Jonathan Brown (art Historian)

Jonathan Mayer Brown (July 15, 1939 – January 17, 2022) was an American art historian, known for his work on Spanish art, particularly Diego Velázquez. He was Carroll and Milton Petrie Professor of Fine Arts at New York University.

Early life and education

Brown was born on July 15, 1939 in Springfield, Massachusetts to Leonard M. Brown, an insurance agent and Jean (Levy) Brown, a librarian. He studied Spanish literature at Dartmouth College and spent a year abroad in Madrid.
While in Spain, he became fascinated with the painter Diego Velázquez, which inspired a lifelong interest in Spanish art. He graduated from Dartmouth in 1960 and continued on to Princeton University, where he received his PhD in 1964 with a dissertation titled "Painting in Seville from Pacheco to Murillo: A Study of Artistic Transition."

Academic career

Brown began his teaching career at Princeton in 1965. The same year, Brown was promoted to associate professor. In 1972, he received the Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize of the College Art Association of America for an article the ''Art Bulletin'' about works of art in the Church of the Hermandad de la Caridad in Seville. The following year, Brown was appointed director of the Institute of Fine Arts (IFA), New York University's graduate program in art history. He was named full professor in 1977. At the IFA, Brown promoted the study of Spanish art, a relatively neglected field in the American academy. During the last two decades of his career, he expanded his interests to viceregal Latin American art, particularly the painting of New Spain.

Curation

Brown curated and co-curated a number of exhibitions throughout his career. While a faculty member at Princeton, he organized "Jusepe de Ribera: Prints and Drawings" at the university's museum, which featured several Spanish drawings from its collection. He continued to organize shows focusing on Spanish drawings, including 1976's '' Murillo & His Drawings'', also held at the Princeton University Art Museum, and "The Spanish Manner: Drawings from Ribera to Goya," held at The Frick Collection in 2010. Brown had a long association with The Frick Collection, co-curating several shows at the institution, including ''Goya's Last Works'' in 2006. In his review of the exhibition, Andrew Schulz commented that: "Brown and is co-curator Susan GraceGalassi did a marvelous job of assembling works from public and private collections in North America and Spain that covered the full range of oya’slate production: portraits in oil, ivory miniatures, black crayon drawings, and lithographs." Schulz concludes: "Their landmark exhibition and catalogue will provide the point of departure as we continue to gain insights into the last works of this singular artist." Reflecting his later interest in the art of the Spanish viceroyalties, Brown organized the 2010–2011 traveling exhibition "Pintura de los reinos. Identidades compartidas en el mundo hispánico" on view at the Museo Nacional del Prado and Palacio Real in Madrid and the Palacio de Iturrbide in Mexico City. In 2013, he co-curated "La Mexique au Louvre: Chefs-d’œuvrede la Nouvelle Espagne" with Guillaume Kientz.

Personal life and death

Brown died at his home in Princeton on January 17, 2022, at the age of 82.

Awards and honors

Slade Professor of Fine Art, Oxford University, 1981

Comendador de la Orden de Isabel la Católica, 1986

Medalla de Oro de Bellas Artes (Spain), 1986

American Philosophical Society, 1988

Andrew W. Mellon Lecturer in the Fine Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1994

Gran Cruz, Order of Alfonso X el Sabio (Spain), 1996

American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1996

Premio Elio Antonio Negrija, University of Salamanca, 1997

College Art Association Distinguished Scholar, 2011

Corresponding member, Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando

Selected publications

* (with Robert Enggass) ''Italy and Spain, 1600–1750: Sources and Documents'', 1970
* ''Jusepe de Ribera: Prints and Drawings'' xh. cat. 1973 ()
* ''Francisco de Zurbarán'', 1974 (reissued in 1991) ()
* ''Images and Ideas in Seventeenth-Century Spanish Painting'', 1978
* (with J.H. Elliott) ''A Palace for a King: The Buen Retiro and the Court of Philip IV'', 1980 (revised and expanded in 2003)
* ''El Greco of Toledo'' xh. cat. 1982
* ''Velazquez: Painter and Courtier'', 1986
* ''The Golden Age of Painting in Spain'', 1991 ()
* ''Kings and Connoisseurs: Collecting Art in Seventeenth-Century Europe'', 1995. (A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, 1994)
* (editor) ''Picasso and the Spanish Tradition'', 1996
* (with Carmen Garrido) ''Velázquez: The Technique of Genius'', 1998

* (with Susan Grace Galassi), ''El Greco: Themes & Variations'' xh. cat. booklet 2001
* (edited with J.H. Elliott), ''The Sale of the Century: Artistic Relations between Spain and Great Britain, 1604–1655'', 2002
* (with Susan Grace Galassi) ''Goya’s Last Works'' xh. cat. 2006
* ''Collected Writings on Velázquez,'' 2008
* (with Susan Grace Galassi, Joanna Sheers, Pablo Pérez d'Ors) ''The Spanish Manner: Drawings from Ribera to Goya'' xh. cat. 2010 ()
* ''Murillo: Virtuoso Draftsman'', 2011
* (edited with Luisa Elena Alcalá) ''Painting in Latin America 1550-1820: From Conquest to Independence'', 2014
* ''In the Shadow of Velázquez: A Life in Art History'', 2014
* ''Art and Empire: The Golden Age of Spain'' xh. cat. 2019.

References

External links

Oral history
interview at the Institute of Fine Arts, conducted by Elizabeth Buhe in 2014.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brown, Jonathan
1939 births
2022 deaths
American art historians
American Hispanists
Slade Professors of Fine Art (University of Oxford)
Dartmouth College alumni
Princeton University alumni
New York University faculty
Writers from Springfield, Massachusetts
Members of the American Philosophical Society