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Wyatt, Matthew Digby

Full Name: Wyatt, Matthew Digby

Other Names:

  • M. Digby Wyatt

Gender: male

Date Born: 1820

Date Died: 1877

Place Born: Rowde, Wiltshire, England, UK

Place Died: Cowbridge, Vale of Glamorgan, Wales, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): Medieval (European)

Institution(s): Cambridge University


Overview

First Slade Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge University (1869). Wyatt was born to Matthew Wyatt, a barrister in Ireland and London police magistrate. He was born in owde, Wiltshire, England, UK, near Devizes. He studied at the architectural firm of his brother, Thomas Henry Wyatt (1807-1880), beginning in 1836. That year he won a medal from the Institute of British Architects for an essay. He made a continental tour in 1844-46, collecting material for his book, published in 1848, Specimens of Geometrical Mosaics of the Middle Ages. Wyatt’s skill at art reporting was first manifest when he was assigned to write on the 1849 French salon by the Society of Arts. Wyatt was accompanied by the writer and promoter Henry Cole (1808-1882) who was intent on launching an industrial art exhibition for England. Wyatt reviewed the Seven Lamps of Architecture by John Ruskin the same year. Although he applauded Ruskin’s disgust at “shams” of architecture, the differences between Wyatt and Ruskin were already clear. As an architect, Wyatt was not averse to mixing styles, something common during the Victorian era, and Ruskin despised it. Cole was successful in masterminding the 1851 Great London Exhibition, of which Wyatt was made secretary by the executive committee. Wyatt exhibited both architectural drawings and reported on the Fair, for which he won medals and a special award from Prince Albert. In 1852 together with a number of other art-historical writers, including Anna Jameson he published The History of the Painters of All Nations. He and the architect Owen Jones (1809-1874) designed the fine arts decorations for the Crystal Palace’s second erection, representing the various nationalities, at Sydenham in 1854. He married Mary Nicholl in 1853. In 1855 he was elected surveyor for the East India Company, later receiving a knighthood for this work. That same year he was made honorary secretary for the Royal Institute of British Architects (held until 1859). In 1869, Cambridge University established the Slade professorship of fine arts at roughly the same time Oxford had appointed Ruskin first Slade professor of fine arts. Wyatt was selected to be its first recipient of the Cambridge chair and was awarded an honorary M. A. His inaugural lecture, titled “Fine Art: Its History, Theory and Practice,” was published in 1871. He died in 1877 at his castle, Dimlands, South Wales where he had gone to recuperate from the stress of his practice. He is buried at Usk, Monmouthshire.

Wyatt’s career was primarily that of an architect. He was responsible for restorations of buildings and memorial monuments and royal and government commissions with his brother, Thomas Henry Wyatt. As an architectural historian, he differed from Ruskin in that he supported the revival architectural work of Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, for whom he took Ruskin to task for criticizing. He also disagreed with Ruskin in the value of the iron-and-glass Crystal Palace, correctly seeing it as the bellwether to modern architecture. But his writing style and theory were generally pedestrian compared to Ruskin.


Selected Bibliography

and Tymms, William R. The Art of Illuminating as Practised in Europe from the Earliest Times: illustrated by Borders, Initial Letters, and Alphabets. London: Day and Son, 1860; and Waring, J. B., and Jones, Owen. Examples of Weaving and Embroidery: Selected from the Royal and Other Collections. London: Day & Son, 1870s; The Fine Arts’ Courts in the Crystal Palace: Second Series, North-east Side. London: Crystal Palace Library, 1854; and Waring, John Burley, and Jameson, Anna, and Blanc, Charles. The History of the Painters of All Nations. London: John Cassell, 1852; and Jones, Owen, and Waring, John B., and Westwood, John Obadiah. The Grammar of Ornament. London: Day and Son, 1856; Specimens of the Geometrical Mosaic of the Middle Ages: with a Brief Historical Notice of the Art Founded on Papers Read before the Royal Institute of British Architects. London: Proprietor [of the Institute], 1848; An Address Delivered in the Crystal Palace on November 3, 1855 by M. Digby Wyatt, at the Opening of an Exhibition of Works of Art Belonging to the Arundel Society, and Consisting of Tracings and Drawings from Paintings by Giotto and other Early Italian Artists with some Illustrations of Greek Sculpture and of Ancient Ivory-Carving. London: Bell and Daldy, 1855; and Waring, John Burley. The Byzantine and Romanesque Court in the Crystal Palace. London: Crystal Palace Library, and Bradbury & Evans, 1854; and Bond, Edward A., and Thompson, E. M., and Coxe, H. O. and Lewis, S. S., and Dickinson, F. H. The Utrecht Psalter: Reports Addressed to the Trustees of the British Museum on the Age of the Manuscript. London: Williams and Norgate, 1874; Metal-work and its Artistic Design. London: Day & Son, 1852; An Attempt to Define the Principles which should Determine Form in the Decorative Arts: Read before The Society of Arts, April 21, 1852. London: G. Barday, 1852; [unsigned] “Principles and Treatment of Ironwork.” Journal of Design 4 (1850-51); Fine Art: Its History, Theory and Practice. Slade Lectures. London: Cambridge University Press, 1870.


