Ring, Grete

Date born:   1887

Place Born:   Berlin, Germany

Date died:   1952

Place died:   Zürich, Switzerland

Dealer, collector and historian of 19th-century panting and drawings. Ring studied with Heinrich Wölfflin (q.v.) at Munich University, completing a thesis on early Netherlandish portrait painting. She became interested in 19th century drawings while working at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich and the Nationalgalerie in Berlin. Ring began working for the firm of Paul Cassirer in 1919, and became a partner in 1924. After working with Helmuth Lutjens in Amsterdam, she established the Paul Cassirer Gallery in London in 1938. In her book, A Century of French Painting, 1400-1500, Ring argued that French painting of the period should be studied for its own merits, rather than in light of the accomplishments of the Italian Renaissance. She collected drawings by the Lukasbrüder, Max Liebermann, Caspar David Friedrich, Anselm Feuerbach, and Adolf Friedrich Erdmann Menzel, which she bequeathed to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. LMW

Home Country:  Germany

Sources:  The Dictionary of Art

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