Scottish author and art theorist and connoisseur.  Anstruther-Thomson was born into an aristocratic family; her father was John Anstruther-Thomson of Charleton and Carntyne (1818-1904), and mother Caroline Maria Agnes Robina Hamilton-Gray (Anstruher-Thomson) (1833-?). Independently wealthy, she pursued a career first as an artist studying at the Slade School of Art and that in Paris under Carolus Duran until 1889.

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.

Professor of aesthetics and art history (1923-1946) at Nijmegen University. Brom was named after his father, Gerard Bartholomeus Brom, a blacksmith of liturgical objects, who had died before Brom jr. was born. His elder brother, Jan Hendrik, took over his father's firm. Brom, who was raised in a Catholic family, attended the Gymnasium of the Bisschoppelijk College in Roermond. After graduation he began medical studies in 1899 at Utrecht University, but a year later switched to Dutch language and literature.

Historian and important esthetician for art history. Croce was born to Pasquale Croce and Luisa Siparia, a wealthy land-owning couple and raised in a Roman Catholic boarding school. At age sixteen in 1883 he and his family were buried in their home in Ischia during the Casamicciola earthquake of only he and his brother survived. He lived with an uncle in Rome, the politician Silvio Spaventa (1822-1893), who introduced him to art, intellectuals and politics. After briefly attending the University of Rome studying law, he quit college settling in Naples in 1886.

Professor of esthetics at the University of Helsinki; first to teach art history courses in Finland. Estlander taught a course in the history of painting at Helsinki in 1862-1863 academic year. For the 1866-1867 another course on art history in general, and in the 1871-1872 one on the Italian Renaissance. Follow that his art courses focused on historic art theory. His art lectures were based on the texts of the seminal German writers on art Wilhelm Lübke, Franz Kugler and Karl Julius Ferdinand Schnaase.

Museum curator; historian of taste and esthetics. Falke studied classical Philology at Erlangen and Göttingen and worked initially as teacher. He joined the Germanisches Nationalmuseum as curator in Nuremberg in 1855. In 1858 he became of Librarian (archivist) and advisor of the art collection of the Princes of Liechtenstein in Vienna. During his time in Vienna, Falke became interested in the contemporary design movement of useful arts, already flourishing in England.

First chief curator of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels; professor of aesthetics and art history; art critic; writer. At age seventeen, Fierens-Gevaert enrolled at the Brussels Royal Conservatory of Music. In 1890 he won the Premier Prix de Chant. In this year he married Jacqueline Marthe Gevaert, the daughter of the famous musician François Auguste Gevaert (1828-1908). Fierens then joined the Opera of the city of Lille, but he unfortunately damaged his voice, which meant the end of his career as a singer.

Chief Curator of the Royal Museums of Fine Art in Brussels; professor of aesthetics and the history of modern art at Liège University; art critic and poet. Fierens was born in Paris of Belgian parents, the art historian Hippolyte Fierens-Gevaert and Jacqueline Marthe Gevaert. The family moved to Belgium in 1902. Fierens attended high school at the Collège Saint-Michel in Brussels and he studied philosophy and classics in Brussels at the Institut St. Louis, where he graduated as bachelor in 1914.

Artist, art critic and art historian. Gablik was born to Anthony J. Gablik and Geraldine Schwarz (Gablik). She briefly attended Black Mountain College during the summer of 1951 before entering Hunter College (now part of the City University of New York) where she studied with Robert Motherwell. She received her B. A. in 1955. Gablik began as an artist working in college paintings. In 1966 held her first one-woman show in New York. She and the New York Times art critic John Russell wrote the exhibition catalog, Pop Art Redefined in 1969.

Aesthetician, art educational theorist, professor of art history at Lafayette College, Easton, PA,1947-1977. Gaertner was the son of Carl Eugen Gaertner (1884-1937) and Fanny Hurwitz (Gaertner). Though his mother was Jewish, he was raised a Christian. Gaertner received his doctorate in theology from the University in Heidelberg in 1936, writing a dissertation on Johann Gottfried Herder's position on Christian art. His intent was to become a Christian minister. Despite being half Jewish, Gaertner was eligible for conscription in the German army.

Scholar of art patronage and aesthetic taste; Oxford University professor. Haskell's father was the dance writer Arnold Haskell. Haskell attended Eton and then King's College, Cambridge, where he took a degree in History, studying under Nikolaus Bernard Leon Pevsner. Graduating in 1952 (receiving a "first" in History), he returned to his alma mater (1954) to teach. From 1962-1967 he was also the Librarian of Fine Arts Faculty.

Esthetician and early art historian; major exponent of Hegel's philosophy in art. Hotho studied law at the Universities of Jura and Breslau between 1820-22 before settling on philosophy at Berlin. He wrote his doctorate in 1826 on Descartes, receiving his habilitation in esthetics and art history a year later with a work on Heraklitus. He was made a professor in Berlin in 1829. Already it is clear that his interests lay in art, as his examination covered Dutch and German paintings of the 15^th century.

Philosopher, journalist, and scholar of African-American art. Alain Locke was born to an African-American couple, Pliny and Mary Hawkins Locke in Philadelphia, Locke was raised in Philadelphia, a popular center for the abolitionists during the Civil War. After his father died in 1891, Locke’s mother focused on developing her son’s intellectual and cultural curiosity. In 1907, Locke received his B.A. in philosophy and literature at Harvard College.

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.

Writer on art and literature. Paget's mother, Matilda Paget (1815-1896), came from a West-Indies fortune. Paget's father, Henry Ferguson Paget (1820-1894), was reputedly the son of a French émigré noble, who met Matilda (then Matilda Adams), a widow, when he was a tutor for her son Eugene in Paris. Violet was their only child together. Because of her family's frequent moves in Europe, Violet learned continental languages fluently. Her half-brother, now Oxford educated and in the Foreign Office in Paris, continued to tutor her French and writing skills.

Professor of esthetics, art history and modern languages at Amsterdam University, 1877-1895. His parents were adherents of the Protestant Réveil Movement of the Jewish convert Isaac Da Costa (1798-1869). Under the influence of this ethical ideology Pierson began his theology study at Utrecht University in 1849. In 1854 he obtained his doctoral degree with his dissertation, Disquisitio historico-dogmatica de Realismo et Nominalismo. The next ten years he served in Louvain and subsequently in Rotterdam as a minister.

Professor of general art history at the Amsterdam Rijksacademie van Beeldende Kunsten (1890-1917); first professor extraordinarius (1896-1916) and first ordinarius professor of aesthetics and art history at Amsterdam University (1916-1926). Six was born to an old patrician family and was a descendant of the famous art collector and Amsterdam mayor Jan Six (1618-1700). His father, Jhr. Jan Pieter Six (1824-1899), was a numismatist. The younger Six attended the Gymnasium in Amsterdam and studied classics at Amsterdam University between 1875 and 1883.

Director of the Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden, 1953-1967; professor of art history and esthetics at the Rijksacademie voor Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam, 1967-1982. Van Wessem grew up in the province of Limburg, in the southern part of the Netherlands. During World War II, after graduation from Gymnasium (high school), Van Wessem went into hiding. Following the liberation of the southern part of the country, in September 1944, he became liaison-officer in the Guards Armored Division of the British Army.