author
W. G. (William George) Constable
1887–1976
A leading art historian and museum curator, he helped shape how British and European painting was studied, catalogued, and presented in major institutions on both sides of the Atlantic. His work joined close looking with deep archival research, making him an important figure in twentieth-century art history.
1 Audiobook
Forgers and Forgeries
by W. G. (William George) Constable
About the author
Born in Derby in 1887, William George Constable became an art historian and gallery director whose career linked Britain and the United States. He worked at the National Gallery in London, served as the first director of the Courtauld Institute, and later became Curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Constable was known for careful scholarship on painters including Canaletto and Richard Wilson, and for the kind of patient, evidence-based connoisseurship that shaped museum practice in his era. Archive descriptions of his papers show how extensive that work was, preserving lectures, research notes, correspondence, and photographs gathered across decades.
He died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1976. Today he is remembered not only for the posts he held, but for the lasting influence of his writing and research on the study of British and Italian art.