Michael J. Ripps read history at Virginia and Cambridge and later art history in Amsterdam, under Ellinoor Bergvelt. He submitted his doctoral thesis, ‘Bond Street picture dealers and the international trade in Dutch old masters, 1882-1914,’ at Oxford, supervised by Christopher Brown. He has held grants from the Frick Collection, Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, and Burlington Magazine (Haskell Prize), and spent a year in the paintings department, J. Paul Getty Museum. While completing his DPhil, Michael also gained experience in the trade, where he assisted Bob Haboldt. Presently, he is turning his thesis into a monograph. His thesis profiles the following firms:

-M.H. Colnaghi
-Thos. Agnew & Sons
-Chas. Sedelmeyer
-the Wertheimer Brothers
-A.J. Sulley
-P. & D. Colnaghi
-Duveen Brothers

If you would like to see Ripps’ work, he may be contacted here.

Main art-historical interests of Michael Ripps:

connoisseurship; the history of the old master trade; the history of collecting; provenance research; Dutch, Flemish, and early Netherlandish paintings; German and Italian old masters