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Fergusson, James

Image Credit: Wikipedia

Full Name: Fergusson, James

Gender: male

Date Born: 22 January 1808

Date Died: 09 January 1886

Place Born: Ayr, Scotland

Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre), Assyrian, Christianity, Early Western World, Hindustani (culture or style), Indian (South Asian), Levantine (culture or style), Mesopotamian (culture or style), mosques (buildings), Near Eastern (Early Western World), Persian (culture), religious buildings, religious structures, and sculpture (visual works)


Overview

Scottish architectural historian, active in India. Fergusson was born in the town of Ayr, on the west coast of Scotland. James was the second son of Dr. William Fergusson, who served as the Inspector General of Military Hospitals — a role which required much overseas travel. James received his early education at the Royal High School in Edinburgh and, later, in Hounslow, outside London. In 1829 he travelled to Bengal, India, where his older brother lived, before moving to Calcutta where he earned his fortune working as an indigo merchant. This new-found wealth allowed Fergusson to travel extensively throughout India between 1835 and 1842. It was during this period that Fergusson personally carried out a wide and intimate architectural survey of the nation, which would go on to form the basis of his later writings.

 

Fergusson’s first book, The Rock-cut Temples of India, which examined some of the country’s earliest architectural forms, was published in 1845. This was followed, in 1847, by An Essay on the Ancient Topography of Jerusalem which argued that the Mosque of Omar was the true site of the Holy Sepulchre. It wasn’t until the publication of his 1848 survey, Picturesque Illustrations of Ancient Architecture in Hindostan — illustrated with lithographs prepared on the basis of Fergusson’s own in-situ drawings, produced with the aid of a camera lucida — that the impact of the author’s travels across India became apparent. Following his earlier interest in the architecture of mosques, Fergusson then looked westwards towards Egypt and Syria, publishing The Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis Restored, an Essay on Ancient Assyrian and Persian Architecture in 1851.

 

In 1855 and 1862 Fergusson produced two survey texts that sought to establish architecture as a discipline in its own right, distinct from archaeology. The Illustrated Handbook of Architecture was the first comprehensive history of the discipline written in English, followed by History of the Modern Styles of Architecture. After the publication of Fergusson’s The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus Restored in 1862 — which extolled the beauty of Greek sculpture relative to other traditions — the two earlier survey texts were combined into a single volume, under the title History of Architecture in All Countries from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, and published between 1865-1867.

 

Fergusson’s thesis that Indian architecture could function as the most useful source for investigating the nation’s history and culture was most clearly expounded in his 1867 book, On the Study of Indian Architecture. This was followed, in 1868, by Fergusson’s only work on Indian sculpture, Tree and Serpent Worship, which also sought to use the works under investigation to draw inferences about India’s ethnology and culture. Fergusson completed a third installment of the survey compendium that began with the Illustrated Handbook, entitled History of Indian and Eastern Architecture, in 1876.

 

Fergusson always considered the Indian forms he encountered to be inferior to European architecture of the Classical era. The author’s final publication in 1884, Archaeology in India, with Special Reference to the Works of Babu Rajendralal Mitra blatantly exposed this cluster of prejudices. The book centered on an attack on the work of Bengali historian Dr Rajendralal Mitra (1822-1891) who had challenged the Scot’s contention that stone architecture was introduced to India by the Greeks.

 

In spite of Fergusson’s belief in the superiority of European styles, he did not impose these standards on the Indian architecture he encountered. Rather, he relied exclusively on architectural evidence in his detailed examinations. Criticizing much European architecture built after 1500 as overly imitative, Fergusson found a lesson for contemporary British construction in the “living tradition” of Indian architecture.

 

According to Fergusson’s theory, British architects could benefit from attending to a building’s “natural” character — analogous to a plant growing from the soil — which emerged in an ideal alignment of form, function, materials, and common sense. “However blundering, at times insensitive, at times self contradictory, his writing may be, at the back of his mind there is the vision, vague and blurred no doubt, but doggedly persistent, of an architecture proper to an industrial democracy” (Craig).

 


Selected Bibliography

  • The Rock-cut Temples of India. London: Cundall, Downes, 1845;
  • An Essay on the Ancient Topography of Jerusalem. London: J. Weale, 1847;
  • Picturesque Illustrations of Ancient Architecture in Hindostan. London: Hogarth, 1848;
  • The Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis Restored, an Essay on Ancient Assyrian and Persian Architecture. London: John Murray, 1851;
  • The Illustrated Handbook of Architecture, Being a Concise and Popular Account of the Different Styles of Architecture Prevailing in All Ages and Countries. London: John Murray, 1855;
  • History of the Modern Styles of Architecture. London: J. Murray, 1862;
  • The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus Restored. London: J. Murray, 1862;
  • History of Architecture in All Countries from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, 2 vols. London: J. Murray, 1865–7;
  • On the Study of Indian Architecture. London, J. Murray, 1867;
  • Tree and Serpent Worship or Illustrations of Mythology and Art in India in the First and Fourth Centuries after Christ from the Sculptures of the Buddhist Topes at Sanchi and Amaravati. London: n.p., 1868;
  • History of Indian and Eastern Architecture. London, 1876;
  • Archaeology in India, with Special Reference to the Works of Babu Rajendralal Mitra. London, n.p., 1884.

