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Newton, Eric

Full Name: Newton, Eric

Other Names:

  • né Eric Oppenheimer

Gender: male

Date Born: 1893

Date Died: 1965

Place Born: Marple Bridge, Manchester, UK

Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Career(s): art critics, authors, and publishers


Overview

Times (London) and Guardian art critic and book author. Newton was the son of L. J. Oppenheimer (d. 1917) and Edith Newton. His father owned an architectural decoration firm in Manchester. As Eric Oppenheimer, he was educated at Manchester University, receiving a B.A. in 1914. After schooling, he joined his family company, L. Oppenheimer Ltd., as a mosaic craftsman, contributing mostly ecclesiastic designs. Newton served in World War I in the British Army, 29th Manchester Regiment, 1914-1918, rising to captain. During that time he married [Isabel] Aileen Vinicombe in 1915. His father, also serving in military, died of gas poisoning. He changed his surname to his mother’s in 1918 to avoid association with Germany. While a member of F. Sladen-Smith’s amateur dramatic group, the Unnamed Society, Manchester, he met the dress designer and later costume historian Stella Mary Pearce (1901-2001) and fell in love. He resigned from the decoration firm in 1922, writing occasional art criticism for the Manchester Guardian. In 1930 he began writing full time criticism for the Guardian. He divorced his wife and married Pearce in 1934. Early in 1935 Newton delivered twelve BBC radio lectures, “The Artist and His Public,” which appeared as his first book the same year. He moved to London in 1936 to be closer to the exhibitions. Newton traveled to North America to lecture between 1936 and 1937 on behalf of the National Gallery of Canada. His broadcast series, “The Artist and his Public,” 1940, and weekly symposium, “The Critics,” both for the BBC, made him a household name. A second book, European Painting and Sculpture, appeared in 1941 by Penguin Press. Following World War II, his publications tended toward theoretical and esthetics. In 1947 he left the Manchester paper to be art critic for the Sunday Times in London. However, after a controversial review of a Royal Academy of Art exhibition in 1950, he was dismissed by the paper, succeeded at the Times by John Russell. Newton returned to Manchester University and completed an M.A. in 1951. His thesis was on Tintoretto. Newton turned this into a book on Tintoretto in 1952, most notable for the appendix where his wife, now a noted costume historian, redated seven Tintoretto paintings by the sitter’s costumes, convincingly altering the chronology of the painter’s style. Newton returned to the Guardian in 1956, holding the Slade Professorship of art at Oxford for the 1959-1960 year. His most popular work, The Romantic Rebellion, was published in 1962, three years before his death. He collapsed at his London office and died at age 71. Newton followed an art-appreciation model of art analysis, akin to that of John Ruskin, who’s writing he valued. His esthetic was that art reached its height when it achieved a balance between realism and non-objective. His books are not generally read today.


Selected Bibliography

[master’s thesis:] Tintoretto’s Paintings in the Church and Scuola of San Rocco, Venice. Manchester University, 1951; An Approach to Art: a Pictorial Guide to Twelve Broadcast Talks and Discussions on The Artist and his Public, Mondays, 7 January – 25 March 1935. London: BBC, 1935; European Painting and Sculpture. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1941; British Painting. London: British Council/Longmans Green, 1945; In My View. London: Longmans, Green, 1950; Tintoretto. London: Longmans, Green, 1952; The Arts of Man: an Anthology and Interpretation of Great Works of Art. Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1960; The Romantic Rebellion. London: Longmans, 1962.


Sources

Current Biography Yearbook 1956: 461-463; Batts, John Stuart, ed. The Diary of English Art Critic Eric Newton: On a North American Lecture Tour in 1937. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1997; Garlake, Margaret. New Art, New World: British Art in Postwar Society. New Haven, CT: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art/Yale University Press, 1998; [obituary:] “Mr. Eric Newton Art Critic And Historian.” Times (London) Mar 11, 1965, p. 14; “Eric Newton, London Art Critic, Newsman, Author, Teacher and Lecturer Is Dead.” New York Times March 11, 1965, p. 33.




Citation

"Newton, Eric." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/newtone/.


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Times (London) and Guardian art critic and book author. Newton was the son of L. J. Oppenheimer (d. 1917) and Edith Newton. His father owned an architectural decoration firm in Manchester. As Eric Oppenheimer, he was educated at

Newton, Douglas

Full Name: Newton, Douglas

Gender: male

Date Born: 1920

Date Died: 2001

Place Born: Malaysia

Place Died: New York, NY, USA

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): African (general, continental cultures), Americas, The, indigenous art, Maori (culture or style), Melanesian, Native American, New Guinean, New Zealand, Oceanic, Pacific (regional reference), and Polynesian

