[1] He was Director of the National Galleries of Scotland (1949–52) and held the Barber chair at Birmingham University until his official retirement in 1970.
[4] He 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 (1937), on the strength of which he was elected a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford (1938–47) and prepared the catalog for a Royal Academy exhibition, 17th-Century Art in Europe.
Further investigations by the Monuments Men concluded that another painting attributed to Vermeer, Christ with the Woman Taken in Adultery, owned by Hermann Goering was also a fake.
[6] After the war, Waterhouse briefly served as editor to The Burlington Magazine where he was soon succeeded by Benedict Nicolson and began his academic career at Manchester University, 1947–48 and Director of the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh (1949–52).
[7] On taking up the post he brought with him his extensive archive of annotated photographs and associated documentation of British art which were formally donated to the Centre on Waterhouse's death in 1985.
[10] 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.
[11] 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[12] in 1949; they had two daughters.
His unusually extensive personal library and annotated photograph collection were sold to help in the initial formation of the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.