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(c) 2017 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
R. Langton Douglas
(c) 2017 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
(c) 2017 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

R. Langton Douglas

Lavenham, United Kingdom, 1864 - 1951, Fiesole, Italy
Biographyfound: Leonardo da Vinci, 1933: t.p. (R. Langton Douglas)
found: RLIN, 10/4/95 (hdg.: Douglas, Robert Langton, 1864-; Douglas, Robert Langton, 1864-1951; usage: R. Langton Douglas; Robert Langton Douglas; Langton Douglas)
found: NUC pre-1956 (hdg.: Douglas, Robert Langton, 1864-; usage: R. Langton Douglas)
found: WW in Amer. art, 1953 (Douglas, Robert Langton; critic; d. Aug. 14, 1951 in Florence, Italy; age 86)

Douglas, R[obert] Langton
Date born: 1864
Place born: Lavenham, Suffolk, United Kingdom
Date died: 1951
Place died: Fiesole, Italy

Italian renaissance art scholar, dealer, and director, National Gallery, Dublin. Douglas attended Oxford University concentrating in Modern History. Walter Pater and Charles Fairfax Murray inspired him to study art. While a chaplain for the Church of England in Italy, he wrote the text for a monograph on Fra Angelico, consulting with a number of scholars, including Bernard Berenson. He gave up his church appointment in 1900, accepting a position as professor of Modern History at the University of Adelaide, Australia. The Angelico monograph appeared in 1900. He returned to Italy in 1901 where his friends, prominent Italian scholars as well as the Zendadari-Chigi family, in whose palace Douglas stayed, assisted in his writing his book, A History of Siena, 1902. It was Douglas who recommended Berenson, unbeknownst to Berenson, to the British art dealer Joseph Duveen, which began an long and ethically compromising relationship between the dealer and Berenson. Berenson increasingly saw Douglas as a rival in the field of Italian scholarship and felt his opinions had been unacknowledged in Douglas's books. Berenson used an article Douglas published on Sassetta in the Burlington Magazine in 1903 to launch a major feud. Berenson published two rival articles on the artist the same year in the Burlington. This set in motion the rival camps of Italian scholarship among the English-speaking world, with Douglas and S. Arthur Strong pitted against Berenson, Roger Fry, and the other "consultative editors" of the Burlington Magazine. Beginning in 1903 ( through 1911) Douglas published a revised edition the first four volumes of A New History of Painting in Italy, the important work of Joseph Crowe and G. B. Cavalcaselle. In 1904 he curated an exhibition of Sienese art at the Burlington Fine Arts Club at the suggestion of the collector Robert Henry Benson (1850-1929). At age 50, in 1914, Douglas enlisted in the British Army in order to fight in World War I. He rose from private to staff captain and a position with the War Office in London. He continued to deal in art during the war. In 1916 Douglas was appointed director of the National Gallery of Art, Dublin. When a disagreement with the trustees erupted in 1923, Douglas resigned. Douglas dealt in old master art during the 1920s, a time when the American newly-rich were anxious to acquire them. He sold major paintings to Otto H. Kahn and Philip Lehman. He settled in New York in 1940, writing text for the Duveen art galleries. He continued to write articles in addition to the Burlington Magazine, Bryan's Dictionary, Art in America, Art Quarterly and the Connoisseur. He was called as a witness on behalf of the art dealer Joseph Duveen in the lawsuit brought about by Mrs Harry Hahn and her purported Leonardo, "La Belle Ferronniere" in 1929. In 1940 and 1941 Douglas lectured in the United States at Harvard and Princeton. He died in Fiesole, in 1951. His book collection was auctioned off at Sotheby's in 1952. His widow, and former research assistant, Jean Langton Douglas, married Edward Fowles, head Duveen's Paris branch and later heir to Duveen's galleries.

Douglas sale of masterworks to collectors and museums included J. Pierpont Morgan and John G. Johnson; the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (Giotto’s Dormition of the Virgin), Wilhelm von Bode for the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum in Berlin, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Epiphany, Giotto) 1911, Julius Wernher in London (Albrecht Altdorfer’s Christ Taking Leave of his Mother), and facilitated sales of Giovanni Bellini’s St Francis in Ecstasy and Gerard David’s Deposition to Henry Clay Frick.

Douglas' work as a scholar and dealer was admired by John Pope-Hennessy (q.v.), whom Douglas encouraged to publish his work on Sassetta in 1939, which was built upon by Frederico Zeri and Everett Fahy. Pope-Hennessy wrote that Douglas "attempted the first synthetic review of Sassetta's career and reattributed to the painter several of his most important pictures, among them the now famous panel of The Mystic Marriage of St. Francis at Chantilly then attributed by Berenson to Sano di Pietro."

Home Country: United Kingdom/United States/Ireland

Sources: Simpson, Colin. Artful Partners: Bernard Berenson and Joseph Duveen. New York: Macmillan, 1986, p. 5; Sutton, Denys. [series of issues devoted Douglas:] Apollo 109 (April 1979): 248-315, Apollo 109 (May 1979): 348-65, 367-83, Apollo 110 (June 1979): 439-46, 412-27, Apollo 110 (July 1979): 2-32, 35-41, 42-54, 55-61, and reprinted in book form as, Sutton, Denys. Robert Langton Douglas: Connoisseur of Art and Life. London: Apollo Magazine Ltd., 1979; "On R. Langton Douglas." Douglas, Claire, and [Reply] Pope-Hennessy, John. New York Review of Books 34, no. 12 (July 16, 1987): ; Pope-Hennessy, John. Sassetta. London: Chatto & Windus, 1939, pp. 1-2; [obituary:] "Robert L. Douglas, British Art Expert." New York Times August 16, 1951, p. 24.

Bibliography: Fra Angelico. London: G. Bell and Sons, 1900; introduction. Exhibition of Pictures of the School of Siena and Examples of the Minor Arts of that City. London: the Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1904; edited volumes 3 and 4, with Nicola, G. de, and Strong, S. Arthur. Crowe, Joseph Archer. A History of Painting in Italy, Umbria, Florence and Siena, from the Second to the Sixteenth Century. 2d edition. London: J. Murray, 1903-14; Leonardo da Vinci: his Life and Pictures. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944; Piero di Cosimo. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946; introduction, Certain Tragical Discourses of Bandello. London, D. Nutt, 1898; A History of Siena. London: J. Murray, 1902; "The Reconstruction of Dismembered Altarpieces: How Far is it Possible? How Far is it Desirable?" Art Quarterly (autumn, 1945): 281-295; introduction. Locker-Lampson, Godfrey Tennyson Lampson. A Few Italian Pictures Collected by Godfrey Locker-Lampson. London: Chiswick press ltd., 1937; Leonardo da Vinci: his "San Donato of Arezzo and the Tax Collector". London: Chiswick Press, 1933; The Art Reference Library Formed by the Late Robert Langton Douglas. New York: Parke-Bernet Galleries, 1952.
https://dictionaryofarthistorians.org/douglasr.htm I.S. 12/12/2017

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Last Updated8/7/24