Ernst Gombrich wrote The Story of Art for teenagers, and the world read it

Person: Ernst Gombrich
Lived: 1909–2001
Field: Art history, education
From: Austrian-British

The story

Ernst Gombrich was a Vienna-born art historian of Jewish origin who had settled in London in 1936. During the Second World War he worked at a BBC listening post at Evesham, translating German radio broadcasts. There he met Béla Horovitz, the founder of Phaidon Press, who was short of new books to publish. Horovitz persuaded Gombrich to finish a history of art that he had started before the war and set aside.

The Story of Art appeared in 1950. Gombrich wrote it for teenagers and set himself clear rules. He promised in the preface to use plain language and to keep the art historian's technical terms to a minimum. He also decided not to mention any work of art that could not be shown in an illustration, so that readers could always look at what he was describing. More than half the book's pages are pictures.

The opening lines became famous: there is no such thing as Art, only artists. Gombrich wanted readers to see each painting, building or sculpture as the work of a real person solving a real problem. The book's 28 chapters move from prehistoric cave paintings and ancient America through Egypt, Greece, Rome, Byzantium, Islam and China, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, to the experimental art of the 20th century.

Reviewers noticed at once that it read like a conversation. The art historian H. W. Janson predicted a most successful career in the classroom, and he was right. The Story of Art has sold more than eight million copies, has been translated into more than 30 languages and is in its 16th edition. Time magazine included it among the 100 best nonfiction books, and Phaidon calls it the finest and most popular introduction to art ever written.

The book has its critics. Some argue that it gives too little space to modern art, to art outside the Western tradition and to women artists, and in 2022 Katy Hessel published The Story of Art Without Men in response. That debate is itself a measure of how central Gombrich's book remains: for millions of readers it is still the first serious book about art they ever open.

Why it matters

The Story of Art remains in print in more than 30 languages, giving students, teachers and museum visitors everywhere a clear way into the whole history of art.

About Ernst Gombrich

Vienna-born art historian whose The Story of Art and A Little History of the World opened art and history to millions of ordinary readers in more than 30 languages.

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Ernst Gombrich

1909–2001 · Art history, education

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