In Memoriam: Philip Conisbee
Senior Curator of European Paintings at National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art's Philip Conisbee, esteemed Senior Curator of European Paintings, died on January 16, 2008. He was 62 years old.
Philip Conisbee, Ph.D., distinguished art historian and Senior Curator of European Paintings at Washington, D.C.'s National Gallery of Art, died from complications due to lung cancer on January 16, 2008. He was 62 years of age.
Academic Background
Dr. Conisbee received his bachelor's degree with First Class Honors in the History of European Art from London's Courtauld Institute of Art in 1968. It was from the same prestigious institution that he also earned a Master of Philosophy in 1978. The scholar's doctoral research focused on the art of 18th-century French landscape and marine painter Claude-Joseph Vernet (1714-1789).
Career and Publications
In his native Britain, Philip Conisbee was a professor of art history at the universities of Reading, London, Leicester and Cambridge (1968-1986). He worked as Associate Curator of French Painting at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1986-1988) and Curator of European Painting and Sculpture at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1988-1993). After serving as the National Gallery of Art's Curator of French Paintings (1993-1998), Conisbee was promoted to Senior Curator of European Paintings. In that capacity, he was responsible for the museum's superb collection of European paintings from the 14th through 19th Centuries and supervised a large professional and support staff. His duties included matters of conservation, acquisition and installation of the permanent collection as well as temporary exhibitions.
In addition to numerous scholarly articles, catalogue essays and reviews, Conisbee, an authority on 17th-, 18th- and 19th-century French art, published Painting in 18th-century France (1981) and Chardin (1985).
Special Exhibitions
With respected museum professionals worldwide, Dr. Conisbee co-curated a number of highly acclaimed exhibitions, among them:
- In the Light of Italy: Corot and Early Open-air Painting (1996);
- Degas at the Races (1998);
- Manet, Monet, and the Gare Saint-Lazare (1998);
- Van Gogh's van Goghs (1999);
- Portraits by Ingres (1999);
- Anne Vallayer-Coster (2002);
- Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre (2004); and
- Cézanne in Provence (2006).
Conisbee will perhaps best be remembered as the curator of Georges de La Tour and His World (1996-1997), a landmark touring presentation of the French painter's works. His insightful writings and those of other academics in the show's monographic catalogue are a thorough distillation of early 17th-century French art and culture as seen in the works of Georges de La Tour (1593-1652), an artist largely forgotten until his rediscovery by German researcher Hermann Voss in 1915. The text remains to this day a staple of many university courses in French painting and iconography of the period.
Philip Conisbee, a United States citizen since 1994, is survived by his wife, Faya Causey Conisbee, the National Gallery of Art's Head of Academic Programs; son Ben Conisbee Baer of New York; daughter Molly Conisbee-Rijke of Bath, England; stepson Jan Causey Frel of San Francisco, California; and his father, Paul Conisbee and brother, Alan Conisbee, both of London, England.
