously in 1927-1929. The first two volumes, with the subtitles Les créateurs de l’art flamand and Les continuateurs des Van Eyck, were completed by Fierens-Gevaert himself, revising his earlier work, while the third volume, La maturité de l’art flamand, was put together by his son, Paul Fierens, who used notes and earlier works of his father. In 1927, Léo Van Puyvelde succeeded Fierens-Gevaert as chief curator of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels and as professor of art history of the Renaissance at Liège University. Fierens-Gevaert’s son, Paul Fierens, began teaching aesthetics and modern art at the same university.

Selected Bibliography

[For a list of publications, see] Van Puyvelde, Leo “Hippolyte Fierens Gevaert” in Halkin, Léon (ed.) Liber Memorialis. L’Université de Liége. De 1867 à 1935. Notices biographiques. 1 Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres. Faculté de Droit. Liége: Rectorat de l’Université, 1936, pp. 458-460; Essai sur l’art contemporain. Paris: Alcan, 1897; La tristesse contemporaine. Paris: Alcan, 1899; Psychologie d’une ville, essai sur Bruges. Paris: Alcan, 1901; L’Hôtel de ville de Paris. Paris: Librairie de l’art ancien et moderne, 1902; Van Dyck. Paris: H. Laurens, 1903; Nouveaux essays sur l’art contemporain. Paris: Alcan, 1903; Jordaens: biographie critique. Paris: H. Laurens, 1905; Études sur l’art flamand. La Renaissance septentrionale et les premiers maîtres des Flandres. Brussels: G. van Oest, 1905; L’Art au XXe siècle et son expression en Belgique. Brussels: Éditions de la Belgique, 1907: La peinture en Belgique, musées, églises, collections, etc. Les Primitifs Flamands. 2 vols. Brussels: G. van Oest, 1908-1909; La peinture au Musée ancien de Bruxelles. Brussels: G. van Oest, 1913; `”L’enseignement de l’histoire de l’art en Belgique” Revue de Synthèse historique 28, 82 (1914): 82-90; Les Très Belles Heures de Jean de France, duc de Berry. Brussels: Weckesser, 1924; [and Fierens, Paul: 3rd vol.] Histoire de la peinture flamande des origines à la fin du XVe siècle. 3 vols. Brussels: G. van Oest, 1927-1929.

Sources

De Seyn, Eugene. Dictionnaire biographique des Sciences, des Lettres et des Arts en Belgique. 1, Brussels: Éditions L’Avenir, 1935: 454; Van Puyvelde, Leo “Hippolyte Fierens Gevaert” in Halkin, Léon (ed.) Liber Memorialis. L’Université de Liége. De 1867 à 1935. Notices biographiques. 1 Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres. Faculté de Droit. Liège: Rectorat de l’Université, 1936: 458-460; Fierens, Paul, Catalogue de la peinture ancienne. Brussels: Éditions de la Connaissance, 1957: 11-12; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, pp. 150, 245, 502; Van Kalck, Michele. “Hippolyte Fierens-Gevaert. Un premier conservateur en chef aux talents multiples (1919-1926)” Les Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique. Deux siècles d’histoire. Brussels: Dexia Banque et Racine, 2003, 1, pp. 332-335; [obituary:] Mouseion 1 (April 1927): 82.

Contributors: Monique Daniels

Fierens, Paul

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Fierens, Paul

Gender: male

Date Born: 1895

Date Died: 1957

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

Place Died: Brussels, Brussels-Capital Region, Belgium

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): aesthetics and Modern (style or period)