Sources

  • Guha-Thakurta, Tapati. Fergusson, James. Grove Art Online. 2003; Accessed 26 May, 2021;
  • Craig, Morris. “James Fergusson.” In Summerson, John ed., Concerning Architecture- Essays on Architectural Writers and Writing presented to Nikolaus Pevsner. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1968;
  • Pevsner, Nikolaus. Some Architectural Writers of the Nineteenth Century. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972, pp. 238-251;
  • Peter Kohane, “From Scotland to India: the Sources of James Fergusson’s Theory of Architecture’s ‘True Styles’,” ABE Journal, 14-15, 2019. Accessed 03 June, 2021, http://journals.openedition.org/abe/5551
  • Guha-Thakurta, Tapati. Fergusson, James. Oxford Art Online. 2003; Accessed 26 May, 2021. https://www-oxfordartonline-com.proxy.lib.duke.edu/groveart/view/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.001.0001/oao-9781884446054-e-7000027920;
  • Parry, Jonathan. “Layard, Austen Henry.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography;


Contributors: Lee Sorensen and Shane Morrissy


Citation

Lee Sorensen and Shane Morrissy. "Fergusson, James." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/fergussonj/.


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Scottish architectural historian, active in India. Fergusson was born in the town of Ayr, on the west coast of Scotland. James was the second son of Dr. William Fergusson, who served as the Inspector General of Military Hospitals — a role which re

Fergusson, Peter J.

Image Credit: Wicked Local

Full Name: Fergusson, Peter J.

Other Names:

  • Peter Fergusson

Gender: male

Date Born: 1934

Home Country/ies: United States

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


Overview

Wellesley College Feldberg Professor of Art; architectural historian of the Medieval era, particularly Cistercian architecture. Fergusson was the son of Alfred Milnthorpe Fergusson (1894-1970), a British cleric for St. Peter’s Church in St. Albans, Hertfordshire, England, and Ursula Mabel Fergusson. He received his bachelor of arts degree from Michigan State University in 1960. He entered Harvard University for graduate work, achieving his M.A.in 1961. There the lectures of Eduard F. Sekler introduced him to Cistercian architecture which would become a life-long passion. At Harvard he also worked closely James S. Ackerman and John P. Coolidge of the Fogg Museum, who, as he whimsically wrote, “tried to make an architectural historian” out of him (Fergusson, 1984). Nearing the completion of his dissertation on twelfth-century Cistercian architecture, Fergusson was hired as an assistant professor first by McGill University in 1965 and then Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, in 1966. His Ph.D. was granted the following year with a dissertation written under Kenneth John Conant. Fergusson married Lilian Armstrong, also a professor of art at Wellesley. Fergusson published widely thought largely in article form, In 1970 Fergusson was awarded the Reginald Taylor Prize and Medal by the British Archaeological Association for his article on Roche Abbey. He chaired the Boston area Save Venice Foundation between 1980 and 1986. His first book, on Cistercian architecture, for Architecture of Solitude, appeared in 1984 and awarded the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award by the College Art Association of America. He was named Theodora and Stanley Feldberg Professor of Art in 1987. Fergusson was a spring resident at the American Academy in Rome, allowing him to publish is second tome, Rievaulx Abbey, 2001, which received the Alice Davis Hitchcock prize by the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain. For the 125th anniversary of the founding of Wellesley, he co-authored The Landscape and Architecture of Wellesley College, in 2001. As an emeritus professor, Fergusson wrote Canterbury Cathedral Priory in the Age of Becket, which appeared in 2011.


Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] English Twelfth Century Cistercian Church Architecture. Harvard, 1967; Architecture of Solitude: Cistercian Abbeys in Twelfth-Century England. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984; Rievaulx Abbey: Community, Memory, Architecture. New Haven, CT: Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press, 2000; Canterbury Cathedral Priory in the Age of Becket. New Haven, CT: Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press, 2011.


Sources

“Acknowledgements.” Architecture of Solitude: Cistercian Abbeys in Twelfth-Century England. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984, p. xxii-xxiii; “Peter Fergusson.” Perspectives for an Architecture of Solitude : Essays on Cistercians, Art and Architecture in Honour of Peter Fergusson. Turnhout: Brepols, 2004, pp. ix-x; “Peter Fergusson.” Wellesley Public Affairs Profiles, http://www.wellesley.edu/PublicAffairs/Profile/af/pfergusson



Contributors: Lee Sorensen


Citation

Lee Sorensen. "Fergusson, Peter J.." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/fergussonp/.


