Sir Michael Vincent Levey,

LVO The Royal Victorian Order (french: Ordre royal de Victoria) is a dynastic order of knighthood established in 1896 by Queen Victoria. It recognises distinguished personal service to the British monarch, Canadian monarch, Australian monarch, or ...

, FBA, FRSL (8 June 1927 – 28 December 2008) was a British

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 ...

and was the director of the

National Gallery The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current Director o ...

from 1973 to 1986.

Biography

Levey was born in

Wimbledon, London Wimbledon () is a district and town of Southwest London, England, southwest of the centre of London at Charing Cross; it is the main commercial centre of the London Borough of Merton. Wimbledon had a population of 68,187 in 2011 which includes ...

, and grew up in

Leigh-on-Sea Leigh-on-Sea (), commonly referred to simply as Leigh, is a town and civil parish in the City of Southend-on-Sea, in the ceremonial county of Essex, England. In 2011, it had a population of 22,509. Geography Leigh-on-Sea is on the northern ...

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

. He attended

The Oratory School The Oratory School () is an HMC Co-educational Independent school (United Kingdom), independent Roman Catholic day and boarding school for pupils aged 11–18 located in Woodcote, north-west of Reading, Berkshire, Reading. Founded in 1859 by S ...

, a Catholic boarding school near

Reading Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of Letter (alphabet), letters, symbols, etc., especially by Visual perception, sight or Somatosensory system, touch. For educators and researchers, reading is a multifaceted process invo ...

. He was called up for

National Service National service is the system of voluntary government service, usually military service. Conscription is mandatory national service. The term ''national service'' comes from the United Kingdom's National Service (Armed Forces) Act 1939. The l ...

in 1945 and served it largely in Egypt. After demobilisation in 1948 Levey went to

Exeter College, Oxford Exeter College (in full: The Rector and Scholars of Exeter College in the University of Oxford) is one of the Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England and the fourth-oldest college of the un ...

to read English; he graduated with first class honours after only two years' study. In 1951 Levey joined the National Gallery as assistant to the Keeper, Sir Martin Davies. He combined administrative duties with scholarly work, producing his first catalogue, on the Gallery's 18th-century Italian paintings, in 1956. In the 1960s, affordable art books with colour reproductions for the general reader began to appear, and Levey was commissioned to write an overview of Western painting for

Thames & Hudson Thames & Hudson (sometimes T&H for brevity) is a publisher of illustrated books in all visually creative categories: art, architecture, design, photography, fashion, film, and the performing arts. It also publishes books on archaeology, history, ...

's ''

World of Art ''World of Art'' (formerly known as ''The World of Art Library'') is a long established series of pocket-sized art books from the British publisher Thames & Hudson, comprising over 300 titles as of 2021. The books are typically around 200 pag ...

'' series. The resulting book, ''A Concise History of Painting: From Giotto to Cézanne'' (1962), remains a classic overview of European art history from the introduction of perspective in Italy to the beginnings of modern art at the start of the 20th century. From 1963 to 1964 Levey was

Slade Professor of Fine Art The Slade Professorship of Fine Art is the oldest professorship of art and art history at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford and University College, London. History The chairs were founded concurrently in 1869 by a bequest from the art collecto ...

Cambridge University , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

; his lectures were published as ''From Rococo to Revolution'' in 1966. ''The Early Renaissance'', written a year later, is considered another milestone in popular art publishing, and was the first non-fiction work to win the

Hawthornden Prize The Hawthornden Prize is a British literary award that was established in 1919 by Alice Warrender, who was born at Hawthornden Castle. Authors under the age of 41 are awarded on the quality of their "imaginative literature", which can be written ...

for Literature. Levey became deputy Keeper of the National Gallery in 1966, Keeper in 1968, and Director in 1973. He was knighted in 1981. He relinquished his directorship to care for his wife, the novelist and critic Brigid Brophy, after she was diagnosed with

multiple sclerosis Multiple (cerebral) sclerosis (MS), also known as encephalomyelitis disseminata or disseminated sclerosis, is the most common demyelinating disease, in which the insulating covers of nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord are damaged. This d ...

in 1985; the disease ultimately claimed her life. Brophy and Levey were married in 1954 and had one daughter Kate Levey (b. 1957). Levey was a Distinguished Supporter of the

British Humanist Association Humanists UK, known from 1967 until May 2017 as the British Humanist Association (BHA), is a charitable organisation which promotes secular humanism and aims to represent "people who seek to live good lives without religious or superstitious b ...

. His memoir, ''The Chapel is on Fire'', recounts his upbringing and was published in 2000.

Selected publications

* ''The German School; National Gallery Catalogues'', 1959, National Gallery, London * ''Pictures in the Royal Collection, The Later Italian Pictures'', 1964, Phaidon Press, London * ''A Concise History of Painting: From

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 ...

to Cézanne'',

' The World of Art Library' series (). * ''Painting at Court'', 1971, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London. * ''Early Renaissance'', 1967, Penguin * ''The 17th and 18th century Italian Schools; National Gallery Catalogues'', 1971, National Gallery, London, * ''The Life & Death of Mozart'', 1971, Weidenfeld and Nicolson (). * ''From Rococo to Revolution: Major Trends in Eighteenth-Century Painting''.

'The World of Art Library' series * ''The Case of Walter Pater'', 1978, Thames & Hudson. * ''The National Gallery Collection'', 1987, National Gallery Publications, * ''Painting and Sculpture in France, 1700-1789'', Yale History of Art, 1993 * ''Florence, a Portrait'', 1996,

Jonathan Cape Jonathan Cape is a London publishing firm founded in 1921 by Herbert Jonathan Cape, who was head of the firm until his death in 1960. Cape and his business partner Wren Howard set up the publishing house in 1921. They established a reputation ...

Biography

Selected publications

References

Further reading