Career(s): art critics and curators

Overview

Chief Curator of the Royal Museums of Fine Art in Brussels; professor of aesthetics and the history of modern art at Liège University; art critic and poet. Fierens was born in Paris of Belgian parents, the art historian Hippolyte Fierens-Gevaert and Jacqueline Marthe Gevaert. The family moved to Belgium in 1902. Fierens attended high school at the Collège Saint-Michel in Brussels and he studied philosophy and classics in Brussels at the Institut St. Louis, where he graduated as bachelor in 1914. After World War I he enrolled at the Free University of Brussels to study law, where he obtained his doctoral degree in 1921. In that year he returned to Paris and joined the editorial staff of the Journal des Débats, where his father also began his career. In addition he was a contributor to French and foreign journals, such as Nouvelles littéraires, La Nouvelle Revue française, The Art News, and Der Cicerone. Upon his father’s death, in 1926, Fierens obtained a teaching position at the Institut supérieur d’Histoire de l’Art et d’Archéologie at Liège University, teaching aesthetics and modern art. However, he continued to live in cosmopolitan Paris until 1934, where famous writers, musicians, and painters, including Marc Chagall and Georges Braque, were among his friends. In 1929, he published La maturité de l’art flamand, as the third volume of a multi-volume work, Histoire de la peinture flamande des origines à la fin du XVe siècle, the first two volumes of which had been written by his father and were posthumously published (1927-1929). In addition to his position at Liège University, Fierens taught at the Institut supérieur d’Histoire de l’Art et d’Archéologie, housed in the Brussels Museums of Fine Arts; at the Chapelle musicale Reine Élisabeth; at the École du Louvre in Paris; and at the universities of Montpellier and Aix-en-Provence. An elaborate study on the paintings of the 17th-century French brothers Antoine, Louis and Mathieu Le Nain appeared in 1933. Fierens identified and cataloged the oeuvre of each of the brothers separately. In the same year he published L’art hollandais contemporain (Dutch contemporary art). In 1934, he moved to Brussels. In 1936, he was appointed professor at Liège University. Between 1938 and 1942, Fierens published a two-volume study on Flemish painting, from the beginnings until the 18th century, La peinture flamande. At the same time, he was the editor and one of the authors of L’art en Belgique du moyen âge à nos jours, an overview of Belgian art from the Middle Ages up to the twentieth century (1939). His own contribution to this book dealt with modern and contemporary art. More publications on Dutch and Flemish art followed. In 1945, Fierens was appointed curator of the Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels, replacing Arthur Laes (1876-1959), and two years later chief curator, as the successor of Léo Van Puyvelde. Between 1919 and 1926, Fierens’ father had held the same position in the Brussels museum. Fierens was a well-known and highly appreciated personality in the museum world. He served as president of the International Association of Art Critics, from its foundation in 1950. He also headed the Belgian Committee of the International Council of Museums (ICOM). In 1953 he became secretary to the Executive Council of this institution. Fierens died at the age of 61 in 1957.

Selected Bibliography

[list of publications before 1936:] Halkin, Léon (ed.) Liber Memorialis. L’Université de Liége. De 1867 à 1935. Notices biographiques. 1. Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres. Faculté de Droit. Liège: Rectorat de l’Université, 1936, pp. 569-572; Van Dongen, l’homme et l’ouvre. Paris: Les Écrivains réunis, 1927; Henry Parayre. Paris: Les Écrivains réunis, 1928; James Ensor. Paris: G. Crès, 1929; Marc Chagall. Paris: G. Crès, 1929; Permeke. Paris: G. Crès, 1929; and Fierens-Gevaert. La maturité de l’art flamand. volume 3 of Histoire de la peinture flamande des origines à la fin du XVe siècle. Paris: Les Éditions G. van Oest, 1929; Choix de cinquante dessins de Rembrandt van Rijn. Paris: Braun, 1929; Marcel Gimond. Paris: Éditions de la Nouvelle Revue française, 1930; Jean van Eyck. Paris: G. Crès, 1931; Survage. Paris: Éditions des Quatre Chemins, 1931; Rubens. Paris: G. Crès, 1931; Joseph Stevens. Brussels: Éditions des Cahiers de Belgique, 1931; Hermann Hubacher. Paris: Éditions des Quatre Chemins, 1932; Les Le Nain. Paris: Floury, 1933; Sculpteurs d’aujourd’hui. Paris: Éditions des Chroniques du jour, exclusivité M.L.F., 1933; L’art hollandais contemporain. Paris: Éditions Le Triangle, 1933; Martin Lauterberg. Paris: Éditions des Quatre Chemins, 1933; Wilhelm Thöny. Paris: Éditions des Chroniques du jour, 1933; Rembrandt. Paris: Braun, 1934; Dessins de la vie juive. Paris, Éditions Le Triangle, 1934; Max Band. Paris: Éditions des Quatre Chemins, 1935; Memlinc. Paris: Braun, 1935; Theo van Rysselberghe. Brussels: Éditions de la Connaissance, 1937; La peinture flamande. vol. 1. Des origines à Quentin Metsys. vol. 2. De Bruegel au XVIIIe siècle. Paris: Les Éditions d’art et d’histoire, 1938-1942; Lasar Segall. Paris: Éditions des Chroniques du jour, 1938; ed. L’art en Belgique du moyen âge à nos jours. Brussels: La Renaissance du livre, 1939; Peinture flamande des origines à 1550. Paris: Braun, 1940; Peinture flamande de 1550 à 1800. Paris: Braun, 1940; Peinture hollandaise. Paris: Braun, 1940; Chaires et confessionnaux baroques. Brussels: Éditions du Cercle d’art, 1943; L’art flamand. Paris: Larousse, 1945; Les grandes étapes de l’esthétique. Brussels: Éditions Formes, 1945; Bruegel l’ancien. Paris: Éditions du Chêne, 1946; Le fantastique dans l’art flamand. Brussels: Éditions du Cercle d’art, 1947; Van Gogh. Paris: Braun, 1947; Trois sculpteurs belges: Charles Leplae, Georges Grard, Pierre Caille. Brussels: Éditions de la Connaissance, 1949; Faut-il nettoyer les tableaux anciens? Brussels: Ad. Goemaere, 1949; Chefs-d’Åuvre des Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique. Brussels: Éditions de la Connaissance, 1950; Pierre Caille. Antwerp: De Sikkel, 1950; Jan Vermeer de Delft, 1632-1675. Paris: Braun, 1952; H.V. Wolvens. Antwerp: De Sikkel, 1953; Antoine Mortier. Brussels: Elsevier, 1956; Musées royaux des beaux-arts de Belgique. Catalogue de la peinture ancienne. Brussels: Éditions de la Connaissance, 1957.

