Full Name: Wolters, Christian
Gender: male
Date Born: unknown
Date Died: unknown
Home Country/ies: Germany
Art historian; use of information provided by X-rays of artwork.
Die Bedeutung der Gemäldedurchleutung mit Roentgenstrahlen für die Kunstgeschichte. Frankfurt, 1938.
Bazin 411
Art historian; use of information provided by X-rays of artwork.
Full Name: Winlock, Herbert Eustis
Gender: male
Date Born: 1884
Date Died: 1950
Place Born: Washington, DC, USA
Place Died: Venice, Sarasota, FL, USA
Home Country/ies: United States
Subject Area(s): Egyptian (ancient) and Egyptology
Career(s): directors (administrators) and museum directors
Egyptologist and Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1932-39. Winlock came from a family of astronomers. His father was William Crawford Winlock, assistant secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and who had served at the Naval Academy Observatory in Washington, and his mother and his mother Alice (Broom) Winlock. His grandfather, Joseph Winlock, was first director of the Harvard College Observatory. Winlock developed an interest in Egyptian art at the Smithsonian Institution while his father was assistant secretary of the museum. He attended Western High School in Washgington, D. C. and then Harvard University, receiving a B.A. in 1906 in archaeology and anthropology with “great distinction.” Winlock’s professor at Harvard, Albert M. Lythgoe had recently been appointed the first curator of Egyptian Art at the Metropolitan and invited Winlock to join the staff in the Museum’s expedition. Winlock worked in museum excavations for much of his career at the Metropolitan, rising through the ranks first as assistant curator of Egyptian art in 1909, associate curator in 1922, then director of the excavations in Egypt in 1928 and finally curator of Egyptian Art in 1929. He married the daughter of the dean of the Department of Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Helen Chandler, in 1912. During World War I he served in the military (field artillery) rising to the rank of major. His digs included the Oasis of Khargeh, the el Lisht site, near Memphis and most important, the royal tombs at Thebes excavating the periods preceding and following the Middle Kingdom. Beginning in 1923, Winlock excavated the waterway leading from the famous temple of Queen Hatshepsut resulting in discovery of many of the statues of her smashed by her successors. He was instrumental in getting Howard Carter, the discoverer of the Tutanhkamum tomb, reinstated in Egypt after Carter’s row (and banishment) with the authorities. In 1932 Winlock was offered the Directorship of the Metropolitan. Although he much preferred to be on digs, the hard financial times of the Depression made these excursions ever more tenuous. He accepted the position in addition to his curator duties in the Egyptian Department. A casual personality and politically conservative, Winlock oversaw the development of the museum without overhauling it as his successors would. In 1937 he suffered a stroke while descending the stairs of the Met, from which he never fully recovered. He remained director at the Metropolitan for two more years, presiding over the opening of the Cloisters branch museum (developed by future director James Rorimer, in 1938. He retired in 1939 as director emeritus. While on vacation in Florida in 1950 he suffered a fatal heart attack. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Winlock was a greater Egyptologist than a museum director. His reconstruction the succession of the rulers of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom and identification of their monuments at Thebes was an important contribution to the field. His discovery of the statue fragments of Queen Hatshepsut in Thebes which had been smashed and discarded by her stepson and successor, Thutmose III, were augmented by his painstaking reconstruction of the pieces, in some cases uniting them with previously discovered fragments in other museums. Winlock’s career as an Egyptian archaeologist was part of the great era of American museum-sponsored expeditions. During this same period George Andrew Reisner led digs for the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and Harvard University, and Henry Breasted, Jr. for the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. British Egyptologist Arthur P. B. Weigall (1880-1934) termed him the “best of his generation” of Egyptologists.
Excavations at Deir el Bahri, 1911-1931. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1942; Models of Daily Life in Ancient Egypt from the Tomb of Meket-Re’ at Thebes. Cambridge: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Harvard University Press, 1955; The Monastery of Epiphanius at Thebes. New York: 1926; The Rise and Fall of the Middle Kingdom in Thebes. New York: Macmillan, 1947; The Temple of Ramesses I at Abydos. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1937; The Treasure of Three Egyptian Princesses. New York: Department of Egyptian Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1948.
Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement 4: 1946-1950; Tomkins, Calvin. Merchants and Masterpieces: The Story of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1970, pp. 140, 226-232.