Career(s): curators


Overview

Museum curator and historian of African, Native American, and Oceanic art. Newton was born to English parents on a rubber plantation in Malaysia. Before moving into museum work in the United States in 1956, he worked for the BBC as a journalist and editor. As a curator for the Museum of Primitive Art, Newton designed over sixty-four exhibitions for the museum. His ability to create innovative exhibition designs while remaining sensitive to the problems of displaying non-Western art attracted praise from both art historians and the public. In 1960, Newton was promoted to full curator, and was appointed director in 1974. He designed exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, including “The Art of Oceania, Africa, and the Americas” (1969) and “Te Maori” (1984). His publications focused on the art of the Pacific Islands. In addition to editing more than twenty five books on the subject, Newton published two monographs entitled Crocodile and Cassowary: Religious Art of the Upper Sepik River, New Guinea (1971) and Arts of the South Seas (1999). After being appointed consultative chairman of the department of primitive art at the Metropolitan Museum in 1974, Newton became the overseer of the transfer of the Museum of Primitive Art’s collections and archives to the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing of the Metropolitan Museum, which was completed in 1982. In the same year, he was named Evelyn A.J. Hall and John A.Friede Chairman of the department of primitive art at the museum, and was elected curator emeritus when he retired in 1990. At the end of his career, Newton received several lifetime achievement awards, including Manu Daula Award by the Pacific Arts Association.


Selected Bibliography

and Gathercole, Peter; Kaeppler, Adrienne L. The Art of the Pacific Islands. Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1979; and Sieber, Roy; Coe, Michael D. African, Pacific, and Pre-Columbian Art in the Indiana University Art Museum. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Art Museum, 1986; and Barbier, Jean Paul, eds. Islands and Ancestors: Indigenous Styles of Southeast Asia. Munich: Prestel, 1988; (foreword by André Malraux) Masterpieces of Primitive Art. New York: Knopf, 1978; Art Styles of the Papuan Gulf. New York: Museum of Primitive Art, 1961; Crocodile and Cassowary: Religious Art of the Upper Sepik River, New Guinea. New York: Museum of Primitive Art, 1971; Malu: Openwork Boards of the Tshuosh Tribe. New York: Museum of Primitive Art, 1963; New Guinea Art in the Collection of the Museum of Primitive Art. New York: Museum of Primitive Art, 1967; Oceanic Images. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1978.


Sources

Obituary, New York Times, September 22, 2001; [Paid Notice:] Deaths, New York Times, September 21, 2001.



Contributors: LaNitra Michele Walker


Citation

LaNitra Michele Walker. "Newton, Douglas." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/newtond/.


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Museum curator and historian of African, Native American, and Oceanic art. Newton was born to English parents on a rubber plantation in Malaysia. Before moving into museum work in the United States in 1956, he worked for the BBC as a journalist an

Newton, Charles T., Sir

Full Name: Newton, Charles T., Sir

Other Names:

  • Sir Charles T. Newton

Gender: male

Date Born: 1816

Date Died: 1894

Place Born: Bredwardine, Herefordshire, England, UK

Place Died: Westgate-on-Sea, Thanet, Isle of, Kent, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): ancient, archaeology, ceramic ware (visual works), and pottery (visual works)


Overview

Archaeologist and vase scholar; built major collections for the British Museum as Keeper of Department of Antiquities. Newton was educated at Christ Church, Oxford where he received his B. A. in 1837 and M.A. in 1840. He joined the British Museum that same year. Newton organized the publication of the Greek and Etruscan vases in the Museum beginning in 1851. The following year, his superiors had him appointed as a consular official for Mytilene (and later acting consul at Rhodes), so that Newton could secure classical object for the Museum. He even turned down an appointment as Regius chair of Greek at Oxford University so that he could remain collecting objects. At the excavations in Bodrum, Newton unearthed the Mausoleum at Halikarnassos. His discovery of the large statues of Mausolas and his wife, as well as the frieze of the Mausoleum in 1857 led to their export to the British Museum, aided by a sympathetic Turkish government. His book, History of Discoveries at Halicarnassus, was published in 1862. Newton spent the years 1859-61 as Consul in Rome. In 1862 he returned to the Museum, now appointed keeper of Greek and Roman antiquities. During his tenure, Newton acquired some of the most spectacular pieces of classical art for the Museum. These included the collections of the Farnese, Pourtalès, Blacas and Castellani families. In 1877 Newton traveled with Percy Gardner to evaluate the finds of Heinrich Schliemann‘s Mycenae exavation. In 1880 he was appointed Yates chair of classical archaeology at University College, London, a position he maintained while still keeper of antiquities at the Museum. He was principally responsible for the founding of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies in 1879 as well as the British School at Athens, 1885. His protégées at the British Museum include Jane Ellen Harrison and Eugénie Sellers Strong. Newton used a scientific approach to the study of classical art. He was one of the first to photograph archaeological sites and publish them. He urged the study of classical objects, especially vases and coins, which during the 19th century were largely ignored in favor of textual studies. He is credited with bringing the British Museum’s ancient collections in line with those of the museums of the continental European capitals.


Selected Bibliography

The Collection of Ancient Greek Inscriptions in the British Museum. 4 vols. Oxford: Trustees of the British Museum, 1874- 1916; Essays on Art and Archaeology. London: Macmillan, 1880; Travels & Discoveries in the Levant. 2 vols. London: Day & son, 1865; and Pullan, Richard Popplewell. A History of Discoveries at Halicarnassus, Cnidus & Branchidæ. London: Day & Son, 1862-1863; and Birch, Samuel. A Catalogue of the Greek and Etruscan Vases in the British Museum. London: W. Nicol, 1851 ff; and Smith, Arthur Hamilton. The Later Greek and Graeco-Roman Reliefs, Decorative and Architectural Sculpture, in the British Museum. London: Printed by order of the Trustees, 1904; A Guide to the Blacas Collection of Antiquities. London: Printed by order of the Trustees, 1867.


