WH James Weale

WH James Weale (1904)

William Henry James Weale (born March 8, 1832 in Marylebone , London , † April 26, 1917 in Clapham Common , London) was a British art historian .

Life

His father James Weale († 1838) was a librarian with John Baker Holroyd and himself a great book collector. He attended King's College School in London from 1843 to 1848 . In 1849 he converted to Catholicism , which made it impossible for him to study at Oxford. He then became headmaster of a school in Islington , but was imprisoned there for flogging a student. Thereupon he moved to Bruges in Belgium in 1855 , where he was also able to pursue his passion, the research of old Dutch painting . His first book on the subject was published in 1861.

In August 1863, Weale founded the Gilde de Saint-Thomas et de Saint-Luc , which had set itself the goal of researching and promoting religious-Christian art, especially the neo-Gothic style . In 1864 he curated an exhibition of church art in Mechelen , and in 1867 an exhibition of old Dutch painting in Bruges.

In 1879 he returned to England, where he founded the Guild of Saint Gregory and Saint Luke . From 1890 until his release in 1897 he was a librarian at the library of the South Kensington Museum , the National Art Library . Even after that he continued to work in his specialty, the history of Old Dutch painting, in particular he was responsible for the outstanding exposition of the primitifs flamands in Bruges in 1902.

Publications (selection)

• Flores Ecclesiae: the saints of the Catholic Church arranged according to the calendar: with the flowers dedicated to them . James Burns, London 1849
• Sequentiae ineditae . 1853
• Des dalles et cuivres tumulaires . De Busscher, 1858
• A new guide-book to Belgium, Aix-la-Chapelle and Cologne . 1859
• Ivoires sculptés de Genoels-Elderen, près de Tongres . Hebbelinck, 1859
• Catalog du musée de l'Académie de Bruges . Beyaert-Defoort, 1861
• Notes on Jan van Eyck . 1861
• Bruges et ses environs. Description of the monuments, objets d'art et antiquités, précédée d'une notice historique . Beyaert-Defoort 1862; 4th edition 1884
• Hans Memlinc: A notice on his life and works . Arundel Society, London 1865
• Tableaux de l'ancienne école néerlandaise exposés à Bruges. Catalog . Bruges 1867.
• Bookbindings and rubbings of bookbindings in the National Art Library . 2 volumes, South Kensington Museum, London 1884, 1898
• Catalogus missalium ritus latini . Bernard Quaritch, London 1886
• Comments on the Mainz and Trier Missalia . In: Zentralblatt für Bibliothekswesen , Vol. 4, 1887, pp. 550–552 ( digitized version ).
• Analecta Liturgica . 1889
• Gerard David. Painter and Illuminator . Seeley, London 1895
• Early painting at Bruges . 1898
• Jean Le Breton, Prototypographe Français . 1898
• The Van Eycks . 1900
• Hubert and John Van Eyck. Their Life and Work . J. Lane, London 1908 ( digitized version )
  • 2nd edition with Maurice W. Brockwell : The Van Eycks and their Art . London 1912.
• (completed by Lawrence Taylor): Early stamped bookbindings in the British Museum . London 1922

literature

• Lori van Biervliet: Leven en werk van WH James Weale, een Engels kunsthistoricus in Vlaanderen in de 19e eeuw . Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten, Brussels 1991 (pp. 187–213 complete list of publications).
• Jenny Graham: Weale, William Henry James (1832-1917) . In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Volume 57, 2004, pp. 786-787.

Web links

• Entry in the Dictionary of Art Historians
• Publications by and about Weale in the Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren