John Rewald
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John Rewald (May 12, 1912 – February 2, 1994) was an American academic, author and art historian. He was known as a scholar of
Impressionism Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by visible brush strokes, open Composition (visual arts), composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...
,
Post-Impressionism Post-Impressionism (also spelled Postimpressionism) was a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction a ...
, Cézanne, Renoir,
Pissarro Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro ( ; ; 10 July 1830 â€“ 13 November 1903) was a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, St Thomas (now in the US Virgin Islands, but t ...
,
Seurat Georges Pierre Seurat ( , ; ; 2 December 1859 – 29 March 1891) was a French post-Impressionist artist. He devised the painting techniques known as chromoluminarism and pointillism and used conté crayon for drawings on paper with a rough ...
, and other French painters of the late 19th century. He was recognized as a foremost authority on late 19th-century art. His ''History of Impressionism'' is a standard work.


Biography

He was born Gustav Rewald at Berlin, of a middle-class, professional family. Rewald came from a Jewish background. He completed his ''Abitur'' in Hamburg, and studied thereafter at several German universities, going to the Sorbonne in Paris in 1932. At the Sorbonne he wrote his dissertation on the friendship of Zola and Cézanne, having to persuade the academic authorities on this because Cézanne (died 1906) was considered too recent a figure. When France declared war on Germany in 1939, he was interned as an enemy alien. He emigrated to the United States in 1941 and Alfred Barr, director of the New York Museum of Modern Art, was his sponsor. From 1943 on, he consulted for the Museum of Modern Art, organizing exhibitions for it and other museums and researching his
magnum opus A masterpiece, , or ; ; ) is a creation that has been given much critical praise, especially one that is considered the greatest work of a person's career or a work of outstanding creativity, skill, profundity, or workmanship. Historically, ...
, a history of Impressionism. ''The History of Impressionism'' was published in 1946 to universal acclaim. Rewald was a visiting professor at
Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...
between 1961 and 1964. He joined the faculty of the
University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...
in 1964 and remained there till 1971. In that year he received an appointment as 'distinguished professor of art history' at the Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York. 1977 saw him organizing the major 'Cézanne: The Late Work' exhibition at MoMA with William Rubin. He spent the year 1979 as the A. W. Mellon Lecturer at the
National Gallery of Art The National Gallery of Art is an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was privately established in ...
in Washington and retired from CUNY in 1984. A devoted Cézanne scholar, he was instrumental in creating a foundation to save Cézanne's studio and turn it into a museum. It is now a permanent museum in Aix-en-Provence, ''L'atelier Cézanne'', and can be viewed as it was at the painter's death. The citizens of Aix, in gratitude to Rewald, named a plaza after him. Rewald died of congestive heart failure at age 81. He is buried close to Cézanne, at Aix-en-Provence cemetery.


Rewald's Significance

Rewald, a highly cultured and erudite man and a renowned writer, was the product of four distinct civilizations: the pre-World War I Wilhelmine German Empire, the Weimar Republic of Germany, the French Third Republic in its final years, and America in the latter half of the 20th century. He is famous not only for his solid scholarship, and the ground-breaking treatment of his subject, but also for the beauty and lucidity of his prose which, invariably sober and scholarly, never departing from the factual, rises at times to a culminating lyricism. In 1983, Theodore Reff, Professor of Art History at
Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...
commented: "He is more responsible than anyone else for putting the study of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism on solid scholarly foundations. What he set out to do, he did more thoroughly and scrupulously than anybody else, and he did it first." Complementing his career as an academic, he served as one of the founding members of the board of directors of the International Foundation for Art Research.


Selected works

In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about John Rewald,
OCLC OCLC, Inc. See also: is an American nonprofit cooperative organization "that provides shared technology services, original research, and community programs for its membership and the library community at large". It was founded in 1967 as the ...
/
WorldCat WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the O ...
encompasses roughly 600+ works in 1,400+ publications in 24 languages and 33,000+ library holdings. *''Cézanne et Zola'' (1936) *''Maillol'' (1939) *''Georges Seurat'' (1943) *''History of Impressionism'' (1946) *''Paul Cézanne'' (1948) *''Pierre Bonnard'' (1948) *''Les Fauves'' (1952) *''History of Post-Impressionism: From van Gogh to Gauguin'' (1956) *''Studies in Impressionism'' (1986) *''Studies in Post-Impressionism'' (1986) *''Cézanne, a Biography'' (1986) *''Seurat, a Biography'' (1990) *''Camille Pissarro'' (1963) *''The Impressionist Brush'' (1973/74) *''Cézanne, the Steins, and their Circle'' (1987) *''Cézanne in America'' (1989) *''The Paintings of Paul Cézanne'': A Catalogue Raisonné by John Rewald in collaboration with Walter Feilchenfeldt and
Jayne Warman Jayne is a name. Surname *Billy Jayne, American television and film actor *Caroline Furness Jayne (1873–1909), American ethnologist *Erika Jayne, American dance/club music performer *Francis Jayne (1845–1921), British bishop and academic *Horac ...
(1996) ;Edited works *''Camille Pissarro at the Musée du Louvre'' (1939) *''Paul Cézanne, Letters'' (1941) *''Paul Gauguin, Letters'' (1943) *''Camille Pissarro, Letters to his Son Lucien'' (1943) *''The Woodcuts of Aristide Maillol'' (1943), ''
catalogue raisonné A (or critical catalogue) is an annotated listing of the works of an artist or group of artists and can contain all works or a selection of works categorised by different parameters such as medium or period. A ''catalogue raisonné'' is normal ...
'' *''Renoir, Drawings'' (1946) *''Paul Cézanne, Carnets de Dessins'' (1951) *''The Sculptures of Edgar Degas'' (1957), ''catalogue raisonné'' *''Gauguin, Drawings'' (1958)


Notes


References

*"Rewald, John." (1993) ''The Columbia Encyclopedia,'' 5th Edition. New York:
Columbia University Press Columbia University Press is a university press based in New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's la ...
.
"Rewald, John ...,"
''Dictionary of Art Historians.'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Rewald, John 1912 births 1994 deaths 20th-century American historians 20th-century American male writers American people of German-Jewish descent American expatriates in France Immigrants to the United States University of Paris alumni Princeton University faculty University of Chicago faculty CUNY Graduate Center faculty American art historians German art historians German male non-fiction writers American male non-fiction writers