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Wellesley College Feldberg Professor of Art; architectural historian of the Medieval era, particularly Cistercian architecture. Fergusson was the son of Alfred Milnthorpe Fergusson (1894-1970), a British cleric for St. Peter’s Church in St. Albans

Faison, S. Lane, Jr.

Image Credit: Iberkshires

Full Name: Faison, S. Lane, Jr.

Other Names:

  • S. Lane Faison

Gender: male

Date Born: 1907

Date Died: 2006

Place Born: Washington, DC, USA

Place Died: Williamstown, Berkshire, MA, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): Medieval (European)


Overview

Medievalist; chair of the department of Art, Williams College 1940-1969; Nazi-art-crime investigator during World War II. Faison was the son of Samson Lane Faison, Sr., a brigadier general in the United States Army, and Eleanor Sowers Faison (d. 1957). In 1923, at age 16, he visited Chartres cathedral, an event which he said transformed his life. Faison attended Williams College, Williamstown, MA, studying under Karl E. Weston, the chair of the art history department. After graduation in 1929, he continued for his Master’s Degree at Harvard University in 1930 and an MFA from Princeton in 1932. In 1932 Faison joined Yale as an associate professor of art. He married Virginia Gordon Weed (d. 1997) in 1935, returning to Williams College in 1936. He became head of the department of art in 1940, succeeding Weston. That year he hired William H. Pierson, Jr., to teach studio art and American art history. Faison served in the U. S. Naval Reserve, and after World War II, assisted in the “Art Looting Investigation Unit” (ALIU) of the Office of Strategic Services, with James S. Plaut (investigating the “Einsatzstab Rosenberg,” or art stolen from Jews under the direction of Alfred Rosenberg) and Theodore Rousseau, Jr., between 1945-1946. He worked along side another American colleague, John M. Phillips, who was documenting the Göring looted treasure. Because much of the art was bought through collaborators or outright plundered, Phillips and Faison worked to determine how the art was procured, who the lower-level culprits were, and where the art was hidden. Among his reports was that interviewing Hermann Voss, the director of the Dresden and Führermuseum. Faison wrote the report on the stolen art for Hitler’s Museum and Library in Linz, Austria. Though he argued that the art looters be included in the Nuremburg trials, this was ignored. He returned to Williams College in 1946 as a professor of art. Faison hired another medievalist, Whitney Stoddard and, together with Pierson, set about creating a school of art history at Williams based on direct experience with the object. He assumed directorship of the art museum at Williams in 1948. Faison returned to Germany in 1950 to be the Director of U. S. State Department Central Collecting Point [for art] in Munich, continuing through 1951. He was made a Chevalier of French Legion of Honor in 1952. He received a Guggenheim fellowship for the 1960-1961 year. In 1969 he stepped down as department chair. In 1971 he was awarded a D.Litt. from Williams College. In 1976 he was appointed emeritus professor and retired from the art museum. His papers are housed at the National Gallery of Art Library, Washgington, D. C., and the Archives of American Art. He died at his home in Williamstown at age 98. Faison led the group of three art history professors at Williams which became known coloquially as the “Holy Trinity” and later the “Williams art Mafia.” Because of their efforts, the college became the launching pad in the 1960s and ’70s for the careers of many major art museum directors and curators of the next generation. Ironically, Faison himself was little interested in museum work as a Harvard graduate student and himself avoided the famous museology/connoisseurship classes of Paul J. Sachs. Those who Faison’s teaching directly inspired included Arthur K. Wheelock, a curator at the National Gallery of Art, Washgington, D. C.; Alexander Powell III, a director of the National Gallery; James N. Wood, director of the Art Institute of Chicago; Robert Lane, director of the San Francisco Museum of Art; and Glenn Lowry director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Faison’s success was criticized in later years for inbreeding and sustaining the rarified world of art museumship: teaching a connoisseur-brand of art history to wealthy elite at a private, all-male school. The “Williams Mafia” as they were know, were not all from the school, but Lane, their mentor, had been a Williams graduate as well.


Selected Bibliography

Honoré Daumier: Third Class Railway Carriage in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. London: P. Lund, Humphries, 1946; A Guide to the Art Museums of New England. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1958; “Barna and Bartolo di Fredi.” Art Bulletin 14 no. 4 (1932): 285-315; “A Gothic Processional Cross in the Museo cristiano.” Art Bulletin 17 (1935): 63-183; Manet. New York, H. N. Abrams, 1953; Handbook of the Collection, Williams College Museum of Art. Williamstown, MA: The Williams College Museum of Art, 1979.


Sources

[transcript] Faison, S. Lane. Interviews with Art Historians, 1991-2002. Getty Research Institute, Malibu, CA; Faison, S. Lane, Jr. And Gladly Teach. Williamstown, MA: Williams College Museum of Art, [1989] 1990; [obituary:] Bailey, Michael J. “S. Lane Faison, 98, Art Scholar, Williams College Professor.” Boston Globe November 13, 2006, p. C7.


