Gustav Friedrich Waagen (February 11, 1794–July 15, 1868) was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 art historian.

Waagen was born in Hamburg

Hamburg

-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

, the son of a painter and nephew of the poet Ludwig Tieck

Ludwig Tieck

Johann Ludwig Tieck was a German poet, translator, editor, novelist, writer of Novellen, and critic, who was one of the founding fathers of the Romantic movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.-Early life:...

. Having passed through the college of Hirschberg

Hirschberg

The German word Hirschberg is composed of Hirsch and Berg . It may refer to:* several places in Europe, including:** Hirschberg, Thuringia, Germany.** Hirschberg, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany....

, he volunteered for service in the Napoleonic campaign of 1813-1814, and on his return attended the lectures at Breslau University. He devoted himself to the study of art, which he pursued in the great European galleries, first in Germany, then in Holland and Italy.

A pamphlet on the brothers Van Eyck

Van Eyck

Van Eyck , also Van Eijk is a Dutch surname meaning "of Eyck" or "of Eijk"...

 led to his appointment to the directorship of the newly founded Berlin Museum in 1832. The result of a journey to London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 and Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 was an important publication in three volumes, Kunstwerke und Künstler in England und Paris (Berlin, 1837-1839), which became the basis for his more important The Treasures of Art in Great Britain, translated by Elizabeth Eastlake

Elizabeth Eastlake

Elizabeth, Lady Eastlake , born Elizabeth Rigby, was a British author, art critic and art historian who was the first woman to write regularly for the Quarterly Review...

, (4 vols, London, 1854 and 1857). This remains a key source for the provenance

Provenance

Provenance, from the French provenir, "to come from", refers to the chronology of the ownership or location of an historical object. The term was originally mostly used for works of art, but is now used in similar senses in a wide range of fields, including science and computing...

 of paintings then in England. Although Waagen has been criticised for his "amateurish and erratic expertise" by modern standards, his work was regarded as highly authoritative for the next half-century.

In 1844 he was appointed professor of art history at the Berlin University, and in 1861 he was called to St Petersburg as adviser in the arranging and naming of the pictures in the imperial collection. On his return he published a book on the Hermitage collection (Munich, 1864). Among his other publications are some essays on Rubens, Mantegna

Andrea Mantegna

Andrea Mantegna was an Italian painter, a student of Roman archeology, and son in law of Jacopo Bellini. Like other artists of the time, Mantegna experimented with perspective, e.g., by lowering the horizon in order to create a sense of greater monumentality...

 and Signorelli

Luca Signorelli

Luca Signorelli was an Italian Renaissance painter who was noted in particular for his ability as a draughtsman and his use of foreshortening...

; Kunstwerke und Künstler in Deutschland; and Die vornehmsten Kunstdenkmäler in Wien.

He died on a visit to Copenhagen

Copenhagen

Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...

 in 1868. In the light of later research his writings are not of much value as regards trustworthy criticism, though they are useful as catalogues of art treasures in private collections at the time when they were compiled. His opinions were greatly respected in England, where he was invited to give evidence before the royal commission inquiring into the condition and future of the National Gallery

National Gallery, London

The National Gallery is an art museum on Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The gallery is an exempt charity, and a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media...

, for which he was a leading candidate to become Director.

External links

• Online Text Treasures of Art in Great Britain: Being an Account of the Chief Collections of Paintings, Drawings, Sculptures, Illuminated Mss., &c., &c, By Gustav Friedrich Waagen, Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake, Algernon Graves
  Algernon Graves
  Algernon Graves was a British art sales and art exhibition documenter. He created reference sources that began the modern discipline of provenance research.-Early life:...
  
  . Translated by Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake, published by J. Murray, 1854, (Original from the New York Public Library)
• Art as Existence Gabriele Guercio - The MIT Press, 2006