Horst W. Janson
| H. W. Janson | |
|---|---|
| Born |
October 4, 1913 St. Petersburg, Russia
|
| Died | September 30, 1982 (aged 68) |
| Nationality | Russian |
| Alma mater | |
| Spouse(s) | Dora Jane Heineberg |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | |
| Academic advisors | Erwin Panofsky |
Horst Waldemar Janson (October 4, 1913 – September 30, 1982), who published as H. W. Janson, was a Russian-born German-American professor of art history best known for his History of Art, which was first published in 1962 and has since sold more than four million copies in fifteen languages.
Janson was born in St. Petersburg in 1913 to Friedrich Janson (1875–1927) and Helene Porsch (Janson) (1879–1974), a Lutheran family of Baltic German stock. After the October Revolution, the family moved to Finland and then Hamburg, where Janson attended the Wilhelms Gymnasium (graduated 1932).
After his German Abitur, Janson studied at the University of Munich and then at the art history program at the University of Hamburg, where he was a student of Erwin Panofsky. In 1935, at the suggestion of Panofsky, who had emigrated to the United States, Alfred Barr sponsored Janson as an immigrant, and he completed a PhD at Harvard University in 1942 (his dissertation was on Michelozzo). He taught at the Worcester Art Museum (1936–38) and the University of Iowa School of Art and Art History (1938–41) while pursuing his degree. In 1941 he married Dora Jane Heineberg (1916–2002), an art history student at Radcliffe College, and he became a citizen in 1943.
Janson taught at Washington University in St. Louis from 1941 until 1949, when he joined the faculty of New York University, where he developed the undergraduate arts department and taught at the graduate Institute of Fine Arts. He was recognized with an honorary degree in 1981 and died on a train between Zurich and Milan in 1982 at the age of 68.
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