Full Name: Oldenbourg, Rudolf
Gender: male
Date Born: 1887
Date Died: 1921
Place Born: Munich, Bavaria, Germany
Place Died: Badenweiler, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Home Country/ies: Germany
Subject Area(s): Flemish (culture or style), painting (visual works), and seventeenth century (dates CE)
Career(s): curators
Overview
Museum curator and historian of 17th century Flemish painting. Oldenbourg was the son of the eminent Munich book publisher Rudolf, Ritter von Oldenbourg (1845-1913). The younger Oldenbourg studied in Vienna and Halle, and wrote a dissertation on painter Thomas de Keyser under the direction of Adolph Goldschmidt in 1911. After receiving his degree, he became an assistant at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, which led to a position as a curator of paintings in the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum in Berlin. While working at the Kaiser-Friedrich, Oldenbourg wrote several essays on Rubens and the influence of Italian art on his paintings. Among them was a pioneering survey of 17th-century Flemish painting, Die Flämische Malerei des XVII. A revised edition of Oldenbourg’s writings on Rubens was published posthumously in the series Klassiker der Kunst, completed by Ludwig Burchard.
Selected Bibliography
[dissertation:] Thomas de Keyser’s Tätigkeit als Maler; ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des holländischen Porträts. Leipzig: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1911; Peter Paul Rubens: Sammlung der von Rudolf Oldenbourg veröffentlichten oder zur Veröffentlichung vorbereiteten Abhandlung über den Meister. Wilhelm von Bode, ed. Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1922; and Uhde-Bernays, Hermann. Die Münchner Malerei im neunzehnten Jahrhundert. Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1922; Die Flämische Malerei des XVII. Jahrhunderts. Berlin: G. Reimer, 1918.
Sources
The Dictionary of Art
Contributors: LaNitra Michele Walker