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Grohmann, Will

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Grohmann, Will

Other Names:

Will Grohmann

Gender: male

Date Born: 1887

Date Died: 1968

Place Born: Bautzen, Sachsen, Germany

Place Died: Berlin, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

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

Overview

Modernist art historian of German Expressionism. Grohmann grew up in Dresden where he attended Heilige Kreuz Grammar School. He studied oriental languages and particularly Sanskrit at the Universities in Paris and then Leipzig (1908-13), the latter under Ernst Windisch (1844-1918). He wrote his dissertation in 1914 in the area of Germanic literature, but thereafter devoted his life to art research and publishing. In 1916 he married Gertrud Vieweg. After World War I Grohmann wrote entries for Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker for their Allgemeines Lexikon and contributed articles to the periodical Cicerone. In 1919 he was a member of the artist’s group, “Novembergruppe.” In 1925 he edited a book on the living German Expressionist artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and the following year his own book on the artist. Between 1926-29 he was an Assistant at the Staatlichen Gemäldegalerie, Dresden, where he was involved in teaching. During this time he published monographs for the Parisian Cahiers d’art publishing house under Christian Zervos. In 1933 Grohmann was dismissed by the Nazis because of his positive views of modern art. He continued to publish pieces in newspapers under pseudonyms such as Olaf Rydberg. Grohmann joined the official writers’ organization of the Nazi party, the Reichsschrifttumskammer, in 1936, which allowed him to continue writing. The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1939 offered him a lectureship in modern art history, which he was unable to accept because he lacked a visa. During the war years, by his own admission, he “researched the somewhat safer areas of archaeology and the art of migratory peoples,” in the newspaper Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung and Das Reich, and a book on the art historian Josef Rudolf Thomas Strzygowski, whose racial theories of art the Nazi’s approved. After World War II he settled in the Soviet Zone, declined a position of professor of art history in Leipzig in 1945, accepting instead the position of Professor and Rector at the Hochschule für Werkkunst, Dresden (1947-1948). He also worked in various cultural capacities of the Dresden Magistrate. In collaboration with the artist Hans Grundig (1901-1958), he organized the Erste Allgemeinen Deutschen Kunstausstellung, one of the first significant art exhibitions in post-war Germany. As the friction between East and West Germany mounted, Grohmann moved to West Berlin, becoming Professor at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste (Academy of Arts) in 1948. Grohmann was the focus of a bitter and public dispute with the artist Karl Hofer (1879-1955) over the legitimacy of abstract art. Anti-abstractionists, supported by the East-German/Soviet doctrine, launched at attack on the painters and art historians of the Künstlerbund, though they avoided direct engagement with Hofer. Grohmann continued to champion the abstract artists, including the Zen 49 group, Willi Baumeister, Rupprecht Geiger, Theodor Werner and Fritz Winter. Only Hofer’s death in 1955 closed the debate. Grohmann was made ordinarius professor at the Hochschüle in 1957 and emeritus in 1958. He married his second wife, Annemarie Zilz in 1966. At his death in 1968 his widow donated Grohmann’s archive, including his extensive collection of art by his artist-friends and his personal library to the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (the foundation had been established a year before his death). An Annemarie- and Will Grohmann-Stipend for young German artists was established in their honor. Grohmann was responsible for positively publicizing German art in the post World War II period. After the war, there was much negative sentiment toward aNew York Timeshing Germanic, especially in the United States. The dark subject matter of German Expressionism, even though despised by national socialism, retained the demonic traits that post-war America and Britain still saw in Germanic art. Grohmann, through his contacts with Barr and American publishers, wrote monographs on German and Swiss artists based upon his personal experience, giving them a human persona and describing their fights again Nazism. Grohmann was nearly alone among his post-war German peers in seeking an international reputation toward his artists (Heibel). Many of the artists whom he wrote about produced portraits of him.