Sources

Halkin, Léon (ed.) Liber Memorialis. L’Université de Liége. De 1867 à 1935. Notices biographiques. 1. Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres. Faculté de Droit. Liège: Rectorat de l’Université, 1936, pp. 569-572; “Paul Fierens, conservateur en chef.” Arts, Beaux-Arts, Littérature, Spectacles (October 31 1947): 1; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, pp. 196, 253, 499, 502; Devillez, Virginie. “Paul Fierens conservateur en chef (1947-1957).” Les Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique: Deux siècles d’histoire. Brussels: Dexia Banque et Racine, 2003, 1, pp 370-374; [obituaries :] F.C. Legrand “Paul Fierens” Burlington Magazine 99 (July 1957): 241-242; Gazette des Beaux-Arts 49 (May-June 1957): suppl. 16 ; J[anson], Cl. “In memoriam Paul Fierens.” Bulletin Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique/Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België 6, no. 1 (1957): 3-4.

Contributors: Monique Daniels

Fechter, Paul Otto Heinrich

November 8, 2023April 11, 2024

Full Name: Fechter, Paul Otto Heinrich

Gender: male

Date Born: 1880

Date Died: 1958

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): Expressionist (style) and German Expressionist (movement)

Career(s): art critics

Overview

Art and literary critic; wrote early book on expressionism. Fechter studied architecture and natural science in Berlin. Hiis doctoral thesis, Die Grundlagen der Realdialektik, was completed in 1906. Fechter wrote for the Dresdner Neuesten Nachrichten newspaper after receiving his degree, moving to Berlin to write for the Vossischen Zeitung in 1911.Between 1918 until 1933 he was a cultural critic for the Deutschen Allgemeinen Zeitung. In 1914 he published Expressionismus one of the earliest documentations of Expressionism as an art movement. He wrote extensively on literature and the theater, always with a preference for nationalist themes. He published much during this time, mostly novels and other literary forms, the most important of which was the play Der Zauberer Gottes, in 1940. After World War II he published an art dictionary as well as a three-volume survey of European drama, Das europäische Drama in 1956.

Selected Bibliography

Der Expressionismus. Munich: R. Piper, 1914; Das europäische Drama: Geist und Kultur im Spiegel des Theaters. 3 vols. Mannheim: Bibliograph. Inst., 1956-1958; Der Zauberer Gottes: eine Komödie. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1940; Kleines Wörterbuch für Kunstgespräche. Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1951.

Sources

Killy, W. (ed.). Literatur Lexicon. Autoren und Werke deutscher Sprache. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann Lexikon, 1988ff., vol.15, p. 342; Stonard, John-Paul. Art and National Reconstruction in Germany 1945-55. Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 2004, p. 233.