Archives


Contributors: Emily Crockett and Lee Sorensen


Citation

Emily Crockett and Lee Sorensen. "Faison, S. Lane, Jr.." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/faisons/.


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Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Medievalist; chair of the department of Art, Williams College 1940-1969; Nazi-art-crime investigator during World War II. Faison was the son of Samson Lane Faison, Sr., a brigadier general in the United States Army, and Eleanor Sowers Faison (d. 1

Falke, Jakob, Ritter von

Full Name: Falke, Jakob, Ritter von

Other Names:

  • Ritter Jakob von Falke

Gender: male

Date Born: 21 June 1825

Date Died: 08 June 1897

Place Born: Ratzeburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany

Place Died: Primorje-Gorski Kotar County, Croatia

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): aesthetics

Career(s): curators


Overview

Museum curator; historian of taste and esthetics. Falke studied classical Philology at Erlangen and Göttingen and worked initially as teacher. He joined the Germanisches Nationalmuseum as curator in Nuremberg in 1855. In 1858 he became of Librarian (archivist) and advisor of the art collection of the Princes of Liechtenstein in Vienna. During his time in Vienna, Falke became interested in the contemporary design movement of useful arts, already flourishing in England. Writing articles in newspapers, such as the Wiener Zeitung, from 1860, Westermanns Monatshefte in 1862, and Gewerbehalle, 1863 onward, he framed the issues of art in terms of industrialism, commoditization and the aspiration of the middle class. Like other arts-and-crafts movement theorists, Falke identified good design based upon an object’s function. He saw the excellence of form in simple utensils derived from triumvirate of their purpose, material and technical fabrication. In 1860 he published Das Kunstgewerbe, writings which mirrored the ideas were in vogue in England in the Journal of Design and Manufactures, published by Henry Cole. His friendship with Rudolf Eitelberger von Edelberg led to the two of them founding the Kaiserliches Königliches österreichisches Museum für Kunst und Industrie (now the österreiches Museum für Angewandte Kunst) in Vienna in 1864, with Falke the museum’s first deputy curator. In 1866 Falke published Geschichte des modernen Geschmacks integrated modern esthetics with living. Die Kunst im Haus published in 1871, was the first guide in the German language for interior decoration, written in an analytical and discursive way for a general audience. Although a Renaissance historian, he suggested people avoid the style for the daily living. He was knighted by the Kaiser in 1874. Falke wrote a social history of classical Greece and Rome, Hellas und Rom: eine Culturgeschichte des classischen Alterthums in 1878. Aesthetik des Kunstgewerbes (1883) is his clearest example of his own aesthetic of applied art (Ottlinger). At Eitelberger’s death in 1895, Falke succeeded him as director Museum für Kunst. Falke’s household esthetics fell out of favor with the advent of the highly decorative Jugendstil movement. His older brother, Johann (1823-1876) was an economic historian and Falke’s son, Otto Falke, was also a prominent art historian and museum director in Berlin. Falke’s Imperial Museum for Art and Industry was modeled on the South Kensington Museum (modern Victoria and Albert Museum), the first applied arts museum in Europe. His popular works on taste followed the lead Charles L. Eastlake had launched with his Hints on Household Taste, 1868 and Gottfried Semper in Germany. He died in Lovrana, Italy, which is present day Primorje-Gorski Kotar County, Croatia.


Selected Bibliography

Geschichte des modernen Geschmacks. Leipzig: T. D. Weigel, 1866; Geschichte des fürstlichen Hauses Liechtenstein. 3 vols. Vienna: W. Braumüller, 1868-1882; Die Kunst im Hause: geschichtliche und kritisch-ästhetische Studien über die Decoration und Ausstattung der Wohnung. Vienna: Gerold, 1871, English, Art in the House: Historical, Critical, and Aesthetical Studies on the Decoration and Furnishing of the Dwelling. [authorized American edition, translated from the 3d German edition.] Boston: L. Prang and Company, 1879; Aesthetik des Kunstgewerbes, ein Handbuch für Haus, Schule und Werkstätte. Stuttgart: W. Spemann 1883; Hellas und Rom: eine Culturgeschichte des classischen Alterthums. Stuttgart: W. Spemann, 1878-1880; “Das Kunstgewerbe.” in, Wien, 1848-1888. 2 vols. Vienna: Gemeinderathe der Stadt Wien/C. Konegen, 1888; Geschichte des Geschmacks im Mittelalter und andere Studien auf dem Gebiete von Kunst und Kultur. 1892.


Sources

Falke, Jakob von. Lebenserinnerungen. Leipzig: G.H. Meyer, 1897; Österreichisches biographisches Lexikon 1815-1950 1, p. 284; Ottillinger, Eva B. “Jakob von Falke (1825-1897) und die Theorie des Kunstgewerbes.” Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 42 (1989): 205-23; Ottillinger, Eva B. “Falke, Jakob von.” Dictionary of Art 10: 772; “Falke, Jakob, Ritter von.” österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon 1815-1950 1: 284; Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopädie 3. 2nd ed.(2006): 225; Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. 2nd Stuttgart: Metzler, 2007, pp. 86-87.




