Dennis Farr; influential art historian & museum curator
Hyfler/Rosner
Energetic director of the Courtauld Institute Galleries and
propagandist for 20th-century British art
The Independent
14 December 2006
Michael Kauffmann
Dennis Farr was one of the relatively few museum curators
whose career spanned directorships in the regions and in the
capital. From 1980 to 1993, he was Director of the Courtauld
Institute Galleries in London, following 11 years as
Director of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. He was
also an outstanding historian of, and propagandist for,
20th-century British art and several of his books have
remained standard works.
Educated at Luton Grammar School, where he was encouraged in
his ambition to study the history of art by an enthusiastic
art teacher, he went to the Courtauld Institute of Art,
London University, in 1947. At the time, Anthony Blunt had
just become director and the student body consisted
predominantly of ex-service men and women. At Blunt's
suggestion, Farr wrote his MA dissertation on William Etty,
the early 19th-century painter of nudes, which was
subsequenly published with a full catalogue (William Etty,
1958).
In 1954 he was appointed Assistant Keeper at the Tate
Gallery, just when the National Gallery and Tate Gallery Act
gave full independent status to the Tate for the first time.
Farr described his early years there in an illuminating
reminiscence in a recent number of the Burlington Magazine
containing numerous amusing anecdotes, including a
description of the then director, John Rothenstein, punching
the well-known, irascible collector Douglas Cooper on the
nose. He worked on several exhibitions, notably a Duncan
Grant retrospective, and he was on the committee of the
legendary "Romantic Movement" exhibition celebrating the
10th anniversary of the Council of Europe in 1959.
But the long-term fruit of his period at the Tate was the
catalogue Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture
(1964), which he wrote with Mary Chamot and Martin Butlin,
and a general book, British Sculpture Since 1945 (1965).
Relatively brief interludes as curator of the Paul Mellon
Collection in Washington and then as Senior Lecturer in Fine
Art at Glasgow University led to the appointment which
turned out to be central to his career, the directorship of
the Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery. The art gallery
is outstanding among the regional collections in England and
under Farr's direction it enjoyed a golden period, marked by
major acquisitions, even though it suffered from financial
cuts in the later 1970s. His calm demeanour and human
kindness and the encouragement he gave to his staff were
widely recognised and appreciated. His high standing in
Birmingham is attested in a variety of ways, not least in
his appointment as JP and the award of an honorary doctorate
by the university.
In 1980 he was appointed Director of the Courtauld Institute
Galleries where his first task was the integration and
display of the recent munificent bequest of Count Antoine
Seilern, the Princes Gate collection. This was mainly of
Flemish and Italian paintings and drawings, and it added a
new dimension to Samuel Courtauld's original collection of
French Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. A few years
later, he planned and supervised the collection's move from
its modest home in Woburn Square to its present grand
surroundings in the fine rooms at Somerset House. We worked
together at this time and he was always a model colleague.
The new galleries were opened to the public in 1990 and he
was appointed CBE the following year.
Dennis Farr's rather laid-back manner belied a great deal of
energy and commitment. As well as the administrative tasks
of his directorships, he engaged in research, particularly,
though by no means exclusively, on 20th-century British art,
and produced numerous publications. Most notable is his
volume in the Oxford History of English Art series, English
Art 1870-1940 (1978) and his monumental book on the sculptor
Lynn Chadwick (Lynn Chadwick: sculptor, 1990, written with
Eva Chadwick) which has run to four editions.
Nor did he shirk the demands of the public arena of his
profession. Indeed, he has remained unique in having been
both President of the Museums Association and Chairman of
the Association of Art Historians. On the academic side, he
was editor of the Clarendon Studies in the History of Art.
Retirement from the Courtauld in 1994 gave him more time for
his favourite hobby, riding, in pursuit of which he and his
wife, Diana Pullein-Thompson, well-known author of
childrens' books, moved to Haslemere in Surrey. Yet he
continued to be in demand as a guest curator of exhibitions
and he took on a Francis Bacon retrospective at the Yale
Center for British Art in New Haven in 1999.
The career of Dennis Farr provides an eloquent example of an
able manager who was also a gifted curator and a productive
scholar - a combination which some would now wrongly claim
to be impracticable.
Michael Kauffmann
Dennis Larry Ashwell Farr, museum director and art
historian: born Luton, Bedfordshire 3 April 1929; Assistant
Witt Librarian, Courtauld Institute of Art 1952-54,
Director, Courtauld Institute Galleries 1980-93; Assistant
Keeper, Tate Gallery 1954-64; Curator, Paul Mellon
Collection, Washington DC 1965-66; Senior Lecturer in Fine
Art, and Deputy Keeper, University Art Collections, Glasgow
University 1967-69; Director, City Museums and Art Gallery,
Birmingham 1969-80; President, Museums Association 1979-80;
Chairman, Association of Art Historians 1983-86; General
Editor, Clarendon Studies in the History of Art 1985-2001;
CBE 1991; married 1959 Diana Pullein-Thompson (one son, one
daughter); died Guildford, Surrey 6 December 2006.