Arthur Kingsley Porter

Porter, Arthur Kingsley (American architectural historian, 1883-1933)

Biography:

Born: 1883 in Connecticut, United States

Died: 1933

Porter, Arthur Kingsley (Feb. 6, 1883 - July 8, 1933), archeologist, was born in Stamford, Conn., the third and youngest son of the Rev. Timothy Hopkins and Maria Louisa (Hoyt) Porter. To use his own words, he was "too well prepared" for college at the Browning School in New York. Like his father and brothers he entered Yale College (1900). Although he spent the greater part of his sophomore year accompanying a convalescent brother on a trip around the world, he graduated in 1904, fourth in his class.

After a summer abroad, having abandoned the idea of becoming a lawyer, he entered the Columbia School of Architecture. While there he secretly began his important two-volume book, Medieval Architecture; Its Origins and Development (1909), published when he was only twenty-six. At that time this was the most important contribution made by an American scholar to the history of medieval architecture and one that was to revolutionize the whole method of writing on the subject, in that he substituted the direct study of documents and dated monuments for the closet system of attempting to prove an ordered development. His work on this book led him to suspect the significance of Lombardy for the early history of architecture, and the next few years he spent in visiting and photographing the churches there, many of which, now lost, are today known only through his photographs. On June 1, 1912, he married Lucy Bryant Wallace, who was thereafter to be his constant companion and invaluable assistant. The first result of these travels to Lombardy was his brilliant monograph, The Construction of Lombard and Gothic Vaults (1911), followed by Lombard Architecture (1915) in three volumes of text and one of plates, the latter awarded the Grande Médaille de Vermeil of the Société Française d'Archéologie. In the same year he began teaching the history of art at Yale, serving as lecturer, 1915-17, and as assistant professor, 1917-19. He was granted leave of absence during the First World War in order that he might join the Service des ouvres d'Art dans la Zone des Armées at the request of the French Government. A series of beautifully written papers on esthetic subjects that he published in 1918 (entitled Beyond Architecture) explained his individual and non-academic system of esthetics.

In 1920, Harvard offered him the position of professor of fine arts, which he accepted and soon inaugurated the unusual classes in which he trained so many young American art historians. In 1925 he was made the first William Dorr Boardman Professor of Fine Arts. During 1923-4 he was exchange professor at the Sorbonne and held the Hyde lectureship at the French provincial universities. What is generally considered to be his greatest book, Romanesque Sculpture of the Pilgrimage Roads (in one volume of text and nine of plates), appeared in 1923. Porter here successfully demonstrated that Bédier's theory of the Chanson de Roland having grown up along the pilgrimage roads applied also to a school of Romanesque sculpture. After its publication the book was the subject of attack by French critics. Although there were minor errors, due often to the fact that he was obliged to rely on the work of other scholars, his theory came to be generally accepted by disinterested students, and in certain points where the French most hotly attacked him, as for example in the eleventh-century date for the Abbey of Cluny, his intuition was proved correct by excavations.

He continued to push his studies of Romanesque sculpture into farther regions and to trace its origins further back. These studies resulted again in an astounding book, Spanish Romanesque Sculpture (2 vols., 1928), in which again old theories were upset. Spanish Romanesque sculpture was shown to have had its own development and not to have been merely a reflection of contemporary French sculpture. The history of sculpture in Europe, also, was traced from Late Antique times down to the Middle Ages, with no break during the Dark Ages as had been the belief held hitherto. The search for the origins of medieval sculpture led him to Ireland, where in 1930 he acquired the demesne of Glenveagh Castle in the wildest, loneliest part of Donegal. There, except when returning to Harvard for his classes, he worked on his book, The Crosses and Culture of Ireland (1931). In it he solved many problems that had baffled local scholars, and he linked the culture with earlier distant civilizations as only one with his breadth of knowledge could. He was naturally led to the study of Ireland's prehistoric culture, but in 1933 he disappeared, during a storm, off the wild island of Inishbofin, where he had built himself a fisherman's cottage for weekend sojourns.

Tall and slender and fond of the out-of-doors from his youth when he had hunted great game in Canada, he was yet shy and retiring, with the look of the poet. These traits are found equally in his researches--the boldness of the great game hunter combined with the sense of beauty of the poet. The poetic side of his nature found further vent in two closet plays, The Seven Who Slept (1919) and The Virgin and the Clerk (1929), the latter proving itself to be actable when it was beautifully performed by students at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh. His brilliance in research was matched by his diligence, for in addition to the above-mentioned books he published over eighty articles and book reviews, presenting his opinions and announcing new ideas or discoveries. Such were his accomplishments that he is generally considered as probably the greatest American medieval archeologist of his day. He was honored by thirteen learned societies of the United States and was awarded an honorary Litt.D. degree (1927) by the University of Marburg.

"Arthur Kingsley Porter." Dictionary of American Biography. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1944. Biography in Context. Web. 17 Nov. 2015.