Art and literary critic; wrote early book on expressionism. Fechter studied architecture and natural science in Berlin. Hiis doctoral thesis, Die Grundlagen der Realdialektik, was completed in 1906. Fechter wrote for the Dresdner Neue

Fehl, Philipp P.

November 8, 2023April 11, 2024

Full Name: Fehl, Philipp P.

Gender: male

Date Born: 1920

Date Died: 2000

Place Born: Vienna, Vienna state, Austria

Place Died: Rome, Lazio, Italy

Home Country/ies: Austria

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

Overview

Professor of Italian Renaissance art. The son of a Jewish craftsman, Fehl grew up in Vienna. After the annexation of Austria, Fehl fled first to England and then, in July 1940, to the United States. He studied painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, but volunteered for war service. Fehl was an interrogator for the United States Army at the Nuremberg Trials 1946-47. He returned to study art history with Ulrich Middeldorf at the University of Chicago. He additionally attended the Brussels Art Seminar seminar by Erwin Panofsky. He was a research fellow at the Warburg Institute. Fehl revered the work of E. H. Gombrich, whom he considered his friend as well as mentor.

Selected Bibliography

Capriccio: the Jest & Earnestness of Art: a History of the Capriccio in Prints. Urbana, IL: Krannert Art Museum, 1987; A Bibliographical Guide to the Study of the History of Art. Chapel Hill, NC, [s. n.]: 1965, new ed., 1969; Birds of a Feather. Urbana, IL: Krannert Art Museum, 1991; The Classical Monument: Reflections on the Connection Between Morality and Art in Greek and Roman Sculpture. New York University Press and the College Art Association of America, 1972; Decorum and Wit: the Poetry of Venetian Painting: Essays in the History of the Classical Tradition. Vienna: IRSA, 1992; Zatura and the Art of Painting Finely: Open-ended Narration in Paintings by Apelles, Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian, Rembrandt and Ter Borch. Groningen: The Gerson Lectures Foundation, 1997; Thomas Appleton of Livorno and Canova’s Statue of George Washington. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1968; edited and translated. Junius, Franciscus. The Literature of Classical Art. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.

Sources

Artibus et Historiae 23 no. 45 (2002): 27; Philipp P. Fehl – Capricci Eine Ausstellung des Deutschen Exilarchivs Der Deutschen Bibliothek, 30. November 2001 – 31. January 2002 (website).

Félibien, André

November 8, 2023April 11, 2024

Full Name: Félibien, André

Other Names:

André Félibien sieur des Avaux de Jàversy

Gender: male

Date Born: May 1619

Date Died: 11 June 1695

Place Born: Chartres, Centre-Val de Loire, France

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

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): French (culture or style) and Italian (culture or style)

Career(s): art critics

Overview

Critic and historian of Italian and French art and royal art collections. Félibien was educated primarily in Paris. In 1647 he was appointed secretary to Marquis de Fontenay-Mareuil (1594-1655), the ambassador to the Holy See, Rome, under Louis XIV. During his service to the ambassador, Félibien spent two years in Rome, where he studied ancient monuments and the works of living artists such as Claude Lorrain, Pietro da Cortona, and Nicolas Poussin, whom he personally met. He returned to France in 1649 and married. Nicolas Fouquet, marquis de Belle-Isle, (1615-1680), the Superintendent of Finances in France, was impressed by his ability and Félibien dedicated his de L’origine de la peinture, 1660, a historical analysis of painting modeled after the writings of Giorgio Vasari to Fouquet. However, when Fouquet became the target of a financial scandal, Félibien was forced to flee Paris as well. He was recalled by the Fouquet’s successor, Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683). He became a founding member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres in 1663, and wrote several articles documenting works in royal collections. Through his position, he exerted great influence on the policies of the Académie Royale de peinture et de sculpture. His appointment by Colbert as historiographer of the Bâtiments du Roi in 1666 expanded his role as a critic and an arts administrator. Félibien began immediately to publish a ten-volume history of painting from antiquity to the17th century, entitled Entretiens sur la vie et les ouvrages des plus excellences peintres anciens et modernes,1666-1668. The work was intended to be a history of art from the antique to Poussin, but Félibien added two final parts containing more contemporary artists. He was named secretary to the newly-founded Academy of Architecture in 1671 and in 1673 keeper of the cabinet of antiques in the palace of Brion. In 1679, Félibien published his Noms des peintres les plus célèbres a dictionary of of artists. His two sons, Michel Félibien, a monk, and Jean-François Félibien, an architect, also became scholars of French art and architecture. Félibien, owing to his position, was the orthodox voice of France, yet succeeded in original judgments on artists. Even his earliest work, Des principes was less about theoretics (principles) than it was a description of working methods. From this first, Félibien shows himself interested in facts–the bits of history–as much as postulation. Entretiens shows Félibien to be seriously concerned with establishing an approach to art history (Pace). His writings on art history are credited (by Bazin) to have rekindled art criticism in France.

