Dennis Larry Ashwell Farr

Background

Dennis Larry Ashwell Farr was born on April 3, 1929 in Luton, Bedfordshire, England, United Kingdom. He was the youngest of three children of Arthur William Farr and Helen Eva Farr.

Education

Educated at Luton Grammar School (now Luton Sixth Form College), where Dennis Larry Aswell Farr was encouraged in his ambition to study the history of art by an enthusiastic art teacher, he went to the Courtauld Institute of Art, London University. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1950 and a Master of Arts degree in 1956.

Career

His early career began at the Courtauld Institute of Art, where Dennis Larry Ashwell Farr was an assistant Witt librarian from 1952 to 1954. He joined the Tate Gallery in London in 1954 as an assistant keeper. Here he became a specialist in modern British artworks, culminating in the publication of two important catalogs: the coauthored Catalogue of the Modern British School Collection (1964) and the solo work British Sculpture since 1945 (1965). Leaving his homeland in 1964, Farr served as curator at the Paul Mellon Collection in Washington, D.C., but returned to Great Britain in 1967 to be a senior lecturer and deputy keeper at the University of Glasgow.

From 1969 to 1973 Farr was an art advisor to the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. He became director of the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery and served from 1969 to 1980. The Courtauld Institute Galleries hired Farr as its director next, and he remained there until his 1993 retirement. Also the general editor of the "Clarendon Studies in the History of Art" series from 1985 to 2001, Farr continued to publish other catalogs and art books over the years. Among these are the cowritten The Northern Landscape: Flemish, Dutch, and British Drawings from the Courtauld Collections (1986), The Courtauld Institute Galleries, University of London (1990), and Lynn Chadwick: Tate Britain Exhibition (2003).

Achievements

• Dennis Larry Ashwell Farr was a prominent figure in the art world. He was best known for his service as the director of the Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery and later as the director of the Courtauld Institute Galleries. In 1981 he was awarded a Doctor of Letters degree from the University of Birmingham and became a Commander of the Order of the Empire in 1991.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Francis Bacon

    (Three prominent Bacon scholars shed light on the painter'...)

    1999
  • The Northern Landscape: Flemish, Dutch and British Drawings from the Courtauld Collections

    (Over 60 great artists are represented The Northern Landsc...)

    1986
  • Lynn Chadwick: Sculptor: With a Complete Illustrated Catalogue, 1947-1988

    (This is the first complete illustrated catalogue of the w...)

    1990
  • English Art 1870-1940

    (A major contribution to the study of modern painting, scu...)

    1979
  • William Etty 1958
  • 100 Masterpieces: Bernardo Daddi to Ben Nicholson: European Paintings and Drawings from the 14th to the 20th Century 1987
  • Guide to the Courtauld Institute Galleries at Somerset House 1990
  • The Courtauld Institute Galleries, University of London 1990
  • Pittura Inglese 1660-1840 1975

Membership

Dennis Larry Ashwell Farr was a member of the Athenaeum, the Institute of Contemporary Arts.

Interests

• reading, travel, writing, horseback riding

Connections

In 1959 Dennis Larry Ashwell married Diana Pullein-Thompson, a writer. They had two children: Benedict Edward, Joanna Helen.

Father:

Arthur William Farr

Mother:

Helen Eva Farr

Spouse:

Diana Pullein-Thompson

Son:

Benedict Edward Farr

Daughter:

Joanna Helen Farr

References

• Contemporary Authors
  2000