Paul Wescher

Paul Wescher (* 1896 in Welschingen ; † September 3, 1974 in Pacific Palisades ) was a German-American art historian, art dealer and museum director.

Life

Paul Wescher was the son of the general practitioner of the same name, Paul Wescher. He attended the humanistic grammar school in Freiburg im Breisgau , interrupted by military service in the First World War , and was therefore only able to do his Abitur in 1918. From 1919 to 1922 he studied art history, classical archeology and literature at the Universities of Freiburg and Munich, especially with Hans Jantzen and Heinrich Wölfflin . In 1923 he was awarded a doctorate in Freiburg with a dissertation supervised by Jantzen. phil. PhD.

In 1923/24 he was a volunteer at the Augustinermuseum in Freiburg and from 1924 to 1927 he was a research assistant at the Staatliche Museen Berlin. From 1927 to 1931 he cataloged his Flemish drawings and manuscripts with a work contract at the Kupferstichkabinett Berlin . From 1931 he was deputy head of the Kupferstichkabinett. In addition, he accompanied the Berlin art market with numerous reports, such as in the magazine Pantheon .

With the beginning of the National Socialist regime in 1933 he emigrated for political reasons and went to Paris ; here he wrote numerous publications, including in German magazines, and was active in the art trade. After the outbreak of World War II and a brief internment, he and his wife managed to move to Switzerland , initially to Basel. Until 1948 he lived as a private scholar in Campione on Lake Lugano . In 1945 he published his large monograph on Jean Fouquet .

In 1948 he moved to the USA, where his friend Wilhelm Reinhold Valentiner gave him a position at the Detroit Institute of Arts . He worked with Valentiner at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, North Carolina . From 1953 to 1959 he was director of the J. Paul Getty Museum . After that he worked as a freelance curator of various exhibitions.

In 1923 Wescher had the art historian Herta, b. Crouched married. The marriage ended in divorce after 1945. In his second marriage he married Mary, the widow of Herbert Stothart, in the USA . Part of the couple's estate is held in the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution .

Fonts

For a complete list of publications, see Frank Otten (ed.): Paul Wescher, Collected Essays on Art. Cologne 1979, pp. 233-236.

• The beginnings of the Old Testament picture sequence in western book illumination and its decoration systems up to around 1300. Dissertation Freiburg 1924
• Descriptive directory of the miniatures, manuscripts and single sheets of the Kupferstichkabinett of the Staatliche Museen Berlin. Leipzig 1931
• Renaissance merchants. In biographies and portraits. Frankfurt 1935, 2nd edition Munich 1940, Basel 1941
• Old cities in master drawings from five centuries. Munich 1938
• (Collaboration :) The masterpieces of the Prado Museum. Frankfurt 1940
• (Ed. :) Swiss artist anecdotes from two centuries. Basel 1942
• Jean Fouquet and his time. Basel 1945, 2., ext. 1947 edition

French: Basel 1947, English: New York 1947

• Romanticism in Swiss painting. Frauenfeld 1947
• (Ed. :) Catalog of paintings. Los Angeles County Museum. Los Angeles 1954

Volume 1: A catalog of Italian, French and Spanish paintings XIV – XVIII century .

Volume 2: A catalog of Flemish, German, Dutch and English paintings XV – XVIII century .

• with Wilhelm R. Valentiner: The J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, California. Guide book. Los Angeles 1954, 2nd edition 1956
• La prima idea. The development of the oil sketch from Tintoretto to Picasso. Munich 1960
• Time in the waste basket. Poems, collages, parables and dreams. Designed and ed. By Karen Sargentich. Santa Monica 1975
• Art theft under Napoleon. Berlin 1976
• Collected essays on art. Edited by Frank Otten. Cologne 1979

literature

• Ulrike Wendland : Biographical handbook of German-speaking art historians in exile. Life and work of the scientists persecuted and expelled under National Socialism. Part 2: L – ZKG Saur, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-598-11339-0 , pp. 756–760.

Web links

• Paul Wescher in the Dictionary of Art Historians online

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Paul and Mary Wescher Papers .