Merchant; art critic, poet; professor at the Amsterdam Rijksacademie, 1876-1889; central figure in the emancipation process of the Roman Catholics of the Netherlands. Alberdingk Thijm received no higher education. He initially went into business. In 1842 he began writing art criticism for De Spectator. He married Wilhelmina Anna Sophia Kerst in 1846. In 1852 he founded the Volks-almanak voor Nederlandse katholieken (The People's Almanac for Dutch Catholics), and in 1855 the Catholic periodical Dietsche Warande.

Scholar of Dutch baroque art; professor of History of Art, UC Berkeley,1962-1994; exponent of the "new art history." Born Svetlana Leontief, she graduated from Radcliffe College with a B.A. in 1957. She married the following year, assuming her husband's surname of Alpers. She continued graduate work in art history at Harvard University publishing an article on Vasari's verbal descriptions of art (ekphrasis) in 1960 in the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, which announced her innovative approach to art history.

Director of the Koninklijk Museum (later Rijksmuseum), Amsterdam. He advised the Baltimore collector Robert Gilmor, Jr. on purchases.

British historian of English and Dutch Art. Armstrong was the son of Walter Armstrong, a merchant, and his wife, Mary Graham (Armstrong). He was initially educated at the Harrow School, later graduating from Exeter College, Oxford. Armstrong married Jane Emily Rose Ferard of Ascot Place in 1873. In 1880, Armstrong distinguished himself as an art critic, writing for various papers, like Pall Mall Gazette, St. James's Gazette, Manchester Guardian, and The Examiner.

Rembrandt scholar and professor of art history, Freiburg. The son of a Mecklenburg judge, Bauch served as cadet and a second lieutenant in the imperial navy, 1916-18. After a 1919-21 volontariat at the Schweriner Museum in Rostock, Germany, under Albert Brinckmann, Bauch studied art history at the universities in Berlin, under Adolph Goldschmidt and Munich, under Heinrich Wölfflin.

Rembrandt scholar and director of the Albertina 1947-61. Benesch's father was the art collector Heinrich Benesch. Among the elder Benesch's friends was the Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele. A double portrait of father and son, painted by Schiele in 1913, is owned by the Wolfgang-Gurlitt-Museum in Linz, Austria. The younger Benesch studied art history at the University of Vienna and a semester in Stockholm under Johnny Roosval. Around 1919 he assisted Frederick Antal in organizing the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest.

Published study of Dutch still life.

Art patronage scholar of XVIII c. Holland.

Director General of all Prussian museums 1906-1920 and major influence on German art history in the early twentieth century; scholar of Dutch 17th-century painting and Italian Renaissance painting and sculpture. Bode hailed from an illustrious German family. His grandfather, Wilhelm Julius Bode (1779-1854), had been the director of city of Braunschweig, Germany. His father, Wilhelm Bode (1812-1883) was a judge and administrator for the Duke of Braunschweig.

Director of the Amsterdam Rijksprentenkabinet; connoisseur of drawings and prints. Boon studied art history at Amsterdam University, with professor Ferrand Whaley Hudig (1883-1937), and at the Sorbonne in Paris. He finished his studies at the école du Louvre with a thesis on the relationship between the School of Cologne and Netherlandish painting in the second half of the fifteenth century, Les rapports entre l'école de Cologne et la peinture néerlandaise dans la deuxième moitié du quinzième siècle.

The van Gogh scholar J.-B. de la Faille studied under Bremmer. Independent art educator and adviser; van Gogh and Dutch artists scholar. Bremmer received his primary education at a boarding school in Roermond and attended high school in Leiden, where his parents owned a hotel (Hotel Rijnland). He also took classes with the painter D. L. Kooreman. In 1889 he left school and enrolled at the Teeken- en Schilderacademie (Academy for Drawing and Painting) in The Hague. He quit after one year and together with some friends he rented a studio in Leiden.

Professor of Art History at the University of Amsterdam (1961-1985); lead art historian for the Rembrandt Research Project (RRP) catalogue raisonné, part of the Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project. Bruyn studied art history at Utrecht University. In 1948, before he finished his study, he was involved in cataloging old paintings in the Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller. In 1950 he was appointed assistant at the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, where he helped prepare the 1952 exhibition Drie eeuwen portret in Nederland (Three centuries of portraiture in the Netherlands).