Sources

Pevsner, Nikolaus. Matthew Digby Wyatt: the First Cambridge Slade professor of Fine Art: an Inaugural Lecture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950; P. W. “Wyatt, Sir Matthew Digby.” Dictionary of National Biography 21: 1097; Wyatt, Matthew Digby.” The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database http://kos.aahvs.duke.edu/creatorimages.php?creatorid=1247D26C-942A-F742-BAA5-37C0BF13B3AF.



Contributors: Lee Sorensen


Citation

Lee Sorensen. "Wyatt, Matthew Digby." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/wyattm/.


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First Slade Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge University (1869). Wyatt was born to Matthew Wyatt, a barrister in Ireland and London police magistrate. He was born in owde, Wiltshire, England, UK, near Devizes. He studied at the architectural firm

Wolters, Paul

Full Name: Wolters, Paul

Gender: male

Date Born: 1858

Date Died: 1936

Place Born: Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany

Place Died: Munich, Bavaria, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

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


Overview

Specialist in ancient Greek and Roman art. Professor of Archaeology at Würzburg (1900-1908), and Munich (1908-29). His students included Ernst Buschor.



Sources

Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 124-125.




Citation

"Wolters, Paul." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/woltersp/.


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Specialist in ancient Greek and Roman art. Professor of Archaeology at Würzburg (1900-1908), and Munich (1908-29). His students included Ernst Buschor.

Woltmann, Alfred

Full Name: Woltmann, Alfred

Gender: male

Date Born: 1841

Date Died: 1880

Place Born: Berlin, Germany

Place Died: Mentone, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France

Home Country/ies: Germany


Overview

In 1871, Woltmann was among the team of art historians (the others including Moritz Thausing, Carl von Lützlow, Adolf von Bayersdorfer, Friedrich Lippmann, Wilhelm Lübke, Bruno Meyer, Karl Woermann, G. Malsz and Wilhelm Bode who convened in Dresden to determine which of two versions of Hans Holbein the younger’s Meyer Madonna was the autograph work. The so-called “Holbein convention,” one of the important events in nineteenth-century art history when many methodical approaches were employed to determined authenticity, concluded that the Darmstadt version was the original.


Selected Bibliography

Entstehung und Ausbildung des gotischen Stils, 1872. Vol. V of Geschichte der Bildenden Künste. 2nd ed. 8 vols. Stuttgart: Ebner & Seubert, 1866-79; and Meyer, Bruno, and Görling, Adolph. Deutschlands Kunstschätze: eine Sammlung der hervorragendsten Bilder Berliner, Dresdner, Münchner, Wiener, Casseler und Braunschweiger Galerien. 4 vols. Leipzig: A.H. Payne, 1871-1872, English, Art Treasures of Germany. A Collection of the Most Important Pictures of the Galleries of Dresden, Cassel, Brunswick, Berlin, Munich and Vienna. Boston: S. Walker & Co., 1873


Sources

Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 490-3; Kultermann, Udo. The History of Art History. New York: Abaris, 1993, p. 145.




Citation

"Woltmann, Alfred." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/woltmanna/.


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In 1871, Woltmann was among the team of art historians (the others including Moritz Thausing, Carl von Lützlow, Adolf von Bayersdorfer, Friedrich Lippmann, Wilhelm Lübke, Bruno Meyer

Wood, James N.

Full Name: Wood, James N.

Other Names:

  • James N. Wood

Gender: male

Date Born: 20 March 1941

Date Died: 11 June 2010

Place Born: Boston, Suffolk, MA, USA

Place Died: Brentwood, Contra Costa, CA, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): museums (institutions)