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation] Vers oder Prosa im hohen Drama des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts. Liebertwolkwitz: Fr. Zeugner, 1914; “Paul Klee in New York.” Der Cicerone [Leipzig] 22 (1930): 11; Braque. Greenwich, CN: New York Graphic Society, 1962; Carnets intimes de G. Braque. Paris: Verve, 1955. English: The Intimate Sketchbooks of G. Braque. Paris: Verve, A. Zwemmer, 1955; Neue Kunst nach 1945. Cologne: M. Dumont Schauberg, 1958. English: Art Since 1945. New York, Abrams, 1958; E. L. Kirchner. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer 1958; Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1956; Paul Klee. Stuttgart : W. Kohlhammer, 1954. English: Paul Klee. Trans Norbert Gutermann. New York, H.N. Abrams 1967; Wassily Kandinsky: eine Begegnung aus dem Jahre 1924: zum hundertsten Geburtstag am 4. Dezember 1966. Berlin: Friedenauer Presse, 1966; Willi Baumeister: Leben und Werke. Cologne: M. DuMont Schauberg, 1963. English: Willi Baumeister: Life and Work. Trans Robert Allen. New York: H. N. Abrams 1966; Paul Klee: Handzeichnungen. 2 vols. Berlin: Müller & I. Kiepenheuer, 1934; English: The Drawings of Paul Klee. New York: C. Valentin, 1944; Oskar Schlemmer: Zeichnungen und Graphik. Oeuvrekatalog. Stuttgart: Hatje, 1965; Wassily Kandinsky; Leben und Werk. English: Wassily Kandinsky: Life and Work. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1958.

Sources

Swiridoff, Paul. Portraits from German Intellectual Life. Pfullingen: Neske,1966, p.100 [includes photo]; “Der doppelte Will Grohmann: zu seinem 80s Geburtstag.” Kunstwerk-Schriften 21 (December 1967): 41; Obituaries: New York Times May 8, 1968: 47; Das Werk 55 (July 1968): 486; In Memoriam Will Grohmann, 1887-1968: Wegbereiter der Moderne. Stuttgart: Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, 1988 [complete bibliography, pp. 58-64]; Gutbrod, Karl, ed. Lieber Freund; Künstler schreiben an Will Grohmann. Cologne: M. DuMont Schauberg,1968; [methodological evaluation]: Heibel, Yule F. Reconstructing the Subject: Modernist Painting in Western Germany, 1945-1950. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995, pp. 110-115; Stonard, John-Paul, Art and National Reconstruction in Germany 1945-55. Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 2004, p. 256; Feist, Günter., and Gillen, Eckhart, and Vierneisel, Beatrice. Kunstdokumentation SBZ/DDR 1945-1990: Aufsätze, Berichte, Materialien. Cologne: DuMont, 1996, p. 864.

Gronau, Georg

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Gronau, Georg

Other Names:

Georg Gronau

Gender: male

Date Born: 1868

Date Died: 1938

Place Died: Fiesole, Florence, Tuscany, Italy

Home Country/ies: Germany

Overview

Director of the Royal Gallery in Cassel, 1910-1924. Gronau was born to a Jewish family. He studied in Bonn and Berlin, writing his thesis at the latter institution on Urspergensis Burchardus (d. 1230) and the Chronicon in 1890. From the first, his personal research interest was in Venetian art. Gronau purchased an Italian villa in the 1890s, San Domenico, in Fiesole where he lived until 1910. There he published articles beginning in 1894 and issued his book on Titian in 1900. In 1902 he published a book on Raphael, followed by an English book on Leonardo, 1903, a translation of the Titian work in 1904, and a book on Correggio in 1907. His book, Die künstlerfamilie Bellini (1909) became one of the early required texts to be listed in the course catalog for the art history classes of Princeton University in the United States. The following year, 1910, he left Italy to become Director of the Gemäldegalerie in Cassel, Germany. During World War I, one of his sons was killed in combat. He retired from the Gemäldegalerie in 1924 continuing a long association with the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, returning to live at San Domenico in 1929. In 1930, Gronau published his Bellini chronology, a work which met with a great deal of dissent. A gifted archivist-researcher in the German tradition, he spent his final years compiling Documenti artistici Urbinati, published in 1936, an annotated index of the archives of Urbino relating to artists. A book on the documents of Titian was never realized. He died at San Domenico in 1938. His son was the art historian Hans-D. Gronau.

Robert Witt estimated that Gronau was one of the first to understand the importance of Giovanni Bellini and to establish a chronology of that artist’s work, which subsequent scholars used to modify or build upon. Roger Fry reviewing Gronau’s book on Raphael, called Gronau “an unusually gifted and scientific observer.” He collaborated with the Dresden museum director Woldemar von Seidlitz on Leonardo scholarship. He worked with Herbert Cook on establishing the date of Titian’s birth.

