Felice Stampfle

Felice Stampfle (25 July 1912 – 31 December 2000)[1] was an American Curator of Drawings and Prints at the Morgan Library for nearly 40 years, and editor of the scholarly journal Master Drawings.

Biography

Stampfle was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1912.[2] She received a BA in Art History and an MA in Art and Archaeology from Washington University in St. Louis. She attended Paul Sach's training class “Museum Work and Museum Problems” at the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University (1943–45).[3] She was appointed the first Curator of Drawings and Prints at the Morgan Library by Pierpont Morgan's librarian and its first director, Belle da Costa Greene, in 1945.[3]

As Curator, Stampfle oversaw acquisitions of art that more than doubled the size of the library's collection.[3] She organised exhibitions that revealed the strengths of the collection, beginning in 1949 with an exhibition to showcase her discovery of more than 100 previously unknown sheets by Giovanni Battista Piranesi that had recently come to the Morgan from the collection of Frances Louise Tracey Morgan, wife of J. P. Morgan. In 1963, Stampfle founded the quarterly journal Master Drawings to promote the study and connoisseurship of drawings.[4] She remained Editor until 1983. Beginning in 1965, Stampfle organized three seminal exhibitions of Italian drawings from New York collections in collaboration with Jacob Bean, curator of drawings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Stampfle published widely on Dutch and Flemish art, and co-authored the catalogue to 'Rembrandt: Experimental Etcher', an exhibition organized in 1969 by the Morgan Library and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.[5] In 1978, she published Giovanni Battista Piranesi: Drawings in the Pierpont Morgan Library, a catalogue of the Morgan's Piranesi drawings.[6]

Stampfle retired in 1983, but continued to work on a large catalogue of the Morgan's fifteenth and sixteenth century Netherlandish drawings and seventeenth and eighteenth century Flemish drawings, published in 1991.[7] Her catalogue, Dutch Drawings in the Pierpont Morgan Library: Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries. Vol. 2, was written with Jane Shoaf Turner and published in 2006.[8] Art work by Rembrandt[9] and Dürer[10] were gifted to the Morgan in Stampfle's honour.

Stampfle was described by contemporaries as 'a formidable presence with a serious and unflappable demeanor'.[3] She was a leader in a male-dominated field, and retained a formal manner - she was always addressed, even by her staff, as Miss Stampfle.[3] She died at the age of 88 at her home in Kennet Square, Pennsylvania.

References
  1. Stampfle.
  2. Smith, Roberta (2001-01-06). "Felice Stampfle, 88, Curator Of Prints at the Morgan Library (Published 2001)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-03-14.
  3. "The Indomitable Felice Stampfle, the Morgan's First Curator of Drawings and Prints". The Morgan Library & Museum. 2020-06-29. Retrieved 2021-03-14.
  4. "Master Drawings | About". Retrieved 2021-03-14.
  5. Smith, Roberta (2001-01-06). "Felice Stampfle, 88, Curator Of Prints at the Morgan Library (Published 2001)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-03-14.
  6. Piranesi, Giovanni Battista; Stampfle, Felice; Pierpont Morgan Library (1978). Giovanni Battista Piranesi: drawings in the Pierpont Morgan Library. New York: Dover Publications. ISBN 978-0-486-23714-5. OCLC 4907693.
  7. Stampfle, Felice; Kraemer, Ruth S; Turner, Jane; Pierpont Morgan Library (1991). Netherlandish drawings of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and Flemish drawings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the Pierpont Morgan Library. New York; Princeton, N.J.: Pierpont Morgan Library; Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-87598-090-4. OCLC 24887396.
  8. Turner, Jane; Stampfle, Felice; The Pierpont Morgan Library (New York) (2006). Dutch drawings in the Pierpont Morgan Library: seventeenth to nineteenth centuries Vol. 2, Vol. 2. New York, NY: Pierpont Morgan Library. OCLC 774586227.
  9. "Christ and the Woman of Samaria: An Arched Print". The Morgan Library & Museum. 2019-01-15. Retrieved 2021-03-14.
  10. "Albrecht Dürer". The Morgan Library & Museum. 2014-06-27. Retrieved 2021-03-14.
  • 'The Women Who Made the Morgan: Belle da Costa Greene, Felice Stampfle, and Edith Porada': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQnz9P_tzcs
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