Sources

Medwid, Linda M. The Makers of Classical Archaeology: A Reference Work. New York: Humanity Books, 2000 pp. 218-221; Ridgway, David. “Newton, Sir Charles Thomas.” Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, vol. 2, pp. 801-3.




Citation

"Newton, Charles T., Sir." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/newtonc/.


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Archaeologist and vase scholar; built major collections for the British Museum as Keeper of Department of Antiquities. Newton was educated at Christ Church, Oxford where he received his B. A. in 1837 and M.A. in 1840. He joined the British Museum

Newhall, Beaumont

Full Name: Newhall, Beaumont

Other Names:

  • Beaumont Newhall

Gender: male

Date Born: 1908

Date Died: 1993

Place Born: Lynn, Essex, MA, USA

Place Died: Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

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

Career(s): curators


Overview

First curator of photography, Museum of Modern Art, New York. Newhall’s father was Herbert William Newhall (1858-1933), a medical doctor, and his mother was Alice Lilia Davis (Newhall) (1865-1940). He graduated cum laude in art history from Harvard University in 1930, proceeding directly for his master’s degree in 1931. In graduate school, he attended the famous museum course by Paul J. Sachs and came into contact with Alfred H. Barr, Jr., then teaching classes at Wellesley. He joined the Philadelphia Museum of Art as a lecturer 1931 moving to the Metropolitan Museum of Art library (where he was dismissed) and then as an assistant in the department of decorative arts under James Rorimer. He returned to graduate study at Harvard to complete his Ph.D., studying also at the Institut d’Art et d’Archeologie, University of Paris, in 1933, and the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, in 1934. Newhall failed his oral examinations, however, and abandoned the doctorate. In 1935 Henry-Russell Hitchcock recommended Newhall to Barr to replace Iris Barry (1895-1969) as the librarian at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Barr was little interested in his bookmanship, rather it wast Newhall’s knowledge of photography he prized, hoping the Museum would mount exhibitions of that medium. Newhall married Nancy Wynne Parker (1908-1974) in 1936, whose writing skills would avail him his whole life. At Barr’s rather informal request, Newhall mounted a survey exhibition of photography for the Museum in 1937, “Photography, 1839- 1937.” The 800-work exhibition toured the country and the catalog for the show became a staple for the history of photography. After it sold out, Newhall reissued it as A Short Critical History of Photography. Newhall mounted two further ground-breaking shows at MoMA immediately thereafter, one on Walker Evans and a third, with the help of Lincoln Kirstein (1907-1996), on Cartier-Bresson. Now the leading figure in the history of photography, Newhall was appointed MoMA’s first curator of photography by Barr in 1940, without reduction of his librarian duties (!). In 1942 he enlisted in the Army Air Forces to fight in World War II; his wife ran the Department in his absence. He was assigned to the European theater rising to the rank of major. After discharge in 1945 he returned to the Museum. Ironically, Newhall’s treatment of photography as high art rankled the museum’s board of trustees, who accepted public criticism that the Museum was turning a popular medium into an avenue of snobbery. He was a lecturer at Black Mountain College, Black Mountain, NC, between 1946 and 1948. When the photographer Edward J. Steichen was hired to head the Department in 1947, Newhall resigned. He secured a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship in 1947 to revise his Critical History book. Newhall joined the George Eastman House, (today, the International Museum of Photography), Rochester, NY, as curator in 1948. His revised photography book appeared in 1949 as The History of Photography, from 1839 to the Present Day. Newhall rose to director of the Eastman House in 1958, becoming a trustee beginning 1962. An ambitious publications schedule proved Newhall as a scholar. He retired as director in 1971. After retirement, Newhall lectured first as a visiting professor and then professor at the University of New Mexico beginning in 1971. He lectured at the Rochester Institute of Technology from 1956 to 1968. After his wife was killed in a rafting accident in 1974 Newhall married Christi Yates Weston in 1975. A second Guggenheim was awarded to him in 1975. Harvard University conferred a D. Art on him in 1978. He delivered the Bromsen lecture for the Boston Public Library in 1980. A third edition of his History appeared in 1982. He retired from New Mexico as professor emeritus in 1984 to be a MacArthur Foundation fellow, 1984-1989.He divorced Weston in 1985. Newhall suffered a stroke in 1993 and died from complications. His papers are kept at the Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA. Newhall was the first photo historian to treat the history of photography from other than a technical-development perspective (Hamber). He codified the history of photography for most Americans. Formalist in his training, he was criticized in later years for not opening his criteria to more modern sensibilities. However, Newhall was among the earliest to incorporate Mathew Brady’s Civil War images as photography of the highest merit. Newhall at MoMA presented photography as an art form. Although MoMA had mounted photography shows before his arrival, Newhall’s “Photography 1839-1937” show seen in the context of the other three seminal exhibitions of the era, Barr’s “Cubism and Abstract Art” (1936), “Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism” (1936) and the Bauhaus retrospective (1938), comprise the four great didactic exhibitions upon which the Museum’s reputation as the pre-eminent interpreter of modern art was built (Phillips). Newhall himself objected to being called “the Father of this History of Photography” (Newhall 1986) though his writing can be considered little less.


