(b Paris, June 11, 1884; d Paris, Nov 16, 1973). French art historian. His family owned a bookshop selling prints and catalogues in the Rue de Rivoli, Paris. In 1908 he graduated brilliantly from the classical studies course at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, and was admitted to the Ecole de France in Rome, where he wrote his thesis on Rome et la renaissance de l’antiquité à la fin du XVIIIe siècle (1912). He was also for a time a student in St Petersburg and became, consequently, one of the few scholars to have known the Russia of the tsars. A result of the Russian visit was his work L’Architecture classique à Saint-Pétersbourg à la fin du XVIIIe siècle (1912). After the end of World War I Hautecoeur became a curator at the Louvre and then the Musée du Luxembourg, except for 1927–30, when he was in charge of the fine arts in Egypt. From then on he was a dominant figure in the history of art, but was also interested in contemporary art; each assignment brought from him an important work. From ...