First author of a Van Gogh catalogue raisonné. De la Faille studied law at Utrecht University and participated in dramatic productions. He earned his doctor's degree in 1913. Instead of working as a lawyer, however, he focused on the contemporary art scene and ethnographic topics, writing for various newspapers and magazines.He also wrote fiction. After reading a 1917 article "Over de literatuur over Van Gogh" (On the literature concerning Van Gogh) by the conservator Herman F. E.

historian of Dutch art

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.

Scholar of Netherlandish prints. The professor of Art History at Utrecht University, J. G. van Gelder, described Geisberg's work as one of the praiseworthy graphic studies of Netherlandish of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Rembrandt scholar and authority on Netherlandish art, Director, Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie and professor of art history at Groning University. Gerson's father was a medical doctor in Berlin. His mother, Gertrud Lilienfeld (d. 1943), was the sister of art historian Karl Lilienfeld. After initially studying the history of art in Vienna and Berlin, Gerson settled in The Hague in 1928 as an assistant to Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, who his uncle had also assisted.

Frans Hals authority and historian of picture frames. Grimm wrote much of his book in the Ashmolean museum, Oxford, having studied the frames collection of Karl Theodore Parker.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder authority; Deputy Director, Manchester City Art Gallery, 1961-1966; Professor of Art History, Washington University, Seattle, 1966-1972. Grossmann was the son of Maximilian Grossmann, a Surgeon-General in the Austro-Hungarian Army. He attended the Staatsgymnasium of the third district (III Bezirk) in Vienna. As a student at the Wiener Handelsakademie he met Antoine Seilern who would prove instrumental in his later career.

Connoisseur; specialist in Dutch seventeenth-century painting and iconography; Director of the Netherlands Institute for Art History and the Mauritshuis in The Hague. Gudlaugsson was born in Skagen as the son of the Icelandic poet Jonas Gudlaugsson (1887-1916). His mother, Maria Ingenohl, was a Dutch woman raised in Germany. After the death of her husband, she moved with Gudlaugsson, her only child, to Berlin. Gudlaugsson studied art history in Berlin and in Munich. His teachers in Berlin included Oskar Fischel and Wilhelm Pinder.

Rembrandt specialist; director Amsterdam Historical Museum. Haak was the son of Jurrian Haak and Henrietta van Eek. He attended the Amsterdam Montessori Lyceum between 1938 and 1944. In 1950 he married Annette van Heek. Between 1950 and 1954, he served as assistant to the art dealer D. A. Hoogendijk in Amsterdam. In 1954 Haak began his museum career as assistant in the department of paintings at the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum. In 1963, he obtained the position of chief curator at the Amsterdam Historical Museum, of which he was appointed director in 1975.

Art critic; museum director (1947-1963); professor of art history (1952-1968); Van Gogh expert. Hammacher grew up in Middelburg as a sensitive child with strong affinities for music, literature, and painting. He played the violin, painted and drew. In 1917, after graduating from high school, he went to Utrecht to study law, with a view to becoming an attorney, like his uncle and grandfather. One year later, however, he changed his mind and started writing on literature and art.

His book, The Dutch School of Painting (1881) was one of the early required texts to be listed in the course catalog for the art history classes of Princeton University.

Dutch baroque scholar; art museum director; student of Panofsky. Heckscher was raised in Hamburg, where he attended the University of Hamburg, studying under Erwin Panofsky. Heckscher described his student years in Hamburg as part of a group of deeply dedicated students whose ranks included Horst W. Janson, Walter W. Horn, Ursula Hoff, and Lotte Brand Foerster.

Rubens and Rembrandt scholar; professor, Barnard College. Held's father was Adolf Held (1873-1919), employed as a merchant; his mother was Nannette Seligmann (1872-1926). He attended realprogymnasium in Mosbach and Gymnasium Heidelberg in that city, receiving his abitur in 1923. He entered the University of Heidelberg in 1923, studying also at Wilhelm Humbolt University, Berlin, 1923-24, 1927-28 and Vienna, 1925-26, 1929.