Richard Muther (art historian)

Richard Muther (1860–1909) was a German critic and historian of art He was born 25 February 1860 in Ohrdruf in Germany and died 28 June 1909 in Wölfelsgrund (now in Poland).

[2] The Russian artist Alexandre Benois wrote of Muther's appeal by saying that his ideas, "became common property and permeated the society so much that even the most conservative people started using 'Muther's parlance'".

[3] He wrote Geschichte der Malerei[4] (five volumes, 1899–1900); which appeared in English as The history of painting from the fourth to the early nineteenth century[5] (2 volumes, 1907), translated and edited by George Kriehn.

He was also the author of books on Leonardo da Vinci (1900), Lucas Cranach (1903), Rembrandt (1904), Francisco Goya (1904), Diego Velázquez (1907), Jean-François Millet (1907) and Gustave Courbet (1908).

His Die deutsche Bücherillustration der Gothik und Frührenaissance was later translated into English and published as German book illustration of the Gothic period and the early Renaissance (1460–1530) (1972).