William Watson (art historian)

William Watson (born December 9, 1917 in Derby , † March 15, 2007 ) is a British sinologist , Japanologist and art historian. He was a professor of Chinese art and archeology at the University of London . But he also dealt with Japan , Iran and Anatolia .

Watson grew up in Brazil, where his father ran a sugar factory. In 1925 he was sent to England to attend school and attended school in Glasgow and Derby. From 1936 he studied at the University of Cambridge (Gonville and Caius College) German, French and Russian (previously he had already dealt with Welsh). During World War II he was in the Intelligence Corps in Egypt and India, where he processed German radio messages and later interrogated Japanese prisoners, for which purpose he expanded his knowledge of East Asian languages. After the war he was in the British Museum, first in the British Antiquities and Medieval Department and then in the Orient Department. In 1954 he went to Japan to study the country and visited China, and contacts made there proved useful in re-establishing cultural contacts between Great Britain and China in the early 1970s. In the late 1960s and early 1970s he went on archaeological expeditions to Thailand .

In 1966 he became a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London . There he was also responsible for the Percival David Foundation's collection of Chinese ceramics. In 1983 he retired.

In 1972 he became a Fellow of the British Academy . 1975/76 he was visiting professor in Cambridge (Slade Professor of Fine Art). From 1980 to 1990 he was a trustee of the British Museum.

In 1973 he organized the Genius of China Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts (around the same time he was involved in a BBC series on China) and in 1981/82 the Great Japan Exhibition , where he convinced the organizers that the Edo period was the central theme to make the exhibition. At that time there were hardly any chairs for Japanese art in Great Britain and Watson tried in vain with Peter Lasko to set up such a chair at the Courtauld Institute . The initiative led to the creation of such chairs elsewhere at British universities.

In 1982 he became CBE .

Fonts

• China , Ars Antiqua - Great Epochs of World Art , Herder Verlag 1980 (French original: L'art de l'Ancienne Chine , Éditions d'art Lucien Mazenod. Coll. Grandes Civilizations)
• Sculpture of Japan from the fifth to the fifteenth century . London: The Studio 1959
• Early Civilization in China (Library of Early Civilizations) , Thames & Hudson, 1966
• with Gale Sieveking Flint Implements: an account of Stone Age techniques and cultures , London: British Museum, 3rd edition 1968
• with RB Smith (Editor), Early South East Asia: essays in archeology, history, and historical geography . Oxford University Press, 1979.
• Publisher The Great Japan Exhibition: Art of the Edo Period, 1600-1868 (exhibition catalog). London: Royal Academy of Arts 1981
• The Arts of China to AD 900 , Yale University Press Pelican History of Art Series Volume 1, 1995
• The Arts of China 900-1620 . Yale University Press Pelican History of Art Series, Volume 2, 2003
• with Chuimei Ho: The Arts of China, 1600-1900 Yale University Press Pelican History of Art Series, Volume 3, 2007

literature

• Rosemary Scott: William Watson, 1917-2007 . In: Proceedings of the British Academy . tape 161 , 2009, p. 365-377 ( thebritishacademy.ac.uk [PDF]).

Web links

• Joe Earle, Guardian obituary