Selected Bibliography

Photography, 1839-1937. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1937, reissued as Photography: a Short Critical History. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1938; The Daguerreotype in America. New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1961; Latent Image: the Discovery of Photography. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967; Photography and the Book: Delivered on the Occasion of the Eighth Bromsen Lecture, May 3, 1980. Boston: Trustees of the Public Library of the City of Boston, 1983; In Plain Sight: the Photographs of Beaumont Newhall. Salt Lake City: G. M. Smith, 1983.


Sources

Newhall, Beaumont. “The Challenge of Photography to This Art Historian.” in Perspectives on Photography: Essays in Honor of Beumont Newhall. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986, pp. 1-9; Marquis, Alice Goldfarb. Alfred H. Barr, Jr.: Missionary for the Modern. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1989, pp. 137-138; Phillips, Christopher. “The Judgment Seat of Photography.” The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography. Richard Bolton, ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989, pp. 15-47; Newhall, Beaumont. Focus: Memoirs of a Life in Photography. Boston: Little, Brown, 1993; Hamber, Anthony J. “A Higher Branch of the Art”: Photographing the Fine Arts in England, 1839-1880. Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach, 1996, pp. 19-22; Kantor, Sybil Gordon. Alfred H. Barr, Jr. and the Intellectual Origins of the Museum of Modern Art. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002, p. 223; [obituary:] Hagen, Charles. “Beaumont Newhall, a Historian of Photography, Is Dead at 84.” New York Times February 27, 1993, p. L27.



Contributors: Lee Sorensen


Citation

Lee Sorensen. "Newhall, Beaumont." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/newhallb/.


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First curator of photography, Museum of Modern Art, New York. Newhall’s father was Herbert William Newhall (1858-1933), a medical doctor, and his mother was Alice Lilia Davis (Newhall) (1865-1940). He graduated cum laude in art history fr

Neurdenburg, Elisabeth

Full Name: Neurdenburg, Elisabeth

Gender: female

Date Born: 1882

Date Died: 1957

Place Born: Breda, North Brabant, Netherlands

Home Country/ies: Netherlands

Subject Area(s): Dutch (culture or style) and Netherlandish


Overview

Lector and first woman professor of art history in the Netherlands. In 1902, Neurdenburg began studying Dutch Language and Literature at the University of Utrecht. She also attended courses at the Institute of Art History, given by Johanna de Jongh (1877-1946) and later by Willem Vogelsang. She also did art historical research. In 1910, she obtained a doctorate in Dutch Language and Literature with a dissertation on an incunabulum, a theatre play, entitled Van Nyeuvont, Loosheit ende Practicke; hoe sij vrou Lortse verheffen. In 1912, she became an assistant of Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, working on contributions for his Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts. From that year, until 1918, she also was an assistant of Adriaan Pit (1860-1944), the Director of the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, the Department of Sculpture and Decorative Arts of the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum. She studied the collections, including old pottery, which resulted in a series of publications, the most noted of which being the museum catalogue of old pottery of 1917. Neurdenberg was also engaged in the promotion of art historical education for high school students. In 1916-1917 and 1917-1918, she taught art history at a high school for girls in Amsterdam. In 1917 she became privaatdocent at the University of Amsterdam. Education in art history was the topic of her inaugural lecture. A year later she became Lector of Art History at the University of Groningen. In addition to her teaching responsibilities, she founded the Institute for Art History. Beginning in 1918 (through 1952), she was a member of the editorial board of the Bulletin van de Nederlandse Oudheidkundige Bond, wherein she regularly published her own articles, mainly on pottery, sculpture and architecture. Her research on the Dutch painters Frans and Willem Van Mieris was published in the tenth volume, in 1928. Her book Old Pottery and Tiles appeared in 1923. In 1926, as a member of the International Federation of University Women (IFUW), she wrote on the potential of the field of art history for Dutch female academics. Her particular interest in the sculptor and architect Hendrick de Keyser (1565-1621) resulted in a monograph on this artist in 1930. A second book on old pottery and tiles appeared in 1943. A book on seventeenth-century sculpture in the Netherlands was issued in 1948. That same year she obtained an extraordinarius Professorship of Art History at Groningen, becoming the first female professor of art history in the Netherlands. She was succeeded in 1953 in Groningen by Henk Schulte Nordholt. Her career as a professor however was overshadowed by illness and as a result the impact she had on students and followers remained restricted.


