Howard McParlin Davis (September 18, 1914 – September 9, 1994) was a longtime professor of Art History at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

. "His classes in Italian Renaissance painting and on Northern European painting were among the most popular undergraduate courses at Columbia," and thanks to him, " nerations of Columbia College students graduated with an especially deep appreciation of the art of

Giotto Giotto di Bondone (; – January 8, 1337), known mononymously as Giotto ( , ) and Latinised as Giottus, was an Italian painter and architect from Florence during the Late Middle Ages. He worked during the Gothic/Proto-Renaissance period. Giot ...

and of

Jan van Eyck Jan van Eyck ( , ; – July 9, 1441) was a painter active in Bruges who was one of the early innovators of what became known as Early Netherlandish painting, and one of the most significant representatives of Early Northern Renaissance art. Ac ...

." Born in Baltimore, Davis graduated from Princeton in 1936 (double major in French language, French literature). Thanks to a Carnegie Fellowship, he studied at the Institut d'Art et d'Archèologie (Paris) in the summer of 1937. A Belgian-American Educational Foundation Fellowship enabled him to study in Brussels in 1938. In 1939 he earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in art history, again from Princeton. With a Fulbright Senior Research Grant he spent 1950-51 in Italy researching

Gian Lorenzo Bernini Gian Lorenzo (or Gianlorenzo) Bernini (, , ; Italian Giovanni Lorenzo; 7 December 159828 November 1680) was an Italian sculptor and architect. While a major figure in the world of architecture, he was more prominently the leading sculptor of his ...

. Before the end of his graduate studies, he had found employment at the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

in New York, first in medieval art and then in prints. His teaching career began in 1942 at

Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools. It also admi ...

(NY); he moved to Columbia in 1944 and stayed there until he hit its mandatory retirement age of 70. He was chairman of the department of art history and archaeology from 1969 to 1972 and was named Moore Collegiate Professor of Art History in 1980. The product of a more genteel era, Davis disdained the modern focus on publication. Nonetheless, his "Fantasy and Irony in Pieter Bruegel's Prints" (1943), "Gravity in the Paintings of Giotto" (1971), and "Bees on the Tomb of Urban VIII" (1989) provided significant insights. It was as a teacher, rather than a scholar, that he gained his fame, however. He earned awards over the years, notably Columbia's

Mark Van Doren Mark Van Doren (June 13, 1894 – December 10, 1972) was an American poet, writer and critic. He was a scholar and a professor of English at Columbia University for nearly 40 years, where he inspired a generation of influential writers and thin ...

Award in 1968, the Great Teacher Award of the Society of Older Graduates of Columbia in 1970, and the College Art Association of America's award for Distinguished Teaching of Art History in 1984. An accolade of another sort was his portrayal in ''

Charles Kuralt Charles Bishop Kuralt (September 10, 1934 – July 4, 1997) was an American television, newspaper and radio journalist and author. He is most widely known for his long career with CBS, first for his "On the Road" segments on '' The CBS Evenin ...

's America''. Davis died of heart disease just nine days short of his 80th birthday. His only child, Alison McParlin Davis-Murphy, is a writer, photographer, and guitarist living in Los Angeles. In 2020, a gift from an anonymous donor enabled Columbia University to establish an endowed professorship in honor of Davis. The Howard McP. Davis Professorship of Art History "will support a Columbia art historian of European art and architecture in the period from 1300 to 1700."

References

External links

"A Classic Teacher Nears Career's End at Columbia" - ''The New York Times''
October 15, 1984
"Fantasy and Irony in Peter Bruegel's Prints." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, New Series, Vol. 1, No. 10 (June 1943), pp. 291-295
{{DEFAULTSORT:Davis, Howard Mcparlin 1918 births 1994 deaths American art historians Columbia University faculty Hunter College faculty 20th-century American historians American male non-fiction writers 20th-century American male writers