Career(s): directors (administrators) and museum directors


Overview

Director, Art Institute of Chicago, 1980-2004 and Getty Trust, 2006-2010. Wood graduated Williams College with honors in art history, part of a cadre of art museum directors who had all done their undergraduate work at Williams. He took an A.M., from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. In 1967 he was appointed Assistant to the director at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and assistant curator in the Department of 20th Century Art from 1968-70. Wood moved to the Albright Knox Gallery of Art, Buffalo in 1970 as associate director and adjunct professor of art history at SUNY at Buffalo. In 1975 he became director of the St. Louis Museum of Art, St. Louis, Missouri. He married Emese Forizs, an artist. In 1980 Woods was appointed by the Board of Trustees at the Art Institute of Chicago to be Director. In Chicago Wood embarked on ambitious building programs, eventually doubling the size of the museum, overseeing the incorporation of the Louis Sullivan Trade room and the Rice Building (wing), designed by Thomas Beeby, which dramatically extended into Grant Park. Wood spearheaded several important shows, notably a Monet retrospective, “Claude Monet: 1840-1926,” in 1995, and “Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South” in 2001, both breaking attendance records for the Institute. Wood oversaw the Renzo Piano-designed modern wing (completed 2009) when he lost a 2003 vote of confidence from the Institute’s board. He retired from the museum in 2004, succeeded by James Cuno. When Barry Munitz, president and chief executive of the Getty Trust in Los Angeles resigned over use of the trust’s money and antiquities provenance, Wood was appointed his replacement in 2006. The position oversaw the J. Paul Getty Museum in Brentwood and the Getty Villa collection of ancient Greek and Roman art near Malibu, as well as the divisions of conservation, research and philanthropy. Wood immediately streamlined the Trust, eliminating positions and consolidating functions. He set the Getty on a conciliatory course with the Italian government, empowering the Museum’s director, Michael Brand, to repatriate forty works. The economic crash of 2008 force Wood to repeat the downsizing of the Trust, including support for research databases such as the Bibliography of the History of Art. These moves put him in direct confrontation Brand who ultimately resigned early in 2010, ostensibly over control of Museum funds. Wood died five months later, suddenly at age 69, at his California home, his body discovered by museum officials when he failed to show up for a meeting. Wood was an administrator and not principally a scholar. His book were issued in conjunction with the museums he oversaw, as for example the guide to the AIC co-written by Katharine Caecelia Lee. As an administrator, he was highly respected for his integrity and vision. He was the first Getty Trust director with significant background in art and museum administration (Kennedy).


Selected Bibliography

Six painters [Edward Avedisian, Darby Bannard, Dan Christensen, Ron Davis, Larry Poons, Peter Young]. Buffalo,NY: Albright-Knox Art Gallery, 1971; Max Bill. Buffalo, NY: Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, 1974; and Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates. The Architecture of the St. Louis Art Museum, 1904-1977. St. Louis: St. Louis Museum of Art, 1978; and Reid, Katharine Lee. Master Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1988.


Sources

[obituaries:] Kennedy, Randy. “James N. Wood, President of the Getty Trust, Dies at 69.” New York Times June 15, 2010; Donovan, Lisa. “Former head of Art Institute [dies], Oversaw Doubling Size of Museum, Record-breaking Exhibits in 25-yr. tenure.” Chicago Sun Times June 13, 2010, p. A8; Boehm, Mike. “James N. Wood, 1941-2010, CEO Restored Getty’s Stability and Prestige.” Los Angeles Times June 13, 2010, p. 31.




Citation

"Wood, James N.." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/woodj/.


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Director, Art Institute of Chicago, 1980-2004 and Getty Trust, 2006-2010. Wood graduated Williams College with honors in art history, part of a cadre of art museum directors who had all done their undergraduate work at Williams. He took an A.M., f

Woodall, Mary

Full Name: Woodall, Mary

Gender: female

Date Born: 1901

Date Died: 1988

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

Place Died: Burcot, near Clifton Hampden, Oxfordshire, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom


Overview

Museum director and Gainsborough scholar. Woodall was the daughter of Henry Woodall, head of the British Gas Light and Coke Company. Her mother was Bertha Nettlefold. Woodall attended Cheltenham Ladies’ College and then Somerville College, Oxford. She majored in history. After college she attended the Slade School of Fine Art, Shoreham, under Franklin White (d. 1975). There she studied the drawings of Gainsborough. In 1939 she was awarded a Ph.D. at the Courtauld Institute of Art, writing on Gainsborough’s landscape drawings. She briefly volunteered at the department of prints and drawings of the British Museum. When World War II was declared, Woodall accepted a position of regional administrator for the Women’s Royal Voluntary Service in 1938. In 1942 she moved to Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Supply. She secured a position as curator (“Keeper”) at the City of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, under Trenchard Cox on 1945. Cox was struggling with postwar issues of museum consolidation and bureaucracy. Woodard, with a strong administrative skill, took on the project immediately. She organized an exhibition on Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, 1947, and another on the work of Richard Wilson in 1948. During this time she and Cox went about building both the collections and public reputation of the Art Gallery. In 1949 she published her Thomas Gainsborough: his Life and Work. When Cox left in 1956 to become director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Woodall succeeded him. She persuaded the Birmingham city council in 1959 to sell works from the collection, including late-19th century Birmingham School artists, Joseph Southall and Arthur Gaskin, which were ill-advised. Her edited letters of Gainsborough appeared in 1961. She elected the first woman president of the Museums Association in 1962. She retired in 1964. In her retirement she was an UK adviser to the Felton Trust, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia and a trustee of the National Gallery, London, between 1966-76. Among her firsts was the first woman fellow of University College, London. Among her staff, she was known as “Mighty Mary.” She died in a nursing home in 1988.


Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Gainsborough’s Landscape Drawings. Ph.D., University of London, 1938, published under the same title, London: Faber and Faber, 1939; Catalogue of Paintings. Birmingham: Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, 1960; Catalogue of Pictures by Richard Wilson and his Circle. Birmingham: City Museum & Art Gallery, 1948; Thomas Gainsborough: his Life and Work. London: Phoenix House, 1949.


Sources

Garlick, Kenneth. “Woodall, Mary (1901-1988).” Dictionary of National Biography; [obituaries:] “Dr Mary Woodall: Art administrator and scholar.” The Times (London), 6 April 1988; Farr, Dennis. “Mary Woodall: A Woman in Pictures.” The Guardian (London), April 11, 1988.




Citation

"Woodall, Mary." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/woodallm/.


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Museum director and Gainsborough scholar. Woodall was the daughter of Henry Woodall, head of the British Gas Light and Coke Company. Her mother was Bertha Nettlefold. Woodall attended Cheltenham Ladies’ College and then Somerville College, Oxford.

Woodruff, Helen M.

Full Name: Woodruff, Helen M

Other Names:

  • Helen Woodruff

Gender: female

Date Born: 1899

Date Died: 1980

Place Born: IL, USA

Place Died: New York, NY, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): manuscripts (documents) and Medieval (European)

Institution(s): Princeton University


Overview

Medieval art historian and manuscript scholar. Woodruff graduated from Wellesley College in 1922. She earned her MA and PhD degrees at Radcliffe College, completing a dissertation on the illustrated manuscripts of Prudentius in 1928. In 1931, Woodruff held the position of Reader at the Index of Christian Art at Princeton University, founded by Charles Rufus Morey. By 1933, she was appointed to the directorship of the Index by Charles Rufus Morey, a position which she held for nine years. Woodruff served as director of the Index until 1942, when she left to join the Women’s Reserve of the United States Navy (specifically, the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service or “WAVES”), rising to the rank of Lieutenant Commander during World War II. Woodruff’s major scholarship during this time included a study of the Bern Physiologus, an early Christian collection of naturalistic and allegorical descriptions from which the medieval bestiaries are derived, published in The Art Bulletin in 1930. A monograph version of her dissertation The Illustrated Manuscripts of Prudentius appeared from Harvard University Press, 1930.

In 1942, Woodruff published the first Index of Christian Art handbook during the last year of her directorship. The handbook, with a foreword written by Morey, facilitated the use of the physical card archive and established standards for iconographic classification. It was the definitive guide for using and contributing to the Index of Christian Art for over 50 years. Woodruff’s revolutionary changes to Index organization included implementing a coding system and adding medium divisions for better organization of the card files. During her directorship, Woodruff established an in-house photographic studio to assemble more pictorial evidence from publications and devised a formulaic standard for written iconographic description that is largely still employed by Index scholars, (renamed in 2017 as the Index of Medieval Art). Woodruff’s study collection, comprising photographs of medieval enamel and metal liturgical objects, book covers, and crosses/crucifixes, is held by the department of Research Photographs in the Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University.

Woodruff’s contributions were recognized by the establishment of a biennial fellowship in her name granted by the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) and the American Academy in Rome.


Selected Bibliography

“The Physiologus of Bern.” Art Bulletin 12 (1930): 226-53; The Illustrated Manuscripts of Prudentius. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1930; “Index to Christian Art­–A Progress Report.” Special Libraries 30:10 (1939): 347-48; The Index of Christian Art at Princeton University; A Handbook. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1942.


Sources

Morey, Charles Rufus. “An Important Instrument of Research.” Princeton Alumni Weekly 32:11 (1931): 236-37; “In Line of Duty.” Princeton Alumni Weekly 45 (1945): 3; Green, Rosalie. “The Index of Christian Art: A Great Humanistic Research Tool” Princeton Alumni Weekly 63 (1963): 8-10, 16-17; 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.  63, mentioned; Ragusa, Isa. “Observations on the History of the Index: In Two Parts,” Visual Resources 13:3-4 (2011): 215-51.  



Contributors: Jessica Savage


Citation

Jessica Savage. "Woodruff, Helen M.." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/woodruffh/.