Selected Bibliography

Lettres familieres de mr Conrad, a mr Felibien. Paris: Chez Claude Barbin, 1681; Des principes de l’architecture, de la sculpture, de la peinture, et des autres arts qui en dependent. Avec vn dictionnaire des termes propres à chacun de ces arts. Paris: J. B. Coignard, 1676; Noms des peintres les plus célèbres et les plus connus anciens et modernes. Paris: 1679; Entretiens sur les vies et sur les ouvrages des plus excellens paintres anciens et modernes …. 5 pts. Paris: Simon Bernard, 1666, 1672,1679, 1685,1688; Recueil de descriptions de peintures et dáutres ouvrages faits pour le roy. Paris: Chez Florentin & P. Delaulne, 1689.

Sources

Pace, Claire. Félibien’s Life of Poussin. London: A. Zwemmer, 1981; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art: de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, pp. 55; Skliar-Piguet, Alexandre. “Félibien, André, Sieur des Avaux et de Jàversy.” Dictionary of Art 24: 805-806.

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

Félibien, Jean-François

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Félibien, Jean-François

Other Names:

Jean-François Félibien des Avaux

Gender: male

Date Born: c. 1658

Date Died: 1733

Home Country/ies: France

Overview

Son of art historian and theorist André Félibien. First theoretician in France to address the gothic style “Disseration touchant l’architecture antique & l’architecture gothique” (Bazin). He termed Romanesque architecture “gothique ancien” and later architecture “gothique modern” (present gothic architecture).

Selected Bibliography

Recueil historique de la vie et des ouvrages des plus célèbres architectes. Paris: Chez Florentin et Pierre Delaulne, 1690; Les plans et les descriptions de deux des plus belles maisons de campagne de Pliné le consul, avec des remarques sur tous ses bâtimens, et une dissertation touchant l’architecture antique & l’architecture gothique. Paris: F. & P. Delaulne, 1699; Les plans et les descriptions de deux des plus belles maisons de campagne de Pline le consul, avec des remarques sur tous les bâtimens et une dissertation touchant l’architecture antique et l’architecture gothique. Amsterdam: Aux depens d’Estienne Roger, 1706.

Sources

Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art: de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, pp. 111 [dates incorrectly assigned to his father]; Skliar-Piguet, Alexandre. “Félibien, André, Sieur des Avaux et de Jàversy.” Dictionary of Art 10: 867 (entry on father).

Félibien, Michel

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Félibien, Michel

Gender: male

Date Born: 14 September 1664

Date Died: 25 September 1719

Place Born: Chartres, Centre-Val de Loire, France

Place Died: Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Centre-Val de Loire, France

Home Country/ies: France

Institution(s): Congrégation de Saint-Maur

Overview

Benedictine Monk and architectural historian from France. Born into a prominent family in Coutainville near Chartres, France, in 1665, Michel was the son of André Félibien (1619-1695), historiographer of the Academy of Painting (1666) and secretary of the Academy of Architecture (1671). His brother, Jean-François, became an architect and historiographer. Michel Félibien became a Benedictine Monk in the Congregation of Saint-Maur in 1683. Also known as Maurists, the congregation were renowned for their erudite scholarship.

In 1706, Félibien published Histoire de l’Abbaye Royale de Saint-Denys en France (History of the Royal Abbey of Saint-Denys in France) — one of the first major structures built in what came to be known as the Gothic style — up until the reign of Louis XIV. Part of the significance of Félibien’s eight-volume text resides in the author’s emphasis upon situating his discussion of the Cathedral within its historical context. The second half of the book, which includes six engraved plates of various treasures housed within, provides a detailed account of the interior and exterior of the structure, including the treasury. The treasury, which played a significant role in the ceremonies of the French monarchy, is now largely known only through his account. Félibien next began researching the history of Paris, which appeared as Histoire de la ville de Paris in 1712. The five-volume was left unfinished at his death but completed by his fellow Benedictine, Guy Alexis Lobineau, Dom Lobineau (1666–1727) in 1725. Following the Maurists tradition, he emphasised reliable sources as the key to ascertaining “truth.” Approaching his work critically, Félibien “swept aside the famous … legends” to provide a clear and accurate history of the subjects he explored (Vaivre).