Citation

"Falke, Jakob, Ritter von." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/falkej/.


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Museum curator; historian of taste and esthetics. Falke studied classical Philology at Erlangen and Göttingen and worked initially as teacher. He joined the Germanisches Nationalmuseum as curator in Nuremberg in 1855. In 1858 he became of Libraria

Falke, Otto

Full Name: Falke, Otto

Other Names:

  • Otto von Falke

Gender: male

Date Born: 29 April 1862

Date Died: 15 August 1942

Place Born: Vienna, Vienna state, Austria

Place Died: Schwäbisch Hall, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany


Overview

Historian of useful arts; museum director. Falke was the son of the art historian Jakob Falke. He studied art history and archeology at the University of Vienna beginning in 1881. He became a member of the Burschenschaft Libertas Wien (fraternity) and the Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, IÖGF (Austrian Institute for Historical Research). Like his father, he held a lifelong interest in the art of useful objects. After a year study on a stipend in Rome, he joined one of the major museums for the study of that genre, the Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin (Museum of Decorative Arts) in 1886. He married Louise Dreger (1865-1935) around this time. He wrote his dissertation in 1887. Falke was appointed director of the Kunstgewerbemuseum Cologne in 1895 and in 1908 returned to the Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin as director. In 1920 he succeeded the great Berlin Museums director Wilhelm Bode as general director of the museums, which he held for seven years, retiring in 1927. In retirement, von Falke founded and acted as publisher of the journal Pantheon. Though he died at the height of the Second World War, his importance among the art historians of the Allied countries was significant enough to be remarked in the English art press. He is buried at the cemetery at Stahnsdorf. Falke brought the study of the so-called “arts and crafts” (or pejoratively) “minor arts” to scholarly study and profile. His numerous articles and collection catalogs raised the level of the study of artifacts. As a skilled administrator he maintained the standards of the museum Bode had built through the difficult Weimar Republic years of Germany. The journal he founded, Pantheon, had from the first high standards for art publication which it maintains today. He never eclipsed his father’s importance for the history of art history. Falke’s Deutsche Schmelzarbeiten des Mittelalters, 1904, inspired Marcel Laurent to study metal work of the Meuse region.


Selected Bibliography

[bibliography:] Giese, Chalotte. Otto von Falke: Verzeichnis seiner Schriften. Munich: Bruckmann, 1932; and Clemen, Paul, and Swarzenski, Georg. Die Sammlung Dr. Leopold Seligmann. Berlin: H. Ball, 1930.


Sources

Meyer, Erich. “Falke, Otto von.” Neue Deutsche Biographie 5, pp. 8 ff.; Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopädie 3. 2nd ed.(2006): 226; Österreichisches biographisches Lexikon 1815-1950 1, p. 284; [obituaries:] Pantheon 29 (1942): 121; Pantheon 30 (1943): 234.


Archives


Contributors: Emily Crockett and Lee Sorensen


Citation

Emily Crockett and Lee Sorensen. "Falke, Otto." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/falkeo/.


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Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Historian of useful arts; museum director. Falke was the son of the art historian Jakob Falke. He studied art history and archeology at the University of Vienna beginning in 1881. He became a member of the Burschenschaft Libe

Farcy-Raynaud, Marc

Full Name: Farcy-Raynaud, Marc

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 researcher in French art history


Selected Bibliography

Correspondance de M. de Marigny. 2 vols. XIX. Nouvelles Archives de l’art français. 1903-1904.; Correspondance de M. Pierre. Nouvelles Archives de l’art français, 1905-1906.; Inventaires des sculptures commandées au XVIIIe siècle par la Direction générale des Bâtiments du Roi 1720-1790. Paris, 1909.


Sources

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




Citation

"Farcy-Raynaud, Marc." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/farcyraynaudm/.


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Archival researcher in French art history

Faré, Michel

Full Name: Faré, Michel

Other Names:

