John Rewald (May 12, 1912 – February 2, 1994) was an American academic, author and
art historian
Art history is the study of aesthetic objects and visual expression in historical and stylistic context. Traditionally, the discipline of art history emphasized painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, ceramics and decorative arts; yet today ...
. He was known as a scholar of
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open Composition (visual arts), composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating ...
,
Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism (also spelled Postimpressionism) was a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction ag ...
,
Cézanne,
Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (; 25 February 1841 – 3 December 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Re ...
,
Pissarro
Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro ( , ; 10 July 1830 – 13 November 1903) was a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas (now in the US Virgin Islands, but then in the Danish West Indies). H ...
,
Seurat
Georges Pierre Seurat ( , , ; 2 December 1859 – 29 March 1891) was a French post-Impressionist artist. He devised the painting techniques known as chromoluminarism and pointillism and used conté crayon for drawings on paper with a rough su ...
, and other French painters of the late 19th century. He was recognized as a foremost authority on late 19th-century art. His ''History of Impressionism'' is a standard work.
Biography
He was born Gustav Rewald at Berlin, of a middle-class, professional family. Rewald came from a Jewish background. He completed his ''Abitur'' in Hamburg, and studied thereafter at several German universities, going to the
Sorbonne
Sorbonne may refer to:
* Sorbonne (building), historic building in Paris, which housed the University of Paris and is now shared among multiple universities.
*the University of Paris (c. 1150 – 1970)
*one of its components or linked institution, ...
in Paris in 1932. At the Sorbonne he wrote his dissertation on the friendship of
Zola Zola may refer to:
People
* Zola (name), a list of people with either the surname or given name
* Zola (musician) (born 1977), South African entertainer
* Zola (rapper), French rapper
* Émile Zola, a major nineteenth-century French writer
Plac ...
and
Cézanne, having to persuade the academic authorities on this because Cézanne (died 1906) was considered too recent a figure.
When France declared war on Germany in 1939, he was interned as an enemy alien. He emigrated to the United States in 1941 and
Alfred Barr
Alfred Hamilton Barr Jr. (January 28, 1902 – August 15, 1981) was an American art historian and the first director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. From that position, he was one of the most influential forces in the development of ...
, director of the
New York Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of th ...
, was his sponsor. From 1943 on, he consulted for the Museum of Modern Art, organizing exhibitions for it and other museums and researching his
magnum opus
A masterpiece, ''magnum opus'' (), or ''chef-d’œuvre'' (; ; ) in modern use is a creation that has been given much critical praise, especially one that is considered the greatest work of a person's career or a work of outstanding creativity, ...
, a history of Impressionism. ''The History of Impressionism'' was published in 1946 to universal acclaim.
Rewald was a visiting professor at
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
between 1961 and 1964. He joined the faculty of the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
in 1964 and remained there till 1971. In that year he received an appointment as 'distinguished professor of art history' at the
City University of New York
The City University of New York ( CUNY; , ) is the Public university, public university system of Education in New York City, New York City. It is the largest urban university system in the United States, comprising 25 campuses: eleven Upper divis ...
(CUNY). 1977 saw him organizing the major 'Cézanne: The Late Work' exhibition at MoMA with
William Rubin
William Stanley Rubin (August 11, 1927January 22, 2006) was an American art scholar, a distinguished curator, critic, collector, art historian and teacher of modern art.
From 1968 to 1988, Rubin was a curator at The Museum of Modern Art located ...
. He spent the year 1979 as the A. W. Mellon Lecturer at the
National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of char ...
in Washington and retired from CUNY in 1984.
A devoted Cézanne scholar, he was instrumental in creating a foundation to save Cézanne's studio and turn it into a museum. It is now a permanent museum in Aix-en-Provence, ''L'atelier Cézanne'', and can be viewed as it was at the painter's death. The citizens of Aix, in gratitude to Rewald, named a plaza after him.
Rewald died of congestive heart failure at age 81. He is buried close to Cézanne, at Aix-en-Provence cemetery.
Rewald's Significance
Rewald, a highly cultured and erudite man and a renowned writer, was the product of four distinct civilizations: the pre-World War I Wilhelmine German Empire, the Weimar Republic of Germany, the French Third Republic in its final years, and America in the latter half of the 20th century. He is famous not only for his solid scholarship, and the ground-breaking treatment of his subject, but also for the beauty and lucidity of his prose which, invariably sober and scholarly, never departing from the factual, rises at times to a culminating lyricism.
In 1983,
Theodore Reff
Theodore Franklin Reff (born 1930) is Professor Emeritus of European Painting and Sculpture, 1840–1940 at Columbia University.
Reff is an expert on French art of the nineteenth century, and in particular Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas and Édouar ...
, 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 ...
commented: "He is more responsible than anyone else for putting the study of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism on solid scholarly foundations. What he set out to do, he did more thoroughly and scrupulously than anybody else, and he did it first."
Complementing his career as an
academic
An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary education, secondary or tertiary education, tertiary higher education, higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membershi ...
, he served as one of the founding members of the Board of Directors of the
International Foundation for Art Research
The International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR) is a non-profit organization which was established to channel and coordinate scholarly and technical information about works of art. IFAR provides an administrative and legal framework within wh ...
.
Selected works
In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about John Rewald,
OCLC
OCLC, Inc., doing business as OCLC, See also: is an American nonprofit cooperative organization "that provides shared technology services, original research, and community programs for its membership and the library community at large". It was ...
/
WorldCat
WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the OCL ...
encompasses roughly 600+ works in 1,400+ publications in 24 languages and 33,000+ library holdings.
* ''Cézanne et Zola'' (1936)
* ''Maillol'' (1939)
* ''Georges Seurat'' (1943)
* ''History of Impressionism'' (1946)
* ''Paul Cézanne'' (1948)
* ''Pierre Bonnard'' (1948)
* ''Les Fauves'' (1952)
* ''History of Post-Impressionism: From van Gogh to Gauguin'' (1956)
* ''Studies in Impressionism'' (1986)
* ''Studies in Post-Impressionism'' (1986)
* ''Cézanne, a Biography'' (1986)
* ''Seurat, a Biography'' (1990)
* ''Camille Pissarro'' (1963)
* ''The Impressionist Brush'' (1973/74)
* ''Cézanne, the Steins, and their Circle'' (1987)
* ''Cézanne in America'' (1989)
* ''The Paintings of Paul Cézanne'': A Catalogue Raisonné by John Rewald in collaboration with and
Jayne Warman (1996)
;Edited works
* ''Paul Cézanne, Letters'' (1941)
* ''Paul Gauguin, Letters'' (1943)
* ''Camille Pissarro, Letters to his Son Lucien'' (1943)
* ''The Woodcuts of Aristide Maillol'' (1943), ''
catalogue raisonné
A ''catalogue raisonné'' (or critical catalogue) is a comprehensive, annotated listing of all the known artworks by an artist either in a particular medium or all media. The works are described in such a way that they may be reliably identified ...
''
* ''Renoir, Drawings'' (1946)
* ''Paul Cézanne, Carnets de Dessins'' (1951)
* ''The Sculptures of Edgar Degas'' (1957), ''catalogue raisonné''
* ''Gauguin, Drawings'' (1958)
Notes
References
* "Rewald, John." (1993) ''The Columbia Encyclopedia,'' 5th Edition. New York:
Columbia University Press
Columbia University Press is a university press based in New York City, and affiliated with Columbia University. It is currently directed by Jennifer Crewe (2014–present) and publishes titles in the humanities and sciences, including the fiel ...
.
"Rewald, John ...,"''Dictionary of Art Historians.''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rewald, John
1912 births
1994 deaths
American people of German-Jewish descent
German emigrants to the United States
University of Paris alumni
Princeton University faculty
University of Chicago faculty
City University of New York faculty
American art historians
German art historians
20th-century American historians
German male non-fiction writers
20th-century American male writers
American male non-fiction writers