Selected Bibliography

Histoire de l’abbaye royale de Saint-Denys en France. Paris: n.p., 1706;
and Lobineau, Guy Alexis. Histoire de la ville de Paris. Paris: n.p., 1725.

Sources

“Félibien, Michel (1665-1719).” BNF Catalogue général. Accessed 20 Aug 2021. https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb12177715q.public
Jean-Bernard, Vaivre. Review of Histoire de l’abbaye royale de saint Denys en France. Nouvelle édition avec une introduction d’Hervé Pinoteau. Bulletin Monumental Année 1974, (132-3): 256
Le Cerf de la Viéville, Philippe. Bibliothèque historique et critique des auteurs de la Congrégation de S. Maur. La Haye : Pierre Gosse, 1726. Accessed 20 Aug 2021. https://archive.org/details/bibliothquehis00lece/page/102/mode/2up?view=theater
“Michel Félibien.” The British Museum. Accessed 20 Aug 2021. https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG164121
Pinoteau, Hervé. “Introduction.” In Histoire de l’abbaye royale de saint Denys en France. Nouvelle édition avec une introduction d’Hervé Pinoteau. Paris: Ed. du Palais Royal, 1973.

Contributors: Lee Sorensen and Shane Morrissy

Fenaille, Maurice

November 8, 2023April 14, 2024

Full Name: Fenaille, Maurice

Gender: male

Date Born: unknown

Date Died: unknown

Home Country/ies: France

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

Career(s): archivists and researchers

Overview

archival research in French art history

Selected Bibliography

état général des tapisseries de la Manufacture des Gobelins depuis son origine jusqu’à nos jours (1600-1900). 5 vols. 1903-1929.

Sources

Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986 p. 482

archival research in French art history

Fenollosa, Ernest Francisco

November 8, 2023April 14, 2024

Full Name: Fenollosa, Ernest Francisco

Other Names:

Tei-Shin

Gender: male

Date Born: 1853

Date Died: 1908

Place Born: Salem, Essex, MA, USA

Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): Chinese (culture or style), Early Historical Japanese, East Asian, Japanese (culture or style), and South Asian

