Denys Miller Sutton (10 August 1917 – 30 January 1991) was a British art critic and historian known for his focus on European artists before 1800 (Old Masters) and Asian art. He was art critic for the Financial Times and editor of Apollo magazine. [1]
Apollo is an English-language monthly magazine covering visual arts of all periods, from antiquity to the present day.
The son of Edmund Miller Sutton (son of Thomas Miller Sutton, a pawnbroker and jeweller, of Victoria Street, London) who worked for the family business, Suttons & Robertsons, and Dulcie Laura (nee Wheeler), [2] [1] Sutton was educated at Uppingham and Exeter College, Oxford, receiving a B.A. and B.Litt. [1]
Uppingham School is a co-educational independent school situated in the small market town of Uppingham in Rutland, England. The school was founded in 1584 by Robert Johnson, the Archdeacon of Leicester who also established Oakham School.
Exeter College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England and the fourth oldest college of the University.
Sutton worked for the Foreign Office Research Department from 1940-46, then appointed Secretary of the International Commission for Restitution of Cultural Material. In 1948 he was named UNESCO's Fine Arts specialist. He visited Yale University in 1949 as a lecturer, then worked as art sales correspondent and a book reviewer for the Daily Telegraph, as well as art critic for the Financial Times and Country Life magazine. In 1962 the Financial Times management appointed him editor of Apollo magazine; during his years of service, he greatly improved the magazine's reputation and increased profits. On his 1986 retirement, he wrote the book 'Degas: The Man and the Work', released that year. Sutton was also a respected organiser of art exhibitions, including the 'France in the Eighteenth Century' show at the Royal Academy in 1968. [3] [4]
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) based in Paris. Its declared purpose is to contribute to peace and security by promoting international collaboration through educational, scientific, and cultural reforms in order to increase universal respect for justice, the rule of law, and human rights along with fundamental freedom proclaimed in the United Nations Charter. It is the successor of the League of Nations' International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation.
Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine Colonial Colleges chartered before the American Revolution.
The Financial Times (FT) is an English-language international daily newspaper owned by Nikkei Inc, headquartered in London, with a special emphasis on business and economic news.
He was appointed C.B.E. in the 1985 New Year Honours list.
The New Year Honours 1985 were appointments by most of the Commonwealth realms of Queen Elizabeth II to various orders and honours to reward and highlight good works by citizens of those countries, and honorary ones to citizens of other countries. They were announced on 31 December 1984 to celebrate the year passed and mark the beginning of 1985 in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Barbados, Mauritius, Fiji, the Bahamas, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Antigua and Barbuda, and Saint Christopher and Nevis.
Sutton married Sonja Klibansky in 1940, with whom he had a daughter, Madeleine; Gertrud Koebke-Knutson in 1952, with whom he had a son, Caspar; and, in 1960, Cynthia Sassoon. [1] [4] Denys and Cynthia Sutton lived at Westwood Manor, a National Trust property at Bradford-upon-Avon, Wiltshire, until 1983, following which they lived at Chelsea. [5]
Westwood Manor is a 15th-century manor house with 16th-century additions and 17th-century plaster-work in the village of Westwood near Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire, England. It is the former home of Edgar Lister, a diplomat at the Ottoman court in the early years of the 20th century.
Wiltshire is a county in South West England with an area of 3,485 km2. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. The county town was originally Wilton, after which the county is named, but Wiltshire Council is now based in the county town of Trowbridge.
Impressionism is a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities, ordinary subject matter, inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience, and unusual visual angles. Impressionism originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s.
Edgar Degas was a French artist famous for his paintings, sculptures, prints, and drawings. He is especially identified with the subject of dance; more than half of his works depict dancers. Regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism, he rejected the term, preferring to be called a realist. He was a superb draftsman, and particularly masterly in depicting movement, as can be seen in his rendition of dancers, racecourse subjects and female nudes. His portraits are notable for their psychological complexity and for their portrayal of human isolation.
Roger Eliot Fry was an English painter and critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of more recent developments in French painting, to which he gave the name Post-Impressionism. He was the first figure to raise public awareness of modern art in Britain, and emphasised the formal properties of paintings over the "associated ideas" conjured in the viewer by their representational content. He was described by the art historian Kenneth Clark as "incomparably the greatest influence on taste since Ruskin ... In so far as taste can be changed by one man, it was changed by Roger Fry". The taste Fry influenced was primarily that of the Anglophone world, and his success lay largely in alerting an educated public to a compelling version of recent artistic developments of the Parisian avant-garde.
Anthony Dymoke Powell was an English novelist best known for his twelve-volume work A Dance to the Music of Time, published between 1951 and 1975.
Ronald Brooks Kitaj was an American artist with Jewish roots who spent much of his life in England.
Andrew Sydenham Farrar Gow was an English classical scholar and teacher. Apart from eleven years as a master at Eton College between 1914 and 1925 his career was entirely at Trinity College, Cambridge.
Anthony Lane is a British journalist, currently a film critic for The New Yorker magazine.
Cynthia Lillian Lennon was the first wife of English musician John Lennon and mother of Julian Lennon. She grew up in the middle-class section of Hoylake, on the Wirral Peninsula in North West England. At the age of 12, she was accepted into the Junior Art School, and was later enrolled in the Liverpool College of Art. John Lennon also attended the college; a meeting with Powell in a calligraphy class led to their relationship.
The Burlington Magazine is a monthly publication that covers the fine and decorative arts. Established in 1903, it is the longest running art journal in the English language. It has been published by a charitable organisation since 1986.
Sir Geoffrey de Bellaigue was Surveyor of the Queen's Works of Art from 1972 to 1996. His was the first full-time appointment to the office, and he did much to professionalise the Royal Collection department after being made the Director of the Royal Collection in 1988.
Karen Wilkin is a New York-based independent curator and art critic specializing in 20th-century modernism. Educated at Barnard College and Columbia University, she was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and a Fulbright Scholarship, to Rome. Wilkin has organized numerous exhibitions internationally and is the author of monographs on Stuart Davis, David Smith, Anthony Caro, Kenneth Noland, Helen Frankenthaler, and Hans Hofmann. Her recent projects include a Hofmann retrospective for the Naples Art Museum, Naples, Florida, and, with William C. Agee, the introductory essays for the Stuart Davis Catalogue Raisonné.
Les Choristes is an 1877 pastel on monotype by French artist Edgar Degas. Part of a series of similar works depicting daily public entertainment at the time, it shows a group of singers performing a scene from the opera Don Giovanni, the only work by Degas depicting an operatic performance without dancers.
Sid Barron was a Canadian editorial cartoonist and artist. He drew for the Victoria Times, Toronto Star and The Albertan.
The Bellelli Family, also known as Family Portrait, is an oil painting on canvas by Edgar Degas (1834–1917), painted ca. 1858–1867, and housed in the Musée d'Orsay. A masterwork of Degas' youth, the painting is a portrait of his aunt, her husband, and their two young daughters.
Henry Mee is a British painter. He read Fine Art at the University of Leeds awarded a place by Professor Sir Lawrence Gowing, graduating in 1979.
Thomas Edwin 'Peter' Utley was a British High Tory journalist and writer who stood unsuccessfully for election to the Parliament of the United Kingdom on one occasion.
Le Roux Smith Le Roux (1914–1963), sometimes rendered LeRoux Smith LeRoux, was a South African artist, actor, broadcaster, art critic and art dealer, considered to be the most distinguished specialist muralist the country has produced. Le Roux was infamous for his involvement in the Great Tate Affair.
Roger Freeing Angelica or Ruggiero Freeing Angelica is an 1819 painting by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, inspired by Orlando Furioso by Ariosto. An oil painting on canvas measuring 147 x 199 cm, it is owned by the Louvre. Ingres subsequently painted several variants of the composition.
Ian Dunlop is a Scottish writer and former art critic for the Evening Standard. His first book, The Shock of the New, about seven historic exhibitions of modern art, was published in 1972. It was followed by books on Van Gogh, and on the life and art of Edgar Degas (1979). He has also written books and articles on contemporary American and British art and has contributed reviews and art criticism to The Times, Studio International, Apollo, The Times Literary Supplement and The Spectator.