John House, who has recently passed away at the age of 66 due to a heart attack, was renowned for his expertise in the field of impressionism. He was not one to just skim the surface of the movement, but instead, he delved deep and uncovered the fact that the impressionists were astute observers of social changes. Moreover, he demonstrated how they negotiated with artistic conventions and institutions to achieve their goals, proving that they were not a self-contained group of people. House played a pivotal part in transforming the academic study of this period and even played a role in the development of public appreciation of the movement via the exhibitions he curated.
Born to an academic aristocratic family, House’s father, Humphry House, was an Oxford don and scholar of Dickens and Gerard Manley Hopkins, and was widely known for his "sombre integrity" and "volcanic self-discipline." In contrast, John took a more vivacious approach to life, but there were hints of his father’s influence in his eclectic interests and sharp tongue. John’s academic achievements were exemplary, beginning with success at Westminster school, a first in classics at New College, Oxford, and a distinction in his MA at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. Although he taught at the University of East Anglia before attaining his PhD, which later formed the basis of his book Monet: Nature into Art (1986).
House was a fan of innovative teaching methods and was known to encourage greater student participation in teaching environments. He and his wife Jill, whom he married in 1968, started a family, but they later separated. He thrived at the Courtauld, where he was appointed in 1980, and was passionate about the gallery’s magnificent impressionist and post-impressionist collection. In 1994, he curated an exhibition that brought together works owned by the institute’s founder, Samuel Courtauld, with others that had been dispersed. His catalogue essay on Courtauld’s patronage was insightful and included an incisive comparison with that of Albert C Barnes, the more authoritarian creator of the Barnes Foundation in Pennsylvania. House remained involved in the affairs of the Courtauld even after his retirement in 2010.
House was a global authority on impressionism, renowned for his integrity when it came to the attribution of paintings, even when faced with immense commercial pressures. Moreover, he left behind a formidable body of scholarly articles and publications, with his most ambitious being Impressionism: Paint and Politics (2004), taking an approach that linked technical innovations with exhibition strategies and ideologies of the period.
He never grew weary of opposing the misconstrued stereotypes that have tarnished the accomplishments of impressionism. In his written commentary for the Royal Academy’s exposition titled Monet in the 20th Century (1999), House saved Monet from the trite modernist label that the latter’s final works were a predecessor to the abstract expressionism art movement. As he adeptly conveyed, Monet’s Grandes Décorations located in the Orangerie in Paris call for a side-by-side comparison to the painted panoramas that were prevalent in the 19th century. Meanwhile, these works exemplified the impressionists’ intent on emphasizing the act of seeing. It was House who impeccably analyzed and contextualized this creative purpose – "the realization in paint of…sensations, …visual experiences of the external world" – throughout his career.
House was enjoying a period of contentment when his unexpected passing happened. During this phase, he derived immense joy from the arrival of his grandchild. His partner, Nancy, and his sons, Adam and Joe, from his marriage to Jill, are left behind to mourn his loss.