Career(s): curators

Overview

Curator of Oriental art at the Boston Museum of Fine Art, 1890-96. Fenollosa was the son of Manuel Francisco Ciriaco Fenollosa and Mary Silsbee (Fenollosa). He attended Hacker Grammar School in Salem, Massachusetts, and the Salem High School before graduating from Harvard in the class of 1874. He continued study at Cambridge University in philosophy and divinity. After a year at the art school at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, during which time he married Lizzie Goodhue Millett, he traveled to Japan in 1878 (at the invitation of American zoologist and Orientalist Edward Sylvester Morse) to teach political economy and philosophy at the Imperial University at Tokyo. He studied the indigenous ancient temples, shrines and art treasures, many of which were in a neglected state. He helped revive the Nihonga (Japanese) style of painting together with Japanese artists Kanō Hōgai (1828-1888) and Hashimoto Gahō (1835-1908). After eight years at the University, he helped found the Tokyo Fine Arts Academy and the Imperial Museum acting as its director in 1888. He converted to Buddhism, and changed his name to Tei-Shin. He also adopted the name Kanō Yeitan Masanobu, suggesting that he had been admitted into the ancient Japanese art academy of the Kanō. Among Fenollosa’s accomplishments were the first inventory of Japan’s national treasures, and in so doing he discovered ancient Chinese scrolls brought to Japan by traveling Zen monks centuries earlier. The Emperor of Japan decorated him with the orders of the Rising Sun and the Sacred Mirror. In 1886 he sold the art collection he had amassed to Boston physician Charles Goddard Weld (1857-1911) on the condition that it go the the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. In 1890 he returned to Boston to be curator of the department of Oriental art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. There Fenollosa organized the first exhibition of Chinese painting at the MFA in 1894 and developed the Department into a training center for generations of scholars. His public divorce and immediate remarriage to the writer Mary McNeill Scott (1865-1954) in 1895 outraged the Boston community, leading to his dismissal from the Museum in 1896. He was replaced by his student and fellow buying companion, Okakura Kakuzo (1862-1913). Fenollosa published Masters of Ukioye, a historical account of Japanese paintings and color prints which were exhibited at the New York Fine Arts Building, in 1896. In 1897 he journeyed back to Japan to be professor of English literature at the Imperial Normal School at Tokyo. After three years he returned to the United States to write and lecture on Asia. After his death, his wife compiled the two-volume Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art from his notes. His literary executor, Ezra Pound, compiled from notes and manuscripts, Cathay (1915); Certain Noble Plays of Japan (1916); and ‘Noh’, or, Accomplishment, a Study of the Classical Stage of Japan (1916). His last years were spent creating a collection for the Detroit railroad baron Charles Lang Freer, the basis of what is now the Freer Collection, Smithsonian Institution, Washgington, D. C. Fenollosa brought a curator’s enthusiasm to the study of Asian art in the United States. He inspired Boston collectors to venture into the relatively new field of Far Eastern art, endowing the Boston Museum of Fine Art with one of the earliest and best Asian art collections in the United States. His books were widely read, but unfortunately are full of errors. Epochs, for example, was completed from notes after his death by his earnest, but less-knowledgeable, wife. The study of Japanese art in the United States was at such a dawning point that much information taken as correct by scholars has since been corrected. Assessments of Fenollosa’s lasting contribution to the study of Asian art have varied greatly. Estimations that he both discovered the subject and that he made no important contribution to it exist. Fenollosa, together with Weld and another society physician-turned collector, William Sturgis Bigelow (1850-1926) formed what were known as the “Boston Orientalists.”

Selected Bibliography

Epochs of Chinese & Japanese Art: an Outline History of East Asiatic Design. New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1912; Instigations of Ezra Pound, Together with an Essay on the Chinese Written Character, by Ernest Fenollosa. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1920; ‘Noh,’ or, Accomplishment, a Study of the Classical Stage of Japan. New York: A. A. Knopf, 1917; East and West: The Discovery of American and Other Poems New York: T.Y. Crowell, 1893; The Masters of Ukioye: a Complete Historical Description of Japanese Paintings and Color Prints of the Genre School. New York: The Knickerbocker Press, 1896.

Sources

Fenollosa, Mary McNeill. “Preface.” Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art: an Outline History of East Asiatic Design. New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1912; Warner, Langdon. “Ernest Francisco Fenollosa.” Dictionary of American Biography. vol. 6. New York: C. Scribner’s sons, 1931, pp. 325-26; Kurihara Shinichi. Fuenorosa to Meiji bunka. Tokyo: Rikugei Shobo, Showa 43,1968; Chisolm, Lawrence W. Fenollosa: the Far East and American Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963; Brooks, Van Wyck. Fenollosa and His Circle; with Other Essays in Biography. New York: Dutton, 1962; Tepfer, Diane. “Enest Fenollosa.” The Dictionary of Art 10: 887; “Fun facts: ‘The Boston Orientalists’. Boston Museum of Fine Art, http://www.boston.com/mfa/chinese/orientalist.htm .

Ferguson, John Calvin

November 8, 2023April 14, 2024

Full Name: Ferguson, John Calvin

Gender: male

Date Born: 1866

Date Died: 1945

Place Born: Lonsdale, Ontario, Canada

Place Died: Clifton Springs, Ontario, NY, USA

Home Country/ies: Canada

Subject Area(s): American (North American), Asian, Chinese (culture or style), Confucianism, and Song (Chinese culture, style, and period)