  • Michel Faré
  • Michel A. Faré
  • M.-A. Faré
  • Michel-Ange Faré

Gender: male

Date Born: 14 November 1913

Date Died: 22 July 1985

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

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

Home Country/ies: France

Subject Area(s): painting (visual works) and still lifes

Career(s): curators

Institution(s): Musée du Louvre


Overview

Chief curator of the Musée des arts décoratifs and the Musée Nissim de Camondo in Paris from 1962-1968; art historian specializing in French still life painting; professor at the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs, and later the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-arts. Faré was born in the 9e arrondissement, Paris, in 1931 to André Faré (1876-1944), an Avocat à la Cour d’appel de Paris, Négociant, (appellate lawyer) and Madeleine Blanche Laurence Mompez (Faré) (1882-1958).  His grandfather, Léonce Faré (1839-1905), founded the Magasins du Louvre (department store).  He obtained his baccalauréat from the lycée Sainte-Croix in Neuilly, and then studied under Henri Focillon at the Sorbonne (Faculté des Lettres de Paris, Institut d’Art et d’Archéologie), and with Robert Rey at the École du Louvre. He fought as a soldier beginning in 1939, participating in the French Campaign of World War II. He completed a thesis at the École in 1942 on French still life painting from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a topic which would remain for him of lifelong interest. The following year, Faré began working with curator René Huyghe at the Musée du Louvre, and at the Musée des arts décoratifs, where he was assistant curator from 1943 and chief curator from 1962 until 1968. He began teaching concurrently in 1946 at the École normale supérieure des arts décoratifs. In 1952, Faré completed a thèse de Lettres on French still life (titled Les origines de la nature morte dans la peinture d’objets du Moyen  ge et de la Renaissance) at the Université de Paris, and published his first book on the same subject ten years later, titled La Nature morte en France: son histoire et son évolution du XVII au XX siècle (1962). In 1970 he took over Hippolyte Taine’s position as the chair of art history at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-arts. In 1975, Faré received the Prix Broquette-Gonin from the Académie des beaux-arts for his book, Le Grand siècle de la nature morte en France: le XVIIe siècle (1974). Faré was elected as a member to the same institution on March 4, 1981. He died in the 15e arrondissement, Paris, in 1985.

As curator of the Musée des arts décoratifs, Faré organized several exhibitions and wrote prefaces for the accompanying catalogs on art of diverse media, such as tapestry and ceramics, testifying to his “admirable eclecticism” as a scholar of early-modern French material culture (Bettencourt).


Selected Bibliography

  • [dissertation:] Les Origines de la nature morte dans la peinture d’objets du Moyen  ge et de la Renaissance. Thèse de Lettres, l’Université de Paris, 1952;
  • La Céramique contemporaine. Paris: Compagnie des arts photomécaniques, 1954;
  • “Attrait de la Nature morte au XVIIe siècle.” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 54 (January 1959): 129-144;
  • “Actualité de la tapisserie.” La Revue Française 107, Supplément “Tapisseries contemporaines” (February 1959);
  • La Nature morte en France: son histoire et son évolution du XVII au XX siècle. 2 vols. Genéve: P. Cailler, 1962;
  • [and Germain Bazin, Marcel Brion, Mathieu Matégot]. Les Tapisseries de Mathieu Matégot. Paris: La Demeure, 1962;
  • Bijoux de Braque réalisés par Heger de Löwenfeld. Paris: Musée des arts décoratifs, 1963;
  • Eugène Claudius-Petit, Georges Combet, Michel Faré, et al., Formes industrielles, 1963;
  • Georges Jouve céramiste. Paris: Art et Industrie (impr. R. Mourral), 1965;
  • Le Grand siècle de la nature morte en France: le XVIIe siècle. Fribourg: Office du livre, Paris: Société française du livre, 1974;
  • [and Fabrice Faré]. La Vie silencieuse en France: la nature morte au XVIIIe siècle. Fribourg: Office du Livre, 1976;

Sources

  • Who’s who in France 1959-1960: Dictionnaire biographique paraissant tous les deux ans (France – Communautés et Français de l’Étranger). Fourth edition. Paris: J. Lafitte, 1959;
  • “Mort du critique d’art Michel Faré.” Le Monde (Paris, France). July 26, 1985;
  • Leygue, Louis. Obsèques de Michel Faré, membre libre, en l’église Notre-Dame de Grâce de Passy. Paris: Institut de France, Académie des beaux-arts, July 26, 1985;
  • Leygue, Louis. Discours prononcés… pour la réception de M. Michel Faré. Institut de France, Académie des Beaux-Arts, December 2, 1981. Paris: Institut de France, 1981;
  • Hours, Magdeleine. Une vie au Louvre. Paris: R. Laffont, 1987, p. 52;
  • “Élection de M. Michel Faré.” Le Monde (Paris, France). March 6, 1981; 
  • Bettencourt, André. Notice sur la vie et les travaux de M. Michel Faré (1913-1985)… Address, Institut de France, Académie des Beaux-Arts, Paris during November 30, 1988 session; Académie française. “Michel FARE.” Accessed July 20, 2020. http://www.academie-francaise.fr/michel-fare;



    • Contributors: Yasemin Altun


    Citation

    Yasemin Altun. "Faré, Michel." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/farem/.