Selected Bibliography

[complete bibliography:] Gronau, Hans Dietrich, (bibliography), Fischel, Oskar (text). Georg Gronau, 15. Februar 1868-26. Dezember 1937. Verzeichnis seiner Schriften. sl: sn, 1938, [bibliography also appearing] Rivista d’arte, 1938; [dissertation:] Die Ursperger Chronik und ihr Verfasser [etc.]. Berlin: Seydel, 1890; Documenti artistici urbinati. Florence: G. C. Sansoni,1936; Giovanni Bellini. New York: E. Weyhe, 1930; Spätwerke des Giovanni Bellini. Strassburg: J. H. Ed. Heitz, 1928; Die künsterfamilie Bellini. Bielefeld/Leipzig: Velhagen & Klasing, 1909; Leonardo da Vinci. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1903; Tizian. Berlin: E. Hoffmann & co., 1900, English, Titian. New York: Scribner’s, 1904.

Sources

[information relating to Gronau in his son’s obituary] Pouncey, Philip. “Dr. H. D. Gronau.” Burlington Magazine 93, no. 577 (April 1951): 133-134; [obituaries:] Witt, Robert. “Dr. Georg Gronau Art Historian And Critic Our Florence Correspondent.” The Times (London) December 30, 1937 p. 12; B[orenius], T[ancred]. “Dr. Georg Gronau.” Burlington Magazine 72, no. 419 (February 1938): 93; Pantheon 21 (February 1938): 68.

Gronau, Hans-D.

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Gronau, Hans-D.

Other Names:

Hans-Dietrich Gronau

Gender: male

Date Born: 1904

Date Died: 1951

Place Born: Fiesole, Fierenze, Tuscany, Italy

Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: Germany

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

Overview

Scholar of Trecento Italian art. Gronau was born at his family’s villa, San Domenico, near Fiesole, the son of the future Cassel Gemäldegalerie Director, Georg Gronau. At age six his family left Italy when his father was appointed director of the Gemäldegalerie in Cassel, Germany. His older brother was killed in World War I. He was not initially interested in art scholarship and took a job with an art dealer in Berlin. However, after his return with the family to the villa in 1929, he began reading in the personal library of Bernard Berenson at I Tatti and the Kunsthistorisches Institut where his father was involved in research. He became interested in art scholarship, returning to Germany the same year to study at Göttingen under Wolfgang Stechow, and Wilhelm Pinder in Munich, and then finally under Georg Vitzthum von Eckstädt in Göttingen. He began publishing in English (Burlington Magazine) also in 1929. He received his Ph. D. summa cum laude in 1934, writing his dissertation on Andrea Orcagna and Nardo di Cione. The Cioni would be a life-long interest of his. His intent was, like his father, to direct a museum. However, after his wife, the art historian Carmen von Wogau (1910-1999), whom he married in 1935, witnessed a speech by Hitler, she convince Gronau to move to London, where they had relatives, the same year. He found work as an advisor to an art dealer, publishing a version of this dissertation in Germany in 1937. When England declared war on Germany, Gronau was briefly interned on the Isle of Man, but released. To escape from the Blitz, his family fled to Beckley Manor in Oxfordshire. He pressed to join the British army and was eventually commissioned (after two rejections on medical grounds) to the the Pioneer Corps. After the war, he became a British citizen and joined Sotheby’s in 1945 as an advisor, succeeding Tancred Borenius, who was no longer deemed reliable in attributions. Sotheby’s was still largely known for its book auctions, not painting; the firm was intent to become on a par with Christies. The hiring of Gronau gave the firm a noted art connoisseur and allowed Gronau the chance to devote his energies more to art scholarship, publishing the bulk of his articles during this period of his life. He lectured at the Courtauld Institute on Giotto and the Florentine school. In 1950 he was diagnosed with a congenital heart condition, which precluded him from lifting paintings or climbing stairs. His wife, Carmen, began to assume the duties at Sotheby’s he could not longer perform. He was at work on a catalog of the Italian paintings in the Fitzwilliam Collection when he died at age 46. His two sons also died in the forties of the same ailment. Gronau’s wife assumed his position at Sotheby’s and, with its Chair, Peter Wilson, built the firm into the major art auction firms of the 1970s and 1980s.One of Grounau’s interests was in reconstructions of multi-panel art works. These included a hypothesis of the altar of San Gaggio, Florence, another for Santa Maria degli Angeli, and an early reconstruction of a work by Jacopo Casentino.

