Tamara Talbot Rice

(Elena) Tamara Talbot Rice (* as Tamara Abelson, June 19, 1904 in Saint Petersburg ; † September 24, 1993 in Gloucestershire ) was a Russian-British art historian. She dealt with Russian and Byzantine art.

She was married to the British art historian David Talbot Rice (1903-1972), who was a Byzantinist and professor in Edinburgh. Both are usually listed under Talbot Rice, sometimes under Rice.

She was the daughter of Israel Boris Abelevich Abelson, a businessman with ties to the Tsar's court, and Louisa Elizabeth Vilenkin. She grew up in privileged circumstances and was the goddaughter of Leo Tolstoy . In the turmoil of the revolution in 1917, she and her mother fled via Finland to London and Paris. In England she attended schools in Cheltenham and Oxford and then studied at Oxford University (Oxford Home Students, later St. Agnes College). There she met, in addition to her future husband, Evelyn Waugh (whose circle of friends in Oxford was the inspiration for Brideshead Revisited ) and Harold Acton , with whom she was friends, Christine Tew (who married the Earl of Longford) and Elizabeth Winifred Jane Martin (1902-1976 ), later wife of the art historian Kenneth Clark . In 1924 she failed her studies and went to her family in Paris, where she worked as a journalist, among other things. During a stay in New York, she was research assistant to Carlton Hayes at Columbia University . In 1927 she married David Talbot Rice, who studied in Paris with the Byzantinist Gabriel Millet , and accompanied him on excavations and trips to Greece, the Balkans, Bulgaria, Georgia, Persia and Turkey, where she was also involved in the excavations. In 1937 she and her husband published a book on icons in Cyprus. During the Second World War she worked in the Turkey Department of the Ministry of Information in London. After the war she continued to publish on art history and wrote a biography of Tsarina Elisabeth , which she sought to rehabilitate.

Most recently she began her memoirs, which remained unfinished and were edited by her daughter after her death.

Fonts

• with David Talbot Rice The Icons of Cyprus , Allen and Unwin 1937
• with David Talbot Rice Icons and their Dating: a Comprehensive Study of their Chronology and Provenance , London: Thames and Hudson, 1974
• with David Talbot Rice Icons and their History , Woodstock (New York): Overlook Press 1974
• Icons , London: Batchworth Press, 1959
• Ancient Arts of Central Asia , New York: Praeger, 1965
• The Art of Russia , Droemer / Knauer 1965
  • English Original: A Concise History of Russian Art . New York: Praeger, 1963
• Czars and Czarinas of Russia . New York: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, 1968
• with Tancred Borenius, David Talbot Rice: Russian Art . London: Gurney and Jackson, 1935 (exhibition catalog)
• The Scythians , Du Mont 1957
  • English Original: The Scythians ( Ancient Peoples and Places ). New York: FA Praeger, 1957
• The Seljuks in Asia Minor . New York: Praeger 1961
• The Seljuks , Du Mont, Cologne 1963
• with David Talbot Rice: Icons: the Natasha Allen Collection . Dublin: National Gallery of Ireland, 1968
• Byzantium , London: Hart-Davis Educational 1969
• Everyday life in Byzantium , New York: Putnams, London 1967
• Elisabeth of Russia , Callwey 1970
  • English original: Elizabeth, Empress of Russia , Weidenfeld and Nicholson 1970
• Participation in Fischer Weltgeschichte , Volumes 7, 8 about Rome
• Tamara: Memoirs of St. Petersburg, Paris, Oxford and Byzantium . London: Murray, 1996 (edited by her daughter Elizabeth Talbot Rice)

Web links

• Dictionary of Art Historians
• Publications by Tamara Talbot Rice in the Opac der Regesta Imperii