Selected Bibliography

Van Nyeuvont, Loosheit ende Practike; hoe sy vrou Lortse verheffen. Utrecht: A. Oosthoek, 1910; Mus. Cat. Amsterdam, Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, Catalogus van de Meubelen in het Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst te Amsterdam. Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum, Second edition, 1913; Mus. Cat. Amsterdam, Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedemis en Kunst, Oud Aardewerk. Toegelicht aan de verzamelingen in het Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst te Amsterdam. Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum, 1917; Onderwijs in de kunstgeschiedenis een eisch voor algemeene ontwikkeling. Openbare les, gehouden bij den aanvang harer lessen als privaat docente in de kunstgeschiedenis aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam op maandag 29 januari 1917. Amsterdam: P.N. Van Kampen & Zoon, 1917: 19; Nog eenige opmerkingen over het onderwijs in de kunstgeschiedenis. Openbare les, gehouden bij den aanvang harer lessen als lector in de moderne kunstgeschiedenis aan de Rijks Universiteit te Groningen op zaterdag 19 october 1918. Groningen/The Hague: J.B. Wolters, 1918; “De gestudeerde vrouw en de kunstgeschiedenis” Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, 13 juni 1920; Twee Rotterdamsche tegeltableaux. Rotterdam, 1922; Old Dutch Pottery and Tiles. London: Benn Brothers Limited, 1923; De muurschilderingen in het koor van de Martinikerk te Groningen. Utrecht, 1924; “History of Art” in What Dutch University Women do in Holland and the Colonies. Pamphlet no. 3. November 1926. London: Langley and Sons, Limited: 25-27; “Judith Leyster” Oud Holland 46 (1929): 27-30; Hendrick de Keyser. Beeldhouwer en bouwmeester van Amsterdam. Amsterdam: Scheltema & Holkema [1930]; “Een teekening voor een der gevelsteenen van het voormalig N.Z. Huiszittenhuis te Amsterdam” Oud Holland 50 (1933): 225-230; De historische schoonheid van Groningen (Heemschut-serie 16) Amsterdam: Allert de Lange, 1942; Oude Nederlandsche Majolica en Tegels, Delftsch Aardewerk (Heemschut-serie 35) Amsterdam: Allert de Lange, 1943. Reprint Schiedam: Interbook International, 1978; De zeventiende-eeuwsche Beeldhouwkunst in de Noordelijke Nederlanden. Hendrick de Keyser, Artus Quellinus, Rombout Verhulst en tijdgenooten. Amsterdam: J.M. Meulenhoff, 1948.


Sources

“In memoriam” Jaarboek van de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (1957); Marcus-de Groot, Yvette “Elisabeth Neurdenburg. De eerste hooggeleerde vrouwe in de kunstgeschiedenis” Kunstlicht 14, 1 (1993): 4-9.



Contributors: Monique Daniels


Citation

Monique Daniels. "Neurdenburg, Elisabeth." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/neurdenburge/.


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Lector and first woman professor of art history in the Netherlands. In 1902, Neurdenburg began studying Dutch Language and Literature at the University of Utrecht. She also attended courses at the Institute of Art History, given by Johanna de Jong

Neumeyer, Alfred

Full Name: Neumeyer, Alfred

Gender: male

Date Born: 07 January 1901

Date Died: 24 January 1973

Place Born: Munich, Bavaria, Germany

Place Died: Oakland, Alameda, CA, USA

Home Country/ies: Germany and United States

Institution(s): Freie Universität Berlin, Mills College, and Universität Berlin


Overview

University professor at Mills College, Director of Mills College Art Gallery, and expert in German and English Romanticism. Alfred Neumeyer was born in 1901 to Dr. Karl Neumeyer (1869-1941), a university lecturer of public law and international private law, and Anna Hirschhorn (Neumeyer) (1879-1941). In 1919, Neumeyer received his notabitur, which is an emergency abitur for German students drafted during wartime, from Wilhelms-Gymnasium in Munich. Immediately upon receiving his degree, he became a member of the Freikorps Epp to fight against the Munich Soviet Republic in 1919 and the Ruhr Uprising, which was a workers’ revolt in 1920. From 1920-1925, he studied art history, archaeology, and philosophy in Munich and Berlin under Heinrich Wölfflin and Adolph Goldschmidt. He received his doctorate in 1925, completing his dissertation, Die Erweckung der Gotik in der deutschen Kunst des späten 18. Jahrhunderts, on the revival of Gothic styles in late 18th century German art. From 1925-1926, Neumeyer was a fellow at the Deutschen Kunsthistorischen Institut (German Institute of Art History) in Florence, one of the most notable Italian research institutions for art history. He was an unpaid research assistant at the Hamburger Kunsthalle (Kunsthalle Art Museum) and at the Staatlichen Museen Berlin (Berlin State Museums) from 1926-1927. In 1928 and 1929, he was a research assistant at the Bibliotheca Hertziana (Max Planck Institute for Art History) in Rome. Upon his return to Berlin, he was hired by the Staatlichen Museen Berlin (Berlin State Museums) as the press spokesperson, a highly sought after office in the German arts community. He completed his habilitation under Adolph Goldschmidt; it was entitled Johann Anton Ramboux after the late 18th century German painter and lithographer. From 1931-1935, he served as a private lecturer at Universität Berlin. He was a prolific writer of essays and novellas, mostly for Neuen Rundschau but also for other journals. In April 1933, his contract was not renewed at the Staatlichen Museen Berlin (Berlin State Museums) and he was dismissed as a private lecturer. This was due to the implementation of the “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” and his Jewish descent. Because of his service in the Freikorps Epp, he was reinstated in his position at Universität Berlin. His reinstatement proved to be ephemeral, as he was dismissed indefinitely in 1935. Thereafter, he was invited as a lecturer to Mills College in Oakland, California, and because of the imminent Nazi threat, he decided to accept the offer. He started as a lecturer there, but he ultimately became a professor and then Director of the Mills College Art Gallery. Since he served in this role from 1937-1961, he accumulated a copious collection of modern graphic art. While at Mills College, he contributed to the German exile newspapers Mass und Wert based in Zürich and Deutschen Blätter based in Santiago de Chile. His professorial accolades were several. He was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of California, Los Angeles, Harvard University, Stanford University, Universität Heidelberg in 1958 after the war. He was also an honorary professor at Freie Universität Berlin from 1952-1953. In 1966, seven years before his death, he became a professor emeritus at Mills College.

