Sir Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich (; ; 30 March 1909 – 3 November 2001) was an Austrian-born
art historian who, after settling in
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...
in 1936, became a
naturalised British citizen in 1947 and spent most of his working life in the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
.
Gombrich was the author of many works of cultural history and art history, most notably ''
The Story of Art'', a book widely regarded as one of the most accessible introductions to the
visual arts
The visual arts are Art#Forms, genres, media, and styles, art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics (art), ceramics, photography, video, filmmaking, design, crafts and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as ...
, and ''
Art and Illusion
''Art and Illusion, A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation'', is a 1960 book of art theory and history by Ernst Gombrich, derived from the 1956 A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts. The book had a wide impact in art history, but ...
'',
[Shone, Richard and Stonard, John-Paul, eds.. ''The Books That Shaped Art History: From Gombrich and Greenberg to Alpers and Krauss'', chapter 9. London: Thames & Hudson, 2013.] a major work in the psychology of perception that influenced thinkers as diverse as
Carlo Ginzburg
Carlo Ginzburg (; born April 15, 1939) is an Italian historian and proponent of the field of microhistory. He is best known for ''Il formaggio e i vermi'' (1976, English title: '' The Cheese and the Worms''), which examined the beliefs of an It ...
,
Nelson Goodman
Henry Nelson Goodman (7 August 1906 – 25 November 1998) was an American philosopher, known for his work on counterfactuals, mereology, the problem of induction, irrealism, and aesthetics.
Life and career
Goodman was born in Somerville, Ma ...
,
Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco (5 January 1932 – 19 February 2016) was an Italian medievalist, philosopher, semiotician, novelist, cultural critic, and political and social commentator. In English, he is best known for his popular 1980 novel '' The Name of th ...
, and
Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Samuel Kuhn (; July 18, 1922 – June 17, 1996) was an American philosopher of science whose 1962 book ''The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'' was influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term '' paradig ...
.
Biography
The son of Karl Gombrich and Leonie Hock, Gombrich was born in Vienna,
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire,, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of ...
, into an assimilated bourgeois family of
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
origin who were part of a sophisticated social and musical milieu. His father was a lawyer and former classmate of
Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Hugo Laurenz August Hofmann von Hofmannsthal (; 1 February 1874 – 15 July 1929) was an Austrian novelist, librettist, poet, dramatist, narrator, and essayist.
Early life
Hofmannsthal was born in Landstraße, Vienna, the son of an upper-cla ...
and his mother was a distinguished pianist who graduated from the
Vienna Conservatoire with the School's Medal of Distinction.
At the Conservatoire she was a pupil of, amongst others,
Anton Bruckner. However, rather than follow a career as a concert pianist (which would have been difficult to combine with her family life in this period) she became an assistant of
Theodor Leschetizky. She also knew
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (, ; ; 13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian-American composer, music theorist, teacher, writer, and painter. He is widely considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was as ...
,
Gustav Mahler,
Hugo Wolf
Hugo Philipp Jacob Wolf (13 March 1860 – 22 February 1903) was an Austrian composer of Slovene origin, particularly noted for his art songs, or Lieder. He brought to this form a concentrated expressive intensity which was unique in late R ...
and
Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms (; 7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer, pianist, and conductor of the mid- Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, he spent much of his professional life in Vienna. He is sometimes grouped wit ...
.
[ Eribon, D. ''A Lifelong Interest'' London: Thames & Hudson; ]
Rudolf Serkin was a close family friend.
Adolf Busch and members of the Busch Quartet regularly met and played in the family home. Throughout his life Gombrich maintained a deep love and knowledge of classical music. He was a competent cellist and in later life at home in London regularly played the chamber music of Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven and others with his wife and his elder sister Dea Forsdyke, a concert violinist.
Gombrich was educated at the
Theresianum and at
Vienna University, where he studied art history under
Hans Tietze, ,
Julius von Schlosser and
Josef Strzygowski, completing a PhD thesis on the Mannerist architecture of
Giulio Romano
Giulio Romano (, ; – 1 November 1546), is the acquired name of Giulio Pippi, who was an Italian painter and architect. He was a pupil of Raphael, and his stylistic deviations from High Renaissance classicism help define the sixteenth-ce ...
, supervised by Von Schlosser. Specialised in caricature, he was invited to help
Ernst Kris
Ernst Kris (April 26, 1900 – February 27, 1957) was an Austrian psychoanalyst and art historian.
Life
Kris was born in 1900 to Leopold Kris, a lawyer, and Rosa Schick in Vienna, Austria-Hungary.
Kris not only practiced as a psychoanalyst, he ...