Selected Bibliography

[revised dissertation:] Andrea Orcagna und Nardo di Cione: eine stilgeschictliche Untersuchung. Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1937; “Earliest Works of Lorenzo Monaco.” Burlington Magazine 92 (July 1950): 183-188; “Una tavola di scuola pistoiese.” Rivista d’Arte 2 no. 1 (April 1929): 215-19; “Tribute: Vitzthum von Eckstädt.” Burlington Magazine 88 (July 1946): 176ff.

Sources

Wendland, Ulrike. Biographisches Handbuch deutschsprachiger Kunsthistoriker im Exil: Leben und Werk der unter dem Nationalsozialismus verfolgten und vertriebenen Wissenschaftler. Munich: Saur, 1999, vol. 1, pp. 247-248; [obituaries:] Pouncey, Philip. “Dr. H. D. Gronau.” Burlington Magazine 93, no. 577 (April 1951): 133-134; “Dr. H. D. Gronau.” Times (London) January 13, 1951, p. 8; Venturi, Lionello. “In Memoriam Hans-Dietrich Gronau.” Commentari 2 (1951): 72; Pevsner, Nikolaus. “Hans-Dietrich Gronau.” Kunstchronik 4 (1951): 122; [wife’s obituary:] “Carmen Gronau.” Times (London), March 11, 1999.

Gross, Walter Hatto

November 8, 2023April 19, 2024

Full Name: Gross, Walter Hatto

Gender: male

Date Born: 1913

Date Died: 1984

Place Born: Heidelberg, Saxony, Germany

Place Died: Hamburg, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): Ancient Greek (culture or style), Antique, the, and Classical

Overview

Specialist in classical Greek and Roman art, influenced by structuralist school. Ausserplanmäßige Professor at Göttingen University (1952-1964), ordentliche Professor of Archaeology at the University of Giessen (1964-1968) and then Hamburg (1968-1979).

Selected Bibliography

Bildnisse Traians. 1940. (Vol. 2 in the series Das römische Herrscherbild) Iulia Augusta. Untersuchung zur Grundlegung einer Livia-Ikonographie. 1962. Zur Augustusstatu von Prima Porta. 1958.

Sources

Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 315-316.

Grosse, Ernst

November 8, 2023April 19, 2024

Full Name: Grosse, Ernst

Gender: male

Date Born: 1862

Date Died: 1927

Home Country/ies: Germany

Institution(s): Freiburg Municipal Art Collections

Overview

Together with Ernst Diez and Curt Glaser, Grosse established the theoretic foundation for Asian art in the German-speaking world (Metzler).

Selected Bibliography

The Beginnings of Art. New York: D. Appleton, 1928; Kunstwissenschaftliche Studien. Tübingen: Mohr, 1900; Die ostasiatische Tuschmalerei. Berlin: B. Cassirer, 1923.

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

Together with Ernst Diez and Curt Glaser, Grosse established the theoretic foundation for Asian art in the German-speaking world (Metzler).

Grossmann, Fritz

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Grossmann, Fritz

Other Names:

Fritz Grossmann

Gender: male

Date Born: 26 June 1902

Date Died: 16 November 1984

Place Born: Ivano-Frankivsk, vano-Frankivs'ka Oblast', Ukraine

Place Died: Croydon, Greater London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): Dutch (culture or style), Flemish (culture or style), and Northern Renaissance