Alfred Neumeyer was known as a brilliant writer, and his witty novellas are some of the best of his generation in Germany. His lectures and writings made him one of the most well-known and accomplished art historians on the West Coast at the time of his tenure at Mills College (Heise). His defining contribution to the field of art history was Der Blick aus dem Bilde. Neumeyer had a profound sense of fear over the future of German art museums, universities, and artist associations at the outset of World War II but was grateful to continue his work in the United States (Braunfels).


Selected Bibliography

  • [dissertation:] Die Erweckung der Gotik in der deutschen Kunst des späten 18. Jahrhunderts 1925;
  • Albrecht Dürer Paris 1929;
  • Johann Anton Ramboux Berlin 1931;
  • Die Herde sucht [Drama] Berlin 1932;
  • Nourraine, der Geschichtenerzähler [Novelle] Frankfurt 1933,1934;
  • Josef Schart 1945;
  • “Nausikaa. Versuch einer Mythendeutung” Neue Rundschau (1947): 331-340;
  • “Heinrich Wölfflin. Gedanken zur Kunstgeschichte” Art (1947): 62-63;
  • Treue und andere Erzählungen Heidelberg 1948;
  • Drawings from Bologna 1520-1800 Oakland 1957;
  • Grecos “Begräbnis des Grafen Orgaz” Stuttgart 1957;
  • Cézanne drawings New York 1958;
  • Cézanne’s “Die Badenden” Stuttgart 1959;
  • Glanz des Schönen. Gespräche mit Bildern Heidelberg 1959;
  • Filippo Lippi “Anbetung des Kindes” Stuttgart 1964;
  • Der Blick aus dem Bilde Berlin 1964;
  • Geschichte der amerikanischen Malerei. Von der kolonialen Frühzeit bis zur naiven Malerei im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert Munich 1974;
  • Gesammelte Schriften Munich, 1977.

Sources

  • [obituaries:] Heise, Carl Georg.  “Alfred Neumeyer.” Kunstchronik 26 (1973): 155-156;
  • Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, p. 46;
  • Braunfels, Wolfgang.  Alfred Neumeyer zum Gedenken.  Ansprache bei er Totengedenkfeier am 17. Mai 1973Munich, 1973;
  • Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 282-5;
  • Wendland, Ulrike. Biographisches Handbuch deutschsprachiger Kunsthistoriker im Exil: Leben und Werk der unter dem Nationalsozialismus verfolgten und vertriebenen Wissenschaftler. Munich: Saur, 1999, vol. 2, pp. 459-463


Contributors: Lee Sorensen and Paul Kamer


Citation

Lee Sorensen and Paul Kamer. "Neumeyer, Alfred." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/neumeyera/.


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University professor at Mills College, Director of Mills College Art Gallery, and expert in German and English Romanticism. Alfred Neumeyer was born in 1901 to Dr. Karl Neumeyer (1869-1941), a university lecturer of public law and international pr

Neumann, Erich

Full Name: Neumann, Erich

Gender: male

Date Born: 23 January 1905

Date Died: 5 November 1960

Place Born: Berlin, Germany

Place Died: Tel Aviv-Jaffa,Tel Aviv, Israel

Home Country/ies: Germany

Institution(s): Universität Berlin


Overview

“analytic psychologist and Jungian art critic” (KRG)


Selected Bibliography

The Archetypal World of Henry Moore. Translated by R. F. C. Hull. New York: Pantheon Books, 1959.Kunst und schöfperisches Unbewusstes. Zürich: Rascher Verlag, 1954. Art and the Creative Unconscious: Four Essays. Translated by Ralph Manheim. New York: Harper & Row, 1959.The Great Mother: An Analysis of teh Archetype. Translated by Ralph Manheim. Bollingen Series, 47. New York: Pantheon Books, 1955.


Sources

KRG, 103



Contributors: Lee Sorensen


Citation

Lee Sorensen. "Neumann, Erich." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/neumanne/.