, who was then keeper of decorative arts at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, on his graduating in 1933.
In 1936, he married Ilse Heller (1910–2006), a pupil of his mother, and herself an accomplished pianist. Their only child, the Indologist
Richard Gombrich
Richard Francis Gombrich (; born 17 July 1937) is a British Indologist and scholar of Sanskrit, Pāli, and Buddhist studies. He was the Boden Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Oxford from 1976 to 2004. He is currently Founder-Presi ...
, was born in 1937. They had two grandchildren: the educationalist
Carl Gombrich, (b. 1965) and Leonie Gombrich (b. 1966), who is his literary executor.
After publishing his first book ''
A Little History of the World'' in German in 1936, written for children and adolescents, and seeing it become a hit only to be banned by the Nazis for pacifism, he fled to Britain in 1936 to take up a post as a research assistant at the
Warburg Institute
The Warburg Institute is a research institution associated with the University of London in central London, England. A member of the School of Advanced Study, its focus is the study of cultural history and the role of images in culture – cros ...
,
University of London
The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degre ...
.
During World War II, Gombrich worked for the
BBC World Service
The BBC World Service is an international broadcasting, international broadcaster owned and operated by the BBC, with funding from the Government of the United Kingdom, British Government through the Foreign Secretary, Foreign Secretary's o ...
, monitoring German radio broadcasts. When in 1945 an upcoming announcement was prefaced by the Adagio of
Bruckner's
seventh symphony, written for
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most o ...
's death, Gombrich guessed correctly that
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
was dead and promptly broke the news to
Churchill.
Gombrich returned to the Warburg Institute in November 1945, where he became Senior Research Fellow (1946), Lecturer (1948), Reader (1954), and eventually Professor of the History of the Classical Tradition and director of the institute (1959–76). He was elected a Fellow of the
British Academy
The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences.
It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the same year. It is now a fellowship of more than 1,000 leading scholars span ...
in 1960, made
CBE in 1966,
knight
A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood finds origins in the G ...
ed in 1972, and appointed a member of the
Order of Merit
The Order of Merit (french: link=no, Ordre du Mérite) is an order of merit for the Commonwealth realms, recognising distinguished service in the armed forces, science, art, literature, or for the promotion of culture. Established in 1902 by ...
in 1988. He continued his work at the University of London until close to his death in 2001. He was the recipient of numerous additional honours, including
Goethe Prize 1994 and
Balzan Prize
The International Balzan Prize Foundation awards four annual monetary prizes to people or organizations who have made outstanding achievements in the fields of humanities, natural sciences, culture, as well as for endeavours for peace and the br ...
in 1985 for History of Western Art.
Gombrich was close to a number of Austrian ''
émigré
An ''émigré'' () is a person who has emigrated, often with a connotation of political or social self- exile. The word is the past participle of the French ''émigrer'', "to emigrate".
French Huguenots
Many French Huguenots fled France follow ...
s'' who fled to the West prior to the
Anschluss
The (, or , ), also known as the (, en, Annexation of Austria), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the Nazi Germany, German Reich on 13 March 1938.
The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a "Ger ...
, among them
Karl Popper (to whom he was especially close),
Friedrich Hayek
Friedrich August von Hayek ( , ; 8 May 189923 March 1992), often referred to by his initials F. A. Hayek, was an Austrian–British economist, legal theorist and philosopher who is best known for his defense of classical liberalism. Hayek ...
and
Max Perutz
Max Ferdinand Perutz (19 May 1914 – 6 February 2002) was an Austrian-born British molecular biologist, who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with John Kendrew, for their studies of the structures of haemoglobin and myoglobin. He ...
. He was instrumental in bringing to publication Popper's magnum opus ''
The Open Society and Its Enemies
''The Open Society and Its Enemies'' is a work on political philosophy by the philosopher Karl Popper, in which the author presents a "defence of the open society against its enemies", and offers a critique of theories of teleological historici ...
''. Each had known the other only fleetingly in Vienna, as Gombrich's father served his law apprenticeship with Popper's father. They became lifelong friends in exile.
Work
Gombrich remarked that he had two very different publics: amongst scholars he was known particularly for his work on the
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass id ...
and the psychology of perception, but also his thoughts on cultural history and tradition; to a wider, non-specialist audience he was known for the accessibility and immediacy of his writing and his ability to present scholarly work in a clear and unfussy manner.
Gombrich's first book, and the only one he did not write in English, was ''Eine kurze Weltgeschichte für junge Leser'' ("A short history of the world for young readers"), published in Germany in 1936. It was very popular and translated into several languages, but was not available in English until 2005, when a translation of a revised edition was published as ''
A Little History of the World''. He did most of this translation and revision himself, and it was completed by his long-time assistant and secretary Caroline Mustill and his granddaughter Leonie Gombrich after his death.