Career(s): directors (administrators) and gallerists

Overview

Pieter Bruegel the Elder authority; Deputy Director, Manchester City Art Gallery, 1961-1966; Professor of Art History, Washington University, Seattle, 1966-1972. Grossmann was the son of Maximilian Grossmann, a Surgeon-General in the Austro-Hungarian Army. He was born in Stanislaus, Galicia, Austro-Hungarian Empire, which is present-day Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine. He attended the Staatsgymnasium of the third district (III Bezirk) in Vienna. As a student at the Wiener Handelsakademie he met Antoine Seilern who would prove instrumental in his later career. He graduated in 1920, continuing study in art history at the universities in Jura and then Vienna focusing on German philology and art history. There he heard lectures by most of the Vienna-School art historians including Julius Alwin von Schlosser, Hans Tietze, Karl Maria Swoboda and Director of the Gemäldegalerie Grustav Glück. Grossmann graduated in 1927, completing his doctorate in 1932 under Josef Rudolf Thomas Strzygowski with a thesis on the High Altar in the Benedictine “Scottish” Monastery in Vienna. During this time, too, a close friendship with the Vienna-School art historians, particularly Fritz Novotny and Tietze led to his championing of contemporary Viennese artists. Many were part of the Hagenbund or connected to the Zinkenbacher Malerkolonie on the Wolfgangsee, including Georg and Bettina Erhlich, Gerhart Frankl, Georg Merkel, Theodor Fried, Lisel Salzer, Lois Pregartbauer, and Franz von Zulow. Grossmann taught as a lecturer in the Volkhochschule, Vienna, taking part in their Art History (Urania) promotion program as well as delivering regular broadcasts on art history on Radio Vienna. Beginning in 1930 he was the Austrian Editor of the Czech magazine for contemporary art, Forum, and also a contributor to Belvedere and Kirchenkunst. He married Anny Zach in 1932 (d. 1985). He revised Glück’s on Pieter Bruegel the Elder publishing it in English in 1936. In December 1938, as a result of the Anschluss, Grossmann, of Jewish ancestry, was forced to leave Vienna. The Dutch art historian J. G. van Gelder provided him initial safe haven in Holland. Grossmann emigrated to London to work as a researcher for Ludwig Burchard on the Rubens catalogue raisonné (Corpus Rubenianum) Burchard was compiling. There he associated with other emigré art historians who fled Hitler’s Europe centered around the Warburg Institute. These included Johannes Wilde and his wife, Julia Wilde (1895-1970), Kurt Badt, E. H. Gombrich, Fritz Saxl and Otto Kurz. He lectured extensively on art history for the Extra Mural Board of London University. In 1945 he assisted Anthony Blunt in cataloging the German and Netherlandish Paintings in the Royal Collections for the exhibition “The King’s Pictures,” which was held at the Royal Academy in 1946-1947. Grossmann wrote his first article for the Burlington Magazine in 1944. Grossmann reconnected with Count Seilern, also in England, who was building one of the most spectacular art collections in England. Grossmann assisted Seilern in compiling the catalog of his collection. In 1955 Grossmann published his book on Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Bruegel: The Paintings, Complete Edition. The following year he edited a revised translation of the 1916 Von Eyck bis Bruegel by of Max J. Friedländer. In 1960, he moved to the Manchester City Art Gallery where he became Deputy Director. Exhibitions mounted by Grossmann included Wenceslas Hollar (1961) and Mannerist Art (1965) as well as the re-installation of the Assheton-Bennet collections in the Gallery. His retirement in 1967 brought a call as Visiting (and later Emeritus) Professor of Art History from the University of Washington, Seattle. After his retirement from Washington in 1972, he settled in Dulwich, London. In 1978 Count Seiler donated his collection to the Courtauld Gallery and National Gallery as the “Prince’s Gate Collection” because he preferred to remain anonymous. Grossmann’s work on Breughel began with an expansion of Glück’s work on the artist (Moore). Grossmann became a major authority on the artist. He contributed articles to the Burlington Magazine until 1973, writing important articles on Holbein, Bruegel and other Flemish artists as well as de la Tour. Though a scholar of broad knowledge, he published than he might have because of a circumspect and cautious approach to his material (Gombrich). His Bruegel book was so respected that it went through three published revisions (1966 and 1973).

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Die Passions- und Marienlebenfolge im wiener Schottenstift und ihre Stellung in der wiener Malerei der Spätgotik. Vienna, 1930;and Glück, Gustav. The Large Bruegel Book. Vienna: A. Schroll, 1936;”Holbein, Torrigiano and some Portraits of Dean Colet: a Study of Holbein’s Work in Relation to Sculpture.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 13, no. 3-4 (1950):202-236;Bruegel: the Paintings, Complete Edition. London: Phaidon Press, 1955;and Blunt, Anthony. “Some observations on Georges de La Tour and the Netherlandish tradition.” Burlington Magazine (September 1973): 576-583

Sources

Wendland, Ulrike. Biographisches Handbuch deutschsprachiger Kunsthistoriker im Exil: Leben und Werk der unter dem Nationalsozialismus verfolgten und vertriebenen Wissenschaftler. Munich: Saur, 1999, vol. 1, pp. 249-250; personal correspondence, Eva Grossmann Moore, February 2012; [obituaries:] Times (London) December 7th 1984; Gombrich, Ernst. “Fritz Grossmann.” Burlington Magazine 127 (June 1985) ;