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Medieval art historian and manuscript scholar. Woodruff graduated from Wellesley College in 1922. She earned her MA and PhD degrees at Radcliffe College, completing a dissertation on the illustrated manuscripts of Prudentius in 1928. In 1931, Wood

Wormald, Francis

Full Name: Wormald, Francis

Gender: male

Date Born: 1904

Date Died: 1972

Place Born: Dewsbury, Kirklees, West Yorkshire, England, UK

Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): Anglo-Saxon (culture or style), English (culture or style), Medieval (European), and painting (visual works)


Overview

Historian of liturgical and Anglo-Saxon illuminated medieval painting; paleographer. Wormald was born into a family of wool merchants in West Riding, Yorkshire. He studied at Eton and then Cambridge University where he read history at Magdalene College. His B.A. was taken in 1925. In 1927 he was appointed an Assistant Keeper in the Department of Manuscripts of the British Museum. The first of his three fundamental works on calendars, English Kalendars before A.D. 1100 I appeared in 1934, and the second, English Benedictine Kalendars after A.D. 1100 I in 1936. In 1935 he was elected as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. The same year he married his cousin, Honoria Yeo. During World War II he served in the Ministry of Home Security, where he produced Civil Defense training films. The second volume of his Benedictine Kalendars appeared in 1946. After the war his career seemed set to become Keeper of the Department of Manuscripts and likely Director of the Museum. However, in 1949 he was selected to be the first chair of Paleography, attached to Kings College, Cambridge, over the candidates in historical paleography. During these years he published his volumes on English calendars on behalf of the Bradshaw Society. His qualities as an advisor to research students and colleague soon became apparent. He was elected to the British Academy in 1948, Section XI (art history) and the Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi Committee. In 1950 he received his Litt. D. from Cambridge. He accepted an appointment at King’s College, University of London, as Professor of Paleography, where he remained until 1968. His first monograph, English Drawings of the Tenth Century, 1952, was a fundamental treatise on illuminated initials. In 1956 he served as Vice President of the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London until 1960, when he became Director, which he held until 1970. In 1960 he published in collaboration with Otto Pächt and C. R. Dodwell the Warburg Institute’s edition of the St. Albans Psalter. Wormald was a member of the Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton, N. J., from 1965 to 1966. In 1967 he became a trustee of the British Museum and Governor of the London Museum in 1971. His papers are held at the University of London. He was the only ex-officer of the British Museum to be appointed to the Board of Trustees, 1967-72. His final work was the introduction to the facsimile of the Winchester Psalter, 1971.Methodologically, he focused on Anglo-Saxon and Romanesque manuscripts, blending iconographic approaches to the illumination and paleographic analysis to the text. His contribution to the liturgical hagiology was extensive.


Selected Bibliography

and Pächt, Otto and Dodwell, C. R. The St. Albans Psalter (Albani Psalter). London: Warburg Institute, University of London, 1960; An Early Breton Gospel Book: a Ninth-Century Manuscript from the Collection of H. L. Bradfer-Lawrence, 1887-1965. Cambridge, UK: Roxburghe Club, 1977; English Drawings of the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries. London: Faber and Faber 1952; The Miniatures in the Gospels of St. Augustine, Corpus Christi College MS. 286. Cambridge, UK: University Press, 1954; Paintings in Westminster Abbey and Contemporary Paintings. Proceedings of the British Academy 35. London: British Academy, 1952; The Utrecht Psalter. Utrecht: Institute of Art History, 1953; The Winchester Psalter. Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1973; “The Survival of Anglo-Saxon Illumination after the Norman Conquest.” British Academy, London. Proceedings of the British Academy, 1944. London: British Academy,1947, pp. 127-145.


Sources

Brown, Julian. “Francis Wormald”, Proceedings of the British Academy 61 (1975): 523-60; Dictionary of Art; Archives in London and the M25 project http://www.aim25.ac.uk/; “Professor Francis Wormald.” Antiquaries Journal 52 (1973): 456-59; Nordenfalk, Carl. “Francis Wormald.” Burlington Magazine 114 (April 1972): 245; Brown, T. J., and D. H. Turner. “Francis Wormald, 1904-72.” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 45 (1972): 1-6.




Citation

"Wormald, Francis." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/wormaldf/.


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Historian of liturgical and Anglo-Saxon illuminated medieval painting; paleographer. Wormald was born into a family of wool merchants in West Riding, Yorkshire. He studied at Eton and then Cambridge University where he read history at Magdalene Co

Wornum, Ralph Nicholson

Full Name: Wornum, Ralph Nicholson

Gender: male

Date Born: 1812

Date Died: 1877

Place Born: Thornton, Leicestershire, England, UK

Place Died: South Hampstead, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Career(s): curators


Overview

Keeper (chief curator) of the National Gallery, London. Wornum was born to piano maker Robert Wornum (1780-1852), the inventor of the upright piano. He was born in Thornton, North Durham, England, UK near Norham. Wornum positioned himself for a career in law, studying in 1832 at University College, the University of London. However, he abandoned the bar to study art with painter Henry Sass (1788-1844), making a grand tour of the art museums of Europe in 1834. Wornum returned to London as a portrait painter, receiving honorable mentions but exhibiting little. He contributed to several publications, including the Penny Cyclopaedia (1840), Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1841) the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge’s Biographical Dictionary (unpublished). To these, he added articles to the Art Journal, among them criticizing the current catalogs of the National Gallery. Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel (1788-1850) commissioned Wornum to write a new catalog, which was completed in 1847. The success of this work gained Wornum a lecturing position in art with government schools of design. In 1851 he was awarded a substantial prize by his former magazine, the Art Journal, for an essay on “The Exhibition of 1851, as a Lesson in Taste.” The following year he was appointed librarian and keeper of casts for the schools of design. Charles Lock Eastlake recommended Wornum to succeed George Saunders Thwaites (1778-1866) as Keeper of the National Gallery, London, which Wornum did in December, 1854. The appointment of Wornum represented the first efforts to make the Keeper an effectual position, rather than the modestly-paid sinecure it had been. Eastlake himself was named director in 1855 and a thorough ‘housecleaning’ of the National Gallery’s staff followed, bringing it into a fully functioning workforce. Wornum anonymously rewrote the Biographical Catalogue of the Principal Italian Painters by “A Lady” (Maria Farquhar) that same year. In 1856 he contributed biographical entries of British artists to Creasy’s British Empire, published in eight volumes in 1860-61. Wornum was Keeper at the time when J. M. W. Turner’s estate was willed to the nation at Turner’s death in 1857. The works of art were put in the hands of the critic John Ruskin for cataloging. Ruskin admitted in an 1858 letter to Wornum of burning a number of sketchbooks filled with erotic drawings by Turner. He told Wornum the drawings were “grossly obscene” and could not, he felt, “lawfully be in anyone’s possession.” Wornum lobbied tirelessly for a larger National Gallery. Before the creation of the Tate Gallery, Turner’s pictures were wedged into the National Gallery building at Trafalgar Square. The introduction to The Turner Gallery pleads for better space for the 725 works of art. In 1867 Wornum’s catalog on Hans Holbein appeared. It was groundbreaking in that he was the first non-German to take a position (ultimately correct) the the Dresden Meyer Madonna was a copy. He died at his home in South Hampstead. Wornum greatly improved the National Gallery, both by issuing edifying publications on the collections and working hard to make it museum truly for the public. He argued passionately against the separation of British artists from foreign artists in the galleries. Wornum’s Epochs of Painting became the textbook for schools of art in Britain (DNB).


Selected Bibliography

edited, Bary, James, and Opie, John, and Fuseli, Henry. Lectures on Painting. London: H.G. Bohn, 1848; Some Account of the Life and Works of Hans Holbein, Painter, of Augsburg. London: Chapman and Hall, 1867; The Turner Gallery: a Series of Sixty Engravings from the Principal Works of Joseph Mallord William Turner. London: J.S. Virtue, 1861; Hans Holbein and the Meier Madonna. Arundel Society Pamphlets. London: s.n., 1871; The Epochs of Painting Characterized; a Sketch of the History of Painting, Ancient and Modern, Showing its Gradual and Various Development from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time. London: C. Cox, 1847; The Epochs of Painting: a Biographical and Critical Essay on Painting and Painters of All Times and Many Places. London: Chapman and Hall, 1864; Analysis of Ornament. The Characteristics of Styles: an Introduction to the Study of the History of Ornamental Art; Being an Outline of a Course of Sixteen Lectures on that Subject, Originally Prepared for the Government Schools of Design in the Years 1848, 1849, 1850. London: Chapman and Hall, 1856.


Sources

Dictionary of National Biography 21: 946-47; Kultermann, Udo. The History of Art History. New York: Abaris, 1993, p. 147.




Citation

"Wornum, Ralph Nicholson." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/wornumr/.


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Keeper (chief curator) of the National Gallery, London. Wornum was born to piano maker Robert Wornum (1780-1852), the inventor of the upright piano. He was born in Thornton, North Durham, England, UK near Norham. Wornum positioned himself for a ca

Worringer, Wilhelm

Full Name: Worringer, Wilhelm

Gender: male

Date Born: 13 January 1881

Date Died: 29 March 1965

Place Born: Aachen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany

Place Died: Munich, Bavaria, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): art theory, Expressionist (style), and German Expressionist (movement)