''
The Story of Art'', first published in 1950 and currently in its 16th edition, is widely regarded as one of the most accessible introductions to the history of
visual arts
The visual arts are Art#Forms, genres, media, and styles, art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics (art), ceramics, photography, video, filmmaking, design, crafts and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as ...
. Originally intended for adolescent readers, it has sold millions of copies and been translated into more than 30 languages.
Other major publications include ''Art and Illusion'' (1960), regarded by critics to be his most influential and far-reaching work, and the essays gathered in ''Meditations on a Hobby Horse'' (1963) and ''The Image and the Eye'' (1981). Other important books are ''Aby Warburg: An Intellectual Biography'' (1970), ''The Sense of Order'' (1979) and ''The Preference for the Primitive'' (posthumously in 2002). The complete list of his publications, ''E. H. Gombrich: A Bibliography'', was published by Joseph Burney Trapp in 2000.
Thought
Psychology of perception
When Gombrich arrived in England in 1936, the discipline of art history was largely centred around
connoisseur
A connoisseur (French traditional, pre-1835, spelling of , from Middle-French , then meaning 'to be acquainted with' or 'to know somebody/something') is a person who has a great deal of knowledge about the fine arts; who is a keen appreciator o ...
ship. Gombrich, however, had been brought up in the Viennese culture of ''
Bildung
''Bildung'' (, "education", "formation", etc.) refers to the German tradition of self-cultivation (as related to the German for: creation, image, shape), wherein philosophy and education are linked in a manner that refers to a process of both pe ...
''
and was concerned with wider issues of cultural tradition and the relationship between science and art. This latter breadth of interest can be seen both in his working relationship with the Austrian psychoanalyst and art historian,
Ernst Kris
Ernst Kris (April 26, 1900 – February 27, 1957) was an Austrian psychoanalyst and art historian.
Life
Kris was born in 1900 to Leopold Kris, a lawyer, and Rosa Schick in Vienna, Austria-Hungary.
Kris not only practiced as a psychoanalyst, he ...
, concerning the art of
caricature
A caricature is a rendered image showing the features of its subject in a simplified or exaggerated way through sketching, pencil strokes, or other artistic drawings (compare to: cartoon). Caricatures can be either insulting or complimentary, a ...
and his later books, ''The Sense of Order'' (1979) (in which information theory is discussed in its relation to patterns and ornaments in art) and the classic ''Art and Illusion'' (1960).
It was in ''Art and Illusion'' that he introduced the ideas of 'schemata', 'making and matching', 'correction' and 'trial and error' influenced by '
conjecture and refutation', in Popper's philosophy of science. In Gombrich's view, the artist compares what he has drawn or painted with what he is trying to draw/paint, and by a 'feedback loop' gradually corrects the drawing/painting to look more like what he is seeing. The process does not start from scratch, however. Each artist inherits '"schemata" that designate reality by force of convention'. These schemata, plus the techniques and works of previous masters, are the starting points from which the artist begins her own process of
trial and error
Trial and error is a fundamental method of problem-solving characterized by repeated, varied attempts which are continued until success, or until the practicer stops trying.
According to W.H. Thorpe, the term was devised by C. Lloyd Morgan ( ...
.
:"This
opperian description of conjecture and refutation, trial and erroris eminently applicable to the story of visual discoveries in art. Our formula of schema and correction, in fact, illustrates this very procedure. You must have a starting point, a standard of comparison, to begin that process of making and matching and remaking which finally becomes embodied in the finished image. The artist cannot start from scratch, but he can criticise his forerunners"
The philosophical conceptions developed by Popper for a philosophy of science meshed well with Gombrich's ideas for a more robust explanation of the history of art. Gombrich had written his first major work ''The Story of Art'' in 1950, ten years before ''Art and Illusion''. The earlier book has been described as viewing the history of art as a narrative moving 'from what ancient artists "knew" to what later artists "saw"'. And as Gombrich was always more concerned with the individual rather than mass movements (the famous first line of ''The Story of Art'' is 'There really is no such thing as Art. There are only artists'), he saw the use of scientific and psychological explanations as key to understanding how these individual artists 'saw', and how they built upon the traditions they had inherited and of which they were a part. With the dialectics of making and matching, schema and correction, Gombrich sought to ground artistic development on more universal truths, closer to those of science, than on what he regarded as fashionable or vacuous terms such as '
zeitgeist
In 18th- and 19th-century German philosophy, a ''Zeitgeist'' () ("spirit of the age") is an invisible agent, force or Daemon dominating the characteristics of a given epoch in world history.
Now, the term is usually associated with Georg W. F. ...
' and other 'abstractions'.
Renaissance studies
Gombrich's contribution to the study of
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass id ...
art began with his doctoral dissertation on
mannerism. In this he argues that the work of
Giulio Romano
Giulio Romano (, ; – 1 November 1546), is the acquired name of Giulio Pippi, who was an Italian painter and architect. He was a pupil of Raphael, and his stylistic deviations from High Renaissance classicism help define the sixteenth-ce ...
, at the
Palazzo del Tè
or is a palace in the suburbs of Mantua, Italy. It is a fine example of the mannerist style of architecture, and the acknowledged masterpiece of Giulio Romano. Although formed in Italian, the usual name in English of Palazzo del Te is not that ...
, was not the work of a decadent Renaissance artist but rather showed how the painter responded to the demands of a patron 'eager for fashionable novelty'.
The four-volume series ''Studies in the Art of the Renaissance'' (1966) comprises the volumes ''Norm and Form''; ''Symbolic Images''; ''The Heritage of Apelles''; and ''New Light on Old Masters'', and made a major contribution to the study of
symbol
A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise very different conc ...
ism in the work of this period.
Gombrich was a great admirer of
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 14522 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, Drawing, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially re ...
and wrote extensively on him, both in these volumes and elsewhere.
Influence
Gombrich has been called 'the best known art historian in Britain, perhaps in the world' and also 'one of the most influential scholars and thinkers of the 20th century'.
Criticism
Gombrich was sensitive to the criticism that he did not like modern art and was obliged to defend his position on occasion.
He has also been criticised for taking what is now viewed as a
eurocentric
Eurocentrism (also Eurocentricity or Western-centrism)
is a worldview that is centered on Western civilization or a biased view that favors it over non-Western civilizations. The exact scope of Eurocentrism varies from the entire Western wo ...
—not to say neo-colonialist—view of art, and for not including women artists in much of his writing on
Western art. His answer to the latter was that he was writing a history of art as it was, and that women artists did not feature widely in the West before the 20th century. He admired 20th-century female artists such as
Bridget Riley
Bridget Louise Riley (born 24 April 1931) is an English painter known for her op art paintings. She lives and works in London, Cornwall and the Vaucluse in France.
Early life and education
Riley was born on 24 April 1931 in Norwood, London ...
, whose work was included in a revised edition of ''The Story of Art''.
While several works of Gombrich (especially ''Art and Illusion'' in 1960) had enormous impact on art history and other fields,
his categorical attacks on
historism have been accused (by
Carlo Ginzburg
Carlo Ginzburg (; born April 15, 1939) is an Italian historian and proponent of the field of microhistory. He is best known for ''Il formaggio e i vermi'' (1976, English title: '' The Cheese and the Worms''), which examined the beliefs of an It ...
) of leading to "barren" scholarship; many of his methodological arguments have been superseded by the work of art historians like
Svetlana Alpers and
Michael Baxandall.
Honours and awards
*
Master-Mind Lecture of the British Academy (1957)
* Elected to the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, ...
(1964)
* Commander of the
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations,
and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...
(1966)
* Elected to the
American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communi ...
(1968)
*
Knight Bachelor
The title of Knight Bachelor is the basic rank granted to a man who has been knighted by the monarch but not inducted as a member of one of the organised orders of chivalry; it is a part of the British honours system. Knights Bachelor are t ...
(1972)
*
Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, 1st class
The Austrian Decoration for Science and Art (german: Österreichisches Ehrenzeichen für Wissenschaft und Kunst) is a state decoration of the Republic of Austria and forms part of the Austrian national honours system.
History
The "Austrian ...
(1975)
*
Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts (1977)
*
Order of Merit
The Order of Merit (french: link=no, Ordre du Mérite) is an order of merit for the Commonwealth realms, recognising distinguished service in the armed forces, science, art, literature, or for the promotion of culture. Established in 1902 by ...
(1988)
*
Balzan Prize
The International Balzan Prize Foundation awards four annual monetary prizes to people or organizations who have made outstanding achievements in the fields of humanities, natural sciences, culture, as well as for endeavours for peace and the br ...
for History of Art of the West (1985)
*
Goethe Prize (1994)
* City of Vienna Prize for Humanities (1986)
*
Ludwig Wittgenstein Prize of the Austrian Science Foundation (1988)
*
Honorary doctorate
An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or '' ad ho ...
from the
University of Vienna
The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich h ...
(1999)
*
Leverhulme Medal of the
British Academy
The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences.
