PUTTFARKEN, Thomas 1943-

PERSONAL: Born December 19, 1943, in Hamburg, Germany; son of Franz Ferdinand (a dentist) and Traut Dorothea (Bruhn) Puttfarken; married Herma Zimmer, December 19, 1969 (divorced, 1981); married Elspeth Ann Crichton Stuart, October 10, 1981; children: (first marriage) Nathalie, Malte Ian. Education: University of Hamburg, D.Phil., 1969; attended University of Innsbruck, University of Munich, and Warburg Institute.

ADDRESSES: Office—Department of Art History and Theory, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester CO4 3SQ, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Art history scholar. University of Essex, Colchester, England, lecturer, 1970-71, senior lecturer, 1974-78, reader, 1978-84, professor of art history and theory, 1984—, dean of students, 1978-81, dean of the School of Comparative Studies, 1984-86, pro vice chancellor, 1987—; lecturer at University of Hamburg, Hamburg, West Germany, 1971-74.

WRITINGS:

Roger de Piles' Theory of Art, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1985.

(With others) Falkland Palace and Royal Burgh, National Trust for Scotland (Edinburgh, Scotland), 1995.

The Discovery of Pictorial Composition: Theories of Visual Order in Painting 1400-1800, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 2000.

Contributor to art magazines, including Burlington, Art History, and Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes.

SIDELIGHTS: Thomas Puttfarken's study Roger de Piles' Theory of Art was highly praised in the Times Literary Supplement by critic Richard Wollheim, who commented that the book "is an admirable contribution to the art-theoretical strand of art history....It is also . . . an excellent example of how to retrieve the ideas of an interesting, if unsystematic, thinker for posterity." Wollheim considered it "a refreshing departure" that Puttfarken examined the seventeenth-century thinker "not so much for the light he can throw on a related body of painting, but in his own right." The critic particularly admired Puttfarken's own interpretation of illusion and his attention to de Piles's view that illusion and harmony are not only compatible, but mutually supportive of each other.

In The Discovery of Pictorial Composition: Theories of Visual Order in Painting, Puttfarken notes that prior to the seventeenth century, pictorial composition was not a factor, particularly since Italian artists and patrons concentrated on the representations and interactions of life-size saints depicted in large murals and altarpieces. He then goes on to study composition in theory and practice. David Topper, reviewing this volume for Leonardo Digital Reviews wrote, "I have often been disturbed by the incongruity between the foreground and background in most pictures by Leonardo da Vinci. This erudite and tightly argued book gives an answer to that puzzle." London Review of Books contributor Jules Lubbock called the art history "superb."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

London Review of Books, October 31, 2002, Jules Lubbock, review of The Discovery of Pictorial Composition: Theories of Visual Order in Painting 1400-1800, p. 40.

Renaissance Quarterly, autumn, 2001, review of The Discovery of Pictorial Composition, p. 941.

Sixteenth Century Journal, spring, 2002, review of The Discovery of Pictorial Composition, p. 316.

Times Literary Supplement, March 28, 1986, Richard Wollheim, review of Roger de Piles' Theory of Art.

ONLINE

Leonardo Digital Reviews, http://mitpress2.mit.edu/ejournals/Leonardo/ldr.html (November, 2000), David Topper, review of The Discovery of Pictorial Composition.*