Egyptologist and Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1932-39. Winlock came from a family of astronomers. His father was William Crawford Winlock, assistant secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and who had served at the Naval Academy Ob
Full Name: Winnefeld, Hermann
Gender: male
Date Born: 1862
Date Died: 1918
Place Born: Überlingen, Baden, Germany
Place Died: Berlin, Germany
Home Country/ies: Germany
Subject Area(s): Ancient Greek (culture or style), Antique, the, and Classical
Specialist in ancient Greece. Worked at the Kgl. Kunstsammlungen in Berlin most of his life, “Zweite Direktor” from 1907-1918. Winnefeld wrote his dissertation under Friedrich von Duhn in Berlin.
Die Friese des groszen Altars. Berlin: Verlag von Georg Reimer, 1910.
Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 148-149.
Specialist in ancient Greece. Worked at the Kgl. Kunstsammlungen in Berlin most of his life, “Zweite Direktor” from 1907-1918. Winnefeld wrote his dissertation under Friedrich von Duhn in Berlin.
Full Name: Winter, Franz
Gender: male
Date Born: 1861
Date Died: 1930
Place Born: Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, Germany
Place Died: Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
Home Country/ies: Germany
Subject Area(s): Ancient Greek (culture or style), ancient Italian pottery styles, Antique, the, Classical, Roman (ancient Italian culture or period), Roman sculpture styles, sculpture (visual works), and statues
Specialist in ancient Greek and Roman art, particularly noted for his studies of single statues like the Belvedere Apollo. Professor at the University of Innsbruck (1899-1905), Graz (1905-1907), Strasbourg (1907-1912) and Bonn (1912-1928).
Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 142-143.
Specialist in ancient Greek and Roman art, particularly noted for his studies of single statues like the Belvedere Apollo. Professor at the University of Innsbruck (1899-1905), Graz (1905-1907), Strasbourg (1907-1912) and Bonn (1912-1928).
Full Name: Wirth, Zdenek
Gender: male
Date Born: 1878
Date Died: 1961
Home Country/ies: Czechoslovakia
Student of Max Dvořák.
Rokyta, Hugo.”Max Dvora´k und seine Schule in den Böhmischen Ländern.” Österreichische Zeitschrift für Kunst und Denkmalpflege 28 no. 3 (1974): 81-89.
Student of Max Dvořák.
Full Name: With, Karl
Gender: male
Date Born: 1891
Date Died: 1980
Place Born: Bremerhaven, Bremen, Germany
Place Died: Los Angeles, CA, USA
Home Country/ies: Germany
Subject Area(s): Asian, Buddhism, East Asian, Japanese (culture or style), and sculpture (visual works)
Career(s): curators
East-Asianist art historian and museum curator, Strzygowski student, dismissed by Nazis, later taught at UCLA. After brief periods of study at Munich and Freiburg, With met and assisted Karl Ernst Osthaus, who later founded the Folkwang-Museum in Hagen, at the Museum für Kunst in Handel und Gewerbe in 1911. The next year he began studies with Josef Rudolf Thomas Strzygowski at the University of Vienna where he specialized in Asian art. His dissertation in 1918 was on Buddhist sculpture in Japan. He acted as director of the Folkwang Museum 1919-21 and as curator for the collection of Baron von der Heyt in Amsterdam 1920-23. In 1928 Konrad Adenauer, then mayor of Cologne, appointed him director of the Kunstgewerbe-Museum of that city. Dismissed from his post by the Nazis in 1933 and singled out in the infamous “Enartete Kunst” (Degenerate Art) exhibition of 1937 as a “literary pimp” of the degenerate forms of art, Baron von der Heydt once again hired him in 1936 to purchase Asian and African art in Ascona. In 1939 With emigrated to the U.S. where, with one exception, he spent the remainder of his life. During World War II With taught in Pasadena and at the Black Mountain College in North Carolina. In the first year afterward, he was director of the Modern Institute of Art in Beverly Hills. From 1950-62 he was professor of Art History at UCLA. With combined an interest in the value of common objects as art and a connoisseur’s approach to Asian art. His personal papers are at the Getty Research Institute for the Humanities.
Karl With: Autobiography of Ideas : Lebenserinnerungen eines außergwöhnlichen Kunstgelehrten. Berlin: Gebruder Mann, 1997; Buddhistische Plastik in Japan bis in den Beginn des 8. Jahrhunderts n. Chr. 3rd ed. Wien: A. Schroll, 1922; Das Hohelied der Sonne; ein Buch vom Quell des Lebens. Berlin: Propyläen-verlag,1934. Java: brahmanische, budhistische und eigenlebige Architektur und Plastik auf Java. Geist, Kunst und Leben Asiens: 1. Hagen i. W.: Folkwang Verlag, G.M.B.H., 1920. –
Karl With: Autobiography of Ideas : Lebenserinnerungen eines außergwöhnlichen Kunstgelehrten. Berlin: Gebruder Mann, 1997, 17-23; 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. 786-790.