It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the same year. It is now a fellowship of more than 1,000 leading scholars span ...
(2002)
* In the
Favoriten (10th District) of Vienna, the Gombrichgasse was named for him in 2009.
Selected publications
* ''The Preference for the Primitive. Episodes in the History of Western Taste and Art.'' London: Phaidon 2002
* ''The Uses of Images. Studies in the Social Function of Art and Visual Communication.'' London: Phaidon 1999
* ''Topics of Our Time. Twentieth-Century Issues in Learning and in Art.'' London: Phaidon 1991
* ''Reflections on the History of Art. Views and Reviews.'' Oxford: Phaidon 1987
* ''Tributes. Interpreters of our Cultural Tradition.'' Oxford: Phaidon 1984
* ''Ideals & Idols. Essays on Values in History and Art.'' Oxford: Phaidon 1979
* ''The Sense of Order. a Study in the Psychology of Decorative Art.'' Oxford: Phaidon 1979
* ''Aby Warburg, an Intellectual Biography.'' London: The Warburg Institute 1970
* ''The Image and the Eye: Further Studies in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation.'' Oxford: Phaidon 1982,
* ''Studies in the Art of the Renaissance.'' London: Phaidon 1967–1986 (also published as: ''Gombrich on the Renaissance.'')
** ''1: Norm and Form.'' 1967
** ''2: Symbolic Images.'' 1972
** ''3: The Heritage of Apelles.'' 1976
** ''4: New Light on Old Masters.'' 1986
* ''Meditations on a Hobbyhorse and other Essays on the Theory of Art.'' London: Phaidon 1963
* ''
Art and Illusion. A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation'' London: Phaidon 1960
* ''
The Story of Art.'' London: Phaidon 1950
* ''Weltgeschichte von der Urzeit bis zur Gegenwart.'' Wenen: s.n. 1935 (also published as: ''Eine kurze Weltgeschichte für junge Leser. Von der Urzeit bis zur Gegenwart.'') English translation: ''
A Little History of the World.''
References
Further reading
* Richmond, Sheldon. ''Aesthetic Criteria: Gombrich and the Philosophies of Science of Popper and Polanyi''. Amsterdam and Atlanta, Georgia: Rodopi, 1994. 152 pp. .
* Woodfield, Richard. ''Gombrich on Art and Psychology.'' Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1996. 271 pp. .
* Trapp, J. B. ''E. H. Gombrich: A Bibliography.'' London, Phaidon 2000.
* Gombrich, E. H. J. & Eribon, D. ''Conversations on Art and Science.'' New York: Abrams 1993 (also published as: ''A Lifelong Interest''.)
* Onians J. (ed.). ''Sight & Insight. Essays in honour of E. H. Gombrich.'' London: Phaidon 1994
* McGrath, Elizabeth. "E. H. Gombrich", ''
The Burlington Magazine
''The Burlington Magazine'' is a monthly publication that covers the fine and decorative arts of all periods. Established in 1903, it is the longest running art journal in the English language. It has been published by a charitable organisation sin ...
,'' 144 (2002), 111–112
*
Carlo Ginzburg
Carlo Ginzburg (; born April 15, 1939) is an Italian historian and proponent of the field of microhistory. He is best known for ''Il formaggio e i vermi'' (1976, English title: '' The Cheese and the Worms''), which examined the beliefs of an It ...
, "From Aby Warburg to E. H. Gombrich: A Problem of Method", ''Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method'', John and Anne C. Tedeschi, trans, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986, 17–59
*Ginzburg, Carlo, Safran, Yehuda, Sherer Daniel. "An Interview with Carlo Ginzburg, by Yehuda Safran and Daniel Sherer." Potlatch 5 (2022), special issue on Carlo Ginzburg. Extensive discussion of Gombrich.
External links
Gombrich archiveDictionary of Art Historians: Gombrich, E(rnst) H(ans Josef), Sir
BBC Radio 4 interview about ''A Little History of the World''"Archive on 4: the Story of E. H. Gombrich", BBC radio documentary by granddaughter and literary executor Leonie Gombrich (2018).*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gombrich, Ernst
1909 births
2001 deaths
German art historians
British art historians
Fellows of the British Academy
Jewish emigrants from Austria to the United Kingdom after the Anschluss
Austrian people of Jewish descent
British people of Austrian-Jewish descent
Writers from Vienna
Directors of the Warburg Institute
Academics of the Warburg Institute
Commanders of the Order of the British Empire
Members of the Order of Merit
Recipients of the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, 1st class
Knights Bachelor
Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class)
People associated with University College London
Critical rationalists
German male non-fiction writers
Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Members of the American Philosophical Society
World historians