Ursula Hoff AO OBE FAHA (26 December 1909 in London, UK – 10 January 2005 in Melbourne) was an Australian scholar and prolific author on art.
Her involvement then continued when she was appointed London Adviser of the Felton Bequest (1975–83), a major charitable foundation dedicated to the NGV.
[5] From 1935 to 1939 Hoff continued living in London and working in a variety of curatorial and research positions at the Royal Academy; National Gallery; and the British Museum; and wrote for the Journal of the Warburg Institute and the Burlington Magazine.
In 1942, she was invited by Sir Daryl Lindsay, the newly appointed director of the National Gallery of Victoria, to deliver a series of lunch time lectures at Melbourne's premier cultural institution.
During her tenure at the National Gallery of Victoria, Hoff pioneered the professional cataloguing of the NGV's holdings; produced important and internationally recognised publications and catalogues of its collections; curated numerous important exhibitions; published monographs on Charles Conder,[8] William Blake,[9] Rembrandt,[10] and many others; secured important works by Paul Klee, Marc Chagall, Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt, Pablo Picasso, Anthony van Dyck, Giovanni Batista Tiepolo, Salvador Dalí, and innumerable others for the NGV's collection;[11] became Founding Editor of the Art Bulletin of Victoria; and published extensively in Australian and International art journals.
Over her tenure as the London Advisor, she secured many outstanding works for the National Gallery of Victoria, including Francisco de Goya, Robert Rauschenberg, Bridget Riley, François Boucher, Canaletto, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and an important suite of 16th- and 17th-century Indian Mughal miniatures.
In 1947, she was invited by Professor Joseph Burke, the inaugural Herald Chair of Fine Arts at the University of Melbourne, to join the teaching staff of his new department.
After retiring as London Advisor of the Felton Bequest, Ursula Hoff returned to Australia in 1984 and settled in Carlton, Victoria.
[18] She also continued researching the National Gallery of Victoria's collections; produced the fifth edition of European Paintings before 1800 at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1995; published a monograph on Arthur Boyd;[19] contributed essays to catalogues of exhibitions by Charles Blackman, Arthur Boyd, and John Brack; and wrote for Australian art journals.
[23] Upon her retirement as its London Advisor, the Felton Bequest commissioned from John Brack a portrait of Ursula Hoff, which it then donated to the National Gallery of Victoria.