East-Asianist art historian and museum curator, Strzygowski student, dismissed by Nazis, later taught at UCLA. After brief periods of study at Munich and Freiburg, With met and assisted Karl Ernst Osthaus, who later founded
Full Name: Witt, Robert, Sir
Other Names:
Gender: male
Date Born: 1872
Date Died: 1952
Place Born: Camberwell, Southwark, London, England, UK
Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK
Home Country/ies: United Kingdom
Subject Area(s): photographs
Career(s): art collectors
Creator of the research photographs collection of the University of London (“Witt Library”); art collector. Witt was the eldest son of Gustavus Andreas Witt (b. 1840) a wool dealer, and Johanna Frederiko Helene de Clermont (Witt). He attended Clifton College, Bristol, and New College, Oxford, graduating with a degree in history in 1894. He served in the British army and as a war correspondent (with Cecil Rhodes) seeing action during the Matabele (Ndebele) uprising of 1896. He returned to London, qualified as a solicitor (attorney) in 1897, where he spent his career rising to senior partner at the offices of Stephenson, Harwood, and Tatham. From the first, Witt maintained a strong interest in art. After marrying his classmate, Mary Helene Marten (1871-1952) in 1899, the two began collecting photographs of works of art. The Witts built their hobby into an enormous library of eventually 750,000 images. In 1902 he wrote his first art book, a primer on approaching art, How to Look at Pictures. In 1903 together with David Lindsay (Earl of Crawford and Balcarres) (1871-1940), Wallace Collection keeper Claude Phillips, the artist D. S. MacColl (1859-1948), and the art museum director Roger Fry, he founded the National Art Collections Fund. The fund, which raised money by subscription for the purchase of pictures, elected him its first honorary secretary, which he held until 1920. When the collector and director of the National Gallery, Dublin, Sir Hugh Lane (1875-1915), died in the sinking of the R.M.S. Lusitania in 1915–leaving conflicting will and codicil to the disposition of his excellent French Impressionist collection–Witt inveighed (futilely) to keep the Collection at the National Gallery, London, where the pictures had been placed on extended loan. Witt was named a trustee of the National Gallery in 1916, a position he held almost unbroken until 1940, and the Tate Gallery, the same year (1916) until 1931. In 1918 he was appointed C.B.E. in 1918. In 1920 he became chair of the Art Collections Fund, which grew into the most important fund-raising unit for art in Britain under Witt’s leadership. Witt’s library and picture collection were so important that he wrote a catalog of his collection in 1920 (supplement, 1925) concentrating on the artist’s represented. Inspired by his library, Helen Frick (1888-1984), daughter of the collector Henry Clay Frick (1849-1919), set out to build a library for the Frick Collection in New York after Witt’s model. Like Witt, Frick wrote the catalog, assisted by Witt, for the Frick Art Reference Library. A similar catalog was written by the British-trained Japanese art historian Yukio Yashiro for the Tokyo Museum. He was knighted in 1922. During the 1930s, Witt was active in organizing the annual winter exhibitions of foreign art at Burlington House. The introduction to the Italian catalog of 1930 was written by him. In 1932 Witt, together with Samuel Courtauld (1876-1947) and Arthur Hamilton Lee (Viscount Lee of Fareham, 1868-1947) founded the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. He received an honorary D. Lit. from the University the following year. In 1942 he became an honorary fellow at his alma mater, New College. In 1944 Witt deeded his house at 32 Portman Square and vast image collection as a research library for the Courtauld Institute. He retired in 1945 because of ill health and was named president, the Fund’s first. The National Gallery, London, organized a special show in his honor featuring the art purchased under his direction of the Fund. He died at his Portman Square home at age 80. The library was moved to the institute at nearby 19 and 20 Portman Square. Also donated were his large collection of nearly 4000 old master drawings to the Institute as well. These included works by at that time lesser-known artists, including Guercino and Gainsborough. More than a collector, Witt saw the need to make art information available to scholars. His photographic archives were compiled at a time before art books were heavily illustrated or the advent of image databases.
Dutch Art: an Illustrated Souvenir of the Exhibition of Dutch Art at Burlington House, London. London: Anglo-Batavian Society, 1929; How to Look at Pictures. London: G. Bell and Sons, 1929; and Cook, Herbert F. Illustrated Catalogue of Pictures by the Brothers Le Nain. London: Burlinton Fine Arts Club, 1910.