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    Chief curator of the Musée des arts décoratifs and the Musée Nissim de Camondo in Paris from 1962-1968; art historian specializing in French still life painting; professor at the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs, and later the École nat

    Faries, Molly

    Full Name: Faries, Molly

    Other Names:

    • Molly Ann Faries

    Gender: female

    Date Born: 1941

    Home Country/ies: United States

    Subject Area(s): Northern Renaissance


    Overview

    Scholar of Northern Renaissance art, professor and early exponent of reflectography for the study of art. Faries graduated from Wooster College, Wooster, OH, in 1962 with a A. B. and an A. M. from the University of Michigan the following year. She entered Bryn Mawr for graduate work, spending the years 1966-1968 doing field reseach at the Rijksmuseum. Faries worked as an instructor at Swarthmore College between 1969-1971. She studied infrared imaging under J. R. J. van Asperen de Boer. Faries received her Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr in 1972 writing a dissertation on Jan van Scorel under James E. Snyder. Receiving a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, she returned to the Netherlands and Amsterdam in 1973 to study Scorel more. In 1975 she was appointed to the faculty of Indiana University. The same year she again worked with Asperen de Boer at the Centraal Museum in Utrecht using sterescope technology on paint samples. The result of this research was an article for the Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek in 1976 and a 1977 exhibition on Scorel in Utrecht. Promoted to associate professor in 1978, she was appointed a senior fellow at the National Gallery of Art’s Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) for the 1981-1982 year, studying the Netherlandish paintings in the Gallery’s collection using dendrochronology and reflecography. A National Endowment for the Humanities grant allowed Faries, beginning in 1984, to examine paintings throughout the midwest. In 1985 she rose to full professor at Indiana. Faries purchased reflectography equipment through the university, becoming the first scholar in the United States to do so. She was a fellow at the National Humanites Center, NC, for the 1990-1991 year. Beginning in 1990, she used a Samuel H. Kress Foundation grant and funds from her university to establish a doctoral fellowship in reflectography. In 1998 Faries added to her duties as professor of Technical Studies in Art History at Groningen. She retired from both universities in 2005. Her life partner P. Eileen Fry, was an image curator at the Indiana University. Her students included Julien Chapuis. Faries was a leader in infrared reflectography. Her discoveries using this process included confirmation that Hans Memling had been a member of Rogier van der Weyden’s workshop (underdrawing confirmed his hand), and that patrons, such as Jan van Eyck’s Nicolas Rolin, had advised on paintings before they were complete.


    Selected Bibliography

    [bibliography:] “Chronological Bibliography of Molly Faries.” Chapuis, Julien, ed. Invention: Northern Renaissance Studies in Honor of Molly Faries. Turnhout: Brepols, 2008, pp. xiii-; [dissertation:] Jan van Scorel: his Style and its Historical Context. Bryn Mawr College, 1972;


    Sources

    Chapuis, Juline. “Molly Faries: Scholar and Mentor.” and van Aperen de Boer, J. R. J. “Laudatio Molly Faries.” in Chapuis, Julien, ed. Invention: Northern Renaissance Studies in Honor of Molly Faries. Turnhout: Brepols, 2008, pp. vii-ix, xi-xii; Kennedy, Janet. “Molly Faries.” Vice Provost for Faculty and Academic Affairs, Indiana University [website] http://www.indiana.edu/vpfaa/download/bios/2005/MFaries.pdf ; CV http://www.indiana.edu/arthist/faculty/faries.pdf.




    Citation

    "Faries, Molly." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/fariesm/.


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    Scholar of Northern Renaissance art, professor and early exponent of reflectography for the study of art. Faries graduated from Wooster College, Wooster, OH, in 1962 with a A. B. and an A. M. from the University of Michigan the following year. She

    Faure, Élie

    Image Credit: Wikipedia

    Full Name: Faure, Élie

    Other Names:

    • Élie Faure

    Gender: male

    Date Born: 1873

    Date Died: 1937

    Place Born: Sainte-Foy-la-Grande, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, 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 self-taught historian of French and Italian art. Faure was trained as a surgeon and spent his early years as a medical doctor, serving as a medical officer in the First World War. He received his first job in the art world from the writer Émile Zola (1840-1902) who secured Faure’s appointment as editor of L’Aurore, the paper in which Zola published his article “J’Accuse”. Faure’s 1904 pamphlet on Velasquez led him to establish an adult school in 1905, where he delivered a series of lectures entitled L’Histoire de l’art. This series was later compiled into five volumes, published in 1920-1921. He later published monographs on Paul Cézanne (1913), André Derain (1923) Chaim Soutine (1929) as well as a biography of Napoleon (1921). Between 1931-1932 he made a world tour, and when in Mexico stayed with the artist Diego Rivera. Faure’s History of Art, translated by Walter Pach, was one of the first art histories to examine art primarily in relation to civilization, according to the Art Digest of 1937. His highly poetic view of art history was most clearly contained in the final volume of the History of Art, his Spirit of Forms. Here he used what is now the familiar compare/contrast method of art pedagogy, comparing French sculpture with Greek, etc. Like his methological exact opposite, Arnold Hauser, and some others, Faure saw modern painting as dead, contending that film was the true successor of the arts. His History of Art was highly popular both in France and the United States, remaining available in paperback reprints long after the author’s death. The writer/art historian André Malraux popularized many of Faure’s ideas in his own work.


