David Piper (art historian)

David Towry Piper CBE (born July 21, 1918 - December 29, 1990 in Wytham near Oxford , England ) was a British art historian , museum director and author .

Life

Piper served in World War II for the United Kingdom in the army of the Empire India and ran for three years in Japanese prisoner of war . His novel Trial by Battle from 1959 deals with this time . After completing his studies, he found employment in 1946 at the National Portrait Gallery in London , of which he was director from 1964 to 1966. In 1966 he was the Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford University for one year . He then headed the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge until 1972 and then went to Oxford as the first director of the Ashmolean Museum from 1973 to 1985 .

In addition to his art history works, Piper also wrote novels under the pseudonym Peter Towry. He suffered from emphysema before his death . His survivors were his wife Anne, a son and three daughters.

He also contributed to the television series 1000 Masterpieces : he contributed to paintings by Pieter Brueghel the Elder , Annibale Carracci , Antonio da Correggio , Piero della Francesca , Vincent van Gogh , Matthias Grünewald , Rembrandt , Raffael , Titian , Jan Vermeer . These texts were also printed in the books accompanying the series, are sporadically repeated on 3sat , ZDFkultur and Planet and are now available on DVD publications (see 1000 Masterworks # Literature ).

honors and awards

• 1967 to 1973: Fellow of Christ's College (Cambridge)
• 1978: Commander of the British Empire

Publications

• 1953: pseudonym Peter Towry: It's Warm Inside . Chatto and Windus, London.
• 1957: The English Face
  • 1998: Revised new edition: National Portrait Gallery, London, ISBN 1-85514-008-X .
• 1959: Trial by Battle , Roman.
• 1960: Painting in England 1500–1870 .
  • 1965: changed edition and title: Painting in England 1500–1880 . Pelican Book, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England.
• 1963: Catalog of Seventeenth-Century Portraits in the National Portrait Gallery 1625-1714 , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England.
• 1964: The Companion Guide to London .
  • 1966: translated into German and edited by Peter de Mendelssohn : London: a guide . Prestel, Munich. Updated: Prestel, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-7913-1112-3 .
• 1965: Trial by Battle . Chilmark Press, New York City.
  • 1966 and 1967: Trial by Battle , revised edition, with a foreword by Frank Kernwade. Collins, London.
• 1971: London , Special Photography by Edwin Smith. Thames and Hudson, London.
  • 1972: German by Gertrud Mander: London . Series: Bucher's travel guide to the centers of culture. Bucher, Luzern, / Frankfurt am Main, ISBN 3-7658-0158-5 .
• 1975: as editor: The Genius of British Painting , Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, ISBN 0-297-76866-2 .
• 1980: Kings and Queens of England and Scotland . Faber, London, ISBN 0-571-11560-8 .
• 1982: Artists' London . Oxford University Press, Oxford, England, ISBN 0-19-520392-5 .
• 1985: as editor: The Joy of Art , ISBN 0-600-55841-X .
  • 1993: German by Christine Götz, last with the title: Experience painting: Enjoying and understanding pictures . Swan, Kehl, ISBN 3-89507-201-X .
• 1988: as General Editor: Dictionary of Art and Artists , Collins, London, ISBN 0-00-434358-1 .
• 1998: I am well, who are you? , Self-published by Anne Piper, Witham, Oxfordshire, England, ISBN 0-9532123-0-0 .
• 2004: The Illustrated History of Art . Bounty Books, ISBN 978-0-7537-0908-5 .

Web links

• Short biography of the art historian