In 1925, he became Lincoln Professor of Classical Archaeology and Art at the University of Oxford,[3] a position he held until 1956.[1] He specialised in Greek decorated pottery (particularly black-figure and red-figure), and became a world authority on the subject. He adapted the art-historical method initiated by Giovanni Morelli to attribute the specific "hands" (style) of specific workshops and artists, even where no signed piece offered a name, e.g. the Berlin Painter, whose production he first distinguished.[7] He looked at the sweep of classical pottery—major and minor pieces—to construct a history of workshops and artists in ancient Athens. The first English edition of his book, Attic Red-figure Vase-painters, appeared in 1942 (in German as Attische Vasenmaler des rotfigurigen Stils, 1925).
In 1919, Beazley married a widow, Marie Ezra (née Bloomfield), whose first husband had been killed in World War I. She died in 1967.[3]
His stepdaughter, from Marie's previous marriage, Giovanna Marie Therese Babette "Mary" Ezra married Irish poet Louis MacNeice.[14]
Archive
There is a notebook in Beazley's hand in Bodleian Archives & Manuscripts, the Bodleian Library, Oxford (MS. Eng. misc. e. 1390), containing his notes on Greek literature and sculpture and on Roman history, and also his illustrations of classical statuary and his sketched caricatures of some contemporaries.
References
^ ab"Sir John Beazley". University of Oxford. 12 June 2012. Retrieved 14 June 2012.