    Selected Bibliography

    œuvres complètes. Paris: J.J. Pauvert,1964; Napoléon. Paris: G. Crès, 1921, English: Napoleon. New York: A. A. Knopf, 1924; Histoire de l’art. Paris: G. Crés and Cie, 1924-28; Velázquez: biographie critique. Paris: H. Laurens, 1903; and Romains, Jules, Vildrac, Charles, and Werth, Léon. Henri-Matisse. Paris: G. Crés & cie, 1923; and Verhaeren, Emile. Sensations. Paris: G. Crès & cie,1928; Fonction du cinéma, de la cinéplastique à son destin social. Geneva: éditions Gontheir, 1964.


    Sources

    Columbia Dictionary of Modern European Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 1947, pp. 257-8; Bazin 180, 359-362; [obituaries:] New York Times, November 1, 1937; Art Digest 12, no 4 (November 15, 1937): 16; [Obituary with medical assessment] Roger, H. La Presse médicale 45: 1790.



    Contributors: LaNitra Michele Walker and Lee Sorensen


    Citation

    LaNitra Michele Walker and Lee Sorensen. "Faure, Élie." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/fauree/.


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    Critic and self-taught historian of French and Italian art. Faure was trained as a surgeon and spent his early years as a medical doctor, serving as a medical officer in the First World War. He received his first job in the art world from the writ

    Fèa, Carlo

    Image Credit: Wikipedia

    Full Name: Fèa, Carlo

    Gender: male

    Date Born: 1753

    Date Died: 1836

    Place Born: Pigna, Imperia, Liguria, Italy

    Place Died: Rome, Lazio, Italy

    Home Country/ies: Italy

    Subject Area(s): archaeology, ceramic ware (visual works), Etruscan (culture or style), Etruscan pottery styles, Italian (culture or style), monuments, pottery (visual works), and vase

    Career(s): conservators (people in conservation)


    Overview

    Italian archaeologist, monuments conservator, and authority on Etruscan vase painting. Fèa received a degree in law from the University of Rome (the Sapienza). He took priestly orders, and after a successful, brief career as a lawyer, he edited an edition of Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Storia della Arti (1783) adding a personal essay “Dissertation on the Ruins of Rome” (Sulle rovine di Roma). He worked as the librarian of the Biblioteca Chigiana. In 1790 he edited the first of two important archival publications, Miscellanea filogica. The following year he began excavating at Ardea, which launched his career as an archaeologist. Napoleon’s conquest of the region forced him into exile and prison. However, his appointment as Commissario delle Antichit à in 1800 by Pope Pius VII outwardly vindicated him of the charges. He remained in this capacity until his death in 1836. In 1801 he was appointed president of the Capitoline Museum. Fèa was responsible for the 1802 antiquities regulations that stimulated new archaeological investigations of major Roman monuments, including the Arch of Constintine, Arch of Septimus Severus and the Flavian ampitheater (Colosseum). He personally worked on the Pantheon in 1804 with the architect and restorer Giuseppe Valadier (1762-1832). In 1809 he concluded his tenure at the Capitoline with the Napoleonic occupation, but continued work with Valadier on the Domus Aurea and the Temple of Vesta. The excavation in 1812 of the arena in the Colosseum set off a major debate with many of his colleagues. After the Napoleonic withdrawal in 1814, Fèa continued his archaeolgical research. He correctly identified the Temple of Castor in 1816 with the Duc de Blacas (Pierre-Louis-Jean-Casimir Duc de Blacas d’Aulps, 1770-1839). The following year he discovered the Clivus Capitolinus and the Temple of Concord with the count of Funchal. His 1819 guide to the antiquities of Rome, Nouva descrizione de’ monumenti antichi, remains an important study of the time. His work on Etruscan vases, Storia dei vasi fittili, appeared in 1832. In 1836 he published the second volume of Miscellanea filogica. Fèa’s success as Commissioner of antiquities (he was the longest incumbent) is measured in the monuments he saved from destruction or abuse. At the founding of the Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica in 1829, he was the only Italian founding member.


    Selected Bibliography

    Storia dei vasi fittili dipinti che da 4 anni si trovano nello stato ecclesiastico in quella parte che e nèll antica Entruria colla relazione della colonia Lidia che li fece per più secoli prima del dominio dei romani. Discorso diretto all’Instituto di corrispondenza archeologica in Roma. Rome: Nella Stamperia delle belle arti, 1832; Progetto di una nuova edizione di Vitruvio: L’integrità del Panteone di Marco Agrippa. Rome: Pagliarini, 1788.


    Sources

    Ridley, R. T. “Fèa, Carlo.” Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, vol. 1, pp. 435-6; Leoncini, Luca. “Fèa, Carlo.” Dictionary of Art.




    Citation

    "Fèa, Carlo." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/feac/.


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    Search for materials by & about this art historian:

    Italian archaeologist, monuments conservator, and authority on Etruscan vase painting. Fèa received a degree in law from the University of Rome (the Sapienza). He took priestly orders, and after a successful, brief career as a lawyer, he edited an