Francis Haskell

{{Short description|English art historian}}{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2024}}{{Use British English|date=July 2015}} {{Infobox academic | honorific_prefix =  | name = Francis Haskell | honorific_suffix = {{Post-nominals|country=GBR|size=100%|FBA}} | image = | image_size = | alt = | caption = | birth_name = Francis James Herbert Haskell | birth_date = 7 April 1928 | birth_place = | death_date = {{death date and age|df=y|18 January 2000|7 April 1928}} | death_place = | death_cause = | citizenship = United Kingdom | other_names = | occupation = | period = | known_for = | title = | boards =  | spouse = | partner = | children = | parents = | relatives = Arnold Haskell (father) | awards = Serena Medal, British Academy (1985) | website = | education = Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle <br /> Eton College | alma_mater = King's College, Cambridge | thesis_title = | thesis_url = | thesis_year = | school_tradition = | doctoral_advisor = | academic_advisors = | influences =  | era = | discipline = Art history | sub_discipline =  | workplaces = King's College, Cambridge <br /> Trinity College, Oxford | doctoral_students =  | notable_students = | main_interests = | notable_works = | notable_ideas = | influenced =  | signature = | signature_alt = | signature_size = | footnotes = }} '''Francis James Herbert Haskell''', {{Post-nominals|country=GBR|size=100%|sep=,|FBA}} (7 April 1928 – 18 January 2000) was an English art historian, whose writings placed emphasis on the social history of art. He wrote one of the first and most influential<ref>Shone, Richard and Stonard, John-Paul, eds.. ''The Books That Shaped Art History: From Gombrich and Greenberg to Alpers and Krauss''. London: Thames & Hudson, 2013.</ref> patronage studies, ''Patrons and Painters''.

==Early life and education== Haskell was born on 7 April 1928. He was the son of Arnold Haskell, an influential ballet critic and writer<ref name="WWW" /> and Vera Saitzoff,<ref>{{Cite web|last=White|first=Christopher|date=21 January 2000|title=Francis Haskell|url=http://www.theguardian.com/news/2000/jan/21/guardianobituaries3|access-date=3 August 2021|website=The Guardian|language=en}}</ref> daughter of a Russian industrialist<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|last=Hope|first=Charles|title=Haskell, Francis James Herbert, 1928–2000|url=https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/publishing/memoirs/1/haskell-francis-james-herbert-1928-2000/|access-date=3 August 2021|website=The British Academy|language=en}}</ref> and sister of writer Boris Zaytsev.<ref>Гравюрный кабинет Фрэнсиса Хаскелла. Каталог выставки. Москва, Фонд In Artibus, 2023. ISBN 978-5-91668-021-8</ref> His first language was French, the language shared by his parents, and he was fluent in English, French and Italian.<ref name="ODNB" /> From ages 5 to 8, Francis attended the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle in London, and then at Eton College.<ref name="WWW" />

In 1948, after serving in the Royal Army Educational Corps, Haskell matriculated into King's College, Cambridge.<ref name="ODNB">{{Cite ODNB |first=Charles |surname=Hope |id=73649 |title=Haskell, Francis James Herbert (1928–2000) |date=25 May 2006}}</ref> He read history before switching to English, and among his tutors were Eric Hobsbawm and Dadie Rylands.<ref name="ODNB" /> At Cambridge, he was a member of the semi-secretive Cambridge Apostles society, a debating club largely reserved for the brightest students.{{cn|date=August 2021}}

==Academic career== Haskell began his career not in academia but as a junior library clerk in the House of Commons from 1953 to 1954. In 1954, however, he was elected a fellow of King's. He was additionally librarian of the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Cambridge, from 1962 to 1967. In 1967, he was elected Professor of Art History at the University of Oxford, where he remained until his retirement in 1995; the position made him, ''ex officio'' a visitor—that is, a trustee—of the Ashmolean Museum. He was additionally a fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, from 1967 to 1995.<ref name="WWW" /> In November 1971, he was made a member of the British School at Rome for the next three years.<ref name="LG 45519">{{London Gazette |issue= 45519 |date= 12 November 1971 |page= 12329}}</ref> He retired from Oxford in 1995, and was made an honorary fellow of his college.<ref name="WWW" />

He was a trustee of the Wallace Collection from 1976 to 1997. In 1976 Haskell, who often served on advisory committees for museum loan exhibitions, joined the National Art Collections Fund committee and became one of its most vocal members, defending the purchase of Poussin's ''Rebecca and Eliezar'' for the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge (the government refused to accept the painting because it had been in the collection of the disgraced Anthony Blunt).

Haskell's research focused beyond artworks to people that surrounded them, including their patrons and history of the academic study of art.<ref name="ODNB" /> His interest in the circumstances in which paintings were displayed, which reflected the esteem in which they were held and influenced the way they were perceived runs as a ''leitmotiv'' through his published work, beginning with an article jointly written with Michael Levey in ''Arte Veneta'', 1958, that was devoted to art exhibitions in eighteenth-century Venice.<ref>Noted by Nicholas Penny in his introduction to ''The Ephemeral Museum''.</ref>

==Personal life== His wife, Larissa, née Salmina (1931–2024), had been a curator at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. They met in Venice in 1962,<ref>{{Cite web |last=Norman |first=By Max |title=‘Parallel Lives’ Review: Love Across the Iron Curtain |url=https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/books/parallel-lives-review-love-across-the-iron-curtain-30a09578 |access-date=2025-09-13 |website=The Wall Street Journal |language=en-US}}</ref> married in 1965,<ref>{{Cite web|title=Collections Online|url=https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG247606|access-date=3 August 2021|website=The British Museum}}</ref> and lived in Walton Street, Oxford. They did not have any children.<ref name="WWW" />

Haskell died of liver cancer on 18 January 2000, aged 71.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Cotter|first=Holland|date=29 January 2000|title=Francis Haskell, 71, An Author And Professor of Art History|language=en-US|page=B7|work=New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2000/01/29/arts/francis-haskell-71-an-author-and-professor-of-art-history.html|access-date=2021-08-03|issn=0362-4331}}</ref>

==Honours== In 1971, he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences.<ref name="WWW">{{cite web |title=Haskell, Francis James Herbert |url=https://www.ukwhoswho.com/view/10.1093/ww/9780199540891.001.0001/ww-9780199540884-e-179067 |website=Who Was Who |access-date=24 May 2020 |language=en |doi=10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U179067 |date=1 December 2007|isbn=978-0-19-954089-1 }}</ref> In 1979, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Francis James Herbert Haskell|url=https://www.amacad.org/person/francis-james-herbert-haskell|access-date=2022-02-22|website=American Academy of Arts & Sciences|language=en}}</ref> He was awarded the Serena medal for Italian studies by the British Academy in 1985.<ref>{{cite web |title=Winners of the Serena Medal |url=https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Serena%20Medal%20pre%202000.pdf |website=The British Academy |access-date=24 May 2020 }}{{Dead link|date=January 2026 |bot=InternetArchiveBot }}</ref> He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1994.<ref>{{Cite web|title=APS Member History|url=https://search.amphilsoc.org/memhist/search?creator=Francis+Haskell&title=&subject=&subdiv=&mem=&year=&year-max=&dead=&keyword=&smode=advanced|access-date=2022-02-22|website=search.amphilsoc.org}}</ref> His book ''Rediscoveries in Art'' won the first Jan Mitchell Prize in 1977.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Krebs|first=Albin|date=2 November 1977|title=Notes on People|language=en-US|page=52|work=New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1977/11/02/archives/notes-on-people.html|access-date=3 August 2021|issn=0362-4331}}</ref>

Haskell had been made a chevalier of the Légion d'honneur by the President of France in recognition of his work.<ref name="ODNB" />

==Selected bibliography== * ''The Age of the Grand Tour''. Crown Publishers, 1967, with Anthony Burgess. * ''Patrons and Painters: Art and Society in Baroque Italy''. Chatto & Windus, 1962. 2nd edition, 1980. Haskell was working on a further revised edition when he died. * ''Rediscoveries in Art: Some Aspects of Taste, Fashion, and Collecting in England and France''. Cornell University Press, 1976. * ''Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Antique Sculpture 1500–1900''. Yale University Press, 1981, with Nicholas Penny. * ''Past and Present in Art and Taste'': Selected Essays. Yale University Press, 1987. * ''The Painful Birth of the Art Book''. (Walther Neurath Memorial Lecture 19). Thames & Hudson, 1987. * ''History and its Images: Art and the Interpretation of the Past''. Yale University Press, 1993. * ''The Ephemeral Museum: Old Master Paintings and the Rise of the Art Exhibition''. Yale University Press, 2000. * ''The King's Pictures: The Formation and Dispersal of the Collections of Charles I and His Courtiers''. Yale University Press, 2013.

== Sources ==

* Гравюрный кабинет Фрэнсиса Хаскелла. Каталог выставки. Москва, Фонд In Artibus, 2023. ISBN 978-5-91668-021-8

== External links == * Lee Sorensen, ''[http://arthistorians.info/haskellf Haskell, Francis (James Herbert)]'' * University of Oxford Department of the History of Art [https://www.hoa.ox.ac.uk/professor-francis-haskell biography] * [https://www.nybooks.com/contributors/francis-haskell/ Essays contributed] to the ''New York Review of Books''. * [https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/documents/366/115p227.pdf Note] by Charles Hope for the ''Proceedings of the British Academy'' 115 (2002): pages 227–242.

==References== {{Reflist}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Haskell, Francis}} Category:1928 births Category:2000 deaths Category:20th-century English historians Category:Alumni of King's College, Cambridge Category:English art historians Category:English people of Dutch descent Category:English people of Iraqi-Jewish descent Category:English people of Russian descent Category:Fellows of the British Academy Category:Fellows of King's College, Cambridge Category:Fellows of Trinity College, Oxford Category:Knights of the Legion of Honour Category:Members of the American Philosophical Society Category:People educated at Eton College Category:People educated at Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle Category:People from Kensington Category:British recipients of the Legion of Honour