Overview

Art Historian and theoretician of Expressionism. Worringer formed his education at a number of German universities, Freiburg, Berlin, and Munich, before finally writing his dissertation at Bern in 1907. His thesis was entitled Abstraktion und Einfühlung: ein Beitrag zur Stilpsychologie (Abstraction and Empathy: Essays in the Psychology of Style). Its publication aroused the interest of art critic Paul Ernst, who reviewed it like a new art book in the influential Kunst und Künstler. It was then issued in a trade edition which gained it immense popularity among intellectuals and artists. German expressionists of Die Brücke, especially Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Emil Nolde, found Worringer’s ideas justifying the primitive art which their art took in part as its inspiration. Worringer was appointed to the University at Bern. His next book, an expansion of the concluding section of Abstraktion, focused on gothic art and architecture. Formprobleme der Gotik (Form in the Gothic), 1911, contrasted and celebrated the “gothic impulse” to create stylized art, opposing it to a Mediterranean infatuation with verisimilitude. The book again met acclaim and Worringer’s reputation was secure. His subsequent publications, such as Die altdeutsche Buchillustration of 1912, were more art historical and never caught the public imagination the way his first two works had. Worringer left Switzerland in 1914 for German military service in World War I and saw fighting. Afterward, he returned to teaching at the Universität Bonn, appointed professor in 1920. There he published two more works, Agyptische Kunst (1927) and Griechentum und Gotik (1928), before moving to Königsberg, also in 1928. Worringer himself continued to expand on his initial stylistic ideas in abstraction. After the Second World War, Worringer moved briefly to Halle, which was then in the Soviet Zone of conquered Germany. The founding of the communist German Democratic Republic in 1950 induced Worringer to leave for Munich, where he remained the rest of his life..

Worringer’s contribution to art and art history cannot be underestimated. His 1907 thesis on art and empathy was draws from the 19th-century aesthetic ideas of Novalis and Schlegel. But Worringer’s method owes a great deal to the esthetic theories of Theodor Lipps (1854-1914) and the art history of Aloïs Riegl. From Lipps, Worringer builds upon the concept of empathy, that our own sense of beauty comes from being able to relate to the specific work of art. He borrows Riegl’s assertion that mimesis is not an inherent urge in artistic production: that stylized art is not because of a culture’s incompetence to create realistic representations, but rather reveals a psychological need to represent objects in a more spiritual manner. Abstraktion und Einfühlung asserted that realistic representation, such as the art of ancient Greece and Rome, demonstrated a confidence in the material world; abstract representation, such that of the gothic period or ancient Egypt, showed an insecurity with materialism and a greater trust in spirituality. Thus, artistic representation became a key window into a historical period’s world view. For early twentieth-century German intellectuals, Worringer’s respect for primitive art and the notion that abstracted forms emanated from societies in spiritual anxiety justified expressionism’s raw character. Artists such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, the spiritual leader of the Dresden expressionist group, Die Brücke, and Emil Nolde use extensively Worringer’s notions of the exoticism and the concomitant angst associated with abstraction. His ideas also encouraged the fascination with the study of African and South Seas art. The art historian Carl Einstein, drew heavily upon Worringer’s work for his own Negerplastik of 1915, as later did Herbert Read. Worringer’s second work, Formprobleme der Gotik, developed the theme formulated in Abstraktion for one particular period, european medieval art. However, it is here that the problems with such a global theory based on style begin to appear. Gothic art becomes defined as any style not shaped by classically inspired culture. Worringer’s dichotomies become sharper and more forced than in his earlier work: North vs South, abstraction vs empathy, renaissance vs gothic. It was this mindset and its historic implications for cultures, that German national socialism used as its esthetic of “pure” and “degenerate” art. It remains ironic that the same author’s theories helped elucidate German Expressionisim also served its greatest antagonist, the Nazi party.  His Bonn students included Heinrich Lützeler.


Selected Bibliography

Abstraktion und Einfühlung: ein Beitrag zur Stilpyschologie. published dissertation, Neuwied, 1907, then as book, Munich: R. Piper, 1908. [Abstraction and Empathy. Translated by Michael Bullock. New York: International University Press, 1953.]; Formprobleme der Gotik. Munich: R. Piper, 1912. [ Form in Gothic. Translated by Sir Herbert Read. London: A. Tiranti, 1957.]; ägyptische Kunst: Probleme ihre Werte. Munich: Piper, 1927. [Egyptian Art. Edited by Bernard Rackham, et. al. London: Putnam’s Sons, 1928.]; Die Altdeutsche Buchillustratoren. Munich: Piper, 1912.; Die Anfänge der deutschen Tafelmalerei. Leipzig: Insel, 1924.; Griechentum und Gotik: vom Weltreich des Hellenismus. Munich: Piper, 1928.; Käthe Kollwitz. Königsberg: Grafen und Unger, 1931.; Künstlerische Zeitfragen. Munich: Brickmann, 1921.; Lucas Cranach. Munich: Piper, 1908.; Problematik der Gegenwartskunst. Munich: Piper, 1948.; über den Einfluss der angelsächsischen Buchmalerei auf die frühmittelalterliche Monumentalplastik des Kontinents. Halle: Niemeyer, 1931.