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“analytic psychologist and Jungian art critic” (KRG)

Neumann, Carl

Full Name: Neumann, Carl

Other Names:

  • Carl Neumann

Gender: male

Date Born: 1 July 1860

Date Died: 9 October 1934

Place Born: Mannheim, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

Place Died: Heidelberg, Saxony, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

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

Career(s): educators


Overview

University of Heidelberg professor of art; wrote first full monograph on Rembrandt (1902). Neumann was the son of a wealthy Jewish mercantile family. In 1878 he entered the university in Heidelberg to study history. By 1880 he had switched to Berlin, attending the lectures of Nitsch and the historian Heinrich von Treitschke (1834-1896). He returned to Heidelberg in 1882 to receive his Ph.D. with a dissertation topic on Bernhard von Clairvaux and the beginnings of the second crusade. Neumann went to Basel to hear the lectures Jacob Burckhardt, which turned his interest to art history. At the end of the 1880 Neuman began displaying signs of mental illness, depression and long hospital stays. He spent 1882 studying classical art at the Glyptothek in Munich. It was around this time that Neumann also became devoted to modern art. His book Der Kampf um die neue Kunst (The Struggle for New Art) was published in 1892. Neumann’s preference, however, was for the classicizing tendencies of artists such as Anselm Feuerbach. Between 1884 and1887 Neumann made several journeys to Italy. He converted to Protestant Christianity in 1887. In 1894 he completed his Habilitationsschrift on the art of “Byzantium before the Crusades.” In 1894 he went to Heidelberg lecturing on historical topics from antiquity to the culture of the Middle Ages. Neuman also wove in contemporary art into his lectures. He described a turning point in his life at the Bildergalerie (Picture Gallery) in Cassel when he saw Rembrandt’s Jacob’s Struggle with the Angel. It was not the technical virtuosity of Rembrandt that impressed him as much as painter’s psychology. This aesthetic experience changed Neumann’s interest from Renaissance art to the art 17th century. In 1902 he published the first monographic biography on Rembrandt. During the academic year 1903-1904 Neumann taught with the Renaissance scholar/theorist Robert Vischer at Göttingen university. But Vischer and Neumann had strong methodological differences and Neumann had to move on. In 1904 he transferred to Kiel under professor Adelbert Matthaei (1859-1924), as the chair for art history at the new technical university at Danzig, and faculty at Kiel. Matthaei had founded in 1893 the Kunsthistorisches Institut at Kiel. Neumann became a full professor at Kiel, teaching a range of courses, including French 18th and 19th century art and culture, Italian renaissance and a Rembrandt course. His lectures attracted huge followings. In 1907 Neumann was first president of the Schleswig-Holstein art association, arranging numerous exhibitions in the art museum. In February 1908 Neumann established an “Arts Center” for the University. Neumann succeeded Henry Thode in Heidelberg in 1911, though Thode protested. Arthur Haseloff replaced Neumann at Kiel. Neumann remained at Heidelberg until his retirement in 1929. In 1934 he moved to Frankfurt, where he died the same year. The students he influenced included Wilhelm Rheinhold Otto Valentiner, Wilhelm Fraenger and Eberhard Freiherr von Bodenhausen. Neumann’s methodology was strongly biographical and nationalistic. His early monograph on Rembrandt (1902) was opposed by art historians who saw the Renaissance as the defining era of art history and by Wilhelm Bode, who had written his own Rembrandt book starting in 1897. Writing in the wake of the wildly successful (and wildly twisted) Rembrandt als Erzieher by Julius Langbehn, Neumann, too, focused on the irrational element in Rembrandt, eluding to the systematic philosopher Georg Simmel (1858-1918) in his book of 1916. Like many writing at the cusp of the twentieth century, Neumann assumed national characteristics determine the various styles of art. In Germany this national characteristic in art was frequently characterized as “medieval values.” Neumann saw Rembrandt as part of the nordic Kunstwollen(art impulse), which Neumann characterized as antithetic to Renaissance culture, and concomitantly the classicism, which it had drawn from. Neumann believed that individualism in culture resulted in barbarism, though he strongly defended artists’ rights to make art of their own time and not to rely on traditional models. Neumann was a proponent of modern art, what he called “the rights of the times,” in his Kampf um die Modern Kunst.


Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] De primariis optandi, jubendi, vetandi enuntiatis apud Homerum comparato usu Hesiedeo[sic]. Varel a.d.J.[?], 1883; Der Kampf um die neue Kunst. Berlin: H. Walther, 1896; Rembrandt. Berlin: Spemann, 1902; edited, and Burckhardt, Jacob. Briefwechsel mit Heinrich von Geymüller. Munich: G. Müller und E. Rentsch, 1914; Drei merkwürdige künstlerische Anregungen bei Runge, Manet, Goya. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1916; Aus der Werkstatt Rembrandts. Heiderlberg: C. Winter, 1918; Aus der Werkstatt Rembrandts. Heiderlberg: C. Winter, 1918; Rembrandt Handzeichnungen. Munich: R. Piper, 1918; Vom Glauben an eine kommende nationale Kunst. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1919; and Kruse, John. Die Zeichnungen Rembrandts und seiner Schule im National-Museum zu Stockholm. The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1920; Jacob Burckhardt. Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1927; Rembrandt van Rijn: das radierte Werk des Meisters in originalgetreuen Handkupferdrucken. 4 vols. Berlin: Amsler, 1928ff.; Der Maler Anselm Feürbach: Gedächtnisrede bei der Jahrhundertfeier für Feürbach an der Universität Heidelberg. Heidelberg: C. Winters, 1929.


