Walter Liedtke | |
---|---|
Born |
Walter Arthur Liedtke, Jr. August 28, 1945 Plainfield, New Jersey US |
Died | February 3, 2015 Valhalla, New York US |
(aged 69)
Residence | Bedford Hills, New York |
Nationality | United States |
Occupation | Art historian, writer, curator |
Years active | 1974–2015 |
Walter Arthur Liedtke, Jr. (August 28, 1945 – February 3, 2015) was an American art historian, writer and Curator of Dutch and Flemish Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He was known as one of the world's leading scholars of Dutch and Flemish paintings. He died in the 2015 Metro-North Valhalla train crash.
Liedtke was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, and grew up in Livingston, New Jersey. Liedtke studied Art History, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1967 from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, a Master of Arts degree in 1969 at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. He received a Doctorate at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. Liedtke said that his interest in Dutch paintings began because he was focused on images as a child from hours and hours of watching a lot of TV. He described his aesthetic as that of having a focus on how he responded to visual patterns compared to a more typical perspective focused on story and narratives.
Liedtke planned on a career in academia. For two years Liedtke taught at the Florida State University, then at the University's villa in Florence. In 1974 he was working at the Courtauld Institute in London on his PhD dissertation, "Architectural painting in Delft, 1650–1675," in which he discussed work of Gerrit Houckgeest, Pieter Saenredam, Hendrick Cornelisz. van Vliet and Emmanuel de Witte. From 1975 till 1979 he joined the faculty at Ohio State University.