Frank Jewett Mather Jr.

Frank Mather was born in Deep River, Connecticut, and graduated from Williams in 1889. He took a Ph.D. in English philology at Johns Hopkins, then studied for a year in Berlin and Paris. In 1893 he was teaching English and modern languages at Williams, and seven years later joined the Evening Post, first as editorial writer, then as art critic. After a seige of typhoid he needed a change, and in 1906 went to Italy, where he did free-lance journalism. There he was discovered by Allan Marquand, the founder and patron of the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton, and Marquand brought him to Princeton.

Mather never left Princeton. He taught Renaissance Art there and was director of the Museum of Historic Art, and when he died he was Marquand Professor of Art and Archaeology Emeritus. But he used Princeton as a base for far more than teaching, and there he wrote the books on art and aesthetics that made him famous. During his long, productive, and influential life the range of his interests and talents was incredible: reporter, editor, yachtsman, literary critic, professor, museum director, passionate collector of books, pictures and fine drawings, avid reader, and writer on almost any cultural subject. Both as writer and teacher he was a humanist in the best sense. There was nothing piecemeal, pedantic, or even academic about him. An expert on the history of painting, he illuminated his teaching of the great masters with wide and deep knowledge of literature, history, and life. Those who studied with him will long remember his brilliance, his abundant knowledge, his fresh and independent judgments. He enjoyed art as he enjoyed life, and he taught other people to enjoy both.

He liked to sail boats and was an exceedingly competent skipper. He spent his summers at Quisset on the Cape, and for many years cruised in a forty-eight foot ketch, “The Four Winds.” Once in a race in Edgartown harbor she got off to a slow start, and when at the half mark the wind died down, it was plain that she was going to finish a couple of hours after the other boats. “This is going to be a long drawn out business,” said Mather. “Shall we be Platonic and finish the race, or Aristotelian and call it a day?” It was voted to be Platonic and finish. Just at that moment a small boat with a crew of two boys and a girl sailed across his bow. On her stern was the legend “CAVE CANUM.” At once Mather’s eagle eye spotted the bad Latin [the second word would properly be “Canem”]. “Ahoy,” he called through his megaphone, “Where are you from?” “Yale,” came the answer. Quick as a flash Mather roared back, “You would!”

He was the dean of American art historians and critics and one of the most gifted writers on art of his generation. He was a wonderful talker, fluent, provocative, and entertaining. Those who knew him well will not forget his “stream of mind” and his delicious humor. He was a rare and charming companion and friend. His career was an example of the advice that he once gave in the Daily Princetonian: “It may be better to concentrate temporarily in many interests rather than to settle down prematurely to a specialty.” He found life full of interest in any direction that he looked—and he looked all about him. He was a charming and sensible writer; and in a field where solemn pontification is almost a vocational malady he was totally free of cant or preciosity.

George W. Martin
1954 Century Association Yearbook