Seite - 265 - in Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, Band LIX

The centenary of Gombrich’s birth is not just an occasion for commemorating one of the most famous scholars of his generation, but also for reminding ourselves of the reasons for his fame. Certainly, he does not fit the pattern of cel- ebrated art historians of the last century, most of whom were known above all for their work on a particular historical period or category of object, or who were attracted by specific areas of histori- cal investigation, for example collecting or pa- tronage. Thus Panofsky will always be associated with the study of iconography, and also of Dürer, Anthony Blunt with seventeenth-century art and architecture, and Gombrich’s teacher Julius von Schlosser with the study of the primary sources of art history. Scholars such as these had a very clear influ- ence on later art history. Gombrich seems more varied in his interests and approaches, and his influence is accordingly less easy to document. He was particularly preoccupied with percep- tion and representation, but he also wrote on iconography, patronage and taste, and much else besides. At the same time, he became the most widely-read writer on art history in the world. This is not just due to the unparalleled success of The Story of Art, published in 1950, although that certainly contributed to his reputation. Gombrich is the only art historian whose work, even today, is sure to be represented in the art section of every large bookshop in any city. And it is not only The Story of Art that one will find there, but also Art and Illusion and the many published collections of his shorter pieces. Gombrich evidently took a particular pride in his ability to address a very wide audience. It is clear from much that he wrote and said that he regarded it as part of the duty of the scholar to express himself in a clear and accessible way, not just because scholars ought to make their work accessible, but also because clarity of ar- gument and style is an admirable goal in itself. The clearer the argument, he believed, the easier to say whether it does or does not make sense. Gombrich always hated obscurity and jargon in academic writing, often suspecting that it concealed not depth of thinking, but lack of clear reasoning. His distrust of the more arcane approaches to his subject won him few friends among art historians of a more theoretical cast; and it may have led some of them to give his ide- as less consideration than they should have done. I suspect that The Story of Art is often re- garded as not quite serious as a work of art his- tory, because it was written explicitly for a non- specialist audience, and for a teenage audience at that, but it is a good starting-point in consider- ing Gombrich’s achievement, and not just be- cause it sold in millions of copies. Its success was not only due to the clarity of the writing, but to the fact that it is extraordinarily interesting. As a general account of the history of art, the book HOW GOMBRICH WILL BE REMEMBERED Charles Hope This paper was originally presented in Celebration of Professor Sir Ernst Gombrich’s 100th birthday on the 30th March 2009 at the Institute for Art History, Vienna University. I am grateful to Veronika Kopecky and Elizabeth McGrath for information and advice.