20 Facts About Ellis Waterhouse

Sir Ellis Kirkham Waterhouse was an English art historian and museum director who specialised in Roman baroque and English painting.

Ellis Waterhouse was Director of the National Galleries of Scotland and held the Barber chair at Birmingham University until his official retirement in 1970.

Ellis Waterhouse's father was the architect Percy Leslie Waterhouse, through whom he possessed the means to pursue a largely independent career.

Ellis Waterhouse won a scholarship New College, Oxford and in 1925 he achieved a first in classical honour moderations.

Ellis Waterhouse graduated with a second class degree in 1927 and then went to Princeton University as a Commonwealth Fund Fellow.

Ellis Waterhouse studied at Princeton with Frank Jewett Mather and received a fellowship to study El Greco in Spain.

Ellis Waterhouse stayed at the National Gallery for four years, but resigned in 1933 because of the amateurish approach of his colleagues.

Ellis Waterhouse then joined the British School in Rome as librarian until 1936, working on the combination of connoisseurship and archival material that resulted in Roman Baroque Painting, on the strength of which he was elected a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford and prepared the catalog for a Royal Academy exhibition, 17th-Century Art in Europe.

Ellis Waterhouse stayed in Greece, working as a cartographer for the British military attache.

Ellis Waterhouse was then commissioned into the Intelligence Corps in Cairo.

In September 1944 Waterhouse was selected for service with the British MFAA by Monuments Man Lt.

Ellis Waterhouse was among the first Monuments Men to investigate Holland, inspecting churches, museums and monuments.

Ellis Waterhouse lectured at Oxford University, Williams College, and the University of Pittsburgh during this time.

In 1970 Ellis Waterhouse became the Director of the newly established Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.

The material includes a series of general English sale catalogues running from 1896 to 1940 ; Ellis Waterhouse's annotated copy of Graves and Cronin's catalogue of Reynolds paintings and a large collection of annotated photographs of British paintings.

Ellis Waterhouse's reaction was ' I was surprised, slightly amused, but on the whole not displeased.

In recalling his friendship of over 40 years with Ellis Waterhouse, Cecil Gould stated that he was 'a most remarkable man, with a ringing, sardonic, slightly nasal voice, with a mischievous glint behind the spectacles, exquisite handwriting, underlying kindness, accessibility to young scholars and open handed willingness to share his results with them and an astonishing industry which continued almost to the day of his death.

Ellis Waterhouse married Helen Thomas, an archaeologist of ancient Greece whom he had met during the war in Athens, where she was connected with the British School of Archaeology in 1949; they had two daughters.

In 1937, Ellis Waterhouse commissioned the modernist house Overshot built by Samuel and Harding of the Tecton Group in Oxford.

Ellis Waterhouse died at home, suddenly, of a heart attack in 1985.