Sources

Jahn, Johannes, ed. Die Kunstwissenschaft der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen. 2 vols. Leipzig: F. Meiner, 1924, pp. 33-76 (“1-44”), includes portrait, signature example, autobiography and bibliography; [Bodenhausen/Valentiner connection:] Barnes, James B. “Chronology.” Masterpieces of Art: In Memory of W. R. Valentiner, 1880-1958. Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1959, p. 1; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art: de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, p. 150; Kultermann, Udo. The History of Art History. New York: Abaris, 1993, p. 132; Fink-Madera, Andrea. Carl Neumann, 1860-1934. Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 1993. Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 280-282.




Citation

"Neumann, Carl." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/neumannc/.


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University of Heidelberg professor of art; wrote first full monograph on Rembrandt (1902). Neumann was the son of a wealthy Jewish mercantile family. In 1878 he entered the university in Heidelberg to study history. By 1880 he had switched to Berl

Nagler, G. K.

Full Name: Nagler, G. K.

Other Names:

  • Georg Kaspar Nagler

Gender: male

Date Born: 1801

Date Died: 1866

Place Born: Oberdiessbach, Oberbayern, Germany

Place Died: Munich, Bavaria, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

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

Career(s): book dealers and merchants


Overview

Book dealer and architectural historian. Nagler earned his doctorate from the Universität Erlangen in 1829. Through his research at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich, he completed his first major scholarly reference publication, Neues allgemeines Künstler-Lexicon (1835-52). It took Nagler seventeen years, scrupulously delivering a manuscript every month to his printer, E.A. Fleischmann, in Munich. Comprehensive art dictionaries and encyclopedias were only then being written. Scholars had mixed feelings about such works. The art historian Hans Wolfgang Singer wrote of the work that “value of the encyclopaedia as a reference work is not…quite as great as the amount of work that has gone into it.” Outside of his book dealing business, Nagler wrote articles about art for the Bayerische Nationalzeitung. Between 1857 and 1878, he wrote his second art historical reference work, Die Monogrammisten und diejengien bekannten und unbekannten Künstler aller Schulen. Nagler intended this dictionary as a complement to this dictionary of artists. Die Monogrammisten became one of the first efforts to approach art historical research in a systematic and scientific way. In 1836, Nagler began lecturing on architectural history at the Königliche Baugewerbschule in Munich. Nagler considered a second edition of Künstler-Lexicon, but died before it could be begun. In 1867, Wilhelm Engelmann (publishers) bought the rights to the Künstler-Lexicon from Tendler/J. Grosser publishers. Julius Meyer was entrusted with a new edition, but it took a reorganization under Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker to bring the modern Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler for fruition.


Selected Bibliography

Neues allgemeines künstler-lexikon; oder, Nachrichten von dem leben und den werken der maler, bilhauer, baumeister, kupferstecher, lithographen, formschneider, zeichner, medailleure, elfenbeinarbeiter, etc. Linz: E. Mareis, 1904-14; Die Monogrammisten. 6 vols. Munich, G. Franz, 1879.


Sources

The Dictionary of Art (incorrectly cites as “Gustav” Kaspar); “From Thieme-Becker to the Artists’ Database.” K. G. Saur homepage. http://www.saur.de/akl/english/projekt.htm



Contributors: LaNitra Michele Walker and Lee Sorensen


Citation

LaNitra Michele Walker and Lee Sorensen. "Nagler, G. K.." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/naglerg/.


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Book dealer and architectural historian. Nagler earned his doctorate from the Universität Erlangen in 1829. Through his research at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich, he completed his first major scholarly reference publication, Neues

Neugebauer, Karl Anton

Full Name: Neugebauer, Karl Anton

Gender: male

Date Born: 04 November 1886

Date Died: 27 June 1945

Place Born: Berlin, Germany

Place Died: Berlin, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): Ancient Greek (culture or style), Antique, the, bronze (metal), bronzes (visual works), Classical, metalwork (visual works), sculpture (visual works), and statues


Overview

Specialist in ancient Greek and Roman art, particularly bronze statuary. Curator at the Antiquarium in Berlin, 1920-1945. Career suffered setbacks after 1933 because of the Jewish heritage of his wife. Died on June 27, 1945, following an operation.


Selected Bibliography

Antike Bronzestatuetten, 1921. Asklepios. Ein Beitrag zur Kritik römischer Statuenkopien, BWPr (1921) Die minoischen und archaischen griechischen Bronzen, 1931. Der Apllone vom Belvedere und sein Meister, AA 1946/47, 1–36. Die griechischen Bronzen der klassischen Zeit und des Hellenismus, ed. C. Blümel, 1951.


Sources

Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 2




Citation

"Neugebauer, Karl Anton." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/neugebauerk/.


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Specialist in ancient Greek and Roman art, particularly bronze statuary. Curator at the Antiquarium in Berlin, 1920-1945. Career suffered setbacks after 1933 because of the Jewish heritage of his wife. Died on June 27, 1945, following an operation