Francis Haskell

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Francis Haskell (born 1928, died January 18, 2000, Oxford) was an English art historian, whose writings placed emphasis on the social history of art.

He read history at King's College, Cambridge and became a Fellow there in 1954. Later he was Professor of Art History at Oxford from 1967 until his retirement in 1995. In 1976 Haskell joined the National Art Collections Fund committee and became one of its most vocal members, defending the purchase of Poussin's Rebecca and Eliezar for the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge (the government refused to accept the painting because it had been in the collection of the disgraced Anthony Blunt).

[edit] Selected bibliography

• Patrons and Painters 1963
• Rediscoveries in Art 1976
• Taste and the Antique 1981, with Nicholas Penny