Dictionary of National Biography ; Troutman, Philip. Italian Old Master Drawings, Witt Collection, Courtauld Gallery. Wellington, New Zealand: National Gallery, 1973; [obituary:] “Sir Robert Witt.” The Times (London) Mar 27, 1952, p. 8.
Creator of the research photographs collection of the University of London (“Witt Library”); art collector. Witt was the eldest son of Gustavus Andreas Witt (b. 1840) a wool dealer, and Johanna Frederiko Helene de Clermont (Witt). He attended Clif
Full Name: Witte, Fritz
Gender: male
Date Born: 1876
Date Died: 1937
Home Country/ies: Germany
Organized the Jahrtausundaustellung (millenial celebration) in Düsseldorf in 1925, where the young Hanns Swarzenski got his start.
and Clemen, Paul, and Neu, Heinrich. Der Dom zu Köln. Düsseldorf: L. Schwann, 1937.
Organized the Jahrtausundaustellung (millenial celebration) in Düsseldorf in 1925, where the young Hanns Swarzenski got his start.
Full Name: Witting, Felix
Gender: male
Date Born: 1873
Date Died: unknown
Home Country/ies: Germany
Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre) and sculpture (visual works)
Architectural historian.
Die Anfänge christlicher Architektur: Gedanken über Wesen und Enstehung der christlichen Basilika. (Zur Kunstgeschichte des Auslandes 10). Strassburg: Heitz, 1902. Kirchenbauten der Auvergne. (Zur Kunstgeschichte des Auslandes 28). Strassburg: Heitz. 1904. Michelangelo und Beethoven. Strassburg: Heitz, 1916. Piero dei Franceschi: Eine Kunsthistorische Studie. Strassburg: Heitz, 1898. Von Kunst und Christentum: Plastik und Selbstgefühl. Strassburg: Heitz, 1903.Westfranzösische Kuppelkirchen. (Zur Kunstgeschichte ds Auslandes 19). Strassburg: Heitz, 1904.
DIN, 239 (unable to find information on him?)
Architectural historian.
Full Name: Wittkower, Margot
Other Names:
Gender: female
Date Born: 1902
Date Died: 03 July 1995
Place Born: Berlin, Germany
Place Died: New York, NY, USA
Home Country/ies: Germany
Subject Area(s): Baroque, decorative art (art genre), interior design, Italian (culture or style), Italian Renaissance-Baroque styles, and Renaissance
Interior designer and Italian Renaissance and Baroque specialist; wife of art historian Rudolf Wittkower. Holzmann met her future husband in Berlin in 1918 when she was just sixteen and he seventeen, but because of their young ages waited until 1923 to marry. Principally an artist, she established herself as an interior designer in Berlin. The couple, both Jewish, fled Nazi Germany in 1933 for London, where her husband was a British citizen by birthright. She continued her work there as a designer, specializing in apartment interiors and furniture design. Both husband and wife were drawn to neo-Palladian architecture. Margot carved the area out as a specialty. In 1963 and 1964 she co-wrote two works of artistic biography with her husband, Born Under Saturn and The Divine Michelangelo. It is the work she published in collaboration with her husband that is most significant today. Born Under Saturn (1963) and The Divine Michelangelo (1964) were both co-authored projects. She also assisted on the first posthumous edition of her husband’s volume in the Pelican History of Art series, The Art and Architecture of Italy 1600-1750 (1980) as well as smaller works.
and Wittkower, Rudolf. Born under Saturn: The Character and Conduct of Artists. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1963; edited by, and Wittkower, Rudolf. The Divine Michelangelo: the Florentine Academy’s Homage on his Death in 1564. London: Phaidon Publishers, 1964; and Wittkower, Rudolf. Künstler Aussenseiter der Gesellschaft. Berlin, Kohlhmammer, 1965; edited, with Collins, George R. Wittkower, Rudolf. Gothic vs. Classic: Architectural Projects in Seventeenth-century Italy. New York: G. Braziller 1974.
New York Times, July 13, 1995, Section B, p. 12; Jennifer Montagu and Joseph Connors. “Rudolf Wittkower 1901-1971.” Introduction to Art and Architecture in Italy: 1600-1750. 6th edition, volume 1, Painting in Italy. Pelican History of Art. pp. ix.
Interior designer and Italian Renaissance and Baroque specialist; wife of art historian Rudolf Wittkower. Holzmann met her future husband in Berlin in 1918 when she was just sixteen and he seventeen, but because of their