Frank Jewett Mather

Frank Jewett Mather Jr. (6 July 1868 – 11 November 1953) was an American art critic and professor. He was the first "modernist" (i.e., post-classicist) professor at the Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University. He was a direct descendant of Richard Mather a Puritan minister in 17th century Boston.

Biography He was born in Deep River, Connecticut, to parents Caroline Arms Graves and lawyer Frank Jewett Mather, Sr. (1835–1929).

Mather was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1931 and the American Philosophical Society in 1940.

Mather was an editorial writer for the New York Evening Post and assistant editor of The Nation (1901–1906) and art critic for the Post (1905–1906; 1910–1911); from 1904 to 1906 was American editor of The Burlington Magazine; contributed frequently, chiefly on art subjects, to The Nation, The Burlington Magazine, Art and Progress, and other periodicals. He became editor of Art Studies in 1923.

Publications

The Collectors (1912), a volume of short stories Estimates in Art (1916) The Portraits of Dante (1921) A History of Italian Painting (1923) Modern Painting: 1664–1914 (1927) Western European Painting of the Renaissance (1939)

Frank Jewett Mather Award Since 1963, the College Art Association (CAA) has presented an annual award for art journalism named in Mather's honor. The award is for "significant published art criticism that has appeared in publication in a one-year period".