Philosopher and historian of ideas scholar; wrote early social histories of art. Boas was born in Providence, Rhode Island, the fifth of seven children of Herman Boas and Sarah Eisenberg (Boas). He attended Classical High School in Providence, RI, where his early interest in Greek and Latin grew. After graduation, Boas studied art at the Rhode Island School of Design under Henry Hunt Clark (b. 1875) and transferred to study English at Brown University, where he completed his B.A. and M.A. in 1913. He studied under the philosopher Josiah Royce (1855-1916) and received his second M.A.

Painter; founder of the modern practice of art criticism and art historian who helped reassert the primacy of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Dutch/Belgian masters. Fromentin's father, Toussaint Fromentin-Dupeux (d. 1867), was a doctor and amateur painter (trained under Jean-Victor Bertin), and his mother, Jenny Billotte Fromentin-Dupeux, the daughter of a Naval administrator and regional councillor in La Rochelle.

Late-Victorian poet, journalist, and art critic. Meynell, then Thompson, was born into an affluent and well-educated family with a pianist- and amateur painter mother, Christiana Jane Weller (1825–1910), and an independently wealthy Jewish father, Thomas James Thompson (1809–1881). Thompson and her elder sister Elizabeth Thompson (1846-1933), later known as Lady Butler and one of the most acclaimed British painters in the 1870s, were homeschooled by their father.