Rosamond Bernier, the stylish art history lecturer who was a friend of Picasso, Matisse, Miró and many other artists, died on 9 November, aged 100. Born Rosamund Rosenbaum to a wealthy and sophisticated Pennsylvania family, she attended Sarah Lawrence College and, aged 19, married Lewis Riley, a property developer, with whom she lived in Mexico. There she learned Spanish, flew her own plane and kept an exotic menagerie. Divorced in 1943, she moved to Paris where she married the journalist, Georges Bernier, with whom she founded L’Oeil, the bilingual monthly art magazine. In France she made friends with the aforementioned artists, as well as Max Ernst, Georges Braque and Fernand Léger. Divorced again, she returned to New York where in the 1970s and 80s she made her mark as a dramatic and stylish art lecturer (starting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, then lecturing elsewhere), peppering her talks with candid personal recollections. She also appeared regularly on TV. In 1975, she married the British-born art critic of The New York Times, John Russell.
Edgar Munhall, the first curator of the Frick Collection who served for 35 years, died on 17 October, aged 83. Born in Pittsburgh, took his BA (1955) and PhD (1959) degrees in art history from Yale, and his MA (1957) from New York University. From 1959 to 1965 he was the assistant curator of prints and drawings at Yale University Art Gallery. In 1965 he heard that the Frick (which had opened to the public in 1935) was looking for a curator—a job previously discharged by the director. He applied, was hired and remained until his retirement in 1999. During Munhall’s tenure, he organised or contributed to 28 exhibitions on 18th- and 19th-century art and, after his retirement, organised Greuze the Draftsman (2002) for the Frick, the first show devoted to the artist’s drawings. He was also responsible for acquisitions, including many Old Master and 18th-century paintings, as well as sculptures by Algardi, Bernini and Coysevox.
Benedict Read, the art historian who revived scholarly and general interest in Victorian sculpture, died on 20 October, aged 71. The son of the art critic and poet, Herbert Read, and the brother of the writer, Piers Paul Read, Benedict Read was born in North Yorkshire and was educated at Ampleforth College. He read English at Oxford and then studied art history at the Courtauld Institute. He was the deputy librarian of the Courtauld’s Witt photographic library, and also taught there. Read became the senior lecturer in sculpture studies at Leeds University in 1990 and remained there until his retirement in 2010. He focused his attention on the neglected, and often scorned, sculptors of the 19th century. His book, Victorian Sculpture (1982) was the cornerstone of the rehabilitation of British 19th-century art.
Louis Stettner, the documentary photographer who captured life on the streets of New York and Paris over 50 years, died on 13 October, aged 93. Born in Brooklyn, Stettner’s interest in photography was first stirred by his father’s gift of a box camera when he was a boy. He began to look at photographs in the Metropolitan Museum’s print room and observing city life, and took a short course at the Photo League. After service in the Second World War, he joined the league, where he became friends with Lewis Hine and Weegee. A stay in Paris from 1946 to 1951 introduced him to the work of Brassaï, Doisneau and Cartier-Bresson, who inspired him to photograph the subjects of everyday life. Thereafter he trained his camera on the ebb and flow of people on their daily rounds—in Penn Station, on the subway, on the Avenue de Chatillon, in the Métro, along the Seine and so on. A collection of his work (1947-72), Early Joys, was published in 1987, his New York scenes in 1996 and his Penn Station photos in 2015.