Professor Sir Ernst Gombrich OM was born in Vienna in 1909 and died in London on November 3, 2001, aged 92. He studied at the Theresianum and then at the Second Institute of Art History at the University of Vienna under Julius von Schlosser (1928-33). He then worked as a Research Assistant and collaborator with the museum curator and Freudian analyst Ernst Kris. He joined the Warburg Institute in London as a Research Assistant in 1936. During World War 2 he was employed by the BBC as a Radio Monitor. After the war he rejoined the Warburg Institute eventually becoming its Director in 1959. His major publications include The Story of Art (1950), Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (1960), Aby Warburg: An Intellectual Biography (1970), The Sense of Order: A Study in the Psychology of Decorative Art. (Also see: www.gombrich.co.uk.)
-
Only a Guideline
February 24, 2000
-
Portrait of the Artist as a Paradox
January 20, 2000
Rembrandt’s Eyes
by Simon Schama
-
‘Largesse’
May 28, 1998
-
In the Giving Vein
April 23, 1998
Largesse by Jean Starobinski, translated by Jane Marie Todd
-
The Miracle at Chauvet
November 14, 1996
Dawn of Art: The Chauvet Cave, The Oldest Known Paintings in the World by Jean-Marie Chauvet, by Eliette Brunel Deschamps, by Christian Hillaire
The Cave Beneath the Sea: Paleolithic Images at Cosquer
by Jean Clottes, by Jean Courtin
-
Icon
February 15, 1996
Three Essays on Style by Erwin Panofsky, edited by Irving Lavin, with a memoir by William S. Heckscher
Perspective as Symbolic Form by Erwin Panofsky, translated by Christopher S. Wood
-
Keeping Up with Leonardo
June 23, 1994
Inventing Leonardo
by A. Richard Turner
-
What Art Tells Us
October 21, 1993
History and Its Images: Art and the Interpretation of the Past by Francis Haskell
-
Getting the Picture
March 4, 1993
Only Connect Art and the Spectator in the Italian Renaissance by John Shearman
-
The Edge of Delusion
February 15, 1990
The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response by David Freedberg
-
Distinguished Dissident
January 19, 1989
James J. Gibson and the Psychology of Perception by Edward S. Reed
-
Back from Oblivion
June 25, 1987
Past and Present in Art and Taste: Selected Essays by Francis Haskell
-
Scenes in a Golden Age
June 13, 1985
Masters of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting Pennsylvania Press) catalog of an exhibition organized by Peter C. Sutton
-
Mysteries of Dutch Painting
November 10, 1983
The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century by Svetlana Alpers
-
On Frances Yates
March 3, 1983
-
The Art of Collecting Art
December 2, 1982
The Rare Art Traditions: The History of Art Collecting and Its Linked Phenomena Wherever These Have Appeared by Joseph Alsop
-
‘The Sense of Order’: An Exchange
September 27, 1979
-
The Life-giving Touch
March 9, 1978
P.P.Rubens: Paintings, Oilsketches, Drawings June 29-September 30, 1977 Catalogue of the Exhibition, Antwerp, Royal Museum of Fine Arts,
P.P.Rubens by Frans Baudouin, translated by Elsie Callander
Rubens compiled and with an introduction by Keith Roberts
Rubens and Italy by Michael Jaffé
Rubens, Drawings and Sketches in the British Museum, 1977 Publications Limited by John Rowlands. Catalogue of an Exhibition at the Department of Prints and Drawings
-
Talking of Michelangelo
January 20, 1977
Michelangelo’s Last Paintings: The Conversion of St. Paul and the Crucifixion of St. Peter in the Cappella Paolina, Vatican Palace by Leo Steinberg
-
Dream Houses
November 29, 1973
On Adam’s House in Paradise: The Idea of the Primitive Hut in Architectural History
by Joseph Rykwert
-
Zebra Crossings
May 4, 1972
House Decoration in Nubia by Marian Wenzel
Nuba Personal Art by James C. Faris
Self-Decoration in Mount Hagen by Andrew Strathern, by Marilyn Strathern
Bangwa Funerary Sculpture by Robert Brain, by Adam Pollock
-
Not the Sheik
April 23, 1970
-
Rembrandt Now
March 12, 1970
Rembrandt: The Complete Edition of the Paintings by Abraham Bredius, 3rd edition revised by Horst Gerson
Rembrandt Paintings by Horst Gerson
Rembrandt by Joseph-Emile Muller, translated by Brian Hooley
Rembrandt: Life and Work
by Jakob Rosenberg
Rembrandt As An Etcher by Christopher White
Rembrandt by Michael Kitson
Rembrandt: His Life, His Work, His Time by Bob Haak, translated by Elizabeth Willems Treeman
Rembrandt in Amsterdam by R.H. Fuchs, translated by Patricia Wardle, translated by Alan Griffiths
Rembrandt’s “Aristotle” and Other Rembrandt Studies by Julius Held
-
Art Transplant
June 19, 1969
The Great Age of Fresco: Giotto to Pontormo with an Introduction by Millard Meiss
-
In Search of Leonardo
December 5, 1968
Leonardo da Vinci
by V.P. Zubov, translated by David H. Kraus, with a Foreword by Myron P. Gilmore
-
Waiting for Cézanne
June 20, 1968
-
How Do You Know It’s Any Good?
February 1, 1968
On Quality in Art: Criteria of Excellence Past and Present (The A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, 1964) by Jakob Rosenberg
-
Calling for “The Doctor”
July 13, 1967
Victorian Painting by Graham Reynolds
Victorian Narrative Paintings by Raymond Lister
-
Bosch of Hertogenbosch
February 23, 1967
Hieronymus Bosch by Charles de Tolnay
-
Art or Behavior
November 17, 1966
-
Art at the End of its Tether
June 23, 1966
Man’s Range for Chaos: Biology, Behavior and the Arts by Morse Peckham
-
The Art of the Greeks
January 6, 1966
Greek Temples, Theatres, and Shrines by Helmut Berve, by Gottfried Gruben, photographs by Max Hirmer
Greek Sculpture by R. Lullies, photographs by Max Hirmer
Ancient Greek Sculpture of South Italy and Sicily by Ernest Langlotz, photographs by Max Hirmer
A History of 1000 Years of Greek Vase Painting by Paolo Enrico Arias, translated by B. Shefton, photographs by Max Hirmer
Crete and Mycenae by Spyridon Marinatos, photographs by Max Hirmer
The Portraits of the Greeks
by G.M.A. Richter
The Techniques of Painted Attic Pottery by Joseph Veach Noble
-
The Mystery of Leonardo
February 11, 1965
Leonardo da Vinci on Painting: A Lost Book (Libro A) reassembled, translated, and edited by Carlo Pedretti, with a Foreword by Sir Kenneth Clark
Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood by Sigmund Freud, translated by Alan Tyson