Sources

Dvorák, Max. Idealism and Naturalism in Gothic Art. Translated and noted by Randolph J. Klawiter. Preface by Karl Maria Swoboda. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1967, pp. 240-1; Neue Beiträge deutscher Forschung: Wilhelm Worringer zum 60sten Geburtstag. Edited by Erich Fidder. Königsberg: Kanter, 1943.; Read, Herbert. “Introduction” to Form in Gothic, pp. ix-xiii.; 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. 21 mentioned, p. 30; Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 493-5; Dictionary of Art 33: 383-5; Encyclopedia of Aesthetics 4: 482-3.



Contributors: Lee Sorensen


Citation

Lee Sorensen. "Worringer, Wilhelm." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/worringerw/.


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Art Historian and theoretician of Expressionism. Worringer formed his education at a number of German universities, Freiburg, Berlin, and Munich, before finally writing his dissertation at Bern in 1907. His thesis was entitled Abstraktion und

Worsley, Giles Arthington

Full Name: Worsley, Giles Arthington

Gender: male

Date Born: 1961

Date Died: 2006

Place Born: North Yorkshire, England, UK

Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

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


Overview

Revisionist architectural historian. Worsley was the second son of an aristocratic Yorkshire family, including Sir Thomas Worsley, who was an 18th-century surveyor general of the Board of Works and an amateur architect who designed the family Palladian mansion, Hovingham Hall. His parents were Sir Marcus Worsley (b. 1925), a Conservative MP and later baronet, and Lady Bridget Assheton (Worsley) (1926-2004). After attending Eton, he majored (“read”) history at New College, Oxford were the architectural historian Howard Montagu Colvin encouraged him to pursue architectural history. After graduation, Worsley entered the Courtauld Institute, London for graduate study. He joined the staff of Country Life magazine in 1985, blending architectural and social history into his articles. He completed a Ph.D. in the architectural history on the British stable in 1989. Worsley rose to architectural editor at the Country Life. His first book Architectural Drawings of the Regency Period, 1790-1837 appeared in 1991. In 1994, he joined the journal Perspectives on Architecture, sponsored by the Institute of Architecture, which Charles, the Prince of Wales founded to promote his conservative view of architecture. As its editor, Worsley wisely declined to join the pro-classicism (anti-modernism, actually) stance of the Prince. In 1995, Worsley launched a salvo at the mainstream architectural community with his Classical Architecture in Britain: The Heroic Age. The book questioned the conclusions of Britain’s major 20th-century architectural historian, John Newenham Summerson. Summerson’s Architecture in Britain: 1530-1830, (1953) organized architecture as a successive progression of styles. Worsley maintained that stylistic diversity was a constant in previous ages. In 1996 he married the writer and (London) Times journalist Joanna Pitman (b. 1963). Perspectives on Architecture folded in 1998 when advisors to the Prince feared his reactionary stance was worsening the Prince’s post-Diana image. Worsley became the architectural critic of the Daily Telegraph. He edited the late Brian Wragg’s book, John Carr of York, for publication in 2000; his own England’s Lost Houses, an account of demolished 20th-century mansions, appeared in 2002. The same year he was elected as a senior research fellow of the Institute of Historical Research. A revised version of his dissertation appeared in 2004. Work on a book on Inigo Jones was completed shortly before his death from cancer at age 44. It appeared posthumously the following year. Another work on Baroque architecture in England remained in manuscript. An annual award in his memory was established by his uncle, the Duke of Kent. Classical Architecture in Britain: The Heroic Age made Worsley’s reputation as an important and original scholar. The book was initially received coolly by many historians who believed Worsley was too young to have written a major survey or have questioned Summerson; today it is generally accepted as a key text on the subject.


Selected Bibliography

[dissertation, revised:] The British Stable. New Haven, CT: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art/Yale University Press, 2004; Classical Architecture in Britain: the Heroic Age. New Haven, CT: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art/Yale University Press, 1995; England’s Lost Houses: from the Archives of Country Life. London: Aurum, 2002; Inigo Jones and the European Classicist Tradition. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press/The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2007.


Sources

[obituaries:] Cannadine, David. “Giles Worsley: Gifted Architectural Writer.” Guardian (London) January 26, 2006, p. 36; Times (London), January 21, 2006, P. 72; “Giles Worsley Architectural Writer and Critic who Challenged Received Wisdom on Britain’s Classical Heritage.” Daily Telegraph (London), January 19, 2006, p. 25; Aslet, Clive. “Giles Worsley, Architectural Historian.” Independent (London), January 20, 2006, p. 39.




Citation

"Worsley, Giles Arthington." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/worsleyg/.


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Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Revisionist architectural historian. Worsley was the second son of an aristocratic Yorkshire family, including Sir Thomas Worsley, who was an 18th-century surveyor general of the Board of Works and an amateur architect who designed the family Pall