Career(s): art collectors

Overview

Early American scholar of Chinese art, collector and procurer for American art museums; Chinese governmental adviser. Ferguson was the son of John Ferguson and Catherine Matilda Pomeroy (Ferguson). His father was a Methodist minister and his mother a schoolteacher. The family traveled frequently because of the father’s work. Ferguson attended Albert College in Ontario, Canada and then Boston University, where he graduated in 1886. He was ordained in the Methodist Episcopal church shortly thereafter and, in 1887, married Mary Elizabeth Wilson. His church posting was to a Methodist mission in Central China. There Ferguson founded a Methodist school, Huiwen Shuyuan (later Nanjing University), which, under his direction, developed established a curriculum along western lines, including schools of medicine and theology. The riots in China in 1891 caused a permanent mental condition on his wife and the pay for the college was so poor that Ferguson returned to missionary work in1897. Together with the industrialist Sheng Xuanhuai, Feguson founded a second school, the Nanyang Gongxue, Shanghai, (later Jiaotong University). His educational zeal and belief in education led him to edit the newspaper Sin Wan Bao in 1899. He returned to Boston where, in 1902, he was awarded a Ph.D. from Boston University writing his dissertation on the topic The Confucian Renaissance in the Sung Dynasty. Named honorary secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society (North China branch) he edited their scholarly journal. The growing nationalism of China and the unpopularity of foreign leaders of Chinese universities caused Ferguson to resigned as president of the Nanyang school. Sheng Xuanhuai, secured for him a position of foreign secretary to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce. From 1903 onward, he held various official nad unofficial advisorships in successive Chinese governments and chief secretary of the Imperial Chinese Railway Administration (to 1907), Chinese representative to the United States. He acted as a buyer of Chinese art for the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York. In 1913 the Met elected him a fellow in perpetuity. When the Qing dynasty was deposed in 1912, Ferguson was the only western scholar invited to participate on the committee examining the art treasures of the imperial palace for the Palace Museum in Beijing. He presented the Scammon Lectures at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1918, published the following year as Outlines of Chinese Art. Ferguson, who had already been an adviser to the Chinese Department of State (1915-1917) continued to advise President Xu Shichang during the warlord era in Beijing (1917-1928). In 1921 he again returned to political service as an adviser for the Chinese delegation to the Washington Conference for the Limitation of Armaments. He co-founded the China Journal of Science and Art which he edited between 1923 until 1931. After 1927 he acted as adviser to the Nationalist party government (Guomindang) of Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) in Nanjing. As tensions mounted near World War II, Ferguson elected to remain in Beijing, even after the Japanese invasion in 1937. In 1943 the Japanese decided to inter U. S. and British nationals still in China, but Ferguson spent his interment in a dormitory in the British Embassy when he was exchanged along with other prisoners. The lengthy trip to the United States through Hong Kong, Viet Nam, South Africa, and Brazil, (he made it back to New York by the end of 1943) took a toll on his health. He and his wife enter the Clifton Springs, New York, sanitarium where he died shortly before the end of Asian theater conflict of World War II. His students included Lidai Zhulu Hua Mu. The catalog created by his students of the paintings of successive dynasties was commonly known as “Ferguson’s Index” (1934). Ferguson was one of the early western art historians of Chinese art history from the North America. He wrote and researched before modern archaeological finds and methods had established an accurate dating system for objects. His wide knowledge of classical Chinese texts, combined with personal interpretations, resulted in errors in his art authentication. Because the field was largely limited to his own findings, he was often defensive of dissenting views. A bitter dispute erupted, for example with the eminent scholar Herbert A. Giles, (of the Wade-Giles Chinese character transliteration formula). His acquisition skills were utilized by the Freer Gallery of Art (Smithsonian Institution, Washgington, D. C.) and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in addition to Chicago and New York. His personal collection of art, including bronzes, scrolls, paintings, and jades, were largely donated to Nanjing University in 1935. His collections forms the core of several art museums within the People’s Republic of China The Jiaotong University collection exists in two separate institutions, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Xian Jiao Tong University, both established in 1956.

Selected Bibliography

Chinese Painting. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1927; Outlines of Chinese art. Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago/University of Chicago press, 1919; Survey of Chinese art. Shanghai, China: The Commercial Press, 1939; Special exhibition of Chinese paintings from the collection of the Museum: catalogue. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1914;[“Ferguson’s Index”] Li dai zhu lu hua mu [Catalog of the Recorded Paintings of Successive Dynasties]. 6 vols. Nanjing Shi: Jin ling da xue Zhong guo wen hua yan jiu suo, 1934.

Sources

Lawton, Thomas. “John C. Ferguson: A Fellow Feeling of Fallibility,” Orientations 27 (1996): 65-76; ” ” New York Times 4 Aug. 1945; Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 73 (1948): v-xiv; Clark, Peter Yuichi. “Ferguson, John Calvin.” American National Biography.

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