Grautoff, Otto

November 8, 2023April 19, 2024

Full Name: Grautoff, Otto

Gender: male

Date Born: 1876

Date Died: 1937

Place Born: Lübeck, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany

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

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): Baroque, French (culture or style), French Renaissance-Baroque styles, and painting (visual works)

Overview

Poussin and French art scholar. In 1907 he published a guide to the art museums of Munich. His Exzentrische Liebes- und Künstlergeschichten, is a fictional account of artists. He published the second volume of Barockmalerei in den romanischen Ländern, which the young art historian Nikolaus Bernard Leon Pevsner as issued the first. His book on Nicolas Poussin, published the same year as one by Walter F. Friedländer, largely overshadowed Friedländer’s in Germany.

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Nicolas Poussins Jugendjahre. Bern, 1914; Die Entwickling der modernen Buchkunst in Deutschland. Leipzig: H. Seemann: 1901; and Waetzoldt, Wilhelm, and Barrès, Maurice, and Bartholomé, Albert. Kunstverwaltung in Frankreich und Deutschland im Urteil . . . sowie nach französischen Kammerberichten und deutschen Dokumenten. Bern: M. Drechsel, 1915; Nicolas Poussin: sein Werk und sein Leben. 2 vols. Munich: Georg Müller, 1914; Auguste Rodin. Leipzig: Velhagen & Klasing, 1908; Exzentrische Liebes- und Künstlergeschichten. Leipzig: L. Staackmann, 1907; Formzertrümmerung und Formaufbau in der bildenden Kunst: ein Versuch zur Deutung der Kunst unserer Zeit. Berlin: E. Wasmuth, 1919; Die Gemäldesammlungen Münchens: ein kunstgeschichtlicher Führer durch die Königliche ältere Pinakothek, das Königliche Maximilianeum, die Sammlung des Freiherrn von Lotzbeck, die Schackgalerie, die Königliche neuere Pinakothek. Leipzig: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1907; Die neue Kunst. Berlin: K. Siegismund, 1921; Die Malerei im Barockzeitalter in Frankreich und Spanien. Volume 2 of Barockmalerei in den romanischen Ländern. Wildpark-Potsdam: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion, 1928.

Sources

Bazin 374; Wendland, Ulrike. Biographisches Handbuch deutschsprachiger Kunsthistoriker im Exil: Leben und Werk der unter dem Nationalsozialismus verfolgten und vertriebenen Wissenschaftler. Munich: Saur, 1999, vol. 1, pp. 239-42.

Poussin and French art scholar. In 1907 he published a guide to the art museums of Munich. His Exzentrische Liebes- und Künstlergeschichten, is a fictional account of artists. He published the second volume of Barockmalerei in den romanis

Graves, Algernon

November 8, 2023April 19, 2024

Full Name: Graves, Algernon

Gender: male

Date Born: 1845

Date Died: 1922

Place Born: Pall Mall, London, England, UK

Place Died: Marylebone, City of Westminster, London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): documentaries (documents), documentary (general concept), and records (documents)

Overview

Art -sales and art-exhibition documenter. Graves was the son of Henry Graves (1806-1892) a publisher of prints, and Mary Squire (d. 1871). He studied German in Bonn, Germany (unsuccessfully, he would say) before joining his father’s company, Henry Graves & Co., which he eventually assumed ownership. In 1850, while confined following an injury, Graves hit upon the idea of an enumerative catalog of art exhibited in London, developed from his personal lists compiled for his other work assignments, and arranged alphabetically by artist. However, this remained an idea while Graves worked researching for catalogs of English painters that Graves & Company published, such as the Works of the Late Sir Edwin Landseer, 1875. By 1884 Graves published the first edition of his idea, A Dictionary of Artists who have Exhibited Works in the Principal London Exhibitions from 1760 to 1880. A second enlarged edition appeared in 1895. Graves married the daughter of a Manchester, England, art dealer, J. C. Grundy. When Grave’s father died in 1892, Graves took over the business. In 1899, Graves and William V. Cronin issued the first volume of their work on Sir Joshua Reynolds, which they sold by subscription. In 1900, a book on Sir Thomas Lawrence by Lord Gower (1845-1916) included a catalog by Graves. A third edition of the Dictionary of Artists was published in 1901. His son, Herbert Seymour Graves (d. 1898), assisted on later editions of the Dictionary of Artists. Graves used his notes, which totaled fifty volumes to create other books documenting individual institutions. Beginning in 1905, he issued the first volume of his Royal Academy of Arts: a Complete Dictionary of Contributors and their Work. A series on the Society of Artists of Great Britain, 1760-1791 [and the] Free Society of Artists, 1761-1783 appeared in 1907. The same year he retired from Graves & Co., and joined Thomas Agnew & Sons as a print authority. His index of the British Institution, 1806-1867 was published in 1908. Graves published a Summary of and Index to Waagen in 1912, an index of the paintings and owners listed in Treasures of Art in Great Britain (1854-7) of Gustav Friedrich Waagen. In 1913, Graves combined these into A Century of Loan Exhibitions, 1813-1912 (four volumes published through 1915). His Art Sales from Early in the Eighteenth Century to Early in the Twentieth Century was published between 1918 and 1921. In 1919, he married a second time to Madeline Lilian Sophia Wakeling Walker (b. 1871/2). He died at his home in Marylebone and is buried at Brompton cemetery, London. Graves created reference sources that began the modern discipline of provenance research. He used his researcher’s instinct to write original dictionaries based upon massive compilations. His sources were wide. In one instance he consulted a set of catalogs annotated by Horace Walpole (1717 – 1797) from the collection of Archibald Philip Primrose, the Earl of Rosebery (1847-1929); in another instance he tracked down the payment ledgers of Joshua Reynolds to Reynold’s descendants. He combed through all of the printed catalogs of Christie’s auction house. Graves’ catalog of Reynolds was highly influential in Graves’ time. Some art historians, such as Ellis K. Waterhouse, found fault with it (though admitting they were “sedulous”), but Graves himself never claimed to be an art historian. His works were widely consulted and owned by art scholars of his time. Imitations, such as George Reford’s Art Sales (1888), paled.

Selected Bibliography

Catalogue of the Works of the Late Sir Edwin Landseer, R. A. London: Messrs. Henry Graves & Co., 1875; A Dictionary of Artists who have Exhibited Works in the Principal London Exhibitions of Oil Paintings from 1760-1880. London: G. Bell, 1884; and Cronin, William Vine. A History of the Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds. 4 vols. London: Henry Graves and Co. 1899-1901; Gower, Ronald Sutherland. Sir Thomas Lawrence, with a Catalogue of the Artist’s Exhibited and Engraved Works. London: Goupil, J. Boussod, Manzi, Joyant, successors, 1900; The Royal Academy of Arts: a Complete Dictionary of Contributors and their Work from its Foundation in 1769 to 1904. 8 vols. London: H. Graves, 1905-06; The Society of Artists of Great Britain, 1760-1791 [and] the Free Society of Artists, 1761-1783: a Complete Dictionary of Contributors and their Work from the Foundation of the Societies to 1791. London: G. Bell and Sons, 1907; Summary of and Index to Waagen. London: A. Graves, 1912; A Century of Loan Exhibitions, 1813-1912. 5 vols. London: A. Graves, 1913-15; Art Sales from Early in the Eighteenth Century to Early in the Twentieth Century (Mostly old Master and Early English Pictures). 3 vols. London: A. Graves, 1918-21.

Sources

Graves, Algernon, and Cronin, William V. “Introduction.” A History of the Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds. 4 vols. 1899-1901; Graves, Algernon. Royal Academy Exhibitors. pp. vii-viii; Avery-Quash, Susanna. “Graves, Algernon.” Dictionary of National Biography; Waterhouse, Ellis K. “A Review of Reynolds.” Burlington Magazine 70, no. 408 (March 1937): 104; [obituary:] “Historian Of English Art: Death of Mr. A. Graves.” Times (London) February 7, 1922, p. 12.

Gray, Basil

November 8, 2023April 19, 2024

Full Name: Gray, Basil

Gender: male

Date Born: 1904

Date Died: 1989

Place Born: South Kensington, Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, UK

Place Died: Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): Ancient Asian, Chinese (culture or style), East Asian, Iranian, Iranian Islamic painting styles after the Mongols, Islam, Islamic (culture or style), miniatures (paintings), painting (visual works), Persian (culture), religious art, sculpture (visual works), South Asian, and West Asian

Overview

Islamicist and head of the Oriental department, British Museum, 1945-1969. Gray was the son of Charles Gray, a surgeon in the (British) Royal Army Medical Corps, and Florence Elworthy Cowell. After attending Bradfield College he entered New College, Oxford University, graduating in 1927. The following year he worked at the British Academy excavations of the great palace of the Byzantine emperors in Constantinople. He attempted study in Vienna under the singular Vienna-school scholar Josef Rudolf Thomas Strzygowski. His departure in three months was long enough for the beginning of a life-long friendship with Strzygowski’s student (and later major Byzantinist) Otto Demus. Gray was now concentrating on middle-eastern art rather than classical era. He return to England and joined the British Museum in the department of printed books. This was the time when the Museum was developing a separate department for its increasing mid-eastern and Asian collections. In 1930 he was placed in charge of oriental prints and drawings, then still a division of the department of prints and drawings under Laurence Binyon. Together with Binyon and James Vere Stewart Wilkinson (1885-1957), the three authored Persian Miniature Painting in 1933–the impetus of the 1931 exhibition at the Royal Academy–which became the standard introductory monograph on the topic. That year, too, he married Binyon’s daughter, the medievalist Nicolete Mary Binyon (1911-1997). Binyon retired and the Department of Oriental Art was founded in 1933. Gray undertook the installation of the South-Asian sculpture. Gray next worked on the famous 1935 Chinese exhibition at the Burlington House with Leigh Ashton. Though Gray was responsible for oriental collections at the British Museum in 1938, it was not until 1940 that he was appointed deputy keeper, because of his age. During World War II, Gray’s duty for the war effort was evacuate and guard the department’s collections. Following the war, he was made keeper of oriental antiquities in 1946. His 1961 Persian Painting became a standard in the field. In 1968 he was appointed principal librarian and the following year as acting director. He retired in 1969. He headed the Islamic art in Cairo in 1969 and another in Beirut in 1974. In England his Arts of Islam exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, London in 1976. In 1979 his The Arts of the Book in Central Asia, 1307-1506 was published. The book asserted the role of princely patronage in Islamic painting. Gray died in the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, in 1989 and is buried in the churchyard at Long Wittenham parish. Gray’s daughter, Camilla Gray (d. 1971), was also an art historian. Gray was one of the leading Islamicists before the area was in vogue in English-speaking world. Like many museum scholars founding a non-west discipline, he read no oriental languages. His area of research focused on the relationship between the arts of China and Persia following the Mongol invasion. Michael Rogers, Nasser D. Khalili Professor of Islamic Art and Archaeology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, wrote that Gray “was indisputably the heir to the great tradition of museology created by Friedrich Sarre, Ernst Kühnel and Kurt Erdmann…his concern for the transmission of oriental scholarship recalls the great tradition of art history fostered by figures like Aby M. Warburg, Fritz Saxl and Julius Alwin von Schlosser.”

Selected Bibliography

(complete bibliography:] Rogers, J. Michael. “Basil Gray.” Iran, xvii (1979):

Sources

Scarisbrick, D. “Basil Gray [interview]” Apollo 129 (1989): 40-44; [obituaries:] Sutton, Denys. “Basil Gray.” Apollo (January 1989): ; Watson, William. “Basil Gray: Scholar of the Orient.” The Guardian (London) June 20, 1989; Rogers, Michael. “Basil Gray.” The Independent (London) June 14 1989, p. 22.

Gray, Christopher

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Gray, Christopher

Gender: male

Date Born: 1915

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): French (culture or style) and Modern (style or period)

Career(s): educators

Overview

Scholar of French modernism and professor of art history at Johns Hopkins University. Gray received his Ph.D. from Harvard University with a dissertation on the theories of Cubism in 1951. He published a version of his dissertation in 1953. In 1963 he completed a catalogue raisonné on the three-dimensional works of Gauguin, Sculpture and Ceramics of Paul Gauguin. His students included Francis V. O’Connor.

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Cubist Aesthetic Theories. Harvard, 1951, pubished, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1953; “Cezanne’s Use of Perspective.” College Art Journal 19, no. 1 (Autumn 1959): 54-64; “The Cubist Conception of Reality The Cubist Conception of Reality.” College Art Journal 13, no. 1 (Autumn 1953): 19-23; Sculpture and Ceramics of Paul Gauguin. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1963.

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