Oskar Ferdinandovich Valdgauer

Val’dgauer, Oskar Ferdinandovich 

Born Mar. 2 (14), 1883, in Vindava, now Ventspils; died Jan. 14, 1935, in Leningrad. Soviet historian of ancient art.

Val’dgauer studied at the University of Munich (1900-03) under A. Furtwängler. He was a professor at Leningrad University and the Academy of the Arts; beginning in 1903 he worked at the Hermitage. Val’dgauer’s principal works, which deal with the publication, attribution, and classification of ancient artifacts and documents in the museums of the USSR, were linked with the urgent problems of Soviet art studies during the 1920’s and 1930’s (the problems of realism and the portrait). Val’dgauer was among the first to introduce scientific methods of organizing museum exhibitions.

WORKS

Kratkoe opisanie raspisnykh vaz v otdele Drevnostei Imp. Ermitazha. St. Petersburg, 1906.
Etiudy po istorii antichnogo portreta. Part 1. Petrograd, 1921. Part 2. Moscow-Leningrad, 1938.
Rimskaia portretnaia skul’ptura v Ermitazhe. Petrograd, 1923.