Volume 48, Number 20 · December 20, 2001
E.H. Gombrich (1909–2001)
By Charles Hope
Ernst Gombrich, who died on November 3, was born in Vienna in 1909. His parents participated in the cultural and intellectual life of their time, numbering Freud and Mahler among their acquaintances, while remaining rather conventional in their tastes. From his mother Gombrich inherited a lifelong passion for music, and at school he acquired a solid classical education and an interest in science. At the university in Vienna he chose to study art history, becoming familiar with the entire range of Western and ancient art, and, just as importantly, with the written sources related to it, but from very early on he was skeptical of attempts, then in fashion, to see artistic style largely as a product of social change or collective attitudes of mind. After completing his dissertation he worked with the psychoanalyst Ernst Kris on a study of caricature, a job which sharpened his interest in questions of representation that would preoccupy him for the rest of his life.
Feature, 644 words
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