John Walker

Personal

Vocation

American art curator, who served as the second director of the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), from 1956 to 1969. His significant acquisitions included Rembrandt's Aristotle with the Bust of Homer, Fragonard's La Liseuse, El Greco's Laocoon, and the Ginevra de' Benci by Leonardo da Vinci. Walker received an undergraduate degree in art history from Harvard University in 1930, where he studied with Paul J. Sachs. He formed the Harvard Society for Contemporary Art, with Philip Johnson, Lincoln Kirstein, and Edward Warburg. He studied at Villa I Tatti in Florence with Bernard Berenson, and served as professor and assistant director of the American Academy in Rome from 1935 to 1939. Walker became chief curator of the National Gallery of Art in 1939 and was involved in identifying works of art looted by the Nazis following World War II. Walker was the author of six books, including Bellini and Titian and Titian at Ferrara, and an autobiography, Self-Portrait with Donors. He died in Amberley, West Sussex, England on 16 October 1995, aged 88. Link to Wikipedia biography