Réau, Louis

Date born:   1881

Place Born:   Poitiers, France

Date died:   1961

Place died:   Paris, France

Director of the Institut Français in St. Petersburg, Russia; historian of French and medieval art and author  Iconographie de l'art chrétien (1955-59). Réau studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He also studied Russian at the École des Langues Orientales in Paris. Réau was appointed Director of the Institut Français in St. Petersburg and in Vienna, where he wrote Histoire de l'expansion de l'art Français, a study of the diffusion of French art through Europe and America in the 1700's. In the field of medieval art, Réau wrote Iconographie de l'art chrétien (1955-59), and monographs of German artists, including Peter Vischer and Mathias Grünwald. His book, L'Art Russe (1922), was one of the first books published in French on the subject of Russian art. Réau was appointed editor-in-chief of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts in 1924, after teaching art history at the Sorbonne and the École du Louvre. In addition to his extensive research on Russian and medieval art, Réau's area of expertise concentrated on 18th-century French art. He published a series of monographs on French sculptors, including Falconet (1922), the Lemoyne family (1927), Pigalle (1950), and Houdon (1964). Réau was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1947.  Among his close associates were the bibliographer and manuscripts scholar Seymour de Ricci (q.v.).

Home Country:  France

Sources:  The Dictionary of Art;  Kleinbauer, W. Eugene.  Modern Perspectives in Western Art History:  An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts.  New York:  Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, p. 56 mentioned;  Bialistocki, Jan. "Iconography."  Encyclopedia of World Art. 7: 769 ff.   New York:  McGraw-Hill, 1959-68 7: 769ff, ; Bazin, Germain.  Histoire de l'histoire de l'art; de Vasari à nos jours.  Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, p. 380.

Bibliography:  Iconographie de l'art chrétien. 3 vols in 6. Paris: Presses Universitares de France, 1955-59. Reprinted, Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus-Thomson, 1974;  Histoire du vandalism en France. 2 vols. Paris, 1959;  L'Europe français au siècle des Lumières. 1938;  Histoire de l'art russe. 2 vols.;  Histoire de l'art roumain.