Background
Wendorf, Richard Harold was born on March 17, 1948 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, United States. Son of Harold Albert and Jeanne Ellen Wendorf.
( Following in the methodological footsteps of his prize-...)
Following in the methodological footsteps of his prize-winning Sir Joshua Reynolds: The Painter in Society, Richard Wendorf’s new book on British art in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is an experiment in cultural history, combining the analysis of specific artistic objects with an exploration of the cultural conditions in which they were created. Themes include an investigation of what happens when a painter dies, the role of writing around and within visual objects, and the nature of evidence in art history. Extended interpretations of some of the most iconic images in British art, including Constable’s Cenotaph, Raeburn’s Skating Minister, Stubbs’s Haymakers and Reapers, and Rossetti’s Prosperpine, Venus Verticordia, and Blessed Damosel, are part of a broader investigation of the ways in which we practice art history today.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/030010734X/?tag=2022091-20
(The ten linked chapters in The Scholar-Librarian document...)
The ten linked chapters in The Scholar-Librarian document the professional, scholarly, and personal interests of one of America's most distinguished library directors - a librarian, moreover, who is widely admired in the academic world for the clarity and elegance of his critical writing. In these essays, Richard Wendorf's critical intelligence can be gauged in his analysis of works as diverse as the poetical manuscripts of Alexander Pope, Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up, and Piranesi's early etchings, as well as various typographical and bibliographical issues. But, several of these essays also reveal another side of the author as he writes in a more personal and often humorous style about collecting, libraries, and librarianship. Both critically and professionally, Wendorf is a problem-solver, and readers will relish joining him as he examines the precise relationship between Piranesi's ruins and the etching process or as he persuades a potential donor to present a fabled letter by John Keats to Harvard University. Richard Wendorf is the Stanford Calderwood Director and Librarian of the Boston Athenæum, the eleventh person to hold the directorship since the library's founding in 1807. He is an eighteenth-century scholar with a particular interest in English art, literature, and printing history. He has edited The Works of William Collins with Charles Ryskamp 1979 and is the author of William Collins and Eighteenth-Century English Poetry 1981 , The Elements of Life: Biography and Portrait-Painting in Stuart and Georgian England 1990 , Sir Joshua Reynolds: The Painter in Society 1996 , and After Sir Joshua: Essays on British Art and Cultural History 2005 . With 19 black-and-white illustrations. Co-published with The Boston Athenæum. viii , 247+ 1 pages. cloth, dust jacket. 8vo..
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1584561599/?tag=2022091-20
( William Collins and Eighteenth-Century English Poetry w...)
William Collins and Eighteenth-Century English Poetry was first published in 1981. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. William Collins (1721–1759) is one of several eighteenth-century poets who have received more attention for what they are said to have anticipated—the full-blooded Romanticism of Wordsworth and Coleridge—than for what they have achieved. Collins's career as a poet was brief, but the handful of major poems that he wrote in the mid -1740s has stirred interest among critics intrigued by the complexity and obscurity of his work and by the illness and possible madness that prematurely ended his life. Combining historical scholarship with close readings of all Collins's poems, Richard Wendorf provides the most comprehensive and detailed study to be devoted to the work of this enigmatic figure and to the forces that shaped his literary career. In doing so, he places Collins within an eighteenth-century poetic context and shows that his gift for myth-making makes him a vital link between the mythic poetry of Shakespeare and Spenser and that of the Romantics. Wendorf's opening and closing chapters examine the relationship between Collins's life and his work, providing an authoritative discussion of his supposed madness and of the myths of insanity that clouded his reputation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Wendorf argues that Collins's madness is problematical at best, and that much recent criticism is a distortion of his major work, which explores the transcendent powers of the irrational forces within us but is not necessarily the product of madness itself. The book's central chapters trace Collins's development as a poet and offer fresh approaches to his major odes. In these mature poems he turned from his early interest in Augustan poetry to very different sources of inspiration and came to reject the ordered and unified natural world of Pope and Thompson.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0816610584/?tag=2022091-20
( That Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) became the most f...)
That Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) became the most fashionable painter of his time was not simply due to his artistic gifts or good fortune. The art of pleasing, Richard Wendorf contends, was as much a part of Reynolds's success--in his life and in his work--as the art of painting. The author's examination of Reynolds's life and career illuminates the nature of eighteenth-century English society in relation to the enterprise of portrait-painting. Conceived as an experiment in cultural criticism, written along the fault lines that separate (but also link) art history and literary studies, Sir Joshua Reynolds: The Painter in Society explores the ways in which portrait-painting is embedded in the social fabric of a given culture as well as in the social and professional transaction between the artist and his or her subject. In addition to providing a new view of Reynolds, Wendorf's book develops a thoroughly new way of interpreting portraiture. Wendorf takes us into Reynolds's studio to show us the artist deploying his considerable social and theatrical skills in staging his sittings as carefully orchestrated performances. The painter's difficult relationship with his sister Frances (also an artist and writer), his complicated maneuvering with patrons, the manner in which he set himself up as an artist and businessman, his highly politicized career as the first president of the Royal Academy of Arts: as each of these aspects of Reynolds's practice comes under Wendorf's scrutiny, a new picture of the painter emerges--more sharply defined and fully fleshed than the Reynolds of past portraits, and clearly delineating his capacity for provoking ambivalence among friends and colleagues, and among viewers and readers today.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/067480967X/?tag=2022091-20
(The twelve essays in this bicentennial publication addres...)
The twelve essays in this bicentennial publication address some of the most important episodes and issues during the Boston Athenæum’s two-hundred-year history. Two chapters focus on the Athenæum’s origins: what were its models, and how did it differ from contemporary institutions? Other chapters discuss the role of women, prints and photographs, the scruples collection, architectural holdings, and the book arts collection. Two essays are devoted to the Athenæum’s role in the creation of the Boston Public Library and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Three other chapters discuss nineteenth-century British responses to the cultural life of Boston, the role of the Athenæum’s conservation program, and the recently established Calderwood Writing Initiative. Each essay will remind both scholars and the general reader of the various roles the Athenæum has played in the cultural life of the nation. Founded in 1807, the Boston Athenæum, the largest membership library in North America, boasts an extensive collection of rare books and manuscripts as well as one of the most significant art collections at any American library. It is home to more than 700,000 books, including approximately one-half of George Washington’s personal library from Mount Vernon.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0934552762/?tag=2022091-20
Wendorf, Richard Harold was born on March 17, 1948 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, United States. Son of Harold Albert and Jeanne Ellen Wendorf.
Bachelor, Williams College, 1970. Bachelor of Philosophy, University Oxford, England, 1972. Master of Arts, Princeton University, 1974.
Doctor of Philosophy, Princeton University, 1976.
From assistant professor English to associate professor English Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, 1976-1986, associate dean, 1984-1988, professor English and art history, 1986-1989. Library director Houghton Library., Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1989-1997. Stanford Calderwood director & library Boston Athenaeum, 1997—2009, director emeritus, since 2009.
Senior lecturer fine arts Harvard University, 1990—1997, acting library Fine Arts Library., 1991—1992, director National Endowment of the Humanities summer seminars college teachers, 1990, 92, 96. Lecturer Phi Beta Kappa Associates, 1992—1996. Director National Endowment of the Humanities summer seminars college teachers Northwestern University, 1987, Boston Anthenaeum, 2002, 04.
Robert Sterling Clark visiting professor art history Williams College, 1993. Board managers Lewis Walpole Library., since 2005.
( Following in the methodological footsteps of his prize-...)
(The ten linked chapters in The Scholar-Librarian document...)
(In this bold new study, Wendorf compares two arts--biogra...)
(In this bold new study, Wendorf compares two arts--biogra...)
(The twelve essays in this bicentennial publication addres...)
( That Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) became the most f...)
( William Collins and Eighteenth-Century English Poetry w...)
( William Collins and Eighteenth-Century English Poetry w...)
Trustee Museum Fine Arts, Boston. Member of Society Antiquaries London, Massachusetts History Society, The Johnsonians (chairman 1994-1995, 1997-1998, 2007-2008), National Committee Standards Arts, Colonial Society Massachusetts, Society British Art Historians, College Art Association, American Society 18th Century Studies (president Midwest regional society 1986, Annibel Jenkins Biography prize 1998), American Antiquarian Society, Keats-Shelley Association American (board directors 1993-1998), Signet Society (associate), University Club (New York ), Union Club Boston, Saturday Club, Cambridge Science Club, Grolier Club, Phi Beta Kappa (executive board Chicago 1984-1987, nominating committee 1998—2002).
Married Barbara Hilderman, 1970 (divorced 1983). Married Diana Thanet French, 1984 (divorced 1995). Children: Reed Thanet Wendorf-French, Carolyn Thanet Wendorf-French.
Married Elizabeth Morse, 1997.