Barbara Ehrlich White

Adjunct Professor Emerita, History of Art and Architecture

barbara.white@tufts.edu

Research/Areas of Interest

French Painting and Drawing from Poussin to Matisse

Education

Ph.D., Columbia University, New York, United States, 1965
M.A., Columbia University, New York, United States, 1960
B.A., Smith College, Northampton, United States, 1958

Biography

Barbara Ehrlich White, Ph.D., lectured on art history at Tufts University from 1965–2002. Currently, she is Adjunct Professor Emeritus of Art History at Tufts University. She wrote Renoir: His Life, Art, and Letters, published in 1984, which sold 125,000 copies. It is in 1,285 libraries in 18 countries, and the New York Times chose it as one of the two best art books of 1984. White is the author of Knopf's Impressionists Side By Side: Their Friendships, Rivalries, and Artistic Exchanges, and numerous journal articles. She also edited Prentice-Hall's Impressionism in Perspective in 1978. Her 2017 book, Renoir: An Intimate Biography is based on her collection of 3,000 letters by, to, and about Renoir; the biography quotes 1,100 letters of which 452 are unpublished. In the course of her career, she won many grants and awards. In 2014, the French Minister of Culture and Communication awarded her Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (Knight of Art and Literature). During her active career she gave lectures about Renoir and Impressionism in many locations in the United States; she also lectured in France, England, and Israel. In 1973 she was Associate Producer and Script Writer of an educational television documentary on Renoir for public television which won an Emmy for Outstanding Program Achievement.

Books

Renoir: An Intimate Biography, Thames and Hudson, 2017

Impressionists Side by Side: Their Friendships, Rivalries, and Artistic Exchanges, Knopf, 1996

Renoir: His Life, Art, and Letters, Abrams, 1984.

Editor of Impressionism in